At ScanFest we also heard the American Nyckelharpa Association play a few tunes. Like most of the world, I had never heard of a Nyckelharpa , but since I love unusual instruments, I couldn’t wait to find out more about it. From the ANA website:
The modern chromatic nyckelharpa has 16 strings: 3 melody strings, one drone string, and 12 sympathetic vibration (or resonance) strings. It has about 37 wooden keys arranged to slide under the strings. Each key has a tangent that reaches up and stops (frets) a string to make a particular note. The player uses a short bow with the right hand, and pushes on the keys with the left. It has a 3 octave range (from the same low “G” as a fiddle’s 4th string) and sounds something like a fiddle, only with lots more resonance.
It was really neat to watch half a dozen or so people playing this odd instrument with all those strings. They held it like a guitar and the bow is really short. And, indeed, they were playing the keys instead of the fretboard. How cool! I didn’t really get to experience the sympathetic strings in the auditorium (I honestly can’t even imagine how that works), but it sounded wonderfully folksy.
Check it out!
[READ: June 6, 2011] Squish:
This is a weird experience for me–I’ve now read the new Squish and the new Babymouse pretty much right as they came out. Wow!
The Power of the Parasite continues the interesting juxtaposition of what Squish is reading (a Super Amoeba comic) and what’s happening in his life. In an interesting graphic choice, the comic book is rendered in black and white while the scenes of Squish are lovingly rendered in the creepy green that they use.
In this story, it’s summer vacation and time for camp. Interestingly, Squish’s two best friends Peggy and Pod go to ballet camp while Squish opts for swim camp (not that there’s anything wrong with ballet camp). This means that we don’t see much of Squish’s cohorts.
When he gets to camp, he is pretty unimpressed (and he’s afraid of water) so he decides that he will avoid the SUPER AWESOME FUN that the counsellor promises. Instead, he reads his Super Amoeba comic. But then a new character Basil,a hydra, comes along and bonds with him (not literally, although he is capable of growing a new limb (or tentacle or whatever) when one breaks off. Basil also has the ability to shock others. Yes literally. (scientific fact: A hydra’s tentacles can paralyze you!). And when he is bored, he uses this to make more fun. Continue Reading »
On September 2, we went to ScanFest, a festival of all things Scandinavian. We had a wonderful time (despite the downpour). The food was great, the stalls were selling cool wares and the entertainment was stellar (I loved the wife carrying contest–win your wife’s weight in beer!).
There were also musicians. We were only able to see a couple, but one was Norsewind, a folk band from Berks County, PA, who play traditional Scndinavian music (and Irish pub songs). I don’t know any of the songs they played that day, but I happened upon their reverbnation site, where you can hear 11 tracks. And I chose this title because I have no idea what it means.
Live, the band was loud and really dynamic. I especially enjoyed what I think was the intro to a song–three members on stage pounding the hell out of traditional drums–it was very cool. These studio recordings are a little anemic–at least compared to their live show. But they do display a nice range of sounds and styles and I enjoyed them very much.
[READ: August 2012] Beast Quest 1-6
When we finished Droon we wanted to move on to a new series. Beast Quest was heavily advertised in the back of the Droon books, so we thought we’d give it a try. Adam Blade (really?) has created a vast world in Avantia. As of this writing, there are 72 books in the series (not including several special edition). Yes, that is eighty-three books in total.
Sadly I just learned that Scholastic, the American publishing company of Beast Quest has only released 24 books (plus 2 special editions) in the United States. A brief rant here. I think Scholastic books is really wonderful. They have released some amazing books over the years. I can’t even count the number of awesome series that Scholastic has picked up. HOWEVER, Scholastic has a horrible track record of starting to release series and then ceasing in the middle. The biggest crime has been Ulysses Moore, which they have ceased after 4 books (even though the series is up to Book 10 or 11 in their native Italy AND they are releasing the author’s newer series now. Now we have this. As you’ll see in the post, I’m the first to admit that the first six books in the series aren’t very good. But now that we’re up to 20, the books and plots have gotten so much better. And just as we’re getting really into it, the plug has been pulled? I understand the economics of publishing and that if something isn’t selling you give up on it. But seriously, you’re heavily advertising a series that you’re not going to finish? How expensive can it be to produce these series of kids books? It’s so disappointing.
SOUNDTRACK: CIRCLE TAKES THE SQUARE Live at Black Cat Washington DC, August 31, 2011 (2011).
I had never heard of Circle Takes the Square before seeing the link to this show on NPR (Thank you, Viking!). I like the band name (Hollywood Squares reference), and couldn’t imagine what they sounded like.
Song titles like “In the Nervous Light of Sunday” and “We’re Sustained by the Corpse of a Fallen Constellation” and even “Non-Objective Portrait of Karma” lead one in many possible directions. But it turns out that the band is sort of pigeonholed as screamo, a post-hardcore style that allows mostly for screamed vocals. And yet these guys also incorporate intricate playing, odd time signatures and some beautiful instrumental passages.
Even though the band plays fast, they don’t play only short songs. The shortest songs run about three minutes but they have two songs that are over 6 minutes, with several different sections.
I listened to this show a few times and I confess I never really got into it. I liked some of it but I was never fully able to grasp what was going on. It could have been the recording quality. Usually NPR shows are crystal clear, but this one was a bit muddy–which may have been intentional from the band as they are pretty raw sounding. I did like the split male/female vocals which added a cool depth to the songs. But mostly I was impressed by the kind and almost sweet attitude of the lead singer. He was polite and thankful to the audience (thanking them for braving the weather–the show was during Hurricane Irene–thanking them for coming from both far and near and talking about how excited he was about Pg. 99, the headliners. It’s funny to hear polite thankfulness and then screaming lyrics like: “Embrace the sweet sound of self-destruction.”
I’d like to hear a studio release before passing final judgment, because there was a lot to like here.
[READ: August 29, 2012] Habibi
I saw this book in a review by Zadie Smith in Harper’s a while back. I didn’t realize at the time that the author was the same person who did the wonderful Blankets.
This book is an amazing piece of art. And the story is very good too.
So this massive book (almost 700 pages) is the story of a woman born into a fictional Middle Eastern country called where the Qur’an is studied and women are more or less chattel. As the story opens Dodola is sold by her father to a wealthy man who becomes her husband. The scene of her deflowering, while not graphic at all, is very disturbing nonetheless. She is afraid of this man and cowers in the fear until they gradually start to see each other as human beings. And although their age difference is substantial (and yes, gross), she learns to appreciate him.
Until he his killed by the king’s men and Dodola is taken away to the king’s palace to be sold as a slave–her hair is tied to another girl’s hair so they cannot escape.
Through a series of events, she does escape, and when she is hiding out she manages to save the life of a black baby named Cham. She calls him Zam after the Well of Zamzam (Arabic: زمزم) in Mecca, the holiest place in Islam. And while she is only 12, she takes care of this 3-year-old boy and raises him as her own child. Continue Reading »
For this in-studio performance, two members of Phoenix showed up to play a stripped down acoustic performance.
They play four songs (and all of the songs are quite short, as well). Three songs from Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix (“Listzomania” “1901” and “Armistice”) and a cover of Air’s “Playground Love.” Given how different Phoenix and Air sound (even if they are both French), it’ an impressive change of style for the set.
This stripped down version really shows what a great voice the singer has. And these songs, while not quite as catchy as the originals, still sound fantastic. There’s also a brief chat with the DJ about their then recent appearance on Saturday Night Live.
If you like Phoenix, this is a great show to download.
[READ: September 1, 2012] An Iliad
Since I really enjoyed the two Baricco stories that I’ve read so far, I decided to try something else from him. An Iliad is a fascinating book from conception to execution.
Baricco wanted to read Homer’s Iliad aloud on the radio. But when he investigated the project further he found that a) it was way too long and b) it wasn’t really well suited to contemporary audiences. So (and he gives details about exactly how he modified it), he decided to remove sections of the original, restructure it and try to give it a more contemporary feel.
But he also tried to keep as much of the original as he could. So, rather than rewriting the book, he worked with a prose translation (poetry being way too convoluted for his project) and used his translation of that translation (which for us gets further translated into English, yipes, although the translation is again a very good job by Ann Goldstein) to create his Iliad. One of the major excisions he did for the book was to remove all of the sections with the gods. They are alluded to, but he removed the gods (and all supernatural aspects) from the book reasoning that the mortals reference what the gods say and do so anyway, so he simply took away the duplication. Plus, the gods aren’t really relevant to contemporary listeners. Continue Reading »
SOUNDTRACK: FUJIYA & MIYAGI-Live at Gibson Showroom, New York (2008).
This set is available for Download from KEXP. I don’t know Fujiya & Miyagi all that well, but I really enjoy everything I’ve heard from them. They place a keyboard-heavy, almost-dance music, but they use a lot of guitars to propel their songs further.
The most noteworthy thing about the band is the vocals–they are whispered (and often nonsensical–“Vanilla, strawberry, knickerbocker glory”) but the whisper seems to make the song move faster somehow–adding an almost sinister edge to the tracks (although sometimes it can feel sensual as well–it’s a neat trick).
This show has five songs from the album Lightbulbs–and it’s their first tour with a live drummer, which adds a nice complexity to their set. One of these days I’m going to have to check out their studio releases.
[READ: September 8, 2012] “My Journey to the Outer Limits of Funk”
Here’s another author I admire writing a short piece in Rolling Stone. This one, unlike Lethem’s recent contribution, is about something he himself has done. This article is a kind of music-based background explanation of his new book, Telegraph Avenue.
The premise of one of the plotlines is that two guys work in a record store, Brokeland Records, and are aficionados of jazz. But he felt that was kind of dull, so Chabon delves into how he was able to get his characters to feel more interesting. He didn’t wan them to just be “into jazz”–blah–he needed to add even more details so that they were more than just jazzies. So he talks a bit about what he learned from Wax Poetics a magazine that refracted black popular culture through hip hop. Continue Reading »
SOUNDTRACK: OF MONSTERS AND MEN-Live from Iceland Airwaves (2011).
This brief set was recorded at KEX hostel in Reykjavik, Iceland (how on earth KEXP in Seattle was there I don’t know). This set was performed before the release of their debut EP, although “Dirty Paws” which they play was not on that EP. “Little Talks” their (reasonably) huge hit them was on the EP and is on their full length album–it’s a great duet (and reminds me a bit of Stars).
There’s an amusing fail in the horn solo on “Lake House,” which is kind of surprising, but not terribly tragic or anything. The band sounds great, especially in front of a home country crowd (I love hearing them say “Takk” at the end of the songs). There’s five songs in all, and by the final one, they feel sound like they’re really enjoying themselves.
[READ: September 1, 2012] Wampeters, Foma & Granfaloons
This collection contains essays reviews and speeches. So it’s non-fiction. Except that, ever the contrarian, Vonnegut includes one fiction piece–a short play. The title of this book comes from three words from his novel Cat’s Cradle: “a wampeter is an object around which the lives of many otherwise unrelated people may revolve. The Holy Grail would be a case in point. Foma are harmless untruths, intended to comfort simple souls. An example: ‘Prosperity is just around the corner.’ A granfallooon is a proud and meaningless association of human beings.”
That all comes from the preface. The preface also says that there are people who have collected everything he has ever written (even stuff he has forgotten about) but he will not let most of that see the light of day. Here he has whittled down the least embarrassing stuff for publication. He also explains that at some point (supported by reading this) he decided to stop giving speeches; to stop “talking” and to concentrate on writing. So he did.
The final straw for this was a comment from the President of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Vonnegut had prepared a speech. The president reread it and hated it, but the president told Vonnegut that nobody would actually listen to the words: “People are seldom interested in the actual content of a speech. They simply want to learn from your tone and gestures and expressions whether or not you are an honest man.”
While Vonnegut’s essays are powerful and effective, it’s the Preface that really tells it straightg.”Not nearly as many Biafrans were butchered by the Nigerians at the end of the war as I had thought would be. At a minimum those damaged children at the exact middle of the universe will be more honorable than Richard M Nixon. [Nixon] is the first president to hate the American people and all they stand for.”
I had hoped to read a lot of commentary and observations about JR this week as a nice finalization to the summer reading. But a couple of things happened. First, we went on vacation, so JR was the furthest thing from my mind. Second, I had a really hard time finding commentary.
I somehow missed the whole Goodreads discussion—which I read just the other day and enjoyed. And I also had a really hard time with the LARB tumblr account. I don’t know if this speaks to tech non-savvy, but man, that’s a hard thing to search. It took several tries before I noticed the teeny search window at the bottom, and when I finally got it to search what I wanted I found the results less than spectacular. So I was able to piece together most of Lee’s comments, which I rather liked, but I wish I had been able to read them as we went along (Googling #OccupGaddis only brought that initial tumblr page, which was very frustrating). Continue Reading »
SOUNDTRACK: MATES OF STATE-“I am a Scientist” (2012).
This is a cover of Guided by Voices’ “I am a Scientist.” It appears on an all female 18-song charity compilation called Science Fair which is themed around and benefiting science and engineering education for girls.
The original is a wonderful, catchy low-tunes and lo fi sounding guitar track (that builds over the course of 2 minutes). The Mates of State version is brighter and louder. It also builds but they add kids singing along with them (it is a benefit album for kids after all).
It’s a wonderful introduction to this worthy CD. You can hear (and watch) it here.
[READ: December 4, 2011] Babymouse for President
So this is the first new Babymouse book that I’ve read that was actually new when it came out! And I’m reading it just in time for the election season. Amazingly, this book with its cartoon politics is far less cartoony than the real politics this election season–who’da thunk it.
Babymouse has a dream of being president–not because of what she could accomplish but because of the POWER! (Later, she is disturbed to realize that Felicia Furrypaws has the same feeling).
This story has fewer pink fantasy sequences than normal. Well, maybe that’s not true, there are plenty, but they are pretty short and self contained–sequences about George Washington playing dodgeball (ha) and Babymouse on Mount Rushmore. And there’s a pretty funny Declaration of Independence joke. Continue Reading »
SOUNDTRACK: DAN DEACON-“Call Me Maybe Acapella 147 Times Exponentially Layered” (2012).
Dan Deacon (whose twitter handle is “ebaynetflix” ha!), created a cover of Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe,” for a digital album with 43 artists covering the pop delicacy. I listened to a few samples from the album and they span the gamut from kind of serious to kind of crazy to mocking to Deacon.
Stereogum describes Deacon’s version this way: “Dan Deacon piles “Call Me Maybe” on itself over and over again, creating the most dissonant, harrowing take on Carli Rae Jepsen’s [sic] hit known to man.”
He begins with a sample from the verse, then he adds some lines from the chorus (while the verse is playing). You can hear “here’s my number, so call me maybe” a few times, but the background is growing in intensity and menace. By 90 seconds in, you can still hear her a little bit, but she is almost entirely consumed by noise. Then around 2 minutes, things seems to calm down a bit (she’s still plugging away at the chorus). By 4 minutes the whole thing has seemingly collapsed in on itself. And the whole time, there seems to be a steady beat that you can dance to. This track may indeed produce insanity.
You can listen to Deacon’s monstrosity below, or go to the original site.
I don’t quite understand how Cohen pulled this off, but in the July issue of Harper‘s right after his story, “The College Borough,” which I mentioned yesterday, he also had three book reviews. How does one get two bylines in Harper’s? Has that ever happened before?
Because I liked the story so much, I decided I would read these reviews too. Cohen sets up the reviews with the idea of political gestation periods (12 months for donkeys, 22 months for elephants) and how novelists work even slower when it comes to writing about events. Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead came out 32 months after V-J Day, John Steinbeck wrote about the depression from 1937-1945. So now in 2012 we see the “spawn of Bush’s two terms of excruciating contractions.” Books that fictionalize the realities of post-9/11 life: “that the canniest distraction from class war is war-war.” Continue Reading »
SOUNDTRACK: DAN DEACON-“Guilford Avenue Bridge” (2012).
I only know Dan Deacon from his “cover” of “Call me Maybe” (in which he layered the song on top of itself 147 times). Deacon has a new proper album out and while it’s not quite as outlandish as the “Call Me Maybe” cover, it’s still pretty out there.
This is the opening track–a noisy barrage of sound set to a really catchy drum beat and bassline. But you almost have to listen hard for that beat because it is just a wall of noise that goes on for 90 seconds until the song completely stops and is replaced by a manipulated banjo solo (I think). This slowly morphs into pianos and then waves of delicate keyboards (all of which I’m sure is some kind of manipulated sound). With about 30 seconds left the noise comes back and the songs ends much like it started. Although it ends with a very happy chord.
This is definitely not for most, but the experimental nature is quite fun, and it’s definitely not something you’re going to hear on the radio very often.
[READ: August 22, 2012] “The College Borough”
I hadn’t read any Joshua Cohen before this story (he wrote the 800+ page buzz book Witz, but is NOT the author of a book called Leverage which Sarah reacted very strongly to–that would be Joshua C. Cohen, this one is Joshua A Cohen). Also, I put it off because it was long.
Before I summarize, I want to state that this story is flipped on its own head by the final line. The final few words completely changed how I felt about this story. And I have to wonder what the risk is for a writer to do something like this. For the entire story we don’t know why the narrator acts the way he does (in the present). The flashback that the story provided is very thorough and detailed but it does not answer our pressing question. Even when we return to the present, and the past comes to meet them, it still doesn’t explain it. It is literally the last few words that justify everything. That’s audacious.
I’ll say more about this at the end.
It also begins with an audacious statement: “I helped build the Flatiron Building though I’ve never been to New York.” Indeed, it seems that the narrator never wanted to go to New York. But ow that his daughter, a junior in high school, wants to go to college in Manhattan (they hope she’ll stay in-state), he agrees for them all to go to New York City.
The narrator met his wife, Dem, in college (at in-state college). They were both in the writing program and they’d had some classes together before they enrolled in Professor Greener’s seminar.
The beginning of the story is mostly the narrator’s complaints about New York. I especially enjoyed this line: “I know no city can contain all the amenities you’d find at a place like our alma mater.” Back home they have more pools, more StairMasters and their very own Flatiron Building (dubbed the Fauxiron).
Then the story pulls back so we can figure out what the hell this guy is talking about. Continue Reading »
SOUNDTRACK: Nyckelharpa (2012). 
At ScanFest we also heard the American Nyckelharpa Association play a few tunes. Like most of the world, I had never heard of a Nyckelharpa , but since I love unusual instruments, I couldn’t wait to find out more about it. From the ANA website:
I Just Read About That... 