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Mohsin Hamid–“What is Possible” (New Yorker, June 4 & 11, 2018)

June 12, 2018 by Paul Debraski

SOUNDTRACK: CONSTANTINES-Live at Massey Hall (May 27, 2015).

From the clips I’ve seen, Constantines are (were?) an incredible live band.  They have so much intensity.

In the opening, they are asked  Are you guys nervous?  They don’t seem to be although they concede that “Nervous is good, it keeps you on your toes.”

At some point we decided to run the band where we would play anywhere with a three-pronged outlet.  It led to playing a lot of amazing spaces…non-performance spaces like skate shops and basements and art galleries.  This feels like an incredible extension of that to play Massey Hall… a historic venue.

“Draw Us Lines” opens the show with thunderous drums and squalling feedback as the band gets the audience clapping along to a simple rhythm while Bry Webb sings in his deep raspy voice.  I love how much noise the keyboardist makes just pounding on keys–at times leaning on the machine with his whole arm.

“Our Age” has martial beats and an interesting low riff that runs through the verses–but the choruses burst forth really catchy.  “On to You” was a single I believe.  It has loud verses and a quiet, understated chorus.  I love how much they raise their guitars–the bassist even plays with the instrument raised over his head

“Young Offenders” rocks as hard as anything else they play, but it adds the surprising lyric: “young hearts be free tonight … time is on your side,” before launching into the heady section with the crowd shouting “Can I get a witness.”

“Nighttime/Anytime {It’s Alright)” has a great slinky guitar intro and sounds very familiar–as if it’s quoting another song, but I can’t figure out what.

More thumping drums (the drummer must be exhausted) and some distortion and feedback introduce “Young Lions” which starts as kind of catchy rocks song but features wonderful noise section in which everyone plays with feedback and the keyboardist actually sits on the keys before returning to that really catchy section.

The show ends with “National Hum,” a blistering loud track with discordant chords and intense vocals.  The drums just seem to go faster and faster as the song goes on.

They play this show like it’s the most important show they’ve ever played.  And the crowd responds accordingly.  It’s unclear to me if Constantines are broken up or not, but if they ever come around, they are a must-see show.

[READ: June 2, 2018] “What is Possible”

This issue of the New Yorker had a section entitled “Parenting.”  Five authors tell a story about their own parents.  Since each author had a very different upbringing the comparison and contrasting of the stories is really interesting.

I love the opening of this essay in which Mohsin says that his mom worked an entry-level job at what would now be considered a Silicon Valley tech business.  They made audiocassettes.

His father made peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches and picked Mohsin up from school on his bike.  His dad had a mustache and sideburns but no hair.  They went to the university where his father was studying.  Or they went home to watch cartoons on the small black and white TV.

Mohsin says he always saw colors on it “though I was told by friends that this wasn’t possible.”  I relate to this because I had a black and white TV in my room growing up and I was sure it was color until one day when I went to my parents TV and compared sided by side and saw just how colorful their TV was. Continue Reading »

Posted in Babies, Canadian Music, Constantines, Essays, Funny (ha ha), Gender, Live at Massey Hall, Mohsin Hamid, New Yorker, Nostalgia, Parenting | Leave a Comment »

Chang-rae Lee–“My Father’s Face” (New Yorker, June 4 & 11, 2018)

June 11, 2018 by Paul Debraski

SOUNDTRACK: CHAD VANGAALEN-Live at Massey Hall (May 27, 2015).

The name Chad VanGaalen sounded familiar to me, and it turns out I know a couple of his songs from NPR.  But I didn’t recognize them here.

As the show opens, he says he only recently heard of Massey Hall and he was blown away by the architecture

He’s glad he’s playing acoustic but even more so that he’s dong the whole one man band and not just a guy with a guitar–he never been that good at playing guitar, so he needs more.  He is playing with Julie Fader “saved his ass on multiple occasions.”   She is one of his favorite people to play with–she does harmonies very well plus it’s nice to play with a  female….  I’m always playing with a bunch of dudes its nice to temper the energy a bit.

“Pine and Clover” opens the show.  Chad play a pretty guitar intro (not power chords-which is what he claimed was all he could play).  As the camera pulls back, you see that he is also playing bass and snare drum with his feet.  Julie sings backing vocals and plays flute.  Next up is “Broken Bell.”  It’s a pretty, slower song.  I love the lyric: “I sit and do a drawing, a portrait of my dad, I should really visit him before he is dead.”  This lyrics gets a big reaction: “Should I take the advice of the graffiti on the wall telling me to go suck it? / should Ii listen to the voices ringing in my head like a broken bell?”

“Hangman’s Son” slows things down a little further, but “Weird Love” is kind of a stomper with some interesting slightly dissonant flute (or maybe its the guitar that is dissonant).

“Peace on the Rise” gets some applause from the start, as does “Willow Tree” which is a quieter, picked guitar song.  For “Cut My Hair” he switches to capo 7 and plays a lovely melody.  But it soon becomes a real stomper: “I will never learn my lesson.”

The final song is dedicated to his daughters. He says he has been teaching them to fish.  Which is “way more fun than doing this….  Not saying this isn’t fun….  It’s really stressing me out…  Holy shit.”  He says he doesn’t like killing he fish but his 7-year-old is like “oh yeah!’  She’s the henchman and he’s in charge of the barbeque, “Which is what you should do with kids–don;t let them run the barbeque.”

“So ‘Burning Candle’ goes out to my girls….  If I fuck this up I’m the worst dad in the world.  It’s pretty and quite short and no, he doesn’t fuck it up.”

[READ: June 2, 2018] “My Father’s Face”

This issue of the New Yorker had a section entitled “Parenting.”  Five authors tell a story about their own parents.  Since each author had a very different upbringing the comparison and contrasting of the stories is really interesting.

Chang-rae says that a clear childhood memory of “my father washing his face.”

His father was very particular about it–“with a vigor and thoroughness that made me feel somehow cleaner for simply having watched him.”  This was the early 1970s and his father was settling into to his first doctoring position as a Bronx V.A. hospital.

Their flat was small but suitable with a place for he and his sister to play. Continue Reading »

Posted in Babies, Bathtubs, Canadian Music, Chad VanGaalen, Chang-Rae Lee, Essays, Live at Massey Hall, New Yorker, Parenting | Leave a Comment »

Jeanette Winterson–“Anyone Can Milk a Rubber Glove” (New Yorker, June 4 & 11, 2018)

June 10, 2018 by Paul Debraski

SOUNDTRACK: ZAKI IBRAHIM-Live at Massey Hall (March 27, 2015).

I had never heard of Zaki Ibrahim before this and from the pictures, I rather thought she would be kind of an opera singer.  She is pretty much everything but.

Born in British Columbia to a father from South Africa and a mother from the United Kingdom, Ibrahim spent her childhood as what she describes as a “citizen of the world”, living at different times in Canada.

This show starts out differently than the others–no interview just her getting her make up done and warming up with her backing singers.

Then she comes out to the theater and sings…in French!  I believe it is the song “Lost in You” (for some reason they don’t show the names of the songs for her).  It’s moody and quite lovely.  After some vocals scatting big drums propel the song half way through to really rock out.

She talks about feeling vulnerable on stage and how important that is for the energy exchange between fans and artist.

The next song is on piano with quiet drums, the singers repeat “I Just Need You Here.”

After this song, the band plays around with some sounds, manipulating it with gadgets and slides and whatnot and there are some vocals by Waleed Abdulhamid.  While that is going on, she comes out in  new outfit and as “Something in the Water” starts she is playing the theremin! and an electronic drum pad.  They seem to be singing “We Fly Home.”

It’s great that these Massey Hall shows have picked so many good artists to showcase.

[READ: June 2, 2018] “Anyone Can Milk a Rubber Glove”

This issue of the New Yorker had a section entitled “Parenting.”  Five authors tell a story about their own parents.  Since each author had a very different upbringing the comparison and contrasting of the stories is really interesting.

Jeanette Winterson describes milking a rubber glove: fill it with warm water, put your index finger and thumb two inches above the teat. The other three fingers squeeze the udder firmly but placidly–it’s like playing the recorder.

Why would anyone do this?  Well she did it for training how to milk a goat.  She was nine or ten when they got the goat.  The goat was named Gracie Fields (after a war-time music hall star).  The war had been over for twenty-five years but her parents still talked about it.

Her mother was deeply religious and read the Bible front to back and started over again.  S also liked singing and believed the goat milked better is you sang to her.  The songs had to be the right kind of downer hymns because goats don’t like to be too cheerful. Unlike sheep, goats are thinkers, but goats are going to Hell while sheep are going with Jesus.

Jeanette’s first time milking Gracie didn’t go very well.  Even with her mother singing “Have You Any Room for Jesus?”

Posted in Essays, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Goats, Jeanette Winterson, Live at Massey Hall, New Yorker, Parenting, Religion, Sheep, The Bible, Zaki Ibrahim | Leave a Comment »

Rachel Kushner–“Finding Yourself in Film” (New Yorker, June 4 & 11, 2018)

June 9, 2018 by Paul Debraski

SOUNDTRACK: SHAD-Live at Massey Hall (March 27, 2015).

Shad is a terrific Canadian rapper.  His beats rock, his lyrics are great and he has some really interesting samples.

As this episode starts, he talks about Massey Hall as having a value in tradition.  When people come here they are excited.  It’s fun for his fans to come to this place to see Shad like they’ve seen him before but its different–a bit more excitement.  It’s like being with your friends you usually hang out with but now you’re going to the semi-formal and it makes it more memorable

The show opens with a trumpet (Tom Moffett) and bass (Ian Koiter).  As Shad walks out on stage, the drummer (Matthew Johnston) plays the cymbals to loud fanfare and Shad hypes the crowd.  The violin (Andrew Forder) swells, the turntable scratches and the melody starts for “Compromise.”  There’s so many great lines in this song:

Your hearts warm, mine’s on fire and I’m antsy
I know it’s so cliche but I’m angry
That some can’t eat, meanwhile I’m letting a damn feast
Of pastas and canned meats, rot in my pantry
Like, Lord please, can we speak on this frankly?
Like, God why you letting this happen? Amen
He answered, “Son, I’m asking you the same thing
Cause you’re supposed to be my servants out there working
Like you’re my hands reaching out to those that’s hurting
You don’t have long on this Earth and
I hope you won’t compromise, I said I hope you won’t compromise”

It ends with some cool organ sounds and then a sample from “(I Never Promised You A) Rose Garden” (which Shad calls some “feel good music”).  “Rose Garden” has more great lyrics and the cycling sample of “(I Never Promised You A) Rose Garden.”

I love that so many rap songs (not just Shad’s) have pop culture references that make the songs incredibly dated.  But if you knew the song when it was relevant you don’t mind

“Stylin” has a great funky bass line and more terrific lyrics

Please, I’m ahead of my time, wait, [scratch] now I’m ahead of the times
Sped up ahead of the beat, speaking of time whenever I head to the meet
I’m always ahead of the heat, head of my class egg head with glasses
Leaving these heads with a classic, now let me just head to the back
With my head, I’m a nap for a bit

and then this ‘ with help from rapper Saukrates

See I got fans that say “Oh hey Shad, I hate rap but I like you, ”
Well I hate that, but I like you at least I like that you
Like me so I won’t spite you, it’s not your fault you’re a white dude
Likes white music I like too, just don’t be surprised by my IQ
Please, it’s like back in high school they said “highbrow”
I said, “hi who?” That Shakespeare, that’s a haiku
I like the high road so I was like dude that’s basic
That’s like crude but you’re old placed to my iTunes
Use your common sense, matter fact use Common Sense
For that matter use Ice Cube, don’t think that we nice too
Cus we don’t look like you, cus we don’t know how to tie ties
And our grandparents weren’t tycoons?

The next song (“Progress: Part 1”) starts like an improvised spoken word.  He says that he and his friends were listening to a song on the radio and he started riffing:

Bye-bye Miss American Pie
Drove a block to that shop with the liquor inside
Singing “Gin and Juice”, drinking whiskey and rye
Thinking “This’ll be the day that I…”

His says his full name is Shadrach Kabango and he wrote a song called “A Good Name” to celebrate it.  This was the first song I’d heard by him and I really liked it back then.  It sounds great live with the band behind him.

But my favorite song of the night is “We Myself and I” from the same album TSOL.  The guitar riff (Tom Ionescu) is simple but totally rocking and the drums are completely intense.  There’s some great turntabling “T Lo (Terence Lo) on the decks.”

The show ends with the less rocking “Remember to Remember,” a thoughtful song with synths from Max Zipursky.

This is a great show.  It’s amazing how much rappers come to life with a live band.

[READ: June 2, 2018] “Finding Yourself in Film”

This issue of the New Yorker had a section entitled “Parenting.”  Five authors tell a story about their own parents.  Since each author had a very different upbringing the comparisons and contrasts of the stories is really interesting.

In this story, Kushner says she relates her parents’ life (and her own) to the movie The Leather Boys.  It came out in 1964, her parents saw it in 1965, before she was born.

When she was a kid, her father rode a Vincent Black Shadow motorcycle like the Rockers in the movie.  Her dad was no Rocker, but he liked the bar featured in the film the Ace Cafe.  (where most people rode Triumpshs, BSAs and Nortons.

In the movie, two bikers meet at the Ace.  Pete is an eccentric lone wolf and Reg is in an unhappy teenage marriage to Dot.  Peter tells Reg to leave her.  Dot tries to keep him from leaving her by claiming she is pregnant. Continue Reading »

Posted in Babies, Essays, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Live at Massey Hall, Motorcycles, New Yorker, Parenting, Quadrophenia, Shad, The Leather Boys | Leave a Comment »

Parquet Courts (Union Transfer, Philadelphia, PA, June 8, 2018)

June 8, 2018 by Paul Debraski

[ATTENDED: June 8, 2018] Parquet Courts

2017-01-31-22-13-40I saw Parquet Courts a year and a half ago at this very venue.  At the time I wasn’t sure if I wanted to see them again, but it had been a fun show.  Their new album was also fun, so why not?

They played 10 of the 13 new songs from Wide Awake.  But they also played a lot of older songs too (19 songs in total including a Ramones cover of “Today Your Love, Tomorrow the World.”

But they started with the lead song of the new album, “Total Football.”  The end of the song “and fuck Tom Brady” got a huge reaction from the crowd (since Philly beat the Patriots in the Super Bowl). Continue Reading »

Posted in Goat Girl, Parkay Quarts, Parquet Courts, Philadelphia, PA, Street Stains, The Ramones, Union Transfer, Venom | Leave a Comment »

Goat Girl (Union Transfer, Philadelphia, PA, June 8, 2018) [PARQUET COURTS]

June 8, 2018 by Paul Debraski

[ATTENDED: June 8, 2018] Goat Girl

Goat Girl are a massive buzz band in England.

Back in March, The Guardian had this to say:

Fearless, omnivorous Goat Girl (named in reference to Bill Hicks’s lusty alter ego, Goat Boy) found each other, and their sound, in Brixton indie venue the Windmill, signing to Rough Trade (over Domino and XL) two years ago before releasing anything. Taking their time and choosing the right home has served them well – their eponymous debut sounds self-assured: 19 songs crafted with care, in which dirty grunge riffs take strange left turns.

I was surprised that they were playing here so soon, evidently on a multi-date tour with Parquet Courts.  But they proved to be an excellent compaion band to parquet Courts since they have a punk, DIY aesthetic but don’t stick to one genre of music

I’ll let NME describe their album:

The four piece’s debut album is a grubby, clattering thing that takes its lead from 1980s LA punk trailblazers like X and The Gun Club, who took traditional country music and fed it moonshine until it fell down in a ditch, then scraped the mud off its jeans, handed it a microphone and a broken electric guitar and made it walk through broken glass to sing in a grotty toilet venue bar over a broken PA system. Goat Girl have mixed this scrappy sound with the gothic ennui of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and the doomy experimentalism of Tom Waits. The result is a late-night swagger through the murky underbelly of the town that Clottie Cream, Rosy Bones, Naima Jelly and L.E.D. – not, we assume, their birth names – call home, coming in at 19 swirling songs in 40 punchy minutes. It even includes a song that describes their very sound, the Pixies-esque belter ‘Country Sleaze’, thus rendering the past paragraph of me picking apart their sonics almost entirely pointless. Ah well.

Goat Girl was a lot of fun.  They played for about 40 minutes, presumably their whole album, although I didn’t know it. Continue Reading »

Posted in Goat Girl, Parkay Quarts, Parquet Courts, Philadelphia, PA, Union Transfer | Leave a Comment »

Street Stains (Union Transfer, Philadelphia, PA, June 8, 2018) [PARQUET COURTS]

June 8, 2018 by Paul Debraski

[ATTENDED: June 8, 2018] Street Stains

Street Stains are from Washington D.C.  They are a duo consisting of guitar and drums.

Guitarist Chris Richards (who was in Q and Not U) plays a spare guitar and simple riffs.  It amused me that he never really took his hood off as he shouted the lyrics.

Drummer Sean McGuinness (who also plays in Pissed Jeans) played some really complex fills and kept the simple songs from growing dull.

He had some things to say about parties in Washington D.C. and how they suck (I assume as an introduction to “The Party.”

I also enjoyed that they have a song called “Street Stains” and one called “Somewhere Over the Chemtrails.” Continue Reading »

Posted in Parkay Quarts, Parquet Courts, Philadelphia, PA, Pissed Jeans, Q and Not U, Street Stains, Union Transfer | Leave a Comment »

Zadie Smith–“Two Men Arrive in a Village” (New Yorker, June 6 & 13, 2016)

June 8, 2018 by Paul Debraski

SOUNDTRACK: CRASH TEST DUMMIES-Oooh La La! (2010).

Crash Test Dummies were once huge, then mocked and then silent.  They are still a band, although the band is really only singer Brad Roberts anymore.

In fat they were more or less broken up but then in 2010 Roberts began experimenting with toy instruments, the Optigan and Omnichord.

Those instruments were the inspiration for this music and yet the songs don’t sound like novelty or “toy” creations.  Both of the instruments were proto-samplers and they allowed Roberts to generates sounds on styles he didn’t normally play.  And so we get this interesting and fun release which features many contributions from fellow Dummy Ellen Ried, who still sounds amazing.

Roberts’ voice is still deep, but he really has his songwriting chops down well.  “Songbird” is a pretty folk song with a lovely chorus.

“You Said You’d Meet Me (In California)” was recorded as a Dummies song, although this version is more fun, with the way he sings it and the way he uses the instruments’ effects.

“And Its Beautiful” really is beautiful–it’s a very catchy song with pretty instrumentation and great backing vocals from Ellen Reid.  “Paralyzed” is a slow piano ballad while “In between Places” has some cool effects sprinkled on the song.

“Not Today Baby” is a goofy song.  Dummies have always been seen as a novelty band, and it’s songs like this that are why. But honestly, what’s wrong with having a sense of humor in your music.  This song isn’t ha ha funny but it should raise a smile.

“Heart of Stone” is the kind of sad song that Brad does so well.  Ellen Reid’s doo doo doo doo” are a lovely touch.

“Lake Bras d’Or” is a pretty ballad with minimal instrumentation, while “What I’m Famous For” is over the top.  This one has a kind of Western feel–a banjo-picking, fast-talking monstrosity.  And yet it’s a fun country ditty with some pretty funny lyrics.

Roberts talked about the big band sound of “Now You See Her” as something of an inspiration for the album–that this toy could make this kind of music and he wanted to see if he could wrote a song in that style   is a kind of big band.  It’s again, kind of a novelty, but I think he pulls it off really well.

The final song “Put a Face” is played with accordion and violin and is sung entirely by Ellen Reid.  It’s a beautiful song and a lovely ending to this unexpected disc.

[READ: January 20, 2017] “Two Men Arrive in a Village”

I usually love Zadie Smith stories–even when she writes things that are quite different from her usual style  But this one is simply odd.

The title is sort of a parable and the story reads like one as well.  It even starts as if the title is the first half of the sentence:

Sometimes on horseback, sometimes by foot, in a car or astride motorbikes, occasionally in a tank—having strayed far from the main phalanx—and every now and then from above, in helicopters. But if we look at the largest possible picture, the longest view, we must admit that it is by foot that they have mostly come…. Two men arrive in a village by foot, and always a village, never a town. If two men arrive in a town they will obviously arrive with more men, and far more in the way of supplies—that’s simple common sense.

After a fairly long setup of the things two men might carry, we find that these two men arrived in the narrator’s village at sunset. Continue Reading »

Posted in Brad Roberts, Crash Test Dummies, Death, Ellen Reid, Fables, Huh?, New Yorker, Omnichord, Optigan, Short Story, Violence, Zadie Smith | Leave a Comment »

Ben Lerner–“The Polish Rider” (New Yorker, June 6 & 13, 2016)

June 7, 2018 by Paul Debraski

SOUNDTRACK: GRACE VANDERWAAL-Tiny Desk Concert #751 (June 6, 2018). 

I had been listening to the All Songs Considered podcast when Bob Boilen told the below story about how he found Grave VanderWaal.  Since I don’t watch any show with anyone with talent of any kind, I had never heard of her either.

When 14-year-old Grace VanderWaal came to perform at the Tiny Desk I had to confess to her (and her mom) that, until my “accidental concert experience,” I had no idea who she was, nor did I know what America’s Got Talent was.

It all started this past February, when I went to the 9:30 Club, a 1,200 capacity music venue, to see what I thought was a show by rock guitarist Grace Vonderkuhn and her power trio from Delaware.

When I arrived for the unusually early 7:30pm show, I saw a long line of young teens wrapping around the block, mostly girls, and a fair smattering of adults who didn’t look like the regular concert goers who head to the 9:30 Club on a weekday evening. And as you’ve likely guessed by now, the show I was about to witness was not the riff-rock guitar player we’d recently featured on All Songs Considered but a very different sort of wunderkind who won the hearts of millions as the 11th winner of America’s Got Talentand, now, a Columbia recording artist.

Inside the club was a massively enthralled and enthused crowd and it didn’t take long for me, one of the few older guys in the club, to also be completely swept away by her performance. It was a dazzling show that felt fresh, sincere, bold but also simple, with Grace on ukulele singing songs such as “Moonlight,” a song about a friend dealing with mental health issues, which she also performs here at my desk.

“She always has a smile
From morning to the night
The perfect poster child
That was once in my life
A doll made out of glass
All her friends think that she’s great
But I can see through it all
And she’s about to break”

Despite what I feel is my broad love of music, I was reminded how easy it is to get comfortable in the musical confines we devise for ourselves. It’s easy to stereotype artists and perhaps be dismissive of something that falls outside our comfort zone. But Grace’s show and music reminds me to keep my thoughts and judgements open. So, if you’re about to pass on watching this one, figuring you’re not going to connect with a young teen and her music, stop. Take a deep breath, open up your heart and let Grace VanderWaal enchant you with her unique talent.

I was curious about this Grace after his story (and also wanted to make sure I didn’t make the same mistake when I saw that Grace Vonderkuhn was playing nearby in Philly ( I didn’t make that show).

So this Grace has a raspy voice, making her sound much older than 14.  But when you look at her she looks like a fragile child.  I’m not sure how poppy her recorded music is, but the ukulele-driven song “Moonlight” is fun and different, despite the very poppy overall feel.

She’s accompanied by “her beautiful beautiful guitarist” Melissa Dougherty.   Dougherty also sings great backing vocals.  Is she annoyed being the accompaniment for a 14 year old?

She says that “Darkness Keeps Chasing Me” has become her favorite–she was always told the song was too much of a downer.  Her voice is surprisingly deep in the beginning.  Indeed, she has a nice command of her voice–low and high notes.  The guitar melody is quite lovely, too.

“Clearly” is kind of a cover of Johnny Nash’s “I Can See Clearly Now.”  They thought that it was such a bright happy song and her producer thought it would be cool to add darker lyrics leading up to the happy chorus.  I don’t know the original verses I don’t think, but of course I know the song.  And listening to it now, it doesn’t need darker lyrics, but it’s fine that they’re added.

So this isn’t so much a cover as taking a really great idea and building a new song around it.

But don’t like the way the chorus has changed:

I can see clearly now, the rain has gone.
I accept all of the things I cannot change.

What did they put the AA slogan  in the voice of a 14 year old?

Plus I hate that they have modernized the delivery of the “bright bright sunshiney day.”  Part.  It sounds like  contemporary vocal melody and it’s just wrong.

So I’m mixed.  Glad I heard her.  But even more glad that I didn’t make the same mistake that Bob did.

[READ: January 12, 2017] “The Polish Rider”

This was an interesting story about an artist and Uber.

Sonia is a Polish artist–she grew up in Poland.  She is about to have a show at a gallery curated by Elena.  But she wakes in the night realizing that she has made a terrible mistake. She has allowed two of her paintings to be hung on the wall with paint on the edges.  The rest are “blank” or painted white and look clean, but these two–she is full of regrets that she allowed them to be hung as they were.

Her paintings are all variations of the same thing: the famous kiss between Erich Honecker, the leader of the German Democratic republic from 1971 until the fall of the Berlin Wall and Leonid Brezhnev, the head of the U.S.S.R. from 1964 to 1982  The iconic Socialist fraternal kiss took place in Berlin and was photographed by Régis Bossu in 1979.  The photo was ubiquitous in Kraków.

After The Berlin Wall came down, a Soviet artist Dmitri Vrubel painted the image on the East side of the wall with the caption: “God help me survive this deadly love affair.”  In March 2009 the artist spruced up the paining, which Sonia thought cheapened the whole thing.

Sonia’s canvasses all showed this kiss, meticulously done and very clean, But each canvas was done in a different style: cubist, chiaroscuro, etc. Continue Reading »

Posted in Art, Artists, Ben Lerner, Danny DeVito, Dmitri Vrubel, Fears, Grace VanderWaal, Grace Vonderkuhn, Johnny Nash, New Yorker, Régis Bossu | Leave a Comment »

Langston Hughes–“Seven People Dancing” (New Yorker, June 6 & 13, 2016)

June 6, 2018 by Paul Debraski

SOUNDTRACK: DANIEL CAESAR-Tiny Desk Concert #750 (June 4, 2018).

Boy I did not like this Tiny Desk Concert at all.  I don;t like Caesar’s voice, I don’t like his lyrics and I don’t care for the backing singers.

This would be why his three most-streamed songs have a combined 249,000,000 plays on Spotify alone.  I just do not like this kind of music.

And of course it went on for nearly 17 minutes. So I’ll let the blurb say nice things

Daniel Caesar [real name Ashton Simmonds] and his band had a clear vision for their Tiny Desk performance. While already confined to a small space, they opted to congregate at the piano, where producer and music director Matthew Burnett sat to create what feels like a fly-on-the-wall moment. We’re presented a purity that’s nearly impossible to capture on an album.

The years of training in church, fused with natural talent, is on full display. Supporting vocalists Camille Harrison, Danah Martin and Nevon Sinclair are in tow for the whole ride, providing some of the richest harmonies we’ve heard at the Tiny Desk. I found myself fixated on the playful manner in which the band members interacted with each other.

I will agree with the intimate nature of the show.  He’s leaning on the piano, largely unaware of the surroundings.  And the piano sounds good. I also won’t leave out Adrian Bent on drums.

They play three songs.

“Japanese Denim”  I hate the opening lyrics: “I don’t stand in line / I don’t pay for clothes; fuck that yeas.  But I would for you.”  Good grief.

“Get You” I like the acoustic bass by Saya Gray on this track.

“Best Part (feat. H.E.R.)” H.E.R. (Gabriella Wilson) has a nice voice and they sing well together: “You’re my water when I’m, stuck in the desert / You’re the Tylenol I take when my head hurts.”

[READ: January 12, 2017] “Seven People Dancing”

Langston Hughes died in 1967.  This story was written in 1961.  It’s fascinating how a word can change in 50 years.

The story begins by telling us that “It was Marcel’s apartment and he was a fairy.”  Given my daughter’s age and the prevalence of magic-related stories out there, and the fact that no one uses that word anymore, I certainly never thought he meant that Marcel was gay.

Also telling about the fairy: “Nobody esle was unusual in that regard.”  Also, that he had inserted a “de la” in his named Marcel de la Smith as an indication of French Creole origin.  Although he had never be to new Orleans.

So it was Marcel’s apartment and seven people were dancing–three couples and Marcel.  Six of these people were colored and one was white.  “Marcel was colored, a muddy brown and not good-looking…. His dancing was too fanciful to be masculine and too grotesque to be feminine.  But everything he did was like that, so it was very easy to tell that he was a fairy.”

Marcel gave parties to mixed couples which many places would not do.  And why?  He was an old fairy who had lost interest in uniforms.  In fact, his interest now was money. That was why he gave parties primarily for people who did not touch his heart.

A few paragraphs in and a narrator enters the story who comments “the reason I say ‘perhaps’ about the white girls is that I do not know the ultimate why of anything.”  Her name was Joan and Claude had brought her.  He had introduced her to Harlem in the first place.

Hughes has a fascinating way with words.

The other couples laughed and the laughter bounced, like very hard rubber balls, around the room, not like tennis balls but like solid hard rubber balls, and Marcel laughed, too. Marcel’s laughter was like a painter’s ground cloth that protects the furniture and anything else under a ceiling being painted.

One of the men was a very dark, very handsome hard-rubber-ball man of indefinite age, maybe young, maybe fifty, but too dark to tell. (I know that he was thirty-eight). The woman with whom he was dancing was the color of green tea in an off-white cup.

But he also repeats information a lot:

Seven people were dancing, three couples and Marcel. Midnight.

It was Marcel’s apartment, and seven people were dancing. Six were colored and one was white. Marcel himself was colored, a muddy brown and not good-looking. It was he who danced alone.

Marcel’s laughter somehow cleared the air of evil and left only the music and the seven people dancing, including himself.

Otherwise, why did the laughter ring out again, louder than the music, and bounce, like a dozen hard rubber balls, around the room after 2 a.m.,

And why did Marcel’s laughter stop being a ground cloth and start bouncing like a rubber ball, too, and a very hard one at that?

The “Oh, but” identified her as having been around at least a little in Harlem, and therefore the laughter bounced like rubber balls.

This story nears its end with the dark man saying how much he wanted to dance with the white woman.  And then there’s this paragraph which I don’t understand at all.

It was a Dizzy Gillespie record, and what it said without words summed up the situation pretty well. It was not that room but the world in that room that was in the record. The music was uranium, and those seven people, had they been super-duper spies, could not have known more about atomic energy—that is, its reason for being a mighty way of dying, “Oh, but I do” being a component.

Being fifty years old and startlingly out of date, this story was hard for me to parse.  Surely the mixture of dark and white people and a gay man must speak to something–I love how progressive it is.  But why the repeated rubber balls and why keep telling us it was seven people?  This was a short piece and there was so much was repeated.

The ending was comical but serious and again, it seemed really spare.

I’m not really familiar with Hughes, so I can’t even say anything by comparison to his other work.

Posted in Daniel Caesar, Dizzy Gillespie, Huh?, Langston Hughes, Language, LGBTQ, Racism, Short Story, Tiny Desk Concert | 1 Comment »

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