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Jason Walz–Last Pick (2018)

March 20, 2020 by Paul Debraski

SOUNDTRACK: CHRIS DAVE AND THE DRUMHEDZ-Tiny Desk Concert #949 (February 21, 2020).

I was pretty intrigued by the introduction that Chris Dave said before this Tiny Desk Concert

“If you’ve never been to a Drumhedz show… …we’re gonna take you on a quick journey as if you’re going through a record store,” Chris Dave told the NPR Music offices at the top of his set, “picking up different genres of music and putting it in your bag.”

So I was a little disappointed that this Tiny Desk proved to be pretty much a rap showcase.  Although musically they do explore a lot of different sounds and tones.

I love that they open with flute from Kebbi Williams (who is introduced as a “this insane dude”).  It’s some great flute sounds with a cool 70s vibe.

The set snuck in with a serpentine flute line that any ’70s heist flick would be proud to have. Sonic smash-cuts between the musical ideas whisk away the misconception you’re in control of the ride you’re about to take.

There’s very cool sound effects from the keys and guitars as Chris Dave gives his introduction.  I’ve never heard of him, but the blurb says

Chris Dave is reasonably described as your favorite drummer’s favorite drummer, or better yet, your favorite musician’s favorite drummer. … The Houston native leads the Drumhedz behind a trap set, with his unorthodox, stacked crash cymbals and percussive toys.

That cymbal set up is very cool.  One of Chris Dave’s cymbals seems like a bent piece of metal which makes a neat clanging sound.

Out comes vocalist and new Drumhedz member, Aaron Camper who raps over “Black Hole.”  There’s some great wild bass from Thaddaeus Tribbett, who coincidentally recently performed a Tiny Desk Concert with Snoh Allegra.

For the next three songs, Elzhi, formerly of Slum Village, surprised the room with an unannounced cameo, on “Whatever” and inciting the crowd to nod along as the Drumhedz segued into “Tainted,” Slum Village’s turn-of-the-millennium jam.

There’s high-pitched slinky guitars from Isaiah Sharkey and guitar stabs from Tom Ford.  But the most fun person to watch is definitely Frank Moka on percussion.  He’s in a pair of overalls with no shirt on and he seems to have limitless piles of cool percussion instruments back there from shakers and congas to unseen things that make cool sounds.

“Clear View,” is my favorite song of the bunch because Camper sings and he has a fantastic groovy singing style.  The song has a more psychedelic sound with both guitarists playing wah wah chords that rise and fall.  And yes, it’s fun to watch Chris Dave smack all of those cymbals.  The end of the song has a wicked instrumental section while Moki goes crazy on the congas and Thad plays some fast and frenetic rumblings on the bass.

The set ends with a song of gratitude and love of family called “Job Well Done” which he Camper dedicates to his mother.

I did enjoy the musical diversity of this set, although I guess having a guest rapper would necessitate that the set was predominately rap.

[READ: March 15, 2020] Last Pick

This book is the first in a series.  When I saw the thumbnail cover, I assumed it was going to be about unpopular kids who were not picked for teams at school.  Zooming in on the cover, however, will reveal big scary aliens.  And that’s what this story is about!

Recently aliens landed on our planet and took away most of the people between the ages of 16 and 65 (it’s a bit of a scary time to be reading this actually).  Everybody outside of those age groups and those who were sick or “useless” in some way were left behind.

The main characters are Sam and Wyatt, twins who are on the cusp of turning 16.  Sam has always been outgoing and charming, but she also has a temper.  Wyatt is presumably on the autism spectrum.  He is very smart but is socially awkward. It was hard for Sam growing up but she has come to appreciate him over the years.  Especially now that the aliens have taken their parents and they need his brains to survive. Continue Reading »

Posted in Aliens, Chris Dave, Drumhedz, End of the World, First Second :01, Graphic Novel, Jason Walz, NPR/PRI/PBS, Slum Village, Tiny Desk Concert | Leave a Comment »

Thomas Siddell–Gunnerkrigg Court: Volume 4: Materia (2013)

March 19, 2020 by Paul Debraski

516ZKjM2CqL._SX351_BO1,204,203,200_ (1) SOUNDTRACK: ELISAPIE-Tiny Desk Concert #948 (February 20, 2020).

downloadElisapie (I have no idea how to pronounce that) is a First Nations singer from Salluit, on the Northern tip of Quebec.

She sings in Inuktitut (as well as in English and French).  And her voice is absolutely intense.

Her songs are very personal–she sings of

her life as an adopted child and of meeting her biological mother. Now, as a mother herself, she sings about what it must have meant to her own mother to give up her child.

Elisapie left her birth-village, Salluit, as a teenager and headed to Montreal, leaving her community and her sick mom. The songs she sings, here all come from her album, The Ballad of the Runaway Girl and deal with the consequences of her leaving.

These songs are definitely rock, but with a different overall sound.  Jason Sharp’s bass saxophone is fantastic–creating deep low rumbles and otherworldly squawks.

“Arnaq” opens with some chugging guitar riffs (I can’t tell if the guitar is acoustic or electric) from Joe Grass and after a verse or so, some great noisy electric guitars from Josh Toal, who punctuates the song with little solos.  There’s no bass guitar because the bass saxophone covers all of the low ends.

The song, even though it is in Inuktitut is rally catchy with a chorus of “ahhhhhh, I, yi, I” (or something).

The middle section is full of great noises as both guitars and the sax all play some wild solos.

All of this is held together by “the tasteful drumming of Evan Tighe.”

She says the second song, “Una” is the most painful yet the most freeing song.  It is  written to her biological mother.  In Inuktitut the word for mother means “our little bag” because they carried us.

It opens with slow staccato guitar chords and a near a capella vocal before the quiet electric guitar from Josh Toal joins in.  The spareness of the beginning of this song is a great counterpoint to the end of the song when everyone joins in–vocals, guitars, sax and some complex drumming.

Before the final song, she looks around and smiles and says Lizzo was here!  My daughter is very excited.

The final song “Darkness Bring The Light” opens with some great weird sounds from everyone.  Tighe makes scraping metallic sounds as he slides his drum sticks around the cymbals.  Toal plays a synth intro as Grass bows his guitar and Sharp makes waves of gentle sounds to underpin the melody

This one is in English.  She sings a melody that rides over the sounds.  After 2 minutes the drums kick in and after a run through of the chorus, the guitarists join in

Bob Boilen concludes

This is an extraordinary Tiny Desk from an artist with something meaningful to say.

He is absolutely correct.  This set is fantastic.

[READ: March 10, 2020] Gunnerkrigg Court 4 [32-41]

I really enjoyed the first three books of this series and then promptly forgot about it.  I happened to see this book at the library and was excited to see that I hadn’t read it.  Can it really have been three years since I last read about these characters?

Being away for so long made some of this a little confusing.  I will have to read the whole story again some time.

Chapter 32 shows Antimony returning from the forest and there is a warm welcome with Renard. But Katarina’s welcome is cool–“you kinda make it hard to be your friend.” Antimony tries very hard to make Kat like her again…too hard.  She creates scary situations in which she can “save” Kat,  It doesn’t exactly work, although Kat isn’t really mad anymore, just annoyed.  But then a gigantic creepy monster thing comes out of the water.  Kat is impressed by Annie’s conjuring until Annie says she didn’t do it.  They run out.

Only to learn that this is Lindsey–the creature who helped design most of everything at the court–a giant crablike creature.

All this time Kat has been working on the idea of growing a robot.  Well, not exactly, but kind of.  She imagines using a muscular frame to build a robot body around.  Or something.  She is able to use the smarts of one of the existing robots to give her a hand.  The code they provide is actually a small white cube with no writing on it.  Amazingly Kat is able to read parts of it. Continue Reading »

Posted in Adoption, Adventure, Alternate Reality, Boredom, Canadian Music, Culture Shock, Demons, Elisapie, Fantasy, First Nations, Funny (ha ha), Ghosts, Graphic Novel, Inuit, Lizzo, Magic, Monsters, Myths, Pigeons, Research, Robots, Romance, Science, Set at School, Smarty Pants, Supernatural, Superstitions, Thomas Siddell, Threats, Tiny Desk Concert, Unfinished series, Witches, YA Books, Zombies | Leave a Comment »

God Is My Co-Pilot / The HIRS Collective / Eat (Boot & Saddle, Philadelphia PA, March 18, 2020) [POSTPONED]

March 18, 2020 by Paul Debraski

[POSTPONED: March 18, 2020] God Is My Co-Pilot / The HIRS Collective / Eat

indexBack in the 1990s I was fascinated by the queercore band God Is My Co-Pilot.  I had a couple of their records and thought they were pretty cool.

They fell off of my radar, and with good reason as they pretty much stopped making music by the end of the 90s.  So I was shocked–shocked, I tell you!–to see that they were performing at Boot & Saddle.

If I hadn’t had a show planned for Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, I would have absolutely gone to check them out.    So this show has been cancelled as well, but heck, maybe they will reschedule and I’ll certainly come, especially of The HIRS Collective opens.

I had seen The HIRS Collective (then called +HIRS+) open for Screaming Females and they were like nothing I’d seen before.  I wrote:

They turned on their gear and the hum was ominously loud.  The beats began (from the singer’s ipod or phone) and the guitarist played a loud pummeling wall of fast heavy punk. The singer screamed unintelligible lyrics.  And the two of them stomped around the stage in an almost childlike cathartic approximation of two people in a mosh pit.  They crashed into each other.  The singer seemed like they might fall over or off the stage.

And 30 seconds later it was over.

Then they did it again.  And they were both in perfect sync–stopping abruptly each time right as the song ended.

Their whole set was 15 minutes.  It was incredible.  I would absolutely see them again.

I don’t know anything about the band Eat, but given these two other bands, I’ll bet they are similarly chaotic and interesting.  Well, looking them up I see that they are a UK band that was active in the late 1980s and early 1990s.  They were quite popular in the UK but never made it outside of the country.  They reformed in 2014.  I may have to give them a listen.

I hope they all come back around again.

godco

Posted in +HIRS+, Boot & Saddle, Eat, God Is My Co-Pilot, Philadelphia, PA, Postponed, The HIRS Collective | Leave a Comment »

Shannon Hale and LeUyen Pham–Best Friends (2017)

March 18, 2020 by Paul Debraski

81HkprYowjLSOUNDTRACK: SNOH AALEGRA-Tiny Desk Concert #947 (February 18, 2020).

maxresdefault (2)In what seems to be a new trend at the Tiny Desk, here’s another artist whom I’ve never heard of somehow and who manages to cram five songs into 16 minutes.  (I won’t complain about the length of this show because it’s not that long, but everyone knows you get three songs).

The most fascinating things about Snoh is that she is Iranian-Swedish.  And that her band is enormous.  And that they all have great names like: O’Neil “Doctor O” Palmer on keys, George “Spanky” McCurdy on drums and Thaddaeus Tribbett on bass.  There’s also Jef Villaluna on guitar whose name isn’t that crazy,

Unfortunately her songs and albums have terrible names.

Her new album is called Ugh, those feels again and her previous album is called Feels. (and she’s not even millennial).  And then the third song is called “Whoa.”  Good grief,

“Whoa” is a sweet love song that is detailed but not explicit.  Except the chorus which is “you make me feel like, whoa.”

The rest of her songs have a very delicate soft-rock vibe.  Especially with the string section of Ashley Parham on violin, Johnny Walker, Jr. on cello, Asali McIntyre on violin and Brandon Lewis on viola.

But apparently that’s not what her music typically sounds like.

On this day in particular, Aalegra’s tracks were stripped of their punchier, album-version kick drums and trap echoes. In their absence, it’s Aalegra’s delicate vocal runs and chemistry with her supporting singers that resonated most. “I Want You Around” and “Whoa,” which usually rest on a bed of glitchy, spiraling production, felt lighter thanks to the dreamy string section.

All of the songs featured her backing vocalists Ron Poindexter and Porsha Clay,  but they were especially prominent on “Fool For You” which ran all of two minutes.

Snoh seemed a little too cool up there, which did not endear me to her.  Her voice is certainly pretty though, even if I didn’t like her songs.

[READ: March 15, 2020] Best Friends

This book is a sequel of sorts to Real Friends.

It continues the story of young Shannon in sixth grade and how she deals with the minefields that middle school can present.

The same cast is back–the good and bad friends, the girls and boys and all of the insecurities that are practically a character in themselves.

As the book opens, Shannon realizes that she and her friends are not really in sync. She can’t keep up with the pop songs that they like–how do they always know the newest cool song (her family doesn’t listen to pop music so she is way out of the loop).

But aside form that, things seem good.  Shannon is best friends with Jen, the most popular girl in their class.  And since they are the oldest grade in school, Jen is therefore the most popular girl in school.

But the girls are always sniping at each other or trying to get Shannon so say nasty things about one of the other girls behind her back (while the girl was listening).  Shannon never did, though, because she is really a good person.  Something the other girls could use some help with, Continue Reading »

Posted in #10yearsof01, Autobiographies, Child Development, Culture Shock, Fears, Feminism, First Second :01, Friendship, Graphic Novel, Humiliation, Jealousy, Kindness, LeUyen Pham, NPR/PRI/PBS, Regrets, Roller Coasters, Set at School, Shannon Hale, Snoh Aalegra, Threats, Tiny Desk Concert, YA Books, Yuck! | Leave a Comment »

Anti-Flag / Grade 2 / Doll Skin (House of Independents, Asbury Park NJ, March 17, 2020) [POSTPONED]

March 17, 2020 by Paul Debraski

[POSTPONED: March 17, 2020] Anti-Flag / Grade 2 / Doll Skin

indexMarch was going to be a very busy concert month for me.  This was to be the fourth of four shows in five nights.  This show was going to be for me and my son and his friend T.

I had just recently heard about Anti-Flag, who have been around forever.  I was interested in seeing them and then I heard C playing them on his Spotify account so I asked if he wanted to see them.  He said yes.  They were playing at The Foundry, a tiny place that I really like.  But it turned out to be on a night that we had something else planned.  (That turned out to be incorrect, that event was the week before, so we could have gone to the Foundry).  But on this night they were playing in Asbury Park (about the same distance from my house).  House of Independents is a great venue and is arguably a better venue to see a punk show (it’s much bigger).

He asked if his friend could come and I thought that sounded like a great way to spend a Tuesday night (even if school would be very sleepy he next day).  I even told him that if we really liked the show we could go Thursday night as well–to see them in a venue the size of our living room.

Opening for this show were Grade 2 and Doll Skin who I don’t know.

This turned out to be the fourth of dozens of shows cancelled or postponed by the coronavirus.

Obviously, my main concern is for everyone’s safety, including the bands!

My selfish concern though is that once the shows are rescheduled that all of these shows will be scheduled on the same day!

Let’s hope the rescheduled dates also do some social distancing.

antiflag

Posted in Anti-Flag, Asbury Park, NJ, Doll Skin, Grade 2, House of Independents, Postponed | Leave a Comment »

Colin Jost–“My High-School Commute” (New Yorker, March 16, 2020)

March 17, 2020 by Paul Debraski

2020_03_16 (1)SOUNDTRACK: MOUNT EERIE-Tiny Desk Concert #945 (February 12, 2020).

maxresdefaultI’ve heard of Mount Eerie, but I didn’t really know that much about them. And when I say them, I really mean him, Phil Elverum.

Phil Elverum’s songs come full circle, swooping down like vultures and floating up like ashes from flames. Throughout his work in Mount Eerie and The Microphones, idealism comes up against realism, existence entangles with impermanence and love discovers new forms. So when he sings, “Let’s get out the romance,” in close harmony with Julie Doiron at the Tiny Desk, there’s a history going back nearly two decades to an isolated cabin in Norway where he first wrote the phrase.

I have never really enjoyed quiet, sad music.  It’s just not my thing.  So this Tiny Desk is definitely not my favorite.  Although I can appreciate the intensity of his lyrics and the beautiful way his and Julie’s voices combine.

They recorded an album, Lost Wisdom Pt. 2, last year.

the sparsely decorated, deeply felt album meditates on a heart still breaking and mutating, but also gently reckons with a younger version of himself. That refrain on “Belief” is performed here with only an electric guitar and a nylon-string acoustic bought in Stockholm during that Scandinavian trip many years ago.

“Belief” opens with quiet acoustic guitar and then the two of them singing together.  And it’s pretty intense:

Elverum remembers himself as a young man who begged “the sky for some calamity to challenge my foundation.” We then become the Greek chorus, witness to the unfolding tragedy: first, the death of his wife and mother to their child, the musician and illustrator Geneviève Castrée, in 2016; then the marriage to actor Michelle Williams in 2018 and their divorce less than a year later. “‘The world always goes on,'” Doiron sings in answer, quoting a Joanne Kyger poem, “‘Breaking us with its changes / Until our form, exhausted, runs true.'”

Doiron’s guitar contributions are so minimal, she doesn’t play for most of the song.   The song runs almost seven minutes and does seem to end mid-sentence.

When “Belief” suddenly ends, seemingly in the middle of a thought, Elverum’s eyes search the room. The audience responds with applause, but a version of this dynamic plays out everywhere he’s performed for the last three years — long silences broken up by tentative claps, nervous laughs struck by grief and absurdity.

The second song, “Enduring The Waves” is only three minutes long.  He begins it by speak/singing “Reading about Buddhism” and I wasn’t sure if it was a lyric or an introduction.  It’s a lyric.  This song features Julie and Phil singing seemingly disparate lines over each other until their final lines match up perfectly  The construction of this song is really wonderful even if it is still a pretty slow sad song,

“Love Without Possession” Julie sings the first verse and after her verse, Phil starts strumming his guitar in what can only be described as a really catchy sort of way.  They harmonize together and Doiron includes minimal electric guitar notes.  This is my favorite song of the bunch.

[READ: March 13, 2020] “My High-School Commute”

Colin Jost is one of the presenters on Saturday Night Live‘s Weekend Update.  I think he’s very funny and has a great sarcastic tone.  Although, I have to agree with the title of his new memoir: A Very Punchable Face.

This is an amusing essay about his daily commute to high school, in which he took “a journey by land, sea and underground rocket toilet.”

His grandfather always told him about the value of an education–protect your brain! was his constant refrain.

It was his brain that got him out of Staten Island.  It got him into a Catholic high school called Regis* *Regis Philbin was named after my high school but went to Cardinal Hayes High School which was full of kids who beat the shit out of kids who went to Regis.

Regis is one of the best schools in the country and it is free–tens of thousands of kids apply for 120 spots. Continue Reading »

Posted in Boats, Colin Jost, David Lynch, Essays, Funny (ha ha), Goonies, Joanne Kyger, Julie Doiron, Mount Eerie, New York City, New Yorker, NPR/PRI/PBS, Saturday Night Live, Set at School, Tiny Desk Concert, Trains | Leave a Comment »

Billie Eilish / Denzel Curry (Prudential Center, Newark, NJ, March 16, 2020) [CANCELLED]

March 16, 2020 by Paul Debraski

[POSTPONED: CANCELLED March 16, 2020] Billie Eilish / Denzel Curry

indexUPDATE: On December 3, this show was officially cancelled.  What a bummer.  I hope her future tour is as good as this one was supposed to be.

March was going to be a very busy concert month for me.  This was to be the third of four shows in five nights.  This show was going to be for me and my daughter–her opportunity  to see the biggest pop star in the world–Billie Eilish.

I actually managed to get us decent seats and I was pretty excited to see what this show would be like as well.

I have to assume that this show will get rescheduled.  It’s one of the few shows I go to where I actually have a seat and not just GA, so when it gets rescheduled I assume they’ll give us the same seats?  I also hope it’s not on a school night.

Opening for this show was a rapper named Denzel Curry who I don’t know.  I don’t really have an opinion about whether he opens next time or not.

This turned out to be the third of dozens of shows cancelled or postponed by the coronavirus.

Obviously, my main concern is for everyone’s safety, including the bands!

My selfish concern though is that once the shows are rescheduled that all of these shows will be scheduled on the same day!

Let’s hope the rescheduled dates also do some social distancing.

eilish

Posted in Billie Eilish, Denzel Curry, Newark, NJ, Postponed, Prudential Center | Leave a Comment »

Matthew Klam–“The Liver” (New Yorker, March 16, 2020)

March 16, 2020 by Paul Debraski

SOUNDTRACK: LAURA STEVENSON-Tiny Desk Concert #946 (February 14, 2020).

maxresdefault (1)I don’t know Laura Stevenson, but she has a very pretty voice.

She is a singer-songwriter who I gather plays fairly stripped down songs.  But Bob Boilen wanted to spruce things up–I’ve never heard of him directly interfering in a Tiny Desk before–I wonder how often he does,

It was supposed to be so simple. Laura Stevenson, a singer-songwriter whose new material radiates warm intensity, would come in and knock us out with an intimate acoustic solo set … So I came to Bob with the idea … but Bob is nothing if not a pesky dreamer — a man who lives his life in pursuit of beauty and the creation of hard work for other people — so he suggested a wrinkle. What if we commissioned string arrangements for three songs from Stevenson’s newest album, The Big Freeze?

And there they are.

So arranger Amy Domingues, who doubles as a marvelous D.C.-area cellist, dreamed up some charts and gathered a small ensemble (herself and violinists Shelley Matthews and Winston Yu) for accompaniment so gorgeous, Stevenson couldn’t stop remarking on it between songs.

After the first song, “Lay Back, Arms Out” she says “.”  Then she talks about being six months pregnant and how she wasn’t pregnant when she booked this show.  She says she has to move her guitar a bit but it looks cool.

“Living Room, NY” is really lovely–Stevenson’s voice is clear and pure and makes the lyrics even more poignant.

The final song is called “Dermatillomania” (which she doesn’t even define, but which is chronic skin-picking).  She says it’s the saddest one but it is the happiest-sounding.

And that’s true, at least the happy-sounding part–it’s super catchy.

But apparently the most exciting part happened after the set was over

we also got to witness what’s almost definitely the first-ever Tiny Desk marriage proposal. Shortly after Stevenson’s set had ended, Jonathan Zember got down on one knee as unobtrusively as possible and proposed to his girlfriend, Dena Rapoport; the two were attending the show as guests of an NPR staffer, and he figured it’d be a memorable spot for their big moment.

Dena said yes.  No word if Laura will write a song about it.

[READ: March 13, 2020] “The Liver”

I enjoyed Klam’s novel Who is Rich, which I found funny and fun.  So I was looking forward to this story which has a title I wasn’t sure how to emphasize.

Boy, was I surprised to read that this is a story about a premature baby.

In fact, the majority of the story is about the narrator’s stresses about this premature baby.

The story begins with Kathy in the hospital after having given birth–two month before her due date. Continue Reading »

Posted in Babies, Fears, Hospitals, Laura Stevenson, Matthew Klam, New Yorker, NPR/PRI/PBS, Short Story, Tiny Desk Concert | Leave a Comment »

Kenny O’Brien & The O’Douls / Ramoms (Johnny Brenda’s, Philadelphia, PA, March 15, 2020) [CANCELLED]

March 15, 2020 by Paul Debraski

[CANCELLED: March 15, 2020] Kenny O’Brien & The O’Douls / Ramoms

indexMarch was going to be a very busy concert month for me.  This was to be the second of four shows in five nights.  This show was going to be just for me–a night of Kevin Devine performing his Saint Patrick’s Day special with his “Irish” band Kenny O’Brien & The O’Douls.  It promised to be a night of hilarious nonsense and excellent music.  I’m not sure if this show will get rescheduled as it was topical.  But if we can have Christmas in July, why not St. Patrick’s Day in September, when we’ll all need some light-heartedness?

Opening for this show was a band called Ramoms, an all mom parody/tribute band to the Ramones.  It sounds fantastic and I really hope they get paired up with the Kenny O’Brien rescheudled date whether this year or next year on St Patrick’s weekend.

This turned out to be the second of dozens of shows cancelled or postponed by the coronavirus.

Obviously, my main concern is for everyone’s safety, including the bands!

My selfish concern though is that once the shows are rescheduled that all of these shows will be scheduled on the same day!

Let’s hope the rescheduled dates also do some social distancing.

kenny

Posted in Cancelled, Johnny Brenda's, Kenny O'Brien & The O'Douls, Kevin Devine, Kevin Devine & The Goddamn Band, Kevin Devine and the Goddman Band, Philadelphia, PA, Ramoms | Leave a Comment »

Matthew Klam–Who is Rich? (2017)

March 15, 2020 by Paul Debraski

SOUNDTRACK: BABY ROSE-Tiny Desk Concert #944 (February 10, 2020).

I had not heard of Baby Rose, which I suppose makes sense since she put out her debut album last year.

The blurb makes it sound like she has been through a lot more than her 25 years might suggest.

But when the voice behind those words is as seasoned and vintage as Baby Rose’s, everything it utters reverberates like the gospel truth. The D.C. native — who came of age in Fayetteville, N.C. before coming into her own as an artist in Atlanta — returned to her birthplace.

She even speaks like a much older person:

“I would not be able to write with such emotion about these things without my fair share of regrets.”

It sounds like a sincere statement until you realize it’s a bit, an introduction to the song strangely spelled “Ragrets.”

But that is my favorite song here.  It’s got a great opening guitar riff from John Scherer that is duplicated on the bass (with some great high notes) by Craig Shephard.  Backing vocalist Erika JaNaé is there with her throughout–matching her with lovely backing ooohs.

Baby Rose has a voice that sounds a bit like Antony from Antony & the Johnsons–wavery and operatic.  Especially as the Concert opens with “Sold Out” which features strings from Jasminfire on viola, Yuli on violin and Noah Johnson on cello.

It’s also evident in the third song “Over.”  In the middle of the song she sings low and it sounds very Antony, although I suppose another comparison would be “the bluesy melisma of Nina Simone and the deep register of Sarah Vaughan–two of her idols.”  This song is, surprisingly, less than two minutes long.  It has a simple piano melody from Timothy Maxey.  In addition to Erika JaNaé, Jasminfire and Yuli sing backing vocals.  I like the bass slide at the end, which seems like it’s a transition to another part of the song, not the end.

The next song is “Mortal” which opens with a loud drum hit from Tauseef Anam and quiet shimmering guitars.  There’s a lot of backing singing on this song and they all sing very nicely.

As this song is ending she introduces the band and says

“This is what real love sounds like.  This is what it feels like.”

The blurb says

From any other new artist, a Tiny Desk declaration like that might sound a tad bit presumptuous if not altogether premature.

I actually thought pretentious was the word.

She asks if she can do one more (because of course an artist I’ve never heard of gets an 18 minute set).  And in introducing “All To Myself,” she says she is

Dedicating the song to herself — and “to anyone here that’s ever wanted to call or text somebody that you know you should not call or text” —  congratulating those of us who’ve refrained from squandering our emotions on the undeserved.

Her voice is really impressive on this song and I like that the blurb acknowledges that she’s not using autotune

In an era when the over-reliance on Autotune has nearly everybody in radio R&B land sounding like automatons, her unadulterated voice is almost otherworldly. It’s confounding how a vocal tone so weathered and wise emerges from her so effortlessly.

I was a bit cynical about her at first, but Baby Rose really brings the goods.

[READ: July 10, 2019] Who is Rich?

Rich Fischer is a cartoonist.  As the book opens, Rich is beginning his annual week-long teaching assignment at a New England beachside Arts Conference.  Rich was once sort of famous for his first (and only) published book and that’s why he was initially invited to instruct.  In the intervening six years, he has not really produced anything except drawings for magazines, but the head of the council still likes him, so Rich has that annual work to look forward to.

Although he doesn’t really look forward to it.  People come from all over to study all kinds of arts with esteemed faculty.  It’s a place where writers, artists and historians show off that they are really drunkards and perverts and are willing to do anything to dance naked on a beach in a drum circle.  At this point, he knows what he is and how he fits along with the rest of the teaching staff:

unknown nobodies and one-hit has-beens, midlist somebodies and legitimate stars.

His was a four day intensive workshop that cost $1500.  He details his students–a former high school art teacher (who tried to take over the class), a med student who didn’t want to start med school, a trans kid, a Vietnam War veteran, a grandmother and a teenager skulking in the back.

But he was also sick of it.  The same faces year after year.  Nadia Klein  “was widely mocked an imitated.”  Larry Burris skipped his meds one year and wore a jester’s cap to class and lit his own notes on fire.  And yet when he was asked to name another cartoonist he could vouch for to teach a second comics workshop, he didn’t answer the director, “because of the way my career had gone, I worried that I’d be hiring my replacement.”

He talks about his precocious success–at first it seems like a mistake, but you get used to it quickly. You assume it will always be there.  Until it isn’t.

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