December 28, 2021 by Paul Debraski
[LISTENED TO: November 2021] Girl in a Band
I didn’t really have that much interest in this book when it came out. I love Sonic Youth, but I didn’t really think I cared all that much about their origin stories. Then I saw that there was an audio book read by Kim and that sounded pretty cool.
I realized that I had no idea anything about Kim Gordon’s life and it was fascinating to learn just how much of a bohemian artist she was before she joined the band.
The memoir starts with the final Sonic Youth show. Kim and Thurston’s divorce was already going to happen. They simply wanted to finish out their final shows. So Kim played while watching her disappointment of a husband absorb all the adulation.
But Kim’s book isn’t a salacious tell-all. It’s the story of her life and how she wound up where she did. In fact, there’s very little about Sonic Youth (a lot more about the earliest records and then bits and pieces about the later records). And, while she’s obviously pissed at Thurston for what he did, she’s restrained in her need to thrash the guy.
Perhaps the biggest take away from the book is that after thirty years of being in a rock band, she doesn’t consider herself a musician or a Rock Star (maybe a small letter rock star). That eye opening statement is a kind of lead in to the fact that she has been an artist for most of her life–just not necessarily in music.
She moved to New York from California in 1980. It’s crazy thinking that Kim was a California girl.
It’s even crazier thinking about her older brother Keller who was manipulative and mean and ultimate institutionalized. Kim idolized him and he abused her terribly (more than an older brother might normally do). All of this made Kim into the shy and sensitive woman who you would never think was responsible for some of the most iconoclastic and then iconic music of the 20th century. Continue Reading »
Posted in Artists, Audiobooks, Autobiographies, Beck, Bill Nace, Body/Head, Ciccone Youth, Coachmen, Fluxus, Introjection, Kim Gordon, Lydia Lunch, Marriage (Happy), Marriage Trouble, Real Life, Sonic Youth, Thurston Moore, Yuck | Leave a Comment »
December 27, 2021 by Paul Debraski
[DID NOT ATTEND: April 10, 2020] Dr. Dog: The Last Tour / The Districts / Natalie Prass
I never really got into Dr. Dog but I’ve liked a bunch of their songs over the years. But I’d always heard they were great live, so I’ve had them on my “gotta see” list.
Back in June, Dr. Dog announced their last tour.
“It is a disturbing thing to read, I’m sure, and trust me, an equally unsettling thing to write, but it’s all good,” they wrote. “It’s important to us that you understand that this is not a break up or anything like that. We don’t know what Dr. Dog will do, we just know it won’t include going on tour, except the tour we’re announcing now, which is going to rule.”
This seemed like the perfect (and only) opportunity to see them. I tried to get tickets to the TLA show, but it sold out in a minute. Then I managed to score a ticket to the Fillmore show. I also found out that The Districts were opening, which was pretty cool. Continue Reading »
Posted in Coronavirus, Dr. Dog, Natalie Prass, Philadelphia, PA, The Districts, The Fillmore Philadelphia | Leave a Comment »
December 26, 2021 by Paul Debraski
SOUNDTRACK: hiatus.
[READ: December 26, 2021] Skiing Tales of Terror
My daughter T., got this book for me for Christmas. She bought it at a flea market. She told me that she thought I’d like it because it looked like the kind of cartoon books that I like (she is referring to the original editions of The Far Side that came in the short but wide comic style).
A fair guess.
Except that the content is entirely about skiing. Which is something I have done maybe three times in my life. And which I’m terrified of.
So, content-wise it’s not really my wheelhouse.
And yet, this book turned out to be pretty fascinating. It is a mix of jokes about skiers and genuinely helpful skiing tips. Indeed, if I had read this book before the first time I Went skiing I would have probably enjoyed the experience a lot more. Continue Reading »
Posted in Christmas, Comic Strips, Funny (ha ha), Skiing, Snowboarding | Leave a Comment »
December 25, 2021 by Paul Debraski
SOUNDTRACK: hiatus
[READ: December 25, 2021] “How Wang-Fo Was Saved”
This year, S. ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar. This is my seventh time reading the Calendar. The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar is a deluxe box set of individually bound short stories.
As always, each story is a surprise, so you won’t know what you’re getting until you crack the seal every morning starting December 1. Once you’ve read that day’s story, check this link where editor Alberto Manguel is providing daily commentary on each of the stories he selected for this year’s calendar.
So here’s yet another story translated by Manguel.
The last few stories in this collection just left me feeling unhappy. I didn’t really enjoy them, and found them mostly tedious. A lot of them felt like stories that took an idea and kept building on it with more an more examples. Rather than advancing the story, it just reiterated the story.
Yourcenar evidently wrote many
Oriental Tales, stories set in the Near and Far East, a few based on traditional legends and folktales. According to Yourcenar, the story of the painter Wang-Fo and his disciple is her own invention, though inspired by a Chinese Taoist classic. Scholars, however, have pointed out that Yourcenar seems to have taken her inspiration from a collection of Japanese tales collected and retold by the nineteenth-century Greek-Irish scholar Lafcadio Hearn.
So, yes, another old story, which is what this reads like.
First we meet Wang-Fo’s disciple, who gave up his life to follow the amazing painter Wang-Fo. He was very wealthy and slowly gave up everything so that Wang-Fo could continue to do his work. Everything he painted felt better than life–more vivid, more real. Continue Reading »
Posted in Alberto Manguel, Artists, Belgium, Canadian Content, Christmas, Death, Hingston & Olsen, Marguerite Yourcenar, Short Story, The Short Story Advent Calendar, Violence | Leave a Comment »
December 24, 2021 by Paul Debraski
SOUNDTRACK: hiatus
[READ: December 24, 2021] “The Young King”
This year, S. ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar. This is my seventh time reading the Calendar. The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar is a deluxe box set of individually bound short stories.
As always, each story is a surprise, so you won’t know what you’re getting until you crack the seal every morning starting December 1. Once you’ve read that day’s story, check this link where editor Alberto Manguel is providing daily commentary on each of the stories he selected for this year’s calendar.
I was pretty delighted that Oscar Wilde was selected for this short story (with the caveat that there are hundreds of more recent Irish short story writers to choose from of course). And it started off with Wilde’s wit with the king’s courtiers needing Etiquette lessons because most of them still had natural manners–a very grave offense.
But then, good lord, this story dragged on so torturously.
A 16 year old lad is named to be the next king. He was raised by goatherds so he is blown away by the sumptuousness of the castle. But, as is the case with children’s stories, of which this is apparently one, he has three bad dreams.
Long dreams. Elaborately detailed and yet rather tedious dreams. Continue Reading »
Posted in Alberto Manguel, Canadian Content, Children's Books, Children's Fable, Christmas, Hingston & Olsen, Ireland, Morality, Oscar Wilde, Religion, Short Story, The Short Story Advent Calendar | Leave a Comment »
December 23, 2021 by Paul Debraski
SOUNDTRACK: hiatus
[READ: December 23, 2021] “The Fire Balloons”
This year, S. ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar. This is my seventh time reading the Calendar. The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar is a deluxe box set of individually bound short stories.
As always, each story is a surprise, so you won’t know what you’re getting until you crack the seal every morning starting December 1. Once you’ve read that day’s story, check this link where editor Alberto Manguel is providing daily commentary on each of the stories he selected for this year’s calendar.
This is the kind of story that unfolds itself, proving to be too big for itself.
It is about a king who feared death. So he ordered a cemetery to be built in the center of the kingdom with very high walls. Everyone currently buried would be dg up and moved to the new cemetery.
This takes extensive time and involves many years of building a digging (often with one piece sufficing as an entire body). Continue Reading »
Posted in Alberto Manguel, Canadian Content, Christmas, Death, Giovanni Pontiero, Hingston & Olsen, José Saramago, Portugal, Short Story, The Short Story Advent Calendar, Translation | Leave a Comment »
December 22, 2021 by Paul Debraski
[DID NOT ATTEND: December 22, 2021] KT Tunstall / Christine Havrilla [moved from August 23, 2020]
So KT Tunstall was supposed to play three shows in my area. The show at Ardmore was added when the other shows were rescheduled. Then COVID pushed the shows back again.
For some reason this show was listed as being on December 8 for a short time before it was corrected to being on December 22.
That meant that it looked like she was playing four shows in the Philly area at different venues.
I like Ardmore, although if I can see a band closer I will go there instead. Even though KT’s SOPAC show was postponed, the fact that it was postponed and not cancelled meant that I could just wait until she came back to South Orange. Continue Reading »
Posted in Ardmore Music Hall, Ardmore, PA, Christine Havrilla, Gupsy Fuzz, Indigo Girls, KT Tunstall, SOPAC, WXPN 88.5 FM--Philadelphia, PA | Leave a Comment »
December 22, 2021 by Paul Debraski
SOUNDTRACK: hiatus
[READ: December 22, 2021] “Truman Capote”
This year, S. ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar. This is my seventh time reading the Calendar. The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar is a deluxe box set of individually bound short stories.
As always, each story is a surprise, so you won’t know what you’re getting until you crack the seal every morning starting December 1. Once you’ve read that day’s story, check this link where editor Alberto Manguel is providing daily commentary on each of the stories he selected for this year’s calendar.
I read this whole story believing it was written by Truman Capote and believing that perhaps (as with many of the other authors in this collection) he originated from a place I didn’t realize. And that Hassouna Mosbahi was a person or perhaps a place that I’d never heard of.
And I thought it was really weird and meta that Truman Capote was writing about himself and that he was writing about himself as if he were dead. It seemed like a pretty crazy conceit.
Whoops.
This story is introduced by a narrator who relates his forgetfulness. He has arrived home in Tunisia, but he’s not sure why. Eventually he discovers a telegram that informs him his grandmother has died. While he is in the center city he sees Truman Capote in his white suit and hat. Continue Reading »
Posted in Alberto Manguel, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Canadian Content, Christmas, Hassouna Mosbahi, Hingston & Olsen, Prostitution, Short Story, The Short Story Advent Calendar, Tunisia, William M. Hutchins | Leave a Comment »
December 21, 2021 by Paul Debraski
[DID NOT ATTEND: December 22, 2020] KT Tunstall / Dina Hall [rescheduled from May 5th 2020 and June 28th 2020 and December 22, 2020 and July 9, 2021]
KT Tunstall and Sellersville Theater did everything they could to make this show happen. This was the fifth rescheduled date.
I’m not even entirely sure if Dina Hall was still opening at this point.
I almost feel bad not going to this show I’ve been following it so carefully. But of the three venues where KT was playing near me, this was the most inconvenient and least likely for me to go to.
Nevertheless, I’m happy it finally happened.
Dina Hall is a folksinger from Bethlehem–originally from Sayreville NJ. When she’s with her full band she rocks out a bit more. I’m not sure if this was a solo or a band show.
Posted in Dina Hall, KT Tunstall, Sellersville Theater, Sellersville, PA | Leave a Comment »
December 21, 2021 by Paul Debraski
SOUNDTRACK: hiatus
[READ: December 21, 2021] “The Three Hermits”
This year, S. ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar. This is my seventh time reading the Calendar. The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar is a deluxe box set of individually bound short stories.
As always, each story is a surprise, so you won’t know what you’re getting until you crack the seal every morning starting December 1. Once you’ve read that day’s story, check this link where editor Alberto Manguel is providing daily commentary on each of the stories he selected for this year’s calendar.
By the time I saw Leo Tolstoy I was getting a little annoyed by the end of this collection. Nothing against Tolstoy at all–we should all read him more, but again, I wanted a contemporary writer to get excited by.
And then this story turned out to be exactly the same as Ray Bradbury’s story (obviously Tolstoy was first), but it was less satisfying.
Basically, a bishop is aboard a ship and is told by the pilgrims on board that there’s an island nearby with three very holy hermits. Naturally the busybody bishop needs to see them to make sure they are praying correctly. So he disrupts the entire voyage, making everyone else delay their travels for at least a full day, so he can be a pain in the ass to these poor hermits.
He tries to teach them about god, but they don’t understand him. Continue Reading »
Posted in Alberto Manguel, Canadian Content, Christmas, Hingston & Olsen, Leo Tolstoy, Leo Wiener, Religion, Russia, Short Story, Supernatural, The Short Story Advent Calendar, Translation | Leave a Comment »
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[LISTENED TO: November 2021] Girl in a Band
I Just Read About That... 