New Music I’m Enjoying and You Can Too!
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I’ve loved music as long as I can remember. Some of my earliest memories center around songs, where I was when I heard them and sometimes smells. Whenever I hear Carole King sing anything from “Tapestry” I’m six years old again, in the back of my parents car hearing the music from a small transistor radio on the dashboard.
Many of my peers still listen to the same music or bands they listened to as we were growing up. That’s fine so far as that goes, but I really enjoy discovering new artists. I could probably go the rest of my life and never hear “Big Ol’ Jet Airliner” ever again and not miss it. Not that it’s a bad song, but hearing it an average of three times a week for over 30 years will kill a song for me.
I discovered this D.C. band Georgie James a few years back. I really enjoyed their lone album, and remember buying it (and a few others) at the now gone Virgin Records Store in Times Square when we were in New York City a few years ago. I was heartbroken when I read that they’d broken up, but those feelings of sadness changed to a great big happy when I found out that Laura Burhenn (half of Georgie James) was putting out a record as The Mynabirds. It is a bit quieter and more introspective than the jangle pop sensibilities of her previous group but it really grew on me. That first album “What We Lose in the Fire We Gain in the Flood” is a terrific record. And now, The Mynabirds have a new record coming out next month on Saddle Creek Records. You can download the first single (song title: Generals) free for nothing here. If, like me, you enjoy live music and believe that it is something that shows the true talents of a recording artist, you can catch The Mynabirds as they do a Tiny Desk Concert on NPR Music. You have the choice of downloading the music, or you can watch the video. Or, what the hell, do both! Meanwhile, I’m going to wait for the new album release and see them when they come to town next month.
As a kid, I enjoyed the first couple of singles by Philly Soul act Hall & Oates. ”Sara Smile” was such a wonderful song, and “Rich Girl” was lots of fun. Of course, as a young pre-teen I didn’t quite get the song the same way I do now. These days, the Soul sounds are courtesy of Fitz and the Tantrums. Heavily influenced by Hall & Oates (and watching the episode of Live From Daryl’s House really drives this point home) Fitz really updated the lyrical content and still maintains that smooth soul sound. Terrific live, they have offered a FREE Five Song Live EP recorded at the House of Blues in Boston. It’s a terrific recording of them in concert (I’ve seen them twice live) and they bring it. There’s an energy and commitment to the music here. And, they do all this without a guitar player in the band. (Caution, some potty language in one song) I recommend the LIVE EP, and did I mention it’s Free? I can also recommend their album.
I recently discovered La Sera while checking out the new releases on Allmusic.com a month ago or so. This is the solo project of bass player Katie Goodman of The Vivian Girls. The music has a real retro feel to it, but it’s lots of fun. I listened to the new album “Sees the Light” around 15 times in the first week I had it, I enjoyed it that much. Follow the link and you can get a couple of free songs from the album and watch a couple of promotional videos as well. I particularly recommend the video for “Real Boy/Drive On”
I hope you enjoy this free music, and take some time to check it out. Thanks for reading!
Moving
I mentioned in Saturday’s post of awesome that we were moving. If you haven’t read that, I encourage you to do so. It’s a prime example of how not to make a blog post when you are tired and don’t bother to proof-read before you hit publish. I amaze myself with my stupid sometimes.
So, to the moving news; We were told a month or so ago by the people who own the house we live in that they intend to sell it. They have a couple of kids that are near or at college age and they would like some tuition money. We are fine with this, to be honest. We’ve kicked the idea around before of moving into a smaller place. We’ve learned that with Great Space comes Great Piles of Junk (apologies to Uncle Ben and Spider-Man) and we would like the incentive of less space to drive keeping less stuff. We never got anywhere because we never started and so we still have mounds of crap and no clear cut direction to go now.
The good news is we haven’t been given the 30 Day notice yet, and there doesn’t seem to be any great rush (but I could be wrong about that) but we’d like to have this taken care of in a reasonable amount of time. So, we’re looking about. And packing. Laws Yes, M-O-O-N spells packing. This involves putting your life into boxes, labeling those boxes with pieces of your life and throwing out parts of your life you don’t want to put into a truck and remove from a truck at a later time. Okay, so that’s the pessimist in me speaking. But the idea is still the same.
And we have a lot of “stuff.” For instance, I collect comic books and have downsized to around 16 long boxes of single issues. That doesn’t count the other 4-5 of trade paperbacks and hard covers. And remember, this is AFTER downsizing. Add in 1,000+ CD’s, about a bazillion DVD’s and books, and notebooks and trinkets and doo-dads, that’s a lot of stuff. Never mind the needful things like clothes, soap, dishes, light bulbs and the like. There are times dragging it out front and having a weenie roast over the roaring flames of burning “stuff” sounds good. But so does watching the trash bags pile up as more stuff gets the chance to return from whence it came.
So, that’s the moving deets. If you’re free to lug boxes, drop your willingness into a comment box. Of course, you can comment even if you aren’t available. Not much else to tell at this moment. When more news is actually news, I’ll light a flare or something.
Thanks for reading!
Surreality, with a chance of Weird in today’s forecast…
It started with a cat licking my forehead. Well, she started licking my fingers then moved to my forehead. In a pattern as well, marching her freakishly gritty tongue across the expanse at the top of my face like she was on an exfoliating mission or something. I sat up before she stared grooming my hair or something. Hairballs are bad enough, skinballs and my hair puked up by a cat would be too much.
I dressed, kissed my wife goodbye and went to Steak ‘n Shake. I go there most Saturday’s for breakfast. I know the help, they know me, the place is seldom busy for breakfast which I’ve always found sort of strange because the food is really good and the prices are great. Maybe it’s the help…(not really, they’re terrific to me and Elaine).
Today, one of the Grad Students that works in our office joined me. He brought his wife, and I brought a couple of motorcycle helmets for him. I’d not met his wife before, and she’s a nice lady. Like Elaine, she’s too good for her husband. I think most wives are too good for their husbands, come to that. Anyhow, I had the helmets for him as he was buying them from me. He gives me a check, and to top it off, bought by breakfast as well!
I packed up all my poetry books (save one) last night. We get to move here in the coming weeks/months (more later, I promise) and it struck me this morning what a strange thing that is. I now have enough poetry books to fill ONE Baker & Taylor box. I know plenty of people who don’t have enough BOOKS total to fill a box. I also feel oddly disconnected from them now.
The motorcycle I was riding when we had our accident in 2010 has been sitting in the garage, collecting dust (lots of it) and leaves that sneak under the fairly large gap where door meets sagging cement. And bird decorations, I think. I didn’t look that closely to be honest. Well, today the guy who went to bring it home after the accident came back today and took it with him to see if he can get it started and running. The body damage is fairly limited and could be fixed by somebody else, so I’m going to sell it when it runs. My riding days are over. So, the confluence of the helmet sales today and the bike going away on the same day were sort of strange to me.
Bike gets loaded, friends who helped thanked, hands washed, and we have some lunch. Whilst I was otherwise occupied in the morning, Elaine DVR’d a movie for me. ”The Brain Eaters” It truly is as wretched as it sounds. I loved it. In a sick sort of way, I suppose. I have a real soft spot for crappy B SciFi movies. Still, this was a C movie at best. But I watched it…so it falls into the Weird for today.
And to top the afternoon off, just before dinner, there was an ad on TV where some girl tried to video blow me into buying a pair of glasses at some retail eyeglass place with the Naughty Librarian routine. I know sex sells, but glasses? Really? *sigh*
Just sort of a strange day for me…
Thanks for reading.
James Brush and his Writing Space
James Brush is no stranger to these pages. He was my first interview victim a few months ago. I’ve asked him to return and provide us a glimpse at his writing space and he graciously agreed. This is a fascinating look behind the curtain and I’m pleased to share it with you.
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My dad made this desk for me when we lived in the Philippines when I was a kid. He made one just like it for my brother, and I’m no longer sure if this is mine or his. It seems my brother’s pet rabbit chewed on both of them so there’s no real way to be sure, but it doesn’t matter.
This is the one piece of furniture to which I am truly attached. I never used it for doing homework as was intended or even writing when I was in college (it weighs a ton and so stayed in my parents house until I was somewhat settled). But then around 1995, when I moved into a little duplex in south Austin, the desk came with me. I stuck my computer on it (a Mac from before Macs were cool) and wrote the script that would someday become my novel A Place Without a Postcard.
I also played a lot of Risk and Galactic Frontiers with my roommates around this desk and that old Mac. Eventually, I came to love this desk as a place for writing. It’s damn comfortable and it’s a great desk for a computer, which is cool considering it was built even before we got a Vic-20. I wrote my grad school papers and scripts on it, my three novels (two still unpublished), countless short stories and poems and the final manuscript for Birds Nobody Loves. It’s the place I go when I need time and space for deep and sustained thought.
Then came the laptops. The laptop made every room in the house and beyond into potential writing spaces and now poems get composed wherever and on whatever is handy: scraps of paper, my journal, my phone, email. But for serious revision, assembling poems into collections, playing with photos and videos, messing with blog code and diving into novels the quiet space and that desk are essential. The desk, you see, is built of memory and words as much as wood and sometimes when I write, I can’t shake the feeling that whatever I’m writing or working on fits in like the heavy drawers on that desk with the other things I’ve done.
Last summer, our son was born. Mark asked me to write about how he’s impacted my space, but really the impact has been on the time part of the spacetime continuum. Time moves faster now but in some odd ways, space seems to have expanded to compensate and so writing is done more in snatches and often ideas are drafted out on my phone and then reworked on the laptop in whatever space I might be occupying, but when the time comes to sit down and get real, it’ll be at that desk, usually in the hour or so after he’s gone to sleep and before we crash for the night.
Someday this desk will be his. I hope he likes it and whatever he uses it for, whether a place to write, to pile junk or sit while information is downloaded into some chip in his brain, I hope he’ll get a sense of the history behind the desk, the adventures I’ve been on while sitting at it, my arms resting on the worn wood as they’ve done for nearly 30 years.
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James Brush is a high school English teacher. He published his first poetry collection Birds Nobody Loves back in January. He keeps a full list of publications at his blog Coyote Mercury. James lives in central Texas.
Jessie Carty Interviewed!
I know, right? Two days since the last Guest Post? What in the Wide, Wide World of Sports Is a Goin’ On Around Here?
Today, Jessie Carty, poet and reviewer of poetry (and she also conducts a great interview herself!) is here to share her answers to my series of questions. I’m grateful, not just for her participation (which I am), but for the yeoman’s effort she puts into promoting and sharing the work of others. Her reviews on her blog, and presence in the Online Writing Community are a huge help.
So, without further…aw, you knew I was gonna say that right? And yeah, I totally get the answer to #5.
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1. Without naming it, describe for me your favorite place to think (not write).
–It involves moving my feet whether indoors or outdoors 
2. Do you believe in Writer’s Block? Why or why not.
– I don’t believe in writer’s block. I think we all have times when the ideas, sentences, images seem sparse, but we have to work through those moments by either continuing to write even if it isn’t “good” or by taking the time to rest; to allow ourselves to fill back up with the world around us.
3. Do you carry a notebook?
— Yes! And if for some crazy reason I don’t have it then I at least have my phone where I can record a note to myself or send myself a text message.
4. What inspires you?
–Really everything around me. Recently I found myself enthralled by Joseph Campbell documentaries on myth that are available on Netflix. But, I also found myself drafting a poem during a workshop when a purple and green paint brush was handed to me.
5. What are you afraid of?
–Not writing.
6. How can humor improve poem? Do you write or enjoy poetry with a smile?
–I love a poem that can bring a good chuckle. Like the need for tragedy, they can’t all make you laugh, but I welcome those that do.
7. What is more rewarding for you, the finished product or the writing process?
– That’s a really tough one. I LOVE the process of writing and I teach writing composition so I try to instill that in my students, but there is something to be said about having a poem that feels “done” especially when I am standing up at an open mike or other reading.
8. How can your art change the world where you live?
–It’s hard for me to say that what I do with my small voice can really make a difference, but even my former high school writing self thought there was something to be said for everyone putting their voices out there. I think by sharing what we have gone through, or the way we see the world, we have a chance to create compassion and empathy. We definitely need more of that.
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Jessie Carty’s writing has appeared in publications such as, MARGIE, decomP and Connotation Press. She is the author of five poetry collections which include Fat Girl (Sibling Rivalry, 2011) as well as the award winning full length poetry collection,Paper House (Folded Word 2010). Jessie teaches at RCCC in Concord, NC. She is also the managing editor of Referential Magazine. She can be found around the web, especially at http://jessiecarty.com .
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