Here’s something my coffee table lacks this Christmas: A new book of photography by San Francisco’s Peter Ellenby called Every Day is Saturday, documenting the meteorical rise and rocking shows of many artists within the “indie rock scene.” Considering it is accompanied by a mix CD (with folks like Grandaddy, Death Cab for Cutie, American Music Club, Rogue Wave, The Wedding Present, and many of the other bands featured in the book) it’s available for a mere pittance at $17.
I mentioned Ellenby a few months ago because of his fine photographic coverage of the Rogue Wave benefit concert in SF that you may remember me talking up, and I like what I’ve seen of his work — his eye for a good shot. I love rock photography, and how could I personally not adore a rock photographer who says that “his favorite places in the world are the top of Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh and Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco“?
Some of the folks he’s photographed that appear in this book are: Beastie Boys, Bob Mould, Bright Eyes, The Donnas, Earlimart, The Fastbacks, The Flaming Lips, The Foo Fighters, Ivy, John Lee Hooker, John Vanderslice (bottom), Les Claypool, Matt Nathanson, Mike Watt (left), Modest Mouse, Nada Surf, Neko Case, Red House Painters, Sebadoh and more . . .
Also contributing to the book were John Doe (from the band X) and Tim Scanlin (remember Addicted To Noise?), and a fine SF writer named Christopher Slater. When I first read it I thought it said Christian Slater and I was gonna get excited and go all Pump Up The Volume on you. But it’s actually not him. Worthy nonetheless.
I laughed and laughed at this recent piece from What Would Jesus Blog, which walks you through the process of how one would go about making a mix tape for pop culture essayist/music lover Chuck Klosterman, should you ever find yourself needing to do so.
Since I could literally, literally sit for hours and talk about perfect song placement, the tour de force closing track and that achingly perfect little ballad to slide in the middle of any given mix, I loved this “conversation.” I’ve even used some of these little suggestions he has without even knowing that it was divinely approved (like a Back To The Future soundclip for the opening track on a driving mix. Come on! It’s just too perfect).
For example, under the section about choosing Track 4 (“Hit Chuck Klosterman with a not too cheesy novelty song”) –
“Your best bet here would be to foreign language cover of a song that he already knows. For example, ”We’re Not Going To Take It’ is not a smart move, but ‘Nosotros No Lo Tomaremos’ would be genius.”
I just kind of cackled out loud again cutting and pasting that.
Incidentally, it gets even better in the comments when LargeHearted Boy linked to the actual mix tapes that Chuck Klosterman made for him and his readers:
It’s a soundtrack to your reading-time, and I love it. Every author worth his salt should do this. It would make me read a lot more than I already do, that’s for sure and certain.
I love it when Pearl Jam reads my mind. Just yesterday it occured to me that there was a book of live Pearl Jam photographs (5×1, by Seattle photographer and long-time friend of the band Lance Mercer) that was supposed to come out this past Spring, but that I never heard a peep about it following the initial announcement. I went trolling the web to no avail.
Then just today I was alerted that the book is now (finally) available. It’s 180 pages of concert and tour photos, like the Place/Date book (1998) which I own and love to leaf through. The price is a bit steep ($40!) but it’s got commentary from Pete Townshend, Bruce Springsteen, Michael Stipe, Gloria Steinem, Howard Zinn, Cameron Crowe, Kelly Slater and more, so I will more likely than not end up coughing up the dough to buy it.
I’m just a girl who can’t say no when it comes to Pearl Jam.
PearlJamOnline.it is a supercool Italian fansite with great downloads. Check out the rar/zip file of the best of the European 2006 tour. It’ll be on this page with the link that says “File zippato.” I love Italian.
And I’ve got two cool posts coming later today once EZArchive stops balking at doing its uploading duty. Same old, same old, I know. See you later.
This week’s Contrast Podcast is such a lovely topic, combining two of my favorite things in this life: music and books. The topic for the podcast this time around was to pick a favorite book and a song to soundtrack that book. I know, cool, right?
Once you start thinking about this topic, you realize that there are endless options if you love to read as much as I do (you know, growing up, if you ever read The Babysitters’ Club? I was Mary Ann – total bookworm. Yet somehow also effortlessly cool — or so my mom told me as she trimmed my hair into a modified feathered mullet).
Anyways, the book & song I finally ended up with is Nick Hornby’s Songbook (also called 31 Songs in the UK edition), which you eagle-eyes will recognize from the quote over there —> on stage right. The song is The Beach Boys’ “Add Some Music To Your Day” from their Sunflower album — an absolutely wonderful gem of a song celebrating all the music in the world and how once you start listening, you hear it everywhere.
There’s no way that I could call Songbook my favorite book, but it is one that I greatly enjoy and it lent itself so well to the song choice. If I were to sit myself down by my tall shelves there in the living room and go through all my books, I would surely find about 20 more favorites and with enough thought would greatly enjoy soundtracking them as well.
LISTEN: The easiest way to listen to it is to head over to Tim’s Contrast Podcast page and click the little play button to stream it in a seamless burst of loveliness.
And if you are in a commenting mood today, I’d love to talk more about what songs complement your favorite book. Comment link at the very bottom of this post.
Thanks to Eric over at Marathonpacks for this link to Dave Eggers‘ (author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) reflections on the World Cup over on Slate:
“It was, by most accounts, 1986 when the residents of the United States became aware of the thing called the World Cup. Isolated reports came from foreign correspondents, and we were frightened by these reports, worried about domino effects, and wondered aloud if the trend was something we could stop by placing a certain number of military advisers in Cologne or Marseilles. Then, in 1990, we realized that the World Cup might happen every four years, with or without us.”
Plus, Eggers assigns one fictional character in his essay the name of Fakey McChumpland, which alone is reason enough to read it. This piece comes from The Thinking Fan’s Guide to the World Cup, an anthology edited by Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey and published this month. It also includes a piece from Nick Hornby, so you know it’s good.
I LOVE Dave Eggers; A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius was one of the best books I read last year (and it has gone missing from me, I think I’d best just buy a replacement). I welcome any links that you wish to send me from other Dave Eggers articles on the web that you find funny. The man is comic genius.
By the way, I am still rocking the suburbs on the World Cup bloggers pool, which is surprising even to me. Don’t worry guys, I am sure to lose soon! (but in the meantime, call me Prognosticator of Prognosticators)
One of the most enjoyable books I’ve ever come across is A Girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel. I tore through it, often laughing OUT LOUD in inopportune public places (you know, when you are reading something funny and you kind of guffaw and then catch yourself, stifle the laugh, and look around to see if anyone is watching?).
It’s hard to explain what it is about, because it is really just what the subtitle says: “Growing Up Small In Mooreland, Indiana.” It’s an autobiographical collection of impressions, moments, memories, funny stories, dares, characters, struggles, and ephemera from the childhood of a unique & hilarious girl (nicknamed Zippy) as she goes about her days in the late ’60s/early ’70s in a very small town. Sounds like a totally touchy-feely Babysitters’ Club premise for a book, right? But it is intelligent, well-written (she really captures the voice and the perception of herself at 7 or 8), emphatically NOT-schmaltzy, and funny as all get out. And also shreddingly poignant at times when you least expect it.
I am currently ripping through her follow-up novel, She Got Up Off The Couch: And Other Heroic Acts from Mooreland, Indiana, and laughing just as much. I recommend both very highly – after I read Zippy, I bought like 7 copies and gave them out like manna from Heaven to my friends and family. Here is an excerpt from She Got Up Off The Couch.
I love lists, especially lists about music:
A Short List of Records My Father Threatened to Break Over My Head If I Played Them One More Time
1. “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,” by Paul Simon. You need only to listen to this song once to realize it is the greatest work of genius since “Beep Beep (The Little Nash Rambler)”; by The Playmates. Also it provides a person with the bonus of rewriting the chorus 700 times a day. For instance, a girl might say, “I’m ridin’ my bike, Mike,” or “I’m goin’ to my sister’s, Mister.” She could also string together many sentences, as in, “I’m feelin’ sad, Dad. Maybe you could get me some candy, Randy. Don’t be such a slob, Bob, just listen to me.”
2. “Beep Beep (The Little Nash Rambler),” by The Playmates. A morality tale about a little car, a Cadillac, and a transmission problem. This song brilliantly gains momentum, and is sung faster and faster right up to the hysterical ending. Could be sung in the truck so frantically the father in question would sometimes have to stick his head out the window while praying aloud.
3. “Someone Saved My Life Tonight,” by Elton John. I understand only one line of this song: “And butterflies are free to fly, fly away.” The rest is completely lost on me. I assumed the British did not speak English, which was a puzzle as they were sometimes referred to as the English. Not understanding the lyrics required me to listen to the song hundreds, perhaps thousands of times, filling in with nonsense words, which my sister said made me look oxygen deprived and sad.
4. “Somewhere They Can’t Find Me,” by Simon & Garfunkel. In addition to “50 Ways To Leave your Lover,” this was probably my most obvious theme song. It could have been written for me. The singer has done something terrible and now his only option is to sneak away: “Before they come to get me I’ll be gone, somewhere they can’t find me.” Oh, indeed. How very, very true.
5. “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother” by the Osmonds, featuring Donny Osmond. A lie, as anyone who knew my brother could attest. But if it was sung by Donny Osmond I could try to believe. I wanted to believe. This was a favorite to play not at top volume in my bedroom, but downstairs on the stereo that was shaped, improbably, like a Colonial desk. I liked to sing along with Donny (we had the same voice) while simultaneously pretending to draft a version of the Bill of Rights, using a fake quill pen. (In truth, a turkey feather.) This was a combination of activities my father found interesting, blasphemous, and wrong.
6. “Along Comes Mary,” by The Association. A wordy song. A wordy, psychedelic song, the meaning of which has never been determined by humans. Tailor-made for me. From the beginning, the song’s just one long puzzle. “Every time I think that I’m the one who’s lonely someone calls on me.” Who? (Mary, my sister would explain through clenched teeth. Yes, but Mary who?) What follows is so unusual it doesn’t bear repeating, although I most assuredly could.
7. “I Started A Joke,” by The Bee Gees. Again, a world-class head-scratcher. He started a joke, and it started the whole world crying. I sensed astonishing depth in the Bee Gees’ lyrics, and also were they all boys? Including the one with the Bugs Bunny teeth? Was she truly never funny and that’s why the world wept? I knew people like that. Later in the song one of them, a Bee or a Gee, begins to cry and gets the whole world laughing, so everything turns out fine in the end. (An additional work of genius is “The Lights Went Out In Massachusetts.” Massachusetts: A state? A prison? Dad was silent on the issue.)
************************************************* Buy A Girl Named Zippy here and She Got Up Off The Couch here, or visit your local library. (Ooh! I feel so Reading Rainbow! LeVar Burton would be proud – These are books you might enjoy, but you don’t have to take MY word for it!).
I recently finished the roller-coaster ride that is James Frey’s (mostly) autobiographical novel A Million Little Pieces. Surely many of you have seen the controversy over this book which has left Oprah “very disappointed” in author James Frey. She feels taken advantage of by the fact that he seems to have fictionalized several incidents in the book. It is unfortunate that Frey lied (his book would have been just as good with strictly the truth), and I am not condoning lying (am I?), but let’s hear Heather’s take on it.
This is an astoundingly riveting book which I picked up in an airport bookstore in spite of the Oprah’s Book Club sticker on the front. Raw and affecting, Frey’s memoir reveals the “self-inflicted apocalypse” that is hard-core drug addiction. It offers unflinching insight into the loathing and despair that comes with it, and the very long, very hard road back from it.
The book opens with Frey waking up on an airplane at age 23 after ten-plus years of intense, regular, hard drug use. “I wake to the drone of an airplane engine and the feeling of something dripping down my chin. I lift my hand to feel my face. My front four teeth are gone, I have a hole in my cheek, my nose is broken and my eyes are swollen nearly shut.” Frey has no idea where he is or how he got there. When he lands in Chicago, he is met by his parents who take him to a rehab facility. It’s either that or he will end up dying from the copious drug use which has almost exhausted his system; mind-staggering amounts of alcohol (“every day, when I wake up, as much as I can”), cocaine (“every day, as much as I can, lately crack, but in every form that exists”), pills, acid, mushrooms, meth, PCP, glue. When he takes these things, it temporarily quiets what he calls “The Fury,” the murderous, screaming fury inside of him.
As Frey works through all the crap in his life and tries to salvage his relationships, who he is, and come to terms with what he has done, his writing reverberates and aches with pain and honest intensity, but I appreciate that he doesn’t slide into maudlin prose. It is terse. It is to the point. He is dealing with The Question posed to him on the rehab self-assessment quiz:
“My sins are unpardonable. True or false? I stare at the question. My sins are unpardonable. I stare at the question. My sins are unpardonable. I leave it blank.”
I thought that the merits of this book outweigh the fact that there are fictionalized incidents. To me, it’s like that whole period in his life was so out of control, so destructive, blurred, surreal, so….falling apart, that the point remains even if the details were not exactly as they occured. The essence of the book, for me, remains the same in light of the current revelations. It’s not as if I went and sobbed in a hot shower, curled in a ball, when I heard that not *every* incident in the book happened exactly like he said. It is a still a recommended read on my shelf.
Feb 2 Update: James Frey writes an addendum to his book in which he apologizes and acknowledges. He says, “This memoir is a combination of facts about my life and certain embellishments. It is a subjective truth, altered by the mind of a recovering drug addict and alcoholic. Ultimately, it’s a story, and one that I could not have written without living the life I have lived.”To read the rest, see the Random House website. The statement does take responsibility, but it does leave me wondering what, exactly, is “subjective truth”? That’s kind of a hedging-your-bet statement, no?
Very late last night I finished reading No Country For Old Men, the newest novel by one of my favorite authors Cormac McCarthy, and I highly recommend it. Like all of his novels, this is stark and elegaic writing at its best. McCarthy writes about the desolate borderlands of southern Texas with a restraint and a beauty that I would have never imagined I would be drawn to, but I am.
As an author, McCarthy is stripped down to the essentials, using limited punctuation and only necessary words as he crafts his terse and heart-wrenching prose. Listen to this excerpt:
“He stood there looking out across the desert. So quiet. Low hum of the wind in the wires. High bloodweeds along the road. Wiregrass and sacahuista. Beyond in the stone arroyos the tracks of dragons. The raw rock mountains shadowed in the late sun and to the east the shimmering abscissa of the desert plains under a sky where raincurtains hung dark as soot all along the quadrant. That god lives in silence who has scoured the following land with salt and ash. He walked back to the cruiser and got in and pulled away.”
The action revolves around a drug war (with its ensuing stolen money, panicked fleeing and motel shootouts), and its effects on the lives of several people involved in the small border towns the war traverses. This book is thematically kind of like Traffic (the movie) minus the soundtrack.
Reading McCarthy’s books is like slipping away into a world that you can viscerally feel as you delve into the dusty roads of his characters and plotlines. This one is pretty bloody, actually, full of evil men and evil deeds, but the human development and dialogue for me is more compelling and drew me in. It is a fascinating glimpse into a part of our land (the country between Texas and Mexico) that I wouldn’t otherwise think twice about – maybe just drive through on a roadtrip, looking for the next rest-stop. As a character in the book reflects, “It just seemed to me that this country has got a strange kind of history and a damned bloody one too.”
McCarthy writes poetry in the form of novels. I first had to read All The Pretty Horses in Mr. Hanford’s sophomore English class in high school, and it has stuck with me and grown on me as one of my favorites. If you’ve never read any of his works, take some time to sit down and lose yourself in one of his novels. They transport you to the rhythms and cadences of another lifestyle, another lifetime, soaked in barren beauty.
Name: Heather Browne Location: Colorado, originally by way of California Giving context to the torrent since 2005.
"I love the relationship that anyone has with music: because there's something in us that is beyond the reach of words, something that eludes and defies our best attempts to spit it out. It's the best part of us, probably, the richest and strangest part..."
—Nick Hornby, Songbook
"Music has always been a matter of energy to me, a question of Fuel. Sentimental people call it Inspiration, but what they really mean is Fuel." —Hunter S. Thompson
Mp3s are for sampling purposes, kinda like when they give you the cheese cube at Costco, knowing that you'll often go home with having bought the whole 7 lb. spiced Brie log. They are left up for a limited time. If you LIKE the music, go and support these artists, buy their schwag, go to their concerts, purchase their CDs/records and tell all your friends. Rock on.
Here’s something my coffee table lacks this Christmas: A new book of photography by San Francisco’s Peter Ellenby called Every Day is Saturday, documenting the meteorical rise and rocking shows of many artists within the “indie rock scene.” Considering it is accompanied by a mix CD (with folks like Grandaddy, Death Cab for Cutie, American Music Club, Rogue Wave, The Wedding Present, and many of the other bands featured in the book) it’s available for a mere pittance at $17.
Some of the folks he’s photographed that appear in this book are: Beastie Boys, Bob Mould, Bright Eyes, The Donnas, Earlimart, The Fastbacks, The Flaming Lips, The Foo Fighters, Ivy, John Lee Hooker, John Vanderslice (bottom), Les Claypool, Matt Nathanson, Mike Watt (left), Modest Mouse, Nada Surf, Neko Case, Red House Painters, Sebadoh and more . . .
This week’s 
Name: Heather Browne
