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Sy Montgomery–The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness (2015)

May 8, 2020 by Paul Debraski

SOUNDTRACK: BUCK CURRAN-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #17 (May 1, 2020).

I’ve never heard of Buck Curran, an American guitarist living in Bergamo, Italy, “the epicenter of the pandemic in Europe.”

Years ago, Curran met Adele Pappalardo while on tour, fell in love and started a family. They have a son about to turn three years old and another child due in August. “We’re trying to survive,” Curran says. “And be positive,” Pappalardo adds. Soon residents in Italy will be allowed to use parks, visit relatives and attend funerals.

This Tiny Desk is blurbed by Lars Gottrich (which explains why I don’t know this guy–Lars travels in the obscure).  He sums up the music of Curran perfectly:

There’s a burning darkness to these songs, as Curran’s rough-hewn voice and droning psych-folk melodies curl like smoke, but there’s also a desperate hope that cracks the surface.

His songs are slow and droney without a lot of change ups.  Adele sings backing ooohs and aahs on the new “Deep in the Lovin’ Arms of My Babe” and “New Moontide” from 2016’s Immortal Light.  I preferred this song because it opened with some lovely guitar harmonics.  Although it’s about six minutes long and most of that six minutes sounds the same.

Adele leaves and he plays “Ghost on the Hill” which is getting its debut live performance.  He ends with an instrumental, “Blue Raga.”  It has some really interesting chord progressions and is my favorite song of the set.

[READ: January 2020] The Soul of an Octopus

S. bought me this book for Christmas because she knows how much I enjoy octopuses (it’s not octopi–you can’t put a Latin ending on a word derived from Greek).

This book was absolutely wonderful.

It opens with Sy explaining that she was heading from her home in New Hampshire to the New England Aquarium.  She had a date with a giant Pacific octopus.

She summarizes some of the reasons why octopuses are so cool

Here is an animal with venom like a snake, a beak like a parrot, and ink like an old-fashioned pen.  It can weigh as much as a man and stretch as long as a car, yet it can pour its baggy, boneless body through an opening the size of an orange.  It can change color and shape.  It can taste with its skin. Most fascinating of all, I had read that octopuses are smart.

This is all so fascinating to me because when I was a kid, I feel like octopus were boring, scary, purple blobs.  Why didn’t we know they were so cool?

Probably because people didn’t know much about octopuses until fairly recently.  In fact, we are still learning a lot about them.  Like that one three-inch sucker can lift 30 pounds–and a giant Pacific octopus has 1,600 suckers. Continue Reading »

Posted in Aquarium, Buck Curran, Corals, Coronavirus, Death, Electric Eels, Marion Britt, New England Aquarium, NPR/PRI/PBS, Quarantine, Science, Scientists, Scuba Diving, Sea Stars, Sy Montgomery, Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts, Tiny Desk Concert | Leave a Comment »

The House of Love: 30th Anniversary Tour / Alex Nicol (White Eagle Hall, Jersey City, NJ, May 7, 2020) [CANCELLED]

May 7, 2020 by Paul Debraski

[CANCELLED: May 7, 2020] The House of Love / Alex Nicol

indexTo me The House of Love are a quintessential college band.  I loved all three or four of their albums, listened to them a lot and then kind of lost them in the shuffle of new music.

But every time I hear a House of Love song it makes me happy.  So when they announced an American tour (their first American tour in nearly 30 years) I knew I’d have to go.

I was very sad to hear that the whole tour was going to be cancelled instead of postponed, but they did promise that they’d try to make it back, so while it is officially cancelled, we’ll still hold out hope for a future date.

Alex Nicol is a Canadian folk singer whose songs are kind of slow and downbeat.

Posted in Alex Nichol, Coronavirus, Jersey City, NJ, Postponed, Quarantine, The House of Love, White Eagle Hall | Leave a Comment »

Georgina Beatty–“Shelter Seekers” (The Walrus, April 2020)

May 7, 2020 by Paul Debraski

SOUNDTRACK: JERU THE DAMAJA-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #16 (April 30, 2020).

I’ve always liked Jeru the Damaja’s name; I find it very satisfying.  It’s amusing to me that with a name like that he raps about positive things.

He used the concert to share his inspiring philosophy of self-knowledge. Jeru drops lyrics about what it takes to achieve self-actualization in tough conditions for not just himself, but for the culture.

I don’t actually know any of his songs; this is a “medley of his classics.”  Jeru’s got a great, deep voice that adds a lot of strength to his lyrics.

Like Black Thought, Jeru sits in a chair, surrounded by his gear.  Unlike Black Thought, Jeru is in motion pretty consistently bobbing and waving his hand like he does care.

He starts with 50 seconds of “Can’t Stop the Prophet” after which he says “we need a superhero and we forget that the superhero resides within us.”  he encourages everyone to be creative in this time because idle hands do the devil’s work.  This is his lead into the 90 seconds of “Ain’t The Devil Happy.”

His prescient lyrics remain as relevant as ever as he addresses the deepening fissures of socioeconomic inequalities exposed by the coronavirus crisis.

He even updates the lyrics of “Scientifical Madness”

Mind Jah lick you with disease
So I inflict MC’s like Ebola Corona
Or some other man made cancer

He says he doesn’t want to be inside, but he’s grateful that he has a place to be because living outside is “So Raw.”  I really like the slow grooving beat of this song.

After the 90 seconds of “My Mind Spray” he says his mind is always working.  He’s always wondering if this and if that. But the old saying goes “If if’s were fifth, we’d all be drunk.”  In the song “If” he adds “If if was a spliff, we’d all get smoked up.”

He closes his set from his home in Berlin with a new song, “The Power,” and offers up a message we all need: “No matter who you are, the power resides in you…We can overcome anything if you put your mind to it, you just can’t get in your mind too much.” The prophet cannot be stopped.

“The Power” is a full song which was inspired by a things his mother used to say that he didn’t understand until he got older: “nothing matters except for how we treat people.”

[READ: May 6, 2020] “Shelter Seekers”

This story is written as a letter to the “scholarship liaison officer.”

The letter writer received a $4,000 Daniel White Foreign Study Scholarship via the Government of Canada.  The money was to fund three months in Argentina to study how the region is “adapting its approach to housing in the interest of sustainability.”

This letter is the final report which is “unconventional in form, long overdue and in excess of the stipulated two-page limit.”

The writer left her husband for three months to undertake this challenge.

On the flight to Patagonia ($1,297) she read the Award Holder’s Guide.  She imagined building clay houses and hanging out with her fellow researchers, drinking Fernet and Coke.  She even considered the idea of an affair with an attractive researcher.  Continue Reading »

Posted in Argentina, Canadian Content, Coronavirus, End of the World, Environmentalism, Funny (ha ha), Futility, Gang Starr, Jeru the Damaja, Marriage Trouble, NPR/PRI/PBS, Pigs, Quarantine, Scholarship, Short Story, The Walrus, Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts, Tiny Desk Concert, Volcanoes | Leave a Comment »

Five Finger Death Punch / Ice Nine Kills / I Prevail / Papa Roach (Prudential Center, Newark, NJ, May 6, 2020) [POSTPONED]

May 6, 2020 by Paul Debraski

[POSTPONED: May 6, 2020] Five Finger Death Punch / Ice Nine Kills / I Prevail / Papa Roach [moved to October 28]

indexMy son and his friends were going to go to this show primarily for Ice Nine Kills.

He and I saw Ice Nine Kills last summer and thought they were amazing.  So good in fact that I offered to be the chaperone of this show (rather than his friend’s dad).  It might still happen.

I feel like disappointment is inevitable since INK are opening, not headlining.  And they wont be on as long or be able to do as much (I assume), but even a little INK is better than none.

I actually don’t know Five Finger Death Punch, although I’ve certainly heard of them.  I had no idea they were [according to Wikipedia] one of the most successful heavy metal bands of the decade.  The few songs I’ve heard were alternately catchy or really vulgar.

I don’t know I Prevail, but they are a metalcore band, like so many other bands these days.  Catchy with some screamo vocals.

I’ve known of Papa Roach for a long time but have never heard them.  I feel like I dismissed them early on because they were part of the nu metal scene.

Papa Roach has been described as alternative metal, alternative rock,hard rock,nu metal,rap metal.  Allmusic has compared the band’s recent work to 1980s glam metal-a knowing update of an ’80s Sunset Strip sleaze rock outfit with new elements of djent.

I listened to one song (from 2005) and found it catchy and another song (from 2015) and heard the djent influences.

I think this entire show would have been exhausting.

Posted in Five Finger Death Punch, I Prevail, Ice Nine Kills, Newark, NJ, Papa Roach, Postponed, Prudential Center | Leave a Comment »

Lisa Taddeo–“Padua, 1966” (Harper’s, April 2020)

May 6, 2020 by Paul Debraski

SOUNDTRACK: JON BATISTE-Tiny Desk Concert #972 (May 4, 2020).

This Tiny Desk Concert was originally (sort of) posted on January 6, 2020 with this disclaimer

Jon Batiste’s Tiny Desk Concert was published prematurely. The new publication date is March 2020.

I don’t know if there was actually a video posted on Jan 6, but I’m curious if people got to see an unfinished version.

Regardless, here it is May (not March) and the Jon Batiste Concert is up. I now know Jon Batiste as the band leader on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, but I knew of him before that from an NPR recording with Stay Human back in 2014.

Batiste is a multi-talented musician, playing keys, and guitars.  He’s also a charming front man.  But he really lets his backing band shine here.

The New Orleans musician came to the Tiny Desk not with his late-night house band, but with an all-new cast. His all-female collaborators — Endea Owens on acoustic bass, Negah Santos on percussion, Sarah Thawer on drums, and Celisse Henderson on guitar and vocals — were an inspiration.

Batiste took us through some of the many sides of his rich musical history,

The soulful ballad titled “Cry” which features Batiste playing the Wurlitzer organ.  This is probably my favorite song of the set–I love the sound he gets.  He is a really impressive keyboard player, handling the cool Wurlitzer solo with ease.  The surprise for me came when Celisse Henderson played a great soulful guitar solo.  I just assumed he’d be doing all of the soloing, but everyone in the band had a moment to shine.

Before the song ended properly, Endea Owens started the next song with a great upright bass riff for the start of the jazz and hip-hop inspired “Coltrane.”  Batiste does an opening rap before the song slows down for the chorus where batiste jumps to the piano and the backing band sings along.

As is often the case when musicians perform in Washington (and especially blocks from the Capitol) the banter hinted at the political. Jon Batiste stopped to tell the NPR crowd, “we’re playing some music, and we’re coping. The times are in an interesting place, but music is always that universal language that can bring people in a room together.”

Then he says, “it’s the first time we’re ever playing these songs, and it’s the first time we’re playing together.”

Then Batitste picks up a square guitar to start the rocking Motown-inspired tune “Tell The Truth,” which he says is self explanatory.  Even though Batiste is on the guitar, Henderson gets the ripping solo again.    The middle of the song has a drum solo from Sarah Thawer but the real star is Negah Santos on percussion as her bongos really stand out.  Then Batiste takes out the melodica (like he uses on Colbert) and gets a terrific sound for a quick solo.

He ends the show with a bit of church.  He says “When times get weird we forget about the simple things, so I like to write a basic song to remind us of that.  That song is “I Need You.”  It opens with an amazing piano solo.  Batiste so casually plays all up and down the keys, it’s really impressive.  As is the solo he plays mid song.

[READ: May 1, 2020] “Padua, 1966”

Despite the title the story is actually set around Newark in contemporary times.  The 1966 part comes in a story told later.

I really enjoyed the way this story seemed to self-correct.

Miranda was tall and as dark-haired as they come.  I say was and not is and that is inaccurate because she is still around and I really am not.

Miranda was married to Luke, A WASP.  They had a daughter named Caroline, “a name I’ve never understood.”

How’s this for a line:

They fell out of love because they never were in love.

Continue Reading »

Posted in Babies, Drugs, Harper's, Italy, Jon Batiste, Jon Batiste and Stay Human, Lisa Taddeo, Marriage Trouble, NPR/PRI/PBS, Sex, Short Story, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Tiny Desk Concert | Leave a Comment »

KT Tunstall / Dina Hall (Sellersville Theater, Sellersville, PA, May 5, 2020) [POSTPONED]

May 5, 2020 by Paul Debraski

[POSTPONED: May 5, 2020] KT Tunstall / Dina Hall [moved to June 28]

index

I had forgotten about KT Tunstall.  I had her first record and then didn’t realize that she had had a couple of other (big) hits since “Suddenly I See.”

I wasn’t planning on going to this show and then I saw that KT Tunstall headlined a show at World Cafe Live last year.  I listened to it recently and found her enjoyable.

Since all shows have been postponed in some way, I’m not sure why this show was postponed from May to June (was that seriously wishful thinking?).  I see now that she had planned a short Spring equinox tour and Sellersville was the final date of the tour.

I wasn’t going to go to this, but her name has been popping up all over the place.  She’s touring with Hall and Oates this summer and she seems to be doing a lot of local shows as a headliner.  All of this repetition has me thinking I might go see her.  But mostly I’m intrigued by how much her name is going to show up in these posts soon.

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.]

seller

 

Posted in Coronavirus, Dina Hall, KT Tunstall, Postponed, Quarantine, Sellersville Theater, Sellersville, PA | Leave a Comment »

Lee Durkee–“Ride or Die” (Harper’s, April 2020)

May 5, 2020 by Paul Debraski

SOUNDTRACK: DAUGHTER OF SWORDS-Tiny Desk Concert #971 (April 29, 2020).

Alexandra Sauser-Monnig is part of Mountain Man (who did a Tiny Desk Concert some time ago).  Daughter of Swords is her solo project.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, it is just as quiet and delicate as Mountain Man but with a little more instrumentation.

Though she’s joined by a full band here, Daughter of Swords was originally envisioned as a solo project for Alexandra Sauser-Monnig. … With a few hushed folk songs, the music was so eerily still, you could have heard a phone vibrate.

This has to be one of the quietest four-piece bands ever on Tiny Desk.

As “Long Leaf Pine” begins, all you hear is a low rumble–the floor tom from Joe Westerlund.  Then Alexandra Sauser-Monnig begins singing quietly.  Maia Friedman supplies soft backing vocals from time to time.  Sauser-Monnig sings high and quiet and amazingly hits and even higher note before the end.

I like the sound of “Shining Woman” more. I think Alex Bingham’s bass stands out a bit more.  Or maybe it’s because Friedman plays an electric guitar accompaniment.  This song starts with a smattering of interesting percussion from Westerlund and while it is in no way loud, it moves faster than the previous song.

When Mountain Man was here, they talked about breakfast food.  Alexandra reprises that by asking what people had for breakfast.  Answers: a banana, a soft-boiled egg.  Alexandra had a green smoothie and goes on about the large piece of toast she had.  She doesn’t normally eat bread and this felt crazy to her [that should tell you all you need to know about Sauser-Monnig].  Bassist Alex Bingham says, “wild day so far.”

For the final song, “Prairie Winter Wasteland” Friedman plays the guitar to start this song–quietly ringing electric guitar.  There’s an interesting bass line from Bingham on this song and Westerlnd is using a small whisk brush on the cymbals.

[READ: April 20, 2020] “Ride or Die”

This is an excerpt from the novel The Last Taxi Driver.

Set in Mississippi, this excerpt follows a cab driver with one fare, a man just released from prison.

He says they never tell him what they were in for, only that they just got out.

This man–white dude, mid-thirties, a few missing teeth, a few prison tats–is in a fantastic mood.  He’s carrying a twelve-pack of Bud Light and asks to go to the Bethune Woods Project.

The driver says he didn’t even know these projects existed before he started driving a cab.  Most of the other cab companies shun the projects.  He knows that Uber is coming to town “I’ve never used an Uber and don’t understand how that works”), and he assumed they will shun the projects too. Continue Reading »

Posted in Alexandra Sauser-Monnig, Beer, Daughter of Swords, Drinking, Excerpt, Harper's, Lee Durkee, Mountain Man, NPR/PRI/PBS, Prison, Taxis, Tiny Desk Concert | Leave a Comment »

Pottery / P.E. (Johnny Brenda’s, Philadelphia, PA, May 4, 2020) [POSTPONED]

May 4, 2020 by Paul Debraski

[POSTPONED: May 4, 2020] Pottery / P.E.

indexI saw Pottery open for Fontaines D.C. and was really impressed by them (I actually enjoyed them more than Fontaines because the Fontaines crowd were jerks).

Pottery were weird and cockeyed and really fun. They have an EP out that is only online. They have a full length coming out soon.

I didn’t know they were touring until recently and I probably wouldn’t have gone to this show because I’d have had a show the two nights in a row before it.  But I’m pleased to know that they were coming and that they are going to come back when things settle down.

P.E. is a band formed out of the band Pill (who I’ve not heard of but who were a skronky and intense DIY art-punk band).  Three members of Pill have gone on to form P.E.  The song I heard “Top Ticket” was a propulsive thump, strung along by drill whirs and Torres’ snotty deliver: “I want the top ticket/ Nothing average, nothing contrived/ None of that consumer-grade shit.”   Noisy and weird, a pretty good fit for Pottery.

Posted in Coronavirus, Fontaines D.C., Johnny Brenda's, P.E., Philadelphia, PA, Pill, Postponed, Pottery, Quarantine | Leave a Comment »

Allan Gurganus–“The Wish for a Good Country Doctor” (New Yorker, May 4, 2020)

May 4, 2020 by Paul Debraski

SOUNDTRACK: THE FREE NATIONALS-Tiny Desk Concert #969 (April 20, 2020).

The full name of this concert is The Free Nationals Feat. Anderson .Paak, Chronixx & India Shawn, but that’s too many “featurings” for a headline.

Whenever you look for Tiny Desk Concerts, the top picture is always from the Anderson .Paak show (which was pretty great).  I never really gave it much thought as to why that picture is up there.  But the blurb here says that “Anderson .Paak’s Tiny Desk concert with The Free Nationals, filmed in 2016, is the most popular in the history of the series.”  Who knew?

It was a special return when The Free Nationals arrived in the nation’s capital to showcase their new tunes on March 4, before the coronavirus crisis had set in. Lots of NPR staffers showed up in the hopes that a surprise guest might be in store.

They play four songs.  First is “Beauty & Essex” It opens with opens with Ron Tnava Avant using a voice box on the keys: “Ron Avant invoked Roger Troutman of Zapp on the talk box”, followed by  some slow funky bass lines from Kelsey González.  India Shawn, radiant in a red jump suit, crooned Daniel Caesar’s “Beauty & Essex” in a sultry register.  Midway through, José Rios plays afully distroetd (but slow and very Prince-like) guitar solo.

India, formerly a background singer for .Paak and now an emerging solo artist, also sang lead on the second song,”On Sight” which is about catching the fade (punch across the face).  The end of this song features and even faster ripping guitar solo with some walloping drums from,  Callum Connor.  As the solo ends, Rios says, “It’s crazy to play so quiet.  I want to jump on this table.”

Then “Cheeky Andy,” aka Anderson .Paak, surprised the audience with his signature smile and spunky energy.  I like him a lot–he always has a mischievous smile.  He tells everyone

We spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on big budget videos just to have our biggest video be in front of a Tiny Desk.

I don’t know Anderson .Paak much aside from his Tiny Desk, but i can tell it’s him instantly by his drum beat, his drumming style is quite unique.  . “Gidget” is “a song with a groove so catchy that it makes you want to two-step in your living room.”  This song’s about another one of Rios’ exes (see the last concert for the setup to this joke).  Rios asks, “Whys it always got to be about me?” .Paak sings the song and then Avant plays a wicked talk box solo.

.Paak wasn’t the only special guest. Jamaican roots reggae singer Chronixx returned to the Desk to perform his “Eternal Light,” a song he recorded with The Free Nationals on their album.  Btu first Anderson .Paak runs out “you got my phone man?”  Connor passes it to Rios who pretends to throw it.

Chronixx seemed stunned at the number of fans in the audience this time,  “last time I was here there was like five people.”

This song has a reggae feel about positive vibes.  It’s a the most chill song for sure.

It’s fascinating to have seen this band take off from four years ago.

[READ: May 3, 2020] “The Wish for a Good Country Doctor”

This was a totally gripping story.  One that I was not expecting to hear probably as much as the narrator was not expecting to hear it.

It starts with an unusual sentence

Most kids lose or beak their toys.  I curated mine.

In 1976, the narrator was at the University of Iowa in an America Studies program.  Every month, the narrator and “some other hippie Ivy graduates” blanketed the state to find “existing folk manifestations.” They traveled to thrift shops, junk stores and Salvation Armys for tools and dolls and then wrote over-interpretive essays about the items.

They were given $100 a month to purchase things and they set off on a Friday full of caffeine.  On this particular Friday the narrator had gotten a rural mailbox made in 1946 shaped like three Scottish terriers.  And an ironic iconic Find of the Week “a handsomely lettered five-foot-long sign explaining, ‘You’ve Got to Be a Football Hero to Get Along with the Beautiful Girls.  THEREFORE, GO TECH!'” Continue Reading »

Posted in Allan Gurganus, Anderson .Paak, Anderson .Paak & The Free Nationals, Artists, Chronixx, Coronavirus, Death, Doctors, India Shawn, New Yorker, NPR/PRI/PBS, Prince, Short Story, The Free Nationals, Tiny Desk Concert, Universities | Leave a Comment »

Acid Mothers Temple / ST 37 (Underground Arts, Philadelphia, PA, May 3, 2020) [POSTPONED]

May 3, 2020 by Paul Debraski

[POSTPONED: May 3, 2020] Acid Mothers Temple / ST 37 [moved to March 8, 2021]

indexI have seen Japanese psych rockers Acid Mothers Temple twice and each show was a whirlwind of fun and insanity.

I promised myself I would see them any time they came to town.  So I was very excited to see them again.

Acid Mothers Temple pretty much tour all the time and they come our way every year or so, but because their tours are planned out ages in advance , it means that their rescheduled date isn’t until next year!  Bu that’s okay, I’ll still be there.

ST 37 is from Texas.  Their bandcamp blurb:

Quite simply, we rule. And we have been ruling for over 30 years. So there.

They play a noisy experimental kind of rock and have nine people listed in their “past members” category.  Wikipedia gives these two quotes about them: mind-altering space-punk whose live shows are drowning in a haze of guitar and reverb that can drift through cosmically shifting layers of aggressive punk riffs, fuzzed noise, and scalding jams.

Sounds fun.

Posted in Acid Mothers Temple, Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso U.F.O., Cancelled, Coronavirus, Philadelphia, PA, Quarantine, ST 37, Underground Arts | Leave a Comment »

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