As you may recall, Roger Maris
purchased 61 compact discs when he visited Seattle in 1961. I am happy
to announce that I beat his record by acquiring 63 during my recent trip. I would normally lay
them all out on the floor and take a picture, but I don't have a room
large enough, so here's a picture of them lined up in a yellow DJ
case. You can zoom in on the titles if you're into that kind of thing.
Beth and I went to see the Swell Season a couple nights ago. You remember the Swell Season, don't you? They're Marketa Irglova and Glen Hansard from that movie Once. Everybody was talking about them last year. Add those two to Glen's old band, the Frames, and you've got the Swell Season. That's musical math right there.
The opening act was a guy named Thomas Bartlett who has unfortunately saddled himself with the horrible name, Doveman. I went in hating him just because of his stupid name. He turned out to be really good, though. He played five originals off his new CD, The Conformist. He also played a medley of songs from the soundtrack to Footloose. Good stuff all around.
What can I say about the Swell Season? I don't know. I guess it makes me happy that people who make good, quality music have had so much success. I went to Target this afternoon and saw about 130 copies of Rihanna's new one for sale. I got all depressed that shit like that is being pushed upon the listening public. Then I saw that Target was also selling the new Swell Season CD. That's how much success they've had over the last couple of years; you can buy a copy of Strict Joy at Target. It almost makes me feel like there's a tiny bit of hope for the world.
But anyway, we saw the concert at the Paramount Theatre in Seattle. It's a fantastic venue and featured some of the most crisp sound I've heard in a long time. Unfortunately, the acoustics meant you could hear everything...including the crazy lady who ranted for about five minutes right before Glen's solo mini-set. I don't know what the fuck she was going on about, but she was clearly nuts. Glen played along with her for awhile, but eventually had enough and told her husband, "You've gotta do something about your lady." He said it in a friendly way, though. I think he was probably afraid of getting stabbed after the show. That was one of the strangest things I've ever witnessed at a concert. Almost ruined it for me.
Actually, now that I think of it, a lot of things happened at the concert that would normally ruin the evening for me. People laughed when Glen Hansard played a Glen Campbell song. "Rhinestone Cowboy" isn't funny. "Rhinestone Cowboy" kicks ass. Quit your laughing, you morons! That right there would normally be enough to sour an evening for me.
Also, there were far too many audience sing-alongs. I don't want to hear the rube sitting behind me belting out "High Horses". I want to hear Glen and Marketa (and maybe some Frames) sing it. And yet, I didn't really mind that Glen gave the audience parts in three or four of the songs. I even sang very quietly to the last song of the evening. It's like aliens had control of my brain.
And then there was my usual least favorite concert occurrence...when the band brings someone I've never heard of up on the stage. It's usually an audience member who gets to shake a tambourine or sing off-key background vocals. This time it was a busker named Shannon Jay (or J. or Jae) who Glen had discovered earlier in the day singing Dylan over by the downtown J. Crew. He not only brought her up on the stage, but he and the rest of the band left and let her sing a song all by herself. This woman was ballsy, too. She didn't play a Dylan cover...she played her own original five minute ballad called "The Sailor Boy". She was pretty damn good, too.
All that annoying crap took place over the course of one concert and I didn't even care. It didn't ruin my night even the slightest bit. I had a great time. It was one of the best shows I've seen all year. Still, I kind of wish they hadn't laughed so hard at Glen Campbell.
Here are the setlists for the evening:
Doveman's Set: The Best Thing/Memorize/Angel's Share/The Burgundy Stain/Footloose Medley (Footloose/Let's Hear It for the Boy/Almost Paradise)/Castles
The Swell Season's Set: Fallen From the Sky (Glen & Marketa duet)/Lies (Glen & Marketa duet)/Low Rising/In These Arms/The Rain/The Moon/If You Want Me/Fantasy Man/(crazy lady rant)/Say It To Me Now (Glen solo)/Leave (Glen solo)/Rhinestone Cowboy (Glen Campbell cover/Glen solo)/Back Broke (Glen solo)/Astral Weeks (Van Morrison cover/Glen solo)/The Count of New Town (performed by Colm Mac Con Iomaire)/Rise/I Have Loved You Wrong/Once/When Your Mind's Made Up
The Swell Season's Encore Set: Falling Slowly/The Sailor Boy (performed by a busker)/High Hope/High Horses/Breathing Out (performed by Doveman)/Red Cord-->A Parting Glass (Clancy Brothers cover)
And here are some pictures and scans relating to the evening:
Here are the new concert posters I've acquired since I wrote my original post.
The Guided By Voices poster was a particularly good find as that was one of my most memorable shows. Robert Pollard threw unopened beer cans into the audience (overhand), and the show ended with about 40 fans dancing around on the shaky Southgate House stage. The Yo La Tengo concert was also a good one, but I still haven't discovered the title of the mysterious ba-ba song that opened the show. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and worry about it.
I might be able to get another concert-specific poster at tonight's Swell Season show. It'll probably depend on what time I get there. Oh look, here it is:
I know two things. The first is that it's probably too early in the year to start making a Christmas list. The second is that at 35, I'm far too old for a Christmas list in the first place. Well, I don't care about either of those things. To me, Christmas is about maximizing my pile of quality presents (while minimizing my own gift-related monetary outlay). Greed knows no age limits, and it's never too early to start elbowing my friends and family in the right direction. I have learned over the years that people need time to do their shopping and if I don't tell them exactly what I want, then I end up with plastic plants or a novel written by Jimmy Buffett. So here it is, my Christmas list for 2009.
I recently found the following items hidden between the pages of books. I guess the previous readers forgot to remove their bookmarks. The ticket stub was found in a used copy of The Mystery of Edwin Drood. The strange thing is that I actually attended the concert in question. The picture of the woman and her dog was found in the copy of My Abandonment I checked out from the library. The laminated picture of Edie was found in a collection of Stephen King short stories. Spooky.
I have a long history of going to see bands just to hear one specific song performed live. I saw the Cardigans just to hear "Lovefool". I saw Cornershop just to hear "Brimful of Asha". I had albums by those bands, though, so I was actually familiar with more than one song at the time of the show. It's just that I liked that one song so much that I had to go hear it live. Well, I've taken it a step further by going to see a band based solely on the one and only song of theirs I'd ever heard. I'm talking about the band Girls and their song "Lust for Life". It's my favorite pop song of 2009.
Girls played in Seattle on Tuesday night with another San Francisco band, Dominant Legs. I must admit here that I sort of liked Dominant Legs more than Girls. They're an unsigned band, but they're incredibly endearing and they've got a good, catchy sound. The guy stands around and dances like it's the 80s. The girl stands around and pretends to play the keyboards. They've got five demos on their website, but they haven't officially released anything yet. My favorite of the demos is called "Young at Love and Life". It has a Stuart Murdoch-y sound to it. They made an ultra-lo-fi video for another of their songs. It's full of slam dunks, jump ropes, and one horrific mullet.
Here's the setlist for Dominant Legs. I made up titles for the songs they haven't posted yet; those titles are the ones in quotation marks:
Dominant Legs Setlist: Young at Love and Life/Just Silly Ones/"a messy house"/"I have denied myself"/About My Girls/Clawing Out at the Walls/Loving Now/"it's not like it was when we were kids" (band version)
Girls was also good, but they went on a bit too long and got kind of sleepy-sounding at the end. They played "Lust for Life", though, so I left with a smile on my face. Unfortunately, they left out the song's ba-bahs, so my smile was slightly crooked.
Girls Setlist: Laura/Ghost Mouth/Heartbreaker/Headache/God Damned/Solitude/Summertime/Darling/Lust for Life/Hellhole Ratrace/Morning Light/"dreams of you" (Ralph McTell cover???)/Lauren Marie
Encore Solo Set: "it's getting cold again"/"we're in love and it's nobody's business"/Broken Dreams Club
Oh, here are my usual concert-related pictures and scans:
Peter Rock's My Abandonment is the first book read in my Book Club by Proxy project. That's the one where I read other people's book club books for them. AmyH told me about this book. I probably wouldn't have bothered except the book was only 225 pages long and the blurb on the back sounded interesting.
My Abandonment is the story of a thirteen year-old girl named Caroline who lives in the woods outside of Portland with her father. Caroline and her father get by pretty well when you consider that they live in a hobbit hole. Their lives are shattered when a jogger stumbles upon their home and reports them to the authorities.
I must admit that this book took me by surprise. I read it as a joke and wasn't expecting much, but My Abandonment was an exciting, well-written story that was a pleasure to read. It was a damn good book. It's actually one of the highlights of my literary year. I would highly recommend this book to you, AmyH, or anyone else with a few hours to spare and an interest in quality reading.
What follows is the portion of the post dealing with cheating at book club. It starts out with my in-depth synopsis of My Abandonment's eight chapters and then ends with a couple talking points that should convince others that you've read the book. The thing to remember here is that what follows will absolutely ruin the book for you. Do not proceed if you have any interest in reading the book for yourself.
The Happy Days in the Forest Park (p. 1 - 48): Caroline and her father live in the woods outside of Portland. Caroline is thirteen; her father is a veteran who has bad dreams about helicopters. They've got an underground dwelling full of sleeping bags, a chess board, and Caroline's toy horse, Randy. They keep to themselves, but once a week they put on their city clothes and go into town. They go to the library, the Safeway, and stop by the post office for the father's government check. One day a jogger accidentally stumbles upon their camp while Caroline is lounging in a tree. The jogger tries to talk to Caroline, but she stays in her tree and hides. The jogger returns a few days later with the police, a canine unit, and a man named Jim Harris. Caroline's father is arrested and Mr. Harris takes Caroline.
Getting Caught and Put in the Building (p. 49 - 76): Mr. Harris drives Caroline into the city. During the drive, she makes reference to a foster family and a younger sister. Mr. Harris turns Caroline over to a woman named Jean Bauer at some sort of detention center. This woman cleans the girl up and gives her some new clothes. Then she subjects Caroline to a series of physical and psychological exams. She determines that Caroline is is good shape for a girl who has been living in the woods for years. Miss Bauer eventually returns Randy the Toy Horse and gives Caroline her own room...one that looks out on her forest.
Living on the Farm (p. 77 - 110): After a chapter apart, Caroline and her father are reunited outside the detention center. The police drive them out to a horse farm owned by a man named Mr. Walters. He's agreed to employ Caroline's father on his farm. In addition to the job, Mr. Walters is allowing Caroline and her father to stay in the bunkhouse on his property. Things are looking up. Caroline meets some neighbor boys and thinks they might turn out to be friends. She gets her first bicycle. She's excited about starting real school in the fall. Her father isn't doing as well, though. He starts to get paranoid and begins to imagine people spying on them from behind hay bales. He tells Caroline to pack her old backpack. As the chapter ends, the two sneak out to the bus stop in the middle of the night.
Living on the Streets of the City (p. 111 - 134): Caroline and her father head back to the woods, but that turns out to be a bad idea. They then decide to hide out in public...where they walk on opposite sides of the road and communicate with umbrella signals. Caroline gets a haircut and dye-job. She and her father set up camp in an abandoned hotel. Caroline's father starts doing "deliveries" for a mysterious man named Vincent. You can tell he's a villain because he has a pointy beard. Guys with pointy beards are always bad. Caroline gets recognized by Taffy, a girl she met at the detention center in Part Two.
Escaping Down Through the Snow (p. 135 - 160): Caroline's father is getting even more paranoid, and he decides they need to hop a train out of town. The only thing is that he's never done it before and he falls off the train as he tries to board. They opt for a bus. Caroline's father gets angry at her when she talks with a woman on the bus. He forces the bus driver to let them off in the middle of nowhere on a snowy night. They sleep outdoors and try to keep warm at a thermal spring. The next day they break into a cabin. Caroline recognizes all the books in one of the rooms. She used to have the same books when she lived with her foster family. They spend the night in the cabin and then use snowshoes and a sled to travel to the nearby town of Sisters, a town that Caroline's father seems to know.
Losing Father in the Cave (p. 161 - 192): Caroline and her father hike out of town, but are soon lost in a sudden snowstorm. They stumble upon a yurt and join a woman and very weird boy inside. The four of them spend the night in the yurt. In the morning Caroline and the very weird boy go out for a sled ride and the two adults stay inside to talk things over. The woman eventually comes out wearing a wig and Caroline's father's backpack. She gives Caroline's snowshoes to the very weird boy and the two of them head off. Caroline goes back into the yurt to find out what's going on. Her father is dead. It appears that he has been electrocuted or burned by the yurt's heating mechanism. Not knowing what to do, she puts her father's body on the sled and wanders around in the snow. She stumbles upon a keg party taking place in a cave. She hides her father's body and joins the party. She waits until the party breaks up and then brings her father's body into the cave. Sitting by the fire, Caroline thinks back and remembers when she first met her father. She remembers how he took her from her foster parents' backyard in Boise. She remembers how he handcuffed her in a hole while he joined the search party to look for her. She remembers how he changed her named to Caroline. She remembers how she used to see her picture on missing posters.
Boise (p. 193 - 210): Having left the man's body in the cave, Caroline heads for Boise. She walks around freely, knowing that nobody will recognize her now that's she's grown and looks different. She walks by her old house and then goes to her former elementary school where she sees her sister Della. She follows Della for awhile and then goes over to a cemetery. She can't find the headstones she's looking for. She takes the bus to the mall where a couple girls follow her into the bathroom and try to talk with her. They run for their mother when they notice that Caroline's foot is bleeding all over the place from frostbite. Caroline runs out the emergency exit.
There is Not Much to Say (p. 211 - 225): Time has gone by. Caroline has left Boise and returned to the town of Sisters. She gets her GED and studies at the community college. She becomes a part-time librarian. She also gets a job as caretaker at a rich man's house. He's rarely there and doesn't mind that Caroline lives in a yurt on his property. She compiles her thoughts and journals into eight sections and types them up at the library. She finds out that Randy the Toy Horse is actually a Chinese acupuncture model.
Something to Discuss in Your Book Club: Perhaps the book's most important sentence takes place on page 222 when Caroline writes about the book she's writing about her experiences with her father. She says, "I remember the conversations as best as I can. If I make up words he says at least they're close or taken from his notebook. I stitch it together and I only add what I have to. If I don't remember something I skip over it and leave it out." Is Caroline a reliable narrator? Do these sentences change your thoughts on what you've read in the earlier chapters? What do you think Caroline added to her book? What do you think she skipped over or left out?
Smart-Sounding Thing to Memorize and Regurgitate at Your Book Club: Did anyone else here find this book reminiscent of the work of independent film director, Kelly Reichardt? I certainly did. Rock's Portland-area setting combined with his protagonist's fascination with canines, brought to mind Reichardt's 2008 film, Wendy & Lucy. Should a film adaptation of My Abandonment be in the works, I think she should definitely be in the running to direct. I can already see Will Oldham in the role of "Nameless". I love the irony of a man with so many nicknames portraying a nameless character. Hah hah!
Did you join a book club because you thought it was the cool thing to do? Now that you've joined, do you have difficulty finding the time to read your club's book selection? Well, you can stop worrying about it. I've decided to offer my reading services to those of you who are either too tired, lazy, or busy to read your own book club books. Just let me know the title and author of your book and then sit back as I read the book for you. Once I've finished, I will provide you with a detailed synopsis and an in-depth analysis of the book. If you'd like, I'll even give you some insightful questions and talking points that you can use to impress and amaze your fellow book clubbers.
My first client is AmyH, who was worried about finding time to read Peter Rock's My Abandonment. This is going to be good for both of us. She'll be able to enjoy the social aspect of her book club without the additional time commitment of actually reading the book. What do I get in return? Well, I get a chance to redeem myself after my miserable showing in the Anna Karenina Book Club of 2002. I finished that book before the others and blurted out the ending. I ruined it for everyone, so now I feel I need to do something good for a different book club.
I picked up a copy of My Abandonment at the library a couple days ago. I'm about halfway through it.
The Mystery of Edwin Drood--Charles Dickens
Edwin Drood is a young orphan engaged to be married to another young orphan named Rosa Bud (saddled with the unfortunate nickname of "Pussy"). They live in Cloisterham, an ancient English cathedral town littered with tombs, a lime pit, and a series of spooky underground vaults. Edwin goes missing. He is last seen with his rival, the hot-headed Neville Landless. Edwin's watch and shirt pin are soon found in the nearby river and suspicion is thrown upon Neville. Most boisterous in his accusations against Neville is a man named John Jasper. In addition to being Edwin's guardian, John Jasper is also Rosa Bud's music teacher and something of secret opium fiend. Isn't that always the case?
Did Neville kill Edwin Drood or was he set up by John Jasper? Did Jasper kill his own ward so he could have Pussy all for himself? Did he toss Edwin's body in the lime pit and then throw his possessions in the river? And who the heck is Dick Datchery, the mysterious white-haired gentleman with the gigantic head who shows up shortly after Edwin's disappearance? Dickens hints that Datchery might be one of the other characters in disguise. Is it Edwin? Is it Neville? Is it Neville's cross-dressing twin sister, Helena? Could it be Bazzard, Tartar, Grewgious, or any of the book's other strangely-named characters who never appear at the same time as Datchery?
We'll never know. Charles Dickens died before he could finish The Mystery of Edwin Drood. He didn't leave any notes and he didn't tell anyone how he intended to finish the book. The story is told that he offered to let Queen Victoria in on the ending (during a private reading), but she turned him down.
