Dark End of the Street

At the end of the bonus disc that comes with the extended version of the Elvis Costello album The Delivery Man, I was pleasantly surprised to find a short but sweet version of this classic ballad.

Elvis Costello and the Imposters - Dark End of the Street

Originally recorded by James Carr, Dark End of the Street has been covered many times, some better than others. In my humble opinion, the unusual phrasing of the chord progression that helps set this song apart is obscured by renditions that are too slow (e.g. Ry Cooder) or arrangements too ornate (Aretha). In contrast, the version I've been hooked on lately strips it down to what really makes it a classic: those chords, and of course the lyrics. And it helps that the subject matter works so well as a country song.

The Flying Burrito Brothers - Dark End of the Street

One more version I just happen to have on the hard drive.

Percy Sledge - Dark End of the Street

Off the top of my head, there aren't too many pop songs sung from the perspective of the adulterer. Your bonus mp3 for today is an old blues number of just that sort. Quite a bit more lighthearted, variously attributed as traditional or, frequently, to John Lee Hooker, and sung here by R.L. Burnside on his album Acoustic Stories.

R.L. Burnside - Meet Me in the Bottom

Protest music past and present

Only a few days left to follow through on this...

Impeach the President, 1973, by The Honeydrippers.

Impeach the President, 2006, from the DJ Green Lantern mix Alive on Arrival.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Graphic Novel & Mysteries

Read Watchmen for bookclub. It was ok. My first, and probably last, graphic novel. The illustrations were pretty cool and allowed (obviously) for more show and less tell. As a newbie with graphic novels, though, I found them almost distracting. The characters were uniformly unlikable. I can imagine how, within the genre of the graphic novel, this might be considered great - but I was dissapointed, and didn't enjoy the read. oh well.

Followed up Watchmen with my first Ruth Rendell, The Face of Trespass (but don't get it at Amazon, go to any used book store - you're bound to find millions of hers). It was totally solid. The writing was fine, the story was intriguing, one of those mysteries where the crime doesn't happen until the end. Very suspenseful. I just started another of hers (No More Dying Then), and it's all sun and roses so far. I love mysteries! Especially those by female Brits! Dorothy Sayers is one of my favorites...any recommendations? I've already read most of Agatha Christie, PD James, Elizabeth George, Conan Doyle, Dick Francis, Carl Hiassen. There must be more I'm not thinking of - tried spots of Jonathan Dickinson Carr, John le Carre, Georges Simenon, Raymond Chandler. One of my favorite mysteries of all time, although I don't even really put it in the mystery bucket when I think of it, is The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins. It was a recent discovery, and combines several exceedingly appealing (to me) elements: mystery, the exotic, the British back in the day, straightforward writing, plot, character development, and length. So so good.

Parts and Labor new album

Parts and Labor have a great new album out, Receivers, and I'm already hooked. Like 99.9% of all bands, they continue to mellow with age.* Of course, "mellow" is a relative term. When you start out where Parts and Labor did, it means there's still, thankfully, plenty here to scare the shit out of whichever overhyped and overbearded midwestern or Canadian neo-folkie you're currently digging.

You can stream the whole album from their website, and if you like it, pick up a cd/lp from Brah Records, or Jagjaguwar (home to some of the aforementioned bearded folkies).

On a related note, our friends (and P&L labelmates) Pterodactyl have a new album in the works as well. I'll be mentioning this again when it comes out in the spring, but in the meantime you can hear a sample on their website.

*a thesis I hope to expand on in a future post. in the meantime, I challenge anyone to show me a counter-example.

"H. M., an Unforgettable Amnesiac, Dies at 82 - Obituary - NYTimes.com"

Virtually anyone who has ever taken a course or read basic texts on neuroscience will have heard about H.M. and his profound amnesia. The historical timing of his tragic case, which this obit evokes so well, ensured that he would enter a small pantheon of case studies (Phineas Gage being his closest rival) whose symptoms provided essential insights in the progress of modern neuroscience.

On a side note, it’s hard to think of a field other than medicine in which non-practitioners can unwittingly become celebrated for the progress they enable. It’s not like Gallileo ever dropped stuff out the window in Pisa by accident.

Depressing

Netherland by Joseph O'Neill. Don't be fooled by the delightful cover.

Invisible Cities

Another great read from my awesome book club: Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. Truth be told, I've had a number of Calvino books gathering dust on my bookshelves for years. It all started with If On A Winter's Night A Traveler, which I picked up roughly a decade ago and got stalled on about the fifth page. After that, there were gifts of Calvino, I tried If On A Winter's Night at least another couple of times, but to no avail. In fact, until a couple of weeks ago, there were at least five Calvino books in my/my husband's possession, neither of us had read any of them, and they did not include Invisible Cities, so I had to purchase another Calvino for book club. ARG! However, I'm really happy I did, and I'm glad my book club ladies provided me with the motivation to get through the first several pages.

Now how about I discuss the book? It's a series of vignettes about fantastical cities that Marco Polo tells to the emperor Kublai Khan. There is no plot, not a whole lot of character development - so why did I like it?? The vignettes themselves are quite lovely and often depressing in their resemblance to real life. The tone is pretty heavy, philosophical. It took me exactly 91 pages to really get into in. It was the chapter "Cities & Eyes 4" that really drew me in. This vignette describes a city that appears wonderful and unique to a newcomer but grows dull and monotonous over time; only the travelers appreciate the city because they are the only ones who actually look around them. Okay, writing it out, it sounds a bit trite - but the vignette itself is quite moving. It was the first one to really resonate with me, and then I loved all the rest. Basically, it was a lot like reading poetry - only easier because there was some kind of a story/structure -- also there were full sentences!

Thriller, Short Stories, Thriller

Woops – been away for a while, but I have several books to report on. I’ve read three since I last posted. They are:

“Ex Libris” by Ross King (literary historical thriller, mediocre)
“Dangerous Laughter” by Steven Millhauser (mysterious short stories, intriguing and good)
“Pattern Recognition” by William Gibson (cyber-uber materialistic thriller, good)

Can you tell I’m looking for some escape in my bedtime reading these days? Not going to spend a lot of time on “Ex-Libris” – it was okay, not the worst one of its kind I’ve read but certainly not the best (that designation would go to “The Shadow of the Wind” by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, which was awesome).

“Dangerous Laughter” was a nice change of pace for me as I don’t often pick up books of short stories these days. The recommendation came from the same friend who recommended “The Outlander” (thanks Dozier!), and though not as great as that, the stories were very different/creative and refreshing. The author – Steven Millhauser – wrote the novel on which the movie “The Illusionist” was based, which might give you some sense of what the stories were like. The writing is lucid; its combination with the subject matter is often startling, as the subjects are strange and surreal. Some of the stories’ central ideas are particularly fun to think about: not talking again for the rest of your life or the idea of a machine that produces touch (the sense) much as television produces vision. In some of the stories, Millhauser has a talent for disguising the absurdity of his central theme until you’re solidly into the story; it’s a jarring but fun effect. My favorite of the stories was probably the last one – “The Wizard of West Orange.”

And finally, “Pattern Recognition,” another inhalation read. Good plot, definitely scores high on the addiction measure. Gibson’s writing style is hip and modern. Although it was written in 2003 and depends heavily on cyber/modern sci-fi themes, it still feels fresh today. I haven’t read a lot of novels that often reference 9/11 (actually only one – “Emperor’s Children” by Claire Messud, which was fine), as Gibson does here; I thought it was quite well done. The most intriguing part of the novel, for me, was how Gibson hammered home the materialistic nature of his heroine. She works in advertising, is generally likable. The descriptions of her interaction with the external world are fascinating and sometime hilarious in the commentary they offer on our brand-permeated lives. At first, I found these descriptions exhausting and slightly irritating – I think I was probably taking it personally/judging the character. Before long, though, I got used to it and came to appreciate it (and I think Gibson toned it down after the character was sufficiently built and the plot came more into focus).

Bob Dylan versus...

I. Dan Bern

Dan Bern's been compared to Bob Dylan ad nauseum, and it's obvious why. I've been a huge fan of Bern's from the first time I heard him though (once I realized it wasn't Dylan), and once you get to know Bern's songs, the similarity quickly fades into the background.

The similarity is certainly nowhere more in your face, though, than in "Talkin' Alien Abduction Blues," which is clearly an homage/pastiche/rip-off of Dylan's "Talkin' World War III Blues" from the classic album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. Bern's take on Dylan's satire of Cold War paranoia (make what you will of Bern's choice of modern parallel for the '60s fear of nuclear annihilation) appears on Bern's first release, the 1996 Dog Boy Van EP. I like to think Bern saw the endless Dylan comparisons coming, and simply decided to get this one out of the way right off the bat. These are fun to listen to back to back.

Dan Bern - Talkin' Alien Abduction Blues
Bob Dylan - Talkin' World War III Blues (youtube)


II. PJ Harvey

I was re-listening to PJ Harvey's great early album Rid Of Me and re-discovered her cover of "Highway 61 Revisited," which frankly I'd never really paid attention to before. I think I've become more obsessed with covers in recent years.

Anyway, not much to say about this cover except that it's a lot of fun, and certainly strays far enough from the sound of the original to escape the common cover pitfall of just being a bad copy.

PJ Harvey - Highway 61 Revisited
Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited (youtube)

N.B.: This post is in no way inspired by or in reference to James Taylor's new album of cover songs, cleverly entitled Covers, which is just lame. James Taylor is lame.

A or B: 80s tech

Which one is (was) more ridiculous?

A.

B.











I mean, it was the 80s after all and just look at the way that guy's looking at his watch. He's clearly very important and time is money and Gordon Gecko and so on.

On the other hand, was it so necessary to get your Golden Girls and your Perfect Strangers that you had to take up a significant part of your lawn with that Goldeneye-style dish?