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Wednesday, March 26th, 2008
I bought a record at Starbucks! I feel so dirty! But listen, it's a really good record: Bob Dylan, Music That Matters to Me -- a mix of tracks Bob has put together as representative of what he's listening to these days. (In the excellent liner notes, he says, "Some people have favorite songs, but I have songs of the minute -- songs that I'm listening to right now. And if you ask me about one of those songs a year from now, I might not even remember who did it, but at the moment it's everything to me.... I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.") The track list is just great. I think I've only ever heard 5 or fewer of the 16 tracks previously -- and many of the performers I had never heard of before today -- there is blues, country, reggae, Hawai'ian, jazz and more. And what really makes the record -- what makes me happy to have it and want to listen to it as a record, rather than as a collection of songs, is Dylan's commentary. The liner notes are a small booklet, with one long paragraph for each song, and they are frankly much better writing than I have oherwise seen from Dylan's pen. The way they are written gives you a sense you're listening to him speak, and he's in a really good, congenial mood, grinning and saying "Now listen to this one, it's gonna blow your mind!" Listening to the first song, "Do Unto Others", is funny because the opening riff is exactly the same as "Back in the USSR" -- Dylan says he thinks John Lennon probably heard the recording at a party sometime and forgot about it -- Ellen asked Sylvia if she knew what the lyric "they say, do unto others/ what you would have them do unto you" means; Sylvia nodded and said, in a bored-little-girl tone, "Yeah, what goes around comes around...." Full track listing below the fold, mainly because I could not find it online anywhere.
- Pee Wee Crayton, "Do Unto Others"
- Clancy Eccles, "Don't Brag, Don't Boast"
- Stanley Bros., "The Fields Have Turned Brown"
- Gus Viseur, "Flambée Montalbanaise"
- Red Prysock, "Hand Clappin'"
- Sol Ho'opi'i, "I Like You"
- Ray Price, "I'll Be There (If You Ever Want Me)"
- Stuff Smith, "I'se A Muggin' (Part 2)"
- Charley Jordan, "Keep It Clean"
- Junior Welles, "Little By Little (I'm Losing You)"
- Patty and the Emblems, "Mixed-Up, Shook-up Girl"
- Gétatchèw Kassa, "Tezeta (Fast)"
- Flaco Jiménez, "Victimas del Huracán Beulah"
- Wanda Jackson, "I Gotta Know"
- Billy Holiday, "I Hear Music"
- Junior Parker, "Pretty Baby"
↻...done
posted evening of March 26th, 2008: Respond
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I discovered, during my violin lesson today, that I am not moving my wrist at all when I pull and push the bow. This seems like something that will be pretty easy to fix now that I know about it, and should have a very beneficial effect on my sound.
posted evening of March 26th, 2008: Respond
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This story just gets me down. My first reaction (well after the inevitable "WTF are these people thinking?!!!1!") is, aw crap, does this mean I need to support Hillary now because Obama getting the nomination means McCain wins the election? or words to that effect. And obviously (a) my support is in no way crucial to a presidential candidate, indeed if history is any guide it's a liability; (b) extrapolating from a headline to a visualised course of the entire rest of the campaign is silly, and I'm no political scientist to begin with. But the whole narrative seems to have shifted from Democrats triumphant and united, to a slim, shaky majority of Democrats which can be broken apart by a minor news story pumped up by the Republican machine. (Of course I blame Hillary.) Unhappy about this development.
posted afternoon of March 26th, 2008: 2 responses
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Tuesday, March 25th, 2008
I like to sing and to play violin; what I am aiming for is a style of playing where I can sing, play rhythm in between the lines of the verse, and play melody on breaks and between verses. I only have two songs where I can really do this, viz. "The Louisville Burglar" and "John Hardy was a Desperate Man"; I have mapped out how to do it for "The Ballad of Hollis Brown" and "Stagger Lee", and I think those two will come fairly quickly with practice; in Blues, I am close to knowing how to do it for "Sweet to Mama" and "Rising Sun Shine On". With this and a couple more songs, I would have a set -- but I need to find a partner, preferably either a guitarist or a banjo player. Jerry is not satisfied with the progress we've been making together and wants to play on his own. Hopefully I will be able to find somebody at one of the folk music jams around here.
posted evening of March 25th, 2008: Respond
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Listening this evening to MS John Hurt playing "Stagger Lee", and it hit me that his guitar part would translate really well to violin. Going to try it out when I go downstairs later on.
 ...Yep -- really fun.
posted evening of March 25th, 2008: Respond
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Today I recommended Never Let Me Go to Heebie-Geebie, who is leading (under duress?) a small reading workshop at her college. I think it would be a great book for the workshop; I thought I might also take a look at what some reviewers have said about it. Two I found very insightful: Louis Menand in The New Yorker -- Menand is not enthusiastic, exactly, but he seems to like Ishiguro and to get what he is writing about, and makes me really interested in reading the rest of Ishiguro's novels; and M. John Harrison writing in The Guardian, whose final paragraphs just made me tear up: By the final, grotesque revelation of what really lies ahead for Kathy and Tommy and Ruth, readers may find themselves full of an energy they don't understand and aren't quite sure how to deploy. Never Let Me Go makes you want to have sex, take drugs, run a marathon, dance - anything to convince yourself that you're more alive, more determined, more conscious, more dangerous than any of these characters.
This extraordinary and, in the end, rather frighteningly clever novel isn't about cloning, or being a clone, at all. It's about why we don't explode, why we don't just wake up one day and go sobbing and crying down the street, kicking everything to pieces out of the raw, infuriating, completely personal sense of our lives never having been what they could have been. (James Browning's review in The Village Voice, which I think is the closest of the three to a "rave", seems pretty incoherent to me and gets some details of the story wrong.)
posted evening of March 25th, 2008: Respond
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Monday, March 24th, 2008
Wow. I had no idea there was such a thing. We are living in marvelous times!
posted afternoon of March 24th, 2008: Respond
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So the plumber (from the heating company) came and let us know, the pressure relief valve is leaking because the water main pressure is too high -- 120psi*, when the house wants it to be between 80 - 100psi. We called Donald (at the water company) and he was like "Oh, well of course you need to have a pressure regulation valve on your main." Turns out we don't have any such thing. So, another plumber (from the plumbing company) is coming (hopefully this afternoon), to install the valve. In the meantime, this guy adjusted the relief valve so that it will hold 120psi without leaking.
 (Later on:) The second plumber came, installed the valve, everything's fine.
*psi is a lovely acronym in that it could also be spelled ψ.
posted afternoon of March 24th, 2008: Respond
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Hm. Well, I turned the main water supply off last night. Turned it on this morning, and the pressure relief valve is not leaking. I'm not sure what to make of that -- it could mean the problem was a transitory surplus of pressure in the main line; or it could (more likely, I think) mean giving the valve a chance to rest made it stop leaking, which probably means the leak will come back after a little while. I don't want to call a plumber and have him come over here while there is no leak, I don't think that would be useful. So, deputizing Ellen to check on the pipe through the day (assuming it is still not leaking at 8:30, when I go to work -- otherwise I will take a personal day and interact with plumbers.)
 ...Aaand, we're dripping! A very slow drip right now, I'm assuming it will get worse as the day goes on. I have called the heating company and the plumber should be here later this morning.
posted morning of March 24th, 2008: Respond
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Sunday, March 23rd, 2008
So I've been having this idea, one which I've posted about here several times, that the most important part of my experience of reading Pamuk is a conscious identification of myself with the author and with the narrators. Now I've also posted in the past about how I love singing along with the music I listen to. Hmm -- singing along is a kind of identification with the singer, right? I wonder... I also wonder whether my identification-with-the-author idea is already ground well trodden among people who think professionally about novels. Reckon I have probably alienated most of the people I could ask about that.
posted evening of March 23rd, 2008: 2 responses
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