Every Time I Look at You, Evil Grows in Me

• The Poppy Family, “Where Evil Grows”

A Canadian hit from the early 1970s, this song always makes me laugh because of the disconnect between the bitter, paranoid lyrics and the scrubbed & pinkly gleaming production. (Reminds me of the Kingston Trio singing about how they “don’t give a damn about a greenback dollar” with perfect elocution.) You wonder if there’s a bit of winking going on, and perhaps there is. But damn if it isn’t a really well-made tune, with some spine & swagger beneath the pretty harmonies and the little organ garnishes.

The Poppy Family – buy a comp here – was led by Terry Jacks, who’s of course best known for the maudlin weeper “Seasons in the Sun” (“Goodbye Michelle, it’s hard to die….”). “Where Evil Grows” was covered at some point by DOA; I’ve only heard their take a couple of times and really can’t remember it, but I feel confident in saying that it was no doubt an over-the-top parodic version.

The cover version I’d really like to hear is Barbara Manning’s – I don’t know if she even knows this song exists, but boy, for some reason I can always hear her singing it in my mind; the lyrics & the rhythm just seem like her kind of thing. (Her occasionally updated website is here.)

Overheard Lobby Blank Verse

when you see rooms not set
I want a list of what wasnt done
and every time it happens I will take fifty dollars out of their tips
and give it to you
which doesnt compensate for what happened
but

A Choice to Hoist My Engine

What are you in the mood for today? A double-bass instrumental sidle with some percolating solo work, or that same song plus trumpet & piano calligraphy, plus actual vocals, plus some percolating solo work?

OK, how about both?

Both are courtesy of Mike Watt, the first via his Dos two-bass project with erstwhile wife Kira, the second via his all-star-guest-packed solo album Ball-Hog or Tugboat? (And just to complicate things a little, the first is chronologically the second – the Dos album in question, Justamente Tres, came out in 1996, the solo album the year before that.)

Some more raw data: on the Ball-Hog version I believe that’s Flea on trumpet and Carla Bozulich (of the Geraldine Fibbers) on vocals. Lots of good stuff on the album, by the way, including a voice-mail rant from Kathleen Hanna and a cover of Funkadelic’s “Maggot Brain” with J. Mascis on guitar.

• Dos, “Sidemouse Advice”
• Mike Watt, “Sidemouse Advice”

(Buy Justamente Tres here and try for Ball-Hog or Tugboat? at poignantly bargain prices here. And thanks to S. for bringing the great Dos version to my attention.)

Talkin’ American Office Canadian Network Blues

So I’ve become deeply obsessed with the American version of The Office. Remember before it came out, when everyone was singing all 12 verses of “How Dare They” and explaining how wretched & unfunny & clunky it was going to be, an embarrassment to all involved? Guess reflexive dismissiveness isn’t always the smart call. I loved the British version, but I love the American one more, partly because its milieu is closer to mine (as this article argues), but mainly because it makes better use of the supporting cast and is more nuanced.

Problem: the season premiere airs tonight, following up on last season’s cliffhanger, and I’m outta luck. You see, the Canadian network Global has rights to The Office, and the show is nowhere to be found in their Thursday night listings. If I had basic cable, I could just watch it on NBC, but I do not have basic cable.

(I may as well note here that I also had the misfortune of relying on Global for supporting my Arrested Development habit – when they did begin airing the show, tardily and irregularly, they also aired the episodes in an apparently random order.)

Anyway, when I’m obsessed, I do stupid & wasteful things.

I’ll paste my brief correspondence with Global on this matter below. Not because I think my whining does me any credit (in general, when you find yourself using the phrase “this Emmy-winning show,” you should realize that you’re starting to splutter), but because I’m actually chucklingly impressed with the nameless Viewer Relations Associate’s speed and patience.

I.

From: DW
To: Viewer Relations (CIII)
Subject: The Office

Dear folks at Global,

So I see that the season premiere of The Office is airing this Thursday -- but NOT, according to my local listings, on Global. Just wondering if you’re planning on actually running this Emmy-winning show, and if so, when? Maybe I should just finally order proper cable so I can simply watch NBC and never have to rely on Global again.

DW

II.

From: "Viewer Relations (CIII)
To: DW
Subject: RE: The Office

Both My Name Is Earl and The Office do not fit into our schedule at this point in time. We are holding on to the episodes for future use. Until then, please tune to NBC at 8pm tonight to catch the Premiere episodes.

~Viewer Relations

III.

From: DW
To: Viewer Relations (CIII)
Subject: Re: RE: The Office

You do realize how insane it is that two hit Emmy-winning shows “do not fit into your schedule,” right?

IV.

From: Viewer Relations (CIII)
To: DW
Subject: RE: RE: The Office

We realize that these are two popular shows and will definitely be airing them at some point later on in the season.

Groovy, Groovy, Groovy

So my copy of Yo La Tengo’s new record finally arrived today (courtesy of this “Season Pass” preorder scheme that Matador Records cooked up), and while I’m annoyed with Matador for reasons undoubtedly too petty to go into here, the record is a great grab-bag of pop sounds, more grab-baggy and more poppy, I think, than any other Yo La album. It may easily end up being my favourite Yo La album period.

Also today I learned that Yo La’s Ira Kaplan has written about a dozen of his favourite albums for eMusic, and man, he’s a really good writer, funny & persuasive – he got me excited about the records I hadn’t heard & eager to revisit the ones I had.

Reading the eMusic list also brought back fond memories. About 15 years ago, I wrote a couple of fan letters to Kaplan as a big admirer of the first few Yo La records (Fakebook was the most recent at the time). He replied graciously, and I immediately pushed my luck and – inspired by some of the weirdo covers on Fakebook – asked if he’d do a couple of cassette mixes if I mailed him the tapes. Looking back, I’m mortified at my own gall, but even more astonished that he actually agreed to do it. I mailed the tapes, he filled them up, and a few months later he ended up handing them over in person at the first Yo La Tengo gig I ever saw (Horseshoe, May 1992, touring for May I Sing with Me). I remember him calling out, “Hey, Georgia, this is the guy I made the tapes for!”

Those tapes really opened up my head. They had everything from Duke Ellington (though I didn’t truly fall in love with “Money Jungle” until I heard it by chance in a bar years later, and in that moment I fell hard) to non-LP Television and Neil Young cuts to the Stalk-Forrest Group (predecessors of Blue Oyster Cult) to fantastic semi-novelty stuff I would never have come across in my life. Some of the cuts have turned up on this site directly (Sun Ra’s “Love in Outer Space”) or indirectly (Van Dyke Parks’s “Jack Palance”), and the only reason more haven’t is my vague sense that too much bandwagoning onto Ira’s mojo would be some kind of impropriety.

Over the years I’ve seen Yo La Tengo must be close to 15 times, interviewed them, and probably heard everything they’ve ever put out, barring some ultra-rare singles or something. And even though I’ve liked some of their albums less than others (well, really only one, maybe one and a half, less than others), they’re still, to paraphrase a friend, “one of the only bands around that I care about with the naked enthusiasm of a teenager.” There’s something about the band’s tastes & sensibilities I just feel simpatico with, in a way that’s hard to pin down. (Though I suspect their love of comedy a la Mr. Show, Kids in the Hall, Larry Sanders, etc. is somehow a not-insignificant factor.)

So, anyway, impropriety or not, here are a couple more gems from the Kaplan Tapes. With belated thanks again to Ira, should he ever happen to read this. However much I thanked him at the time, it probably wasn’t enough.

• Joe Dodo & the Groovers, “Groovy”
• The Twinkeyz, “Aliens in Our Midst”
• Marty Neon, “Voila, Pronounced ‘Wal-La’”
• DMZ, “Mighty Idy”
  

Hey, Come On, Babe, Come Off It

A friend tells me that the former frontman of Blue Peter (presumably Paul Humphrey) works at his neighbourhood bar, which is pretty cool. For those who don’t know them, Blue Peter made catchy Roxyish new wave pop in the late 1970s & early 1980s. I never delved too deeply into their stuff – I was pretty young at the time, and immersed in my classic rock studies – but I always really liked the singles I heard, like “Don’t Walk Past” and “Radio Silence.” None more so than “Chinese Graffiti,” with that twitchy guitar & the decorative keyboard bit (hey, sounds kinda Asian or something!) that’s eventually overwhelmed by the song’s rising urgency.

“Chinese Graffiti” was also greatly helped out by backing vocals from Sherry Kean, who was in a band called the Sharks and who had a big solo pop hit in 1984 with “I Want You Back.” I always really liked that song & still do – I’m always beguiled by the way, in the opening minute or so, it takes a second for the keyboard line and the rhythm to sync. As if they were each doing their own thing on the dancefloor, and then happened to notice each other and decide to team up.

• Blue Peter, “Chinese Graffiti”
• Sherry Kean, “I Want You Back”

You can learn more about Blue Peter here and Sherry Kean (not sure whatever became of her) here, and you can buy a Blue Peter comp here. And I’ll stress again that if any of the parties involved happen to come across this and don’t appreciate these songs being posted, say the word & down they come.

This Western Oriental’s Going Full Circle

• Cornershop, “6 A.M. Jullandar Shere”

“Jullandar Shere” is probably still my favourite Cornershop song. What is there not to love about a marathon tamboura drone, steaming & sweaty, sung in Punjabi with a soaring chorus? (If you dig it, and I hope you do, there’s also an even longer version – under the title “7:20 A.M. Jullandar Shere” – on the album, Woman’s Gotta Have It, which you can & should buy here.)

I’ve put the track here to segue into Mira Nair’s The Namesake at the filmfest, which is based on Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel. I reviewed the book for the Toronto Star when it came out back in 2003, and I’ll stick the review below for the curious. (I’ve never mastered that whole “after the jump” thing – can you do that with Blogger? – so I’m afraid you’ll just have to scroll down if you want to skip the review and see previous posts.)

While I mainly stand by the review, in retrospect its last sentence does seem a little hard on the book, which has held my memory and affection much more than I would have guessed at the time. I was quite charmed by the movie, too. I liked it a lot, even though it was pretty smooth – at times it seemed like every scene and beat was designed for a specific and obvious narrative purpose. (In contrast, Jindabyne, my other filmfest choice so far, was full of tangents and ambiguities.) The visuals were often lovely, and lovingly captured.

But that’s enough film-reviewing – here’s some old book-reviewing.

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

Jhumpa Lahiri made her name four years ago with her first book, the superb short-story collection Interpreter of Maladies. Impressive for its crisp prose and close attention to physical and emotional detail, Lahiri’s work also showed a strong grasp of the narrative economy of the short-story form. But these days it’s assumed that young writers will “graduate” to novel-writing as quickly as possible, and she’s done so with her second book, The Namesake.

While the novel shares no characters or plotlines with the nine stories in Lahiri’s debut, it flows so naturally from its predecessor that it still has the feel of a sequel. Interpreter of Maladies is full of Indian immigrants and their Westernized children, settled in the northeastern U.S. and struggling with cultural confusion as well as faltering relationships. The closing story, “The Third and Final Continent,” has a tone of resolution: the narrator’s acclimation to America, and the wary first days of his arranged marriage, give way to a warm but believable declaration of love for both his adopted country and his wife. Still, The Namesake shows that Lahiri isn’t done with the dilemmas explored in the collection.

The novel centres on Gogol Ganguli, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1968 to recently arrived Indian immigrants. His father, Ashoke, is a young university professor; his mother, Ashima, dotes on memories of Calcutta while regarding her new home with suspicion. Gogol grows up surrounded both by American white-bread culture and by his parents’ ever-expanding network of Bengali-American friends. His unusual name springs from family history – Ashoke, a devotee of Russian literature, credits his absorption in Nikolai Gogol’s story “The Overcoat” with saving his life during a train wreck – but to Gogol it only represents one more obstacle in his quest for self-assimilation.

The story follows the first 30-odd years of Gogol’s more-or-less-ordinary life. He discovers the Beatles, graduates from high school, changes his name to the less conspicuous Nikhil, becomes an architect, falls in and out of love, and copes with a death in the family. Each chapter tends to skip a few years ahead of the last, but that doesn’t mean the story moves from one dramatic pivot to another. In fact, not much actually happens; for a book about identity crisis, the conflict here is pretty low-key. Gogol’s parents aren’t particularly oppressive, the travails of his struggle to fit in not especially stinging. After all, the central drama of the first 100 pages is a teenager not liking his name – hardly stop-the-presses stuff.

Yet The Namesake is surprisingly readable, propelled by Lahiri’s expert description. As in her short stories, she snares the reader with a patient layering of detail – from the dirty lining in a kitchen cupboard to the layout of an apartment complex – that never slips into mere information. At her best, she combines that detail with sharp observation of character, making for bold insights, subtly presented. Probably the book’s strongest section recounts Gogol’s affair with a pampered Manhattanite WASP who lives with her rich parents – fully Americanized at last, he’s dating a lifestyle as much as a person. An episode near the end of the book also convincingly captures the pain and confusion of a collapsing marriage. And although these bits stand out, the entire novel is extremely well-written.

Perhaps, in fact, a little too well-written. Throughout the book Lahiri relies on an excessively formal tone, evident in small word choices that start to add up: “contain” rather than hold, “obtain” rather than get, “converse” rather than talk. (When the conversing is especially good, one character even “expresses interest.”) That the novel includes a textbook-ready phrase like “a practice of Bengali nomenclature grants, to every single person, two names” is telling; that the wording hardly seems out of place is even more so.

It’s not that Lahiri’s writing is either clunky or showy. On the contrary, her prose carries undeniable grace, and she’s confident enough to avoid the kind of capital-W Writing with which so many young authors overinflate their work. But the ever-careful language tends to hold us at a reserve, limiting our emotional investment. As the critic James Wood has complained of John Updike, we are not immersed in the characters’ experiences and feelings – rather, we get an author’s very elegant essay about those experiences and feelings. (The book’s summary-style structure, in which many pages pass with little to no dialogue, doesn’t help in this regard either.) At its worst, the disconnect is comical: “He is shocked and discomfited by the news.” Not shocked and discomfited!

There’s nothing inherently wrong with a dry, detached style. But it’s unsuited to a novel that’s meant to showcase a central character’s inner journey. Finishing The Namesake, no reader could fail to admire Lahiri’s skill in exploring her themes, in balancing various motifs, in closing the story with a tidy nod to Gogol’s past and his family history. But all that admiration won’t erase the nagging wish that we’d gotten to know Gogol a little better, come to care for him a little more.

30

PSA: Bang the Drum All Day (Or, Voyeur Campouts?)

A few months back I called a cranky post “I Just Wanna Bang on My Drum All Day” off the top of my head, thinking of that song from a thousand commercials. Since then, according to my back-end admin records, many people have come to this site searching for “bang the drum all day mp3” and “bang on my drums all day mp3” and “bang my drum all day lyrics” and “I just wanna bang on these drums all day” and “song bang a drum all day” and many others.

So: The song is called “Bang the Drum All Day” and was written and recorded by Todd Rundgren and is available for sale on this greatest-hits. I suppose I could just post an mp3 myself, but I’m not feeling that civic-minded.

And to whoever came here after searching for “voyeur campouts,” I don’t think I can help you.

On with the Show, This Is It

Was trolling for other versions of the sublime “Pata Pata” a little while ago and came across this space-age-lounge cover by French bandleader Paul Mauriat, who was unknown to me. (Some more info here.) I hear this as the overture to some kind of primetime pageant in bizarro-world Hollywood, or maybe just old Hollywood. Clouds of mist spray the air with a sickly-sweet scent, green and pink accents tint the spotlights, and at centre stage there’s a moustached leather-skinned guy in a tuxedo uttering banalities into one of those very long & thin microphones (topped by a tiny bulb), and despite his sparkling obsequious grin there’s something in the wink of his eye that makes you depressed & even anxious. And yet the backing music reassures you in a way: in its parodic excesses it confirms that you’re right to feel anxious & alienated.

Still, you keep watching.

Then there’s the Miriam Makeba oriignal, which is all about joy and fellowship in trying circumstances, a song that everyone should have in their life, and a song I won’t describe further because doing so would defeat a minor goal of mine to not use so many superlatives on this site. I’ll keep the Makeba version up for a short time only but you can buy some of her stuff here. (And some Mauriat here.)

• Paul Mauriat, “Pata Pata”
• Miriam Makeba, “Pata Pata”

It’s a Congo Party

Lee Perry’s production work has come to me mainly in compilations, single sides, hodgepodges, bits. But The Heart of the Congos, by the Congos – recorded at Perry’s Black Ark studio and released in 1977 – is I think the only Perry-linked proper album that I disappear into on a regular basis. The way the dub rhythms of “Fisherman” roll like a boat-bearing tide; the ghostly incantations of “Congoman”; the gentle percussion clanks of “Open Up the Gate”....

I could go on track by track, but for brevity’s sake I’ll stop at #4, “Children Crying,” which always knocks me out. With the piano flutters (or pianolike? I guess you never know) and the cresting backing vocals, it seems like a bloom of colour and warmth bursting out of a dark landscape. The moo sounds really help sell it, too.

You can buy the two-disc CD reissue of The Heart of the Congos here. I remember buying it just before moving to Toronto, so it always has fond summer associations for me – though it works pretty fine as an autumn record too.

• The Congos, “Children Crying”

It’s a Bongo Party

Well, I’m back, and hoping my little blog holiday didn’t cost me whatever readership I have. Was up at the Bruce Peninsula for another relaxing week – this time the rental cottage opened directly onto a lakeside beach, and there were horseshoes! (you know, the game where you throw horseshoes onto spikes?) – and then back working, and then not doing much other than reading this (never read it before, superb) and this (enjoying it so far) and watching this and this.

(Quick thought about the second-lattermost thing: I loved the plot arc about Michael dating a British woman without realizing that she was mentally challenged, but wouldn’t the whole thing have been much, much funnier if the audience had known right from the start? The one episode where we do know seemed to pop in comparison to the rest, and yeah, you can argue in favour of suspense or mystery or whatever, but historically Arrested Development was about nothing more than bringing as much funny as possible as quickly as possible.)

(Quick thought about the lattermost thing: I must now admit – to myself as well as the outside world – that I prefer the original cut of Apocalypse Now, and I don’t think it’s just because of the years of familiarity. Some of the extra Redux stuff was interesting, sure, but a lot of it seemed superfluous – I didn’t mind the added scene with the Playboy bunnies, but it didn’t seem to add much – and the French plantation section really did not work for me period.)

Anyway, gearing up for the filmfest, and though I’m currently ticketless I’m still hoping to score a few, like this and this (this last one filmed & set in my hometown) among other things. In honour of the South African-made and -set former, here’s a lovely track from a great South African comp, The History of Township Music, which can be purchased at a reasonable price here and which was recommended to me (well, not to me specifically, but to the world) here. I have to be careful about listening to this on the iPod because I’m liable to adopt a sort of skipping gait, clicking my fingers and pointing and smiling at passersby.

• Solven Whistlers, “Something New in Africa”
  

And back in North America, here are a couple from Davie Allan & the Arrows, who are probably best known for the nugget “Blue’s Theme” but had lots of good stuff in their repertoire, as this very fine two-disc comp shows. I have to be careful about Davie Allan on the iPod because I’m liable to adopt a sort of cocky swagger – which, come to think of it, is probably indistinguishable to passersby from the sort-of-skipping gait.

• Davie Allan & the Arrows, “Bongo Party”
• Davie Allan & the Arrows, “Cycle-Delic”