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Kurt Vonnegut–Hocus Pocus (1990)

October 8, 2012 by Paul Debraski

SOUNDTRACK:  PUBLIC ENEMY-Live at All Tomorrow’s Parties, Convention Hall, October 2, 2011 (2011).

NPR was cool enough to record and provide as a download most of the shows at the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in Asbury Park, NJ.  (Portishead wouldn’t allow their show to be recorded, sadly).  But Public Enemy was a welcome surprise!
This tour is in celebration of the anniversary of Fear of a Black Planet.  And they play most of Fear and a lot of other things too (with almost nothing from their 2000 era CDs.

I can remember back in the early days of rap that it was hard to imagine what a rap show would be like live since they didn’t play instruments and much of the music was sampled.  Well, PE has musicians on stage and they have DJ Lord filling in for Terminator X behind the turntables (big shoes to fill, but done largely well–especially his fun “solo” in which he samples The White Stripes and Nirvana–although he should have mixed in Portishead, no?).  And mostly they have the personalities of Chuck D and Flavor Flav.

I suspect that this show would be a bit more fun to watch than it is to listen to–Flavor Flav’s antics don’t always translate well without his visuals.    Like when he asks the audience if that can all say “Ho” (which he eventually holds for 33 seconds!), it seems like a delay tactic in audio, but is probably fun to witness.

What’s especially cool about the show is that PE play so many songs, including small snippets of songs as segues to other ones (like the seventy second version of “Anti-Nigger Machine” that intros “Burn Hollywood Burn” which is practically hardcore) or the minute and a half of “He Got Game” that follows “Night of the Living Baseheads.”  I like that they even threw in some skits from the record like “Meet the G That Killed Me” and “Incident at 66.6FM.”

But of course the real joy is the full length songs, “Brothers Gonna Work It Out,” “911 is a Joke,” and of course “Bring the Noise” and “Fight the Power.”

Some of the improv sections don’t work all that well, the guitar solo in “Power to the People” leaves something to be desired (Khari Wynn maybe a legend, but he;s no Vernon Reid),  although the  “Jungle Boogie” riff is cool.   But the improv with guest drummer Denis Davis was pretty bad ass.  Flavor Flav hopped on the drums and was quite good for “Timebomb.”  We also got to meet Flav’s daughter Jasmine.  And Professor Griff was there too.

It’s also interesting that they keep saying they have no time left in the set (Portishead is next) but they play for at least 30 minutes after this.  Including a wonderful “By the Time I Get to Arizona and the set ending “Fight the Power.”

Chuck D has still got it and Flav is just as crazy and fun as ever (even if his screams and yos seems out of tune from time to time).  Of course, Flav has to get the last word in by raging  on for six and a half minutes  at the end (and about six-minutes in the beginning as well where he gave himself props about his reality show.

It’s a really good set–a little distorted from time to time, but really solid.  Here’s a link to the downloadable show.

[READ: October 2, 2012] Hocus Pocus

This book may have put me over the edge in terms of Vonnegut exhaustion.  I bought this book some time in 1992, but I never read it. It’s been in my house for twenty years and it was about time I read it.

But as I’ve been noticing, each Vonnegut book has been getting darker and more misanthropic.  And this one is no exception.  The construction of the book follows Vonnegut’s cut and paste style but it feels even more shuffled and indirect than usual (more on that later).  In many of Vonnegut’s books, the “climax” occurs somewhere in the middle and he fills in the details later.  For this one, the climax came around h.and I wouldn’t have felt like I missed anything.

In this book, the main character, Eugene Debs Hartke  is a Vietnam vet (usually his protagonists are military men, and Vonnegut has criticized Vietnam a lot, but this is the first time he’s had a Vietnam vet as protagonist).  He married his wife and had a wonderful family until he learned that his mother in law had a disease that made her crazy–but it only kicked in later in life, after he married her daughter.  And that his wife has the same disease–so by the middle of the story both of the women in his life are crazy “hags.”  And, like in his other stories, his children hate him. Continue Reading »

Posted in All Songs Considered, Anarchy, Culture Shock, Death, Funny (ha ha), Futility, Kurt Vonnegut, LGBTQ, Marriage Trouble, Morality, Nirvana, Portishead, Prison, Public Enemy, The White Stripes, Utopia, Violence | Leave a Comment »

Adam Blade–Beast Quest Special Edition: Spiros the Ghost Phoenix (2009)

October 7, 2012 by Paul Debraski

SOUNDTRACK: ANIMANIACS-“Nations of the World” (1995).

I was a little too old for Animaniacs when it was first on.  And boy am I mad I missed it then, because it is hilarious.  And, astonishingly, educational.

Check out the countries of the world as sung by Yakko.

Genius lies within.

Incidentally, this isn’t the cleanest version of the video I’ve seen, but it has closed captioning so you can see all the countries!  For a clearer picture click this link.

[READ: September 2012] Spiros the Ghost Phoenix

After reading Book 12, Clark noticed on the back cover of the book that there was a cover for a book we hadn’t read yet.  So I looked it up and it was this one, a Special Edition.  There are several Beast Quest Special Edition books just like in the Droon series.  I never quite understood the purpose of the Special Editions in Droon–they were bigger, but you had to read them in sequence or the series didn’t make sense, and if you skipped them, you missed out on a huge plot development, so it was just an odd thing to do.

So I wasn’t surprised to find out that there were Special Editions in Beast Quest  but I was surprised to find out that the Special Edition has no relation to the sequence at all.  Indeed, they work fine as introductions to the series. Continue Reading »

Posted in Adam Blade, Adventure, Animaniacs, Children's Books, Fables, Fantasy, Fears, Magic, Supernatural, Threats | Leave a Comment »

Matt Furie–The Night Riders (2012)

October 6, 2012 by Paul Debraski

SOUNDTRACK: LULLATONE-“The Best Paper Airplane Ever” (2011).

Lullatone is a duo from Kentucky and Japan (!). Their personal story may be more interesting than the music.  Shawn James Seymour met Yoshimi Tomida when she was an exchange student.  They became romantically involved and he moved back to Japan with her.  They started making music in their shared apartment.  They make music for both kids and adults.

And most of their songs have lyrics, although this one with such a wonderful title, does not.  It has a simple orchestration (which is more Casio than orchestra) and a melody that would not be out of place in a Wes Anderson film.  It’s kind of a slight piece–pretty but not overwhelming.   But it’s very nice nonetheless.  It gives me very little indication of what the rest of their music might sound like.  You can hear this in the OWTK March podcast.

[READ: Summer 2012] The Night Riders

This McSweeney’s McMullens book is actually wordless.  Matt Furie designed and painted this rather bizarre story of bizarre and somewhat frightening characters. There is something unearthly and strange about everything in this book–and that’s entirely intentional.

As the book opens, a frog grabs his bicycle out of the garage and goes for a  midnight bike ride–with a mouse in his basket.  They meet some scary creatures, like a bright red dragon-like creature who is scary but sweet.  Indeed, most of the creatures turn out to be very nice.  And together, they all go on some underworld adventures.  They go underground  and they go underwater  where they met otherworldly animals who take them on further adventures until the sun comes up. Continue Reading »

Posted in Children's Books, Funny (strange), Lullatone, Matt Furie, McSweeney's, Surreal | Leave a Comment »

Amy Martin–Symphony City (2011)

October 5, 2012 by Paul Debraski

SOUNDTRACK: THE NOT-ITS!-“Puppy Dog” (2011).

This song was paired with the Billy Kelly song in OWTKs March podcast.  And it, too, is very funny.  It is almost aggressively catchy and in your face.  I found it a we bit off-putting, but it quickly won me over.

It has a kind of Ralph’s World feel (although they don’t really sound like Ralph’s World or anything).  I like the way the chorus actually slows the song down.  The “third part” of the song has quite an unexpected sound twist–so there’s more than a simple pop song here.

The lyrics are really quite funny (if a little dark).  And the talking dog at the front of the song is awesome.

[READ: 2011] Symphony City

Amy Martin wrote and illustrated this beautiful children’s book.  In it, a young girl with nothing to do, hopes to go to the free Symphony in the city today.  She gets lost from her parents and experiences the vibrant colors of the music of the city.

While it should be frightening and is a little bit (it gets resolved in a very quick and rather confusing way, but that clearly isn’t the point), the strength of the book is the vibrant colors on every page–bright yellows and reds, dark and moody blues, with different sounds evoking different colors.  It actually has a bit of a synesthetic effect, which is all very cool. Continue Reading »

Posted in Amy Martin, Books about music, Children's Books, McSweeney's, The Not-Its! | Leave a Comment »

Vladimir Vagin & Frank Asch–Here Comes the Cat! СЮДА ИДЕТ КОТ! (1989/2011)

October 4, 2012 by Paul Debraski

SOUNDTRACK: BILLY KELLY-“People Really Like Milk” (2009).

I enjoyed Billy Kelly’s song with Davy Jones so much that I investigated him a little further and found this wonderful song.

It’s a poppy folk song about a very important topic: milk, and how much everyone loves it.  Kelly has a great delivery (especially the rhymes with milk) and the song itself is funny and bouncy   It will stay in your head for hours (in a good way).

I really can’t get enough of Billy Kelly.  And if you Google the song you’ll see him performing the it at a kid’s backyard party.  But here’s the official video (which Kelly animated).

[READ: 2011] Here Comes the Cat

Of all of the McSweeney’s McMullens books, this one has been our favorite.  It is a very simple story (told in Russian and English) with only four (English) and three (Russian) words repeated over and over.  And the colophon explains the history: “Here Comes the Cat!, the first ever Soviet/American picture-book collaboration  was originally published by Scholastic in 1989.”

СЮДА ИДЕТ КОТ! is pronounced syu-DAH ee-DYOT KOT! and it along with the translation Here comes the cat! is on every page in both languages (along with some other bilingual phrases–Hello, Mice at Work etc). And on every page, a mouse runs through the mouse village announcing Here Comes the Cat!  The villagers all look surprised as they run across the city with the news.  But what will happen when the shadow of the cat appears in the village?

This is a wonderful story, simple, yet full of humor and cleverness.  It tells a story that not everything is what it seems.  And the ending is quite funny. Continue Reading »

Posted in Billy Kelly, Cats, Children's Books, Fears, Frank Asch, McSweeney's, Russia, Vladimir Vagin | Leave a Comment »

Sheila Heti &Clare Rojas–We Need a Horse (2011)

October 3, 2012 by Paul Debraski

SOUNDTRACK: BILLY KELLY with DAVY JONES-“Me and My Brand New Haircut” (2010).

This is a fun and silly song in which the beat is kept by scissors.  It’s a very light song (as befits a song about a haircut).  Indeed it’s amazing how much you can sing about a haircut.

The lines that Davy speaks (there’s some call and response) reminds me a lot of Flight of the Conchords.  This is the kind of silly kids song that I really like.

I see that Billy Kelly has a few albums out.  He may be worth investigating further.

[READ: sometime in 2011] We Need a Horse

Like with Arthur Bradford, this book is Sheila Heti’s first children’s book.  I haven’t enjoyed Heti’s adult work all that much, but it’s hard to disagree with the message of this book.  The message is simple enough–you are what you are and what you are is valuable.  But I have to admit that the first few pages are a little unexpected (a horse talking to light, a sheep with a tennis racket, etc).  Nevertheless, it has a happy ending. Continue Reading »

Posted in Billy Kelly, Children's Books, Clare Rojas, Davy Jones, Flight of the Conchords, McSweeney's, Sheila Heti, Surreal | Leave a Comment »

Arthur Bradford & Lisa Hanawalt–Benny’s Brigade (2012)

October 2, 2012 by Paul Debraski

SOUNDTRACK: MO PHILLIPS-“Big Red Truck” (2012).

This track was number two on the OWTK March 2012 playlist.  This song has a kind of late X, or maybe The Knitters kind of feel–male and female vocals with a heavy bassline and a slightly ominous feel–although it is just about a big red truck.  I like t he song a lot, but I’m not sure if my kids would.

The chorus of “bringing all my loving taking all my loving home to you” seems like an odd one for a kids song.

[READ: September 30, 2012] Benny’s Brigade

Yes, this is the same Arthur Bradford whom I have written about and read all of his works–McSweeney’s McMullens has been publishing children’s stories from unexpected adult authors!  This is Bradford’s first foray into children’s books, and I think it’s quite successful.  Benny’s Brigade came with the Ionesco book, but my kids enjoyed it much more.

I was a little concerned exactly how this would turn out (the combination of McSweeney’s and Bradford could have gone dark), but I needn’t have worried.  It is a kids book after all. Continue Reading »

Posted in Arthur Bradford, Children's Books, Lisa Hanawalt, McSweeney's, Mo Phillips, Surreal, The Knitters, X | Leave a Comment »

Eugène Ionesco & Etienne Delessert–Stories 1 2 3 4 (1969, 1970, 1971, 1976) [translated 2012]

October 1, 2012 by Paul Debraski

SOUNDTRACK: THE HAPPY RACERS–“Lovabye Dragon” (2012).

This song was the first track on the inaugural playlist of Out With the Kids back in March 2012. This is a sweet song about dragons and monsters and no more nightmares.  For a children’s song, this is quite intricate.  The opening riff is enticing, and the occasional falsetto was unexpected.

But the bridge is a delicate lead in to the chorus which is not as catchy as one might expect for a children’s song.  It’s a very sweet song.  And indeed, a lot of the elements are things that I would normally love in a song (it actually reminds me a bit of Airborne Toxic Event, but more poppy).  And yet I’m not all that compelled by it.  Although a few listens has really warmed me up to it.

[READ: September 30, 2012] Stories 1 2 3 4

Last year, McSweeney’s started a new imprint–McSweeney’s McMullens–which would publish children’s books.  As with everything McSweeney’s does, the books are beautiful!  Lovingly created with amazing illustrations.  And in each book, the cover unfolds into a giant poster (usually of the pictures contained inside).

And, like other McSweeny’s books, the stories are all a little odd.  I usually try to read the books once through before reading them to my kids to find out just how odd they turn out.  I didn’t read this one first because it was quite large, and boy, were we surprised by it.

Eugène Ionesco writing a children’s book?   One of the foremost playwrights in the Theater of the Absurd?  Indeed, that Ionesco. Continue Reading »

Posted in Children's Books, Etienne Delessert, Etienne Delessert, Eugène Ionesco, Foreign Books, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), McSweeney's, Surreal, The Airborne Toxic Event, The Happy Racers | Leave a Comment »

Adam Blade–Beast Quest: The Golden Armor #7-12 (2008

September 30, 2012 by Paul Debraski

SOUNDTRACK: OUT WITH THIS KIDS MUSIC MONTHLY PODCAST (2012).

I am bummed to have literally just discovered this cool podcast.  Each month Out with the Kids plays some ten songs that are kid-friendly.  They’re not all “kids songs” but they are kid friendly.  And it’s a fun way to learn about new music that kids may like.

The blog was started by Jeff Bogle, and he does proper DJ intros and outros (fortunately no “Morning Zoo zaniness”).  The songs are often connected thematically, and he plays a diverse collection of music (for his October podcast, I’d heard of none of the artists before, which is great if all of your kids music awareness comes via Dan Zanes and They Might Be Giants (nothing nothing nothing wrong with them, I love them both) or, heaven forbid Kidz Bop.

So, check him out, and subscribe via iTunes.  What have you got to lose?

[READ: August 2012] Beast Quest 7-12

I wasn’t all that excited to continue this series.  I liked some of the things in the first books, but I was on the fence about whether to continue.  But Clark enjoyed the series, so I figured I’d continue (but hopefully not do all 72 books).  Well, I was pleasantly surprised by this next series.  Although the formula is still in place, Adam Blade played around with the ideas a little bit and made them much more interesting.  Rather than having to rescue beasts who were turned evil, this time, Tom, the 12 (!) year old hero, must go in search of pieces of the golden armor.

But a step back first.  After competing the first 6 quests, Wizard Aduro shows Tom and Elenna the beautiful golden armor that resides in a special room in King Hugo’s castle.  But when they get there they discovered  that the armor has been stolen (in the prologue we see how the  armor was stolen and we know it was Malvel’s doing).  As Book 7 takes off we learn of Tom’s new quest–to find all of the stolen pieces of the armor which are now being guarded by beasts that Malvel has created.  It was kind of fun wondering what the six pieces of armor would be.  They turn out to be a helmet, chain mail, a breast plate, leg armor, boots and gloves and each one gives Tom a special power. Continue Reading »

Posted in Adam Blade, Adventure, Children's Books, Dan Zanes, Fables, Fantasy, Fears, Magic, Short Books, Supernatural, They Might Be Giants, Threats | Leave a Comment »

Paul Legault–The Emily Dickinson Reader (2012)

September 29, 2012 by Paul Debraski

SOUNDTRACK: JOHN DOE AND EXENE CERVENKA at KEXP December 31, 2010 (2010).

X toured the Los Angeles album back in 2010–the 30th anniversary of the album.  John Doe and Exene Cervenka came to KEXP to do an acoustic set and to talk…a lot.  The DJ tells them of when he saw them at age 16.  He had his camera and wanted to be a rock photographer.  He was getting pushed around in the pit and Exene pulled him onstage (he got great photos which I’d love to see).  Surprisingly, Exene does not seem as moved as one might expect by that story.

This is a simple, acoustic set–John with his guitar and he and Exene singing.  They play a few songs from across their career: “Because I Do,” “In This House That I Call Home” (a personal favorite), “True Love” (another favorite) and “See How We Are.”  John still sounds great, although Exene’s voice sounds a little worn on “Because I Do” and is actually hard to listen to on “True Love.”

There’s some really long interviews–talking about drugs and The Germs and the heyday and how Exene can’t wait for 2011 to start.

[READ: August 27, 2012] The Emily Dickinson Reader

This book is “an English-to-English translation of Emily Dickinson’s Complete Poems.”  What?  Well, basically Paul Legualt has taken all of the “poetry” out of Dickinson’s poems and has left us with what the poems might mean to contemporary readers.  But he also reduced them to basically one line summaries as well–or as McSweeney’s says: “ingenious and madcap one-line renderings.”

So you get “translations” like: #314

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –

And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –

I’ve heard it in the chillest land –
And on the strangest Sea –
Yet – never – in Extremity, It asked a crumb – of me.

Which Legault translates as: “Hope is kind of like birds. In that I don’t have any.” Continue Reading »

Posted in Death, Emily Dickinson, Funny (ha ha), John Doe, KEXP 90.3 FM--Seattle, WA, McSweeney's, Paul Legault, Poetry, Poets, Sex, Short Books, Translation, X | Leave a Comment »

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