Judge Playlist 29 By its Cover

I was on vacation. But the Playlist never really takes a vacation. Vacations just provide more time to delve into new books, discover new music or finally get out to the movies. Vacation took us to Philadelphia, New York and Princeton (with a short business trip to DC). Weirdly, those were the three locations hit by a certain happening in M. Night Shyamalan's latest thriller (see last item on the playlist).

Coincidence? Or something else at play here? Anyway, here's this week's Playlist

This week's Playlist ...

This week's Playlist ...

Playlist ...

LP Cover Lovers.
If you're like me, you long for the days when vinyl records ruled the musical world. A visit to the local used record store resulted in a new listening experience. And an art experience, too.

My joy of discovering music was often tied directly into the art work. As I dropped the needle on the vinyl, I'd first go to the inside sleeve, hoping that there would be lyrics and a listing of the musicians for each track. Then I'd study the actual album cover. What joy if it was a gatefold. Sticky Fingers. News of the World. Physical Graffiti. Presence. Any Pink Floyd album. Jazz albums put out by Blue Note.

This was art.

And sometimes art is bad.

Or just funny.

The two vinyl collectors who run the LP Cover Lovers Web site "love finding old records with crazy, beautiful, sexy, funny, shocking, provacative, absurd, tacky covers." It's like visiting a flea market or a musty old record store every day.


The bin Ladens. Steven Coll.
This is a heavily researched and meticulous, perhaps a bit too meticulous, look at the large bin Laden family. And what a story it is. Father Muhammed bin Laden, poor, illiterate and with only one eye, left a small village in what is now Yemen and arrived in Saudi Arabia in the 1920s. He earned a reputation as an honest and religious man. He cultivated relationships with the royal Saudi family, which made his company their preferred choice for all types of jobs.

But that's just the beginning of the story. Coll details the lives of many of Muhammed's 55 children, including the infamous Osama. (Muhammed had 22 wives). The most interesting chapters focus on oldest son Salem, who took over the company when Muhammed died in a plane crash in 1967, the first of several plane-related tragedies and dramas involving the family. Coll details Osama's religious turn early in life and how, at least initially, it helped the company. But Salem was no religious fanatic. He studied and made friends in the West, including the future husband of Emmylou Harris. He played guitar (poorly) and wanted to be a rocker. He loved fast cars, pranks, planes and fart jokes. And he dreamed of creating a "United Nations" of wives.

Richard and Linda Thompson's Shoot Out the Lights (33 1/3). Hayden Childs.
I dare you to name anyone, other than, perhaps, Neil Young, who has shown the combined guitar prowess, songwriting skills and longevity of Richard Thompson. The guitar hero's dark masterpiece Shoot Out the Lights, which he recorded with then-wife Linda, is one of the greatest rock albums of all-time, let alone the 80s, as Rolling Stone declared.

Childs tackles Shoot out the Lights for the latest installment of the wonderful 33 1/3 series. He provides deft analysis of the album track by track, through the nonfiction eyes of a musician whose life bears an eerie resemblance to Thompson, but without the success. Oh, and he throws in references to Dante's Inferno for good measure (see this week's Wikipedia link). I was skeptical of this approach at first, but it really works well.

Childs covers the original recording of what ended up being Shoot Out the Lights. Produced by soft rocker Gerry Rafferty, the bootleg album is widely known as Rafferty's Folly. I knew I'd love this book immediately after reading Childs' description of Mr. Baker Street.

Rafferty had been half of Stealer's Wheel, the "Stuck in the Middle With You" guys, but by the end of the 70s, he'd produced a couple of wildly popular solo albums, City to City and Night Owl. Listen to those solo albums now, and they sound like a leisure suit skidding into a cocaine-fueled car wreck, but back then, they sounded like folding money.

-- You can visit Hayden Childs' blog, called From Here to Obscurity.

-- And learn more about the 33 1/3 series at its blog.

-- And please, please pick up Shoot Out the Lights if you don't already have it. If you thought Fleetwood Mac's Rumours was the greatest in-band breakup album of all time, you're in for a treat.



Fighting Trees. The Swimmers.
A couple years ago, I fell in love with the big, world-weary sound of Philadelphia alt-country band One Star Hotel. I've waited since then for the follow-up to their wonderful 2004 release Good Morning, West Gordon. I would've been waiting a long time. That band broke up. But the good news: Lead singer/guitarist/keyboardist/songwriter Steven Yutzy-Burkey, a Lancaster native, formed the new band The Swimmers and recently released Fighting Trees. Unfortunately, this self-produced CD lacks some of the jangly sound of One Star Hotel. But that's OK. The big dramatic swoops, the pounding pianos and the harmonies (Beatles' circa White Album) remain. It's smart, melodic and one of the best releases I've heard so far this year.

The Happening.
Fans and critics are out in full force panning M. Night Shyamalan's latest movie, yet it still grossed over $30 million its first week. I don't get the vitrol. This is not Sixth Sense or even Signs. But it's a solid suspenseful movie with one of the most tense opening 10-15 minutes I've seen. Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel are not great, but certainly play their roles well enough. And Betty Buckley was amazing. I don't want to go into the plot at all as not to spoil it. This flick is definitely worth the $9-$10 you'd pay to see it in the theaters.

It All Adds Up to Playlist 28

Welcome to summer with overwhelming humidity in Florida and temperatures set to cross the 100-degree mark up north. So stay inside. Turn up the air conditioner. And treat yourself to a good book or some good music. Here's what I've been enjoying this past week ...

Getting to the Point is Beside It. I Love Math.
This isn't calculus or trig. Nothing fancy. Just basic math. This Texas indie supergroup of sorts (the musicians come from several bands, including the Old 97s and Apples in Stereo) plays it very well. Drummer Philip Peeples pounds out simple swinging rhythms. Singer John Dufhilo comes across as a mix between John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants and a less downbeat Elliot Smith. The 11 songs that make up Getting to the Point (not counting a 38-second reprise) are a wonderful combination of indie-pop, alt-country and garage rock. The members of I Love Math are less rawkous than they are in their other groups. But the album is filled with tons of melody and clever lyrics. Go ahead and listen to These Paper Thin Walls and try not singing the Ba-da-da refrain. I Love Math is opening for the Old 97s on their current tour (Peeples is handling drums for both groups). This is a fun album and I hope the participants find time to make more together.

Them: Adventures with Extremists. Jon Ronson
What do radical Islamic militant Omar Bakri Mohammed, former BBC sportscaster David Icke, American militias and the KKK have in common? Besides the fact that they work on the outer fringes spouting hatred, they also all believe that the Bilderberg Group runs the world, using its annual meeting to set the "New World Order." These secret leaders are mostly Jews who worship owls. Oh, and Icke thinks all these people are descended from lizards.

British journalist Ronson, who is Jewish, doesn't really infiltrate these camps, as much as he develops relationships with the leaders. The result is that you almost feel empathy for these extremists. They are a bunch of buffoons. There's Mohammed, the self-declared Osama Bin Laden of London, who gives wrong directions to his followers and ends up giving a speech to a sparse crowd. Or the emerging KKK leader who passes out self-help books and implores his followers to not use the n-word. In other words, Ronson, doesn't expose these haters. He lets them expose themselves.

Oh, but there is a Bilderberg Group (our weekly Wikipedia link). And Ronson gets pretty close before he ends up being chased down by a henchman.

An interesting note: According to the Internet Movie Database, a movie script of Them is currently being written by Ronson and Mike White (School of Rock).


Music Within
This independent film is a touching story about the life of Richard Pimental, a Vietnam vet and disability activist. The relationship between Pimental and his buddy Art, who has cerebral palsy, is the heart of the often-funny movie.

Maybe It's Reno. Maybe It's Reno.
This is a reunion album of sorts. Members include the former members of 1990s indie-pop band Unrest. But this is clearly singer/bassist Bridget Cross' show. Maybe it's Reno takes the 90 alt-rock and plows it into wide open spaces. A unique album, that will grow on you in time.

The Curious Coupling of Playlist and 27

A former colleague of mine decided to go back to grad school. One school essay asked him to name the three people, currently living, whom he would take with him on a cross-country trip. I've often thought of that question myself.
Most of the names change, except for one -- Jimmy Carter.
Friends and my mostly conservative family know of my admiration for the 39th president. My son's middle name is Carter. (And we did not name him Andrew Carter because of my similar admiration for the TV show Hogan's Heroes. I swear. I know nothing!)
I really think I could learn a lot about life by spending time with President Carter, who is an inspiration for how to stay an honest, faithful and giving person in the often dirty and unforgiving world. He is, arguably, the best person we've had as president.
This all leads into this week's Playlist ...

Jimmy Carter Man from Plains.
So you know I'm biased toward the subject matter here. I found this Jonathan Demme-directed documentary fascinating. If you're looking for something that covers the former president's whole life, look elsewhere. This covers his book tour for Palestine: Peace, not Apartheid, and the controversy that swirled around it. Maybe a bit too long at two hours, but otherwise a great peek into the current life of our former president.

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex. Mary Roach
If I had Mary Roach as a science teacher, I might have gotten a few more B's, and the subject would've held my interest a little more. Granted, the topic here is pretty interesting on its own, but Roach takes it on in her unique way and you can see why the New Yorker called her the "funniest science writer alive." Roach tackles things that are pretty creepy (the penis cam, Kinsey's attic experiments) as well as highly technical content. It's fascinating. And it's funny.
The best part? The footnotes. Yep, the 100+ off-the-cuff comments were perhaps the funniest part of the book.
Whoever thought of a science book as a quick read? Well give this follow-up to Stiff (a book about cadavers, not another book about sex ... get your mind out of the gutter) a try. I finished it in two days.

Love is Simple. Akron/Family.
I downloaded this last year, listened to it haphazardly and gave up on it.
It was disjointed.
Weird.
Unlistenable.
I gave it another shot recently and was just mesmerized by it. Yep it's still weird. And a bit disjointed. But it's an amazing very listenable album that is simple in its humanist message -- let's love each other -- but complex in its genre-bending sounds. There's the chants that sometimes go one for minutes. At other times, the songs reminded me of The Beatles, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Yes and, just for a few minutes, Rush.

Lanquidity. Sun Ra
Sun Ra covered a lot of ground in his long career from swing to blues to free jazz and avante garde. He's been pretty far out there at times. While he stretches the boundaries a little here, this is not one of his more adventurous albums. But that's OK. This album made in the late 70s when Sun Ra and the Arkestra had resettled in the Germantown section of Philly, is all about the groove. With electric bass, two guitars and three drummers, Lanquidity pulses behind Sun Ra's keyboard improvisations. A very cool album.

Lost.
Just in case you haven't seen it, I'll spare the season finale details, other than it answered some questions and left us with a whole lot more. A great season-ender. I already can't wait for it to start up again. And for you Lost fans, our Weekly Wikipedia link is to Jeremy Bentham.

I Don't Get It -- Internet Making Voters Stupid

Eight years ago, we had a man who invented the Internet running for president.
The current Democratic president is finding himself a victim of hoaxes perpetuated by that same wacky World Wide Web.
Take a look at Snopes.com's list of the hottest e-mail urban legends. It's a list that Obama has been a mainstay on. (Cue Casey Kasem's voice: And holding strong for the 30th straight week at No. 2 is that Senator from Illinois ...)
The biggest hoax, lie -- or whatever you want to call it -- making the rounds is that Barak Obama is a Muslim. It's nothing new. It's been going on for months and has steadfastly been debunked. But thanks to an enthusiastic group of zealots, it lives on.
Now first. I don't personally care whether Obama is a Muslim or not. But here's the thing. He's not! It's a lie. It's a hoax.
And people are believing it.
I really didn't think much of this, until this past week. What struck me was when I heard that a friend -- a smart, well-educated woman in a comfortable income bracket -- said that she liked Obama, but had concerns with his Muslim beliefs.
Let's set the record straight:
Obama is not Muslim and he has taken his oath of office on the Bible -- not the Koran.
Look, I don't care if you want to believe the stupid e-mails you get that tell you that In God We Trust is being taken off money or that you need to immediately send a few hundred bucks to someone in Uganda who is going to pay you back twice as much. But if you're going to make decisions that affect all of us, make sure you've got the right info.
By the way, Al Gore NEVER said that he invented the Internet, nor did he ever say anything that could be interpreted that way.
Let's hope eight years from now, we're not talking about that Muslim who ran for president.

Playlist 26 -- Three-day Weekend = No Depression

Hope everyone is enjoying their three-day holiday weekend. If you Tivo'd The Office or Desperate Housewives and haven't watched the season finales yet, you should skip the bottom part of this week's playlist, which begins right now ...

Fanon. John Edgar Wideman.
At the end of Part II, main character Thomas writes to Frantz Fanon. The letter clearly explains my struggle with the book.
Dear Frantz Fanon:
As you can probably figure out for yourself, I'm reluctant to say whether my evolving project is fiction or nonfiction, novel or memoir ...
The widely acclaimed Macarthur genius grant winner Wideman set to write a novel about a writer tackling the life of Fanon (who happens to be the subject of our weekly Wikipedia link). Fanon was a philosopher, psychiatrist, political activist and author who fought against racism and oppression. A worthy subject indeed. Fanon, the inspiration of the Black Power movement is making a comeback on college campuses.
Thomas is writing a book about Fanon. Or he may write a book about a severed head arriving in the mail. And he visits his brother in jail. And talks to French filmmaker Jean Luc Godard. And then the author himself shows up in the book.
It takes place over neverending, sometimes page-long, paragraphs.
And I found it all very confusing.
However, there is joy in reading Fanon. Wideman's prose has been called "poetry" and been compared to jazz. Those long paragraphs are sometimes beautifully rendered and make this difficult book a joy to read. Here's one such example:
After all, watching the news is to verify the single fact that counts: survival. The flood, car bombing, drought, AIDS, train wreck, cancer, death in all its menancing spectacularly repeatable forms didn't zap me. Those terrible things happen to other people. I'm still safely sealed in my citadel, a viewer above, beyond the fray. Not immune, of course. I'm not dumb enough to think that, but who knows. I'm still peering through my window, watching the news. For a minute or two after 9/11 my viewing habits, along with my fellow countrymen's viewing habits, may have altered a little bit, but we've settled back on our sofas, watch like NASCAR fans, numbed by the noise and power of super turbo-charged cars, racing around and around an oval track secretly hoping against hope that a fiery crash will lift us out of our seats again.

No Depression, Issue 75, May-June, 2008.
Blender, April 2008.
I finally got around to reading some magazines that were piling up, including the last issue of No Depression. (See Playlist 14.) It had been a while since I picked up the magazine, but one read through issue 75 and I'm already missing its devotion to roots rock and its excellent music writing and criticism. This last issue had wonderful in-depth pieces on the Old 97s, Billy Bragg and Blue Mountain. And a great review of Alejandro Escovedo's latest album.
Fittingly for ND, it chose its artist of the decade (yes, in 2008) and it is alt-country's everyman -- guitarist Buddy Miller. The magazine reminds me a lot of Buddy Miller. It was steeped in the traditional, but created honest, new and timeless quality art. Though the magazine was started in response to a musical trend, it was never relegated to the whims of the buying public. It was about good music.
Blender, well, let's say it's no No Depression. But if you have five to seven minutes, it's a fun read. And I learned five interesting things from the April issue.
1. Steve Malkmus played Scrabble a lot when touring. (Am I the the only person to find that really really cool?)
2. The music industry has made a lot of mistakes, from Pretty Boy Floyd to Napster.
3. Taylor Swift is cute.
4. It took a long time and a lot of LA session musicians (think Toto) before Warren Zevon got the right sound down for Werewolves in London.
5. Beatle Bob (photo at top of blog) is a great story. Beatle Bob has been to a live rock show every dayof his life for the last 11 years. No days off. That's an interesting story. But who is Beatle Bob? Does he work? Does he have a family?

Read the amazing story of Beatle Bob here.



In Rainbows. Radiohead.
I'm late coming to this party, but thanks to eMusic, which added this to its catalog this month, I'm here. I have not listened to any of Radiohead's work since OK Computer and this is being heralded as a return to that more band-focused sound. But this is a much warmer and more accessible record than OK Computer. I'm most impressed with how the swirling guitars and lush strings work so well with Thom Yorke's voice.


The Instigator. Rhett Miller.
When the Old 97s singer released this solo album, the band had already started to move away from pure alt-country into more pop territory. But this Jon Brion-produced album was pure pop. Nary a twang to be found. That's OK, because this is a masterpiece. That it sold so few copies just amazes me. Listen to a song once and it'll stick in your head for days.

The Office.
Angela and Dwight? What a way to send out the season. And hasn't poor Andy just turned into a miniature version of clueless Michael? What will happen when Pam leaves for art school? Will there ever be a proposal? The highlights -- Kevin as a "special" person. And the connection between new HR person Holly Flax and Michael before Jan's surprise. Looking forward to next year already.

Desperate Housewives.
Look, I swear I only watch this to spend time with my wife. Honestly. The season finale was excellent, a much needed boost after a somewhat lackluster season. The anchor of the show remains the Scavo family, but finally some interesting story lines involving the other housewives. And the new family, led by Dana Delaney, was much more interesting than the previous year's son chained in the basement story. But I hated the Lost flash-forward like ending.

Other songs I've been listening too ...
-- Ever Fallen in Love/Noise Annoys. The Buzzcocks. Singles Going Steady.
-- At Least That's What She Said. Wilco. A Ghost is Born.

I Don't Get It -- This Package Doesn't Stimulate Me

All over the Internet this month, people are talking about their stimulus packages. Heck, there is even a Web site called How I Spent My Stimulus where people are submitting photos of how they spent their $600, $1200 or $1800 from the government. Arjewtino blogged this past week that the stimulus is making everyone stupid.
He's right.
You know why?
The stimulus package is just politics. You may have heard there's an election coming up and that Republicans are getting a little worried. Of course, the Dems can pander, too.
In the long run, it's only going to benefit those who are rich -- the people who are going to take the money from you while you , ahem, help stimulate the economy. Like ESPN's Colin Cowherd said today on his show: During the good economic years, like Clinton's presidency, everybody got rich. But during tough economic times, it's the rich who get super-rich.
You know who is getting rich these days? The oil companies.
Not us.
Think of how much gas prices have risen since the war in Iraq started five years ago. Think your stimulus package covers that difference?
Rising costs
How is your food bill these days? My weekly supermarket trips cost as much as my old car payments. (And it doesn't help that my teen-age boys have decided that 7 meals a day just isn't enough, even if at least three of those meals are either cereal or ice cream).
Yep, we got our check. And no, we're not sending it back. We may actually spend it on a need, perhaps a dishwasher that actually works.
But what about the cry for responsible government spending? Isn't that what the Republicans are all about? Don't you think this check is sort of a welfare program? What about the big budget deficit? Didn't we all used to care at some point about what we're leaving behind for our kids' kids and their kids?
And forget oil. The latest economic news to send a shiver down my recessionary bones is beer. Because of disappearing discretionary income, beer drinkers are opting for the "economy" brands. Can you say, I'll take a six of Milwaukee's Best?
I hate to be so depressing, but times are bad. And they're just going to get worse. Whichever new administration gets in is going to have its hands full.
Then again, never mind.
Maybe it's time for a vacation to Fiji.

Playlist 25 Survives the Plague and Zombies

What a great week. How could it not be a tremendous, joyous, wonderful week when it included the great Free Iced Coffee Day? And the news gets better, Dunkin Donuts has extended this promotion to run on Thursdays through June 12. So pick a flava and make your order. My favorite -- hazlenut, one sugar, one cream.

Now onto Playlist 25 ...

Boing Boing Web site.
Back in Playlist 20, we discussed Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and I provided a link to his Web site Boing Boing. The last couple of weeks I've found myself going back to that Web site regularly where I've found interesting items/links such as ...

A coffee table that's also a classic NES video game controller -- and it works! ...

A Floating Staircase

How to Knit Uppers for your Converse

The Web site, of which Doctorow is one of several contributors, posts numerous blogs each day. It focuses mostly on technology and copyright, but also links to interesting stories, such as the 78-year-old blind man who bowled a perfect game, the art of defacing money and the three-year-old boy who hasn't slept yet (seriously, not in his whole three years).

The Distraction promise: Visit Boing Boing on a regular basis and you'll find at least one interesting story over the course of a few days that you'll want to tell everyone about. That's why it's been added on the right to the list of Distractions-approved Web sites.

Plague of the Doves. Louise Erdrich.
Erdrich is an accomplished author of 13 books, including novels, poetry and children's books. As I started this book, I found out my 11-year-old nephew was reading one of her books, too. But this is not a children's book. Not because of adult content. But because it's so confusing (at least to me).

I steal moments to read. Five minutes while waiting for the bus with my son, 10-15 minutes before bed, maybe 20 minutes at lunch. That's not the way to read this book. I was lost several times and had to reread passages. That said, this work was very rewarding.

Plague is a multigenerational tale, involving several families whose lives intertwine in and around a North Dakota reservation. Sections of the book are told from different viewpoints. But the first one-page chapter sets the tone. A family is slaughtered, except for a baby in a crib who is left alive. Later in the book, we find that a group of Native Americans who stumble upon the slaughter, but had nothing to do with it, are brought to swift justice -- and three of them are hanged. This incident unwittingly guides the lives of several families for years after.

Erdrich is a great storyteller, which made me continue to want to read the book even when I was confused about who was who. I particularly felt for the goofy old grandfather Mooshum, who survives the hanging.

If you have a big stretch of time or a rainy day alone, consider this book.

Read a snippet of the book from the New Yorker.

And check out our Weekly Wikipedia link to Louis Riel. Although, Plague of the Doves is a work of fiction, Riel was a very real person who is mentioned often in the book.

Odessey and Oracle. The Zombies.
I had only known the Zombies as a British Invasion band with a couple singles -- She's Not There and Time of the Season. But they were not a singles band. Listening to Odessey and Oracle this past week was like finding a lost Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band or another Pet Sounds. But the Zombies combined the best of both those albums. Yes, it's psychadelic and experimental, but it is held together by wonderful melody after wonderful melody. And great songwriting, such as the album lead Care of Cell 44, about someone awaiting the return of a loved one from prison. Or the haunting Butcher, describing the desolation and pain of being stuck in war.

Dogs & Water. Anders Nilsen.
Nilsen's graphic novel, published late last year by Drawn & Quarterly, is epic in theme, but simple in art and story. Several reviews I've read praise Nilsen's linework, which gives the book a dreamlike quality. It's basically the story of a young man traveling with his stuffed bear. He gets lost and ends up in what appears to be a desolate war-torn area, where he meets animals and a handful of humans. The story tugs at your heart as loving scenes, such as the boy meeting a pack of dogs, quickly turn ugly.


Songs I listened to this past week ...
-- New England. Jonathan Richman. The Best of Jonathan Richman. I have seen Israel's arid Plain. It's beautiful, but so is Maine. Ooooooh New England.
-- No Quarter. Led Zeppelin. Houses of the Holy. Reliving my teen years, I guess. Funny, this was the song on the album I always hated.

So take care. And if I don't blog before then, have another great Free Iced Coffee Day next Thursday!