Train Music

Goodness this blog (when I have actually been able to squeeze out a post) has been veering rapidly past depressing toward being irritatingly whiny. On top of that, you would think I haven’t been listening to any music as of late. Sorry about that. Let’s see if we can’t correct that, eh?

This afternoon finds me on my way home from NYC on the ole Amtrak NE Regional and while I should be doing some work, train trips always make me reflective and in the mood to listen to music as the cities and landscape slide by the window. I tend to have a certain kind of music that I prefer on the train—typically, acoustic and contemplative. Think Nick Drake, Gillian Welch, Bon Iver or Sun Kil Moon—and if you happen to sing about trains often like say,Tom Rush, that is a little bonus.

Well let’s add José Gonzáles to that list. Gonzáles comes to me by way of the magical Pandora on my acoustic station. He officially hails from Sweden, but given that he was born to parents who moved there from Argentina, the Latin-influence sound in his guitar makes a bit more sense. While he like so many played in a variety of bands of various types over time, entering into his music as I did (late) with his first full solo album Veneer, it is hard for me to imagine him as anything but a thoughtful singer-songwriter with wonderful lyrical guitar sense.

This 2003 album is slow and haunting with little more than double-tracked guitar and voice. As is always the case with me, I love the song that seems simple but ultimately warrants revisiting over and over. And I love the spaces in the music which leave you anticipating the fill. And the fill is beautifully quiet classical guitar that brings a certain tension to the songs as the lyrics float across the guitar line.

Here are two that I think really capture the album, particularly the way in which the songs can be so similar in some ways and so unique in others. I will be curious to see what I think of his second album, which I will surely pick up.

Crosses (Buy Album)
Hints

Now back to my window.

Lessons from Movies on the Road

So the travel continues--and it is rapidly moving from the “getting old” category to the “something must change” as I really have had enough of being away from the family. This trip involved missing two baseball practices, a piano recital, and one reportedly hilarious afternoon of slip-and-slide on the hill in the backyard.

The only up side of this latest trip is that it has involved driving and trains rather than airplanes. Now you may have a variety of complaints about air travel including being nickel-and-dimed at every step of the process, having to basically disrobe to get through security (they will be charging for that soon), being crammed into a small-as–conceivable-space-as-possible to sit in for an extended period of time and on and on.

But I want to add another complaint: the airlines clearly have an agenda of making parents who travel feel as guilty as possible about their work travels with the movies that decide to show.

For instance, on a recent trip to California the movie was The Blind Side in which we see the happy family taking in the down-on-his-luck dude, making him feel a part of a family that will never abandon him. The family is tight and always there for this guy—their father would never leave them or miss a key game—no, no, he is always there as if he almost doesn’t have a job! Sure, I know, just a movie just showing the positive moments—not reality, blah, blah, blah. Try to talk that to me and the two businessmen sitting with me in my row who were all not so subtlety dabbing our eyes at the corners during the movie at every emotional moment.

It reminded me of an earlier trip where they showed The Rookie in which Dennis Quaid plays a baseball player in the minors trying to make it in the big leagues. You get all these scenes of him being away from his kids (he is of course a great dad) and is just about to throw it all in because he can’t stand it. C’mon, that just isn’t fair! And then when I talked to two of my colleagues who were also on that trip and saw the same movie on the plane (and who had young children as well), I learned that they too were a mess watching the film for all the same reasons.

But the film on the way home on my last trip really took the cake. It was Everybody’s Fine starring Robert De Niro and many others. It is a remake of remake of the Giuseppe Tornatore film Stanno Tutti Bene and if you haven’t seen it the basic plot goes likes this.

De Niro is retired and a recent widower who has four kids. He dreams of getting all the kids back together but they can no longer make it. So he decides to go out and visit them all, but discovers in doing so that he doesn’t know his children at all, they never told him anything although were all close with their mother, they feel he was hard on them when they were young and so were forever worrying about not meeting his expectations and before he discovers this all, one of his children has died. Man oh man—really?

Sure everything ends up great in the end—it is Hollywood after all, but it is hard to see the ending when you are in the midst of a plot that feels like it isn’t going in the direction you want. So, I guess it is either time to stop watching movies on planes or actually doing something to change things so I don’t have to count on a Hollywood ending.

An Open Letter to Life

Dear Life:

I shall blog. You cannot stop me as hard as you try. I know you are working at it, but it will not stop me. As of late you have:

• buried me with work including an eight day trip to California;
• greeted me upon my return with family visiting as well as international guests;
• unleashed Spring in full force requiring concerted effort to get the yard and garden in shape (and recover from the havoc you let loose in the form of sequential winter storms earlier this year);
• chided me for still having a winter-oriented header on my blog;
• decided that the California trip wasn't enough so you tacked on an overnight to PA followed by a couple days in NYC;
• had various friends and family email and phone me to remind me that I am a horrible correspondent and life is no real excuse; and,
• taunted me into trying to see baseball season as another problem rather than the source of happiness.

So here I am life, blogging. And while this blogging may be seen as nothing but filler for real blogging, there is no denying that I am, in fact, blogging and you, busy life, have not stopped me. Furthermore, I have many, many blog ideas that will surely come to fruition in short order--once I get just a few other things done.

Sincerely,

cps

Teamwork: The Movie

Today, after recovering from my annual irritation with G.V. Hudson and the retail industry, I showed the boys xtranormal which I learned about thanks to a few colleagues. Of course, the boys immediately wanted to make a movie. So here you go.

The script is totally random--has nothing to do with my life or the boys (really)! You can tell for sure that it has nothing to do with the boys because it includes none of the available bodily function sounds that xtranormal provides you with (although early versions did and provided belly-laughing, tear-rendering responses).

And so for now, we give you the short cathartic sketch: "Teamwork."

Sounds of Spring

Curious to find myself wanting to hear side one of Outlandos d'Amour this morning on the way to work and then side three of Three Sides Live on the way home--okay they were discs but had I been a teenager back in my bedroom acting like I was doing homework with my headphones on, it would have been vinyl and those would have been the sides. But why the sudden urge to hear The Police and Genesis? Could it be just more signs of regression as I head for the fetal position searching for some lost happy time?

Possibly. But more likely it is the fact that the weather for the last few days has actually felt like spring. The sun has been out and the days extend. The air is decidedly warm by afternoon and evening. People are outdoors, working, eating, enjoying the luxurious warmth. And that has us all believing that at long last, winter might (knock, knock) be done.

For me that means that certain music starts to call to me. Music that reminds me of springs past like that first Police album and how "Roxanne" mysteriously came on over the loudspeaker when our tennis coach in high school was giving us our pep talk. Music that hints at summer and so you put it on urging the sun and summer to arrive (but not really, because spring and the promise and the anticipation are so wonderful). Music that is jangly and a cacophony of sounds like spring. Music that celebrates the end of another academic year--a cycle that I still cannot shake after ten years out of the classroom. But mostly, music that makes you want to put the window down and let the warm spring wind with its hint of summer (and the music) brush over your skin and awaken your senses.

So here are just a few bands and albums that make me think of spring. Some are from many years ago and some more recent. They aren't only "spring bands" but many are. And no apologies here for the sappy or overly popular as these are all bands that hit me at a certain time in my life and still stay with me.

• Steve Winwood: Arc of a Diver and Back in the High Life
• English Beat: I Just Can't Stop It and Special Beat Service
• Dire Straits: Communique
• Los Lobos: The Neighborhood
• Ani Difranco: Living in Clip
• Soul Coughing: El Oso
• Van Morrison: Moondance
• Rickie Lee Jones: The Magazine
• Wilco: Sky Blue Sky
• Flaming Lips: The Soft Bulletin
• Rilo Kiley: Take Offs and Landings

Then there is all that acoustic music that comes out when the long rains and lush spring green comes out in full ranging from Celtic music to Nick Drake to Fleet Foxes. But for now, we enjoy the anticipation.

Friday Haiku

Unexpected package

Japanese death poems - small things,

Friends renew like Spring

Educating EMI (and others): Pass It On

NPR's All Songs blog has a great post up about OK Go's new video which they fought with their record label over around the issue of whether or not to allow the You Tube version of the video to be embedded. As All Songs reports, OK Go's lead singer Damien Kulash took to the NY Times to make his case, writing:

"In these tight times, it's no surprise that EMI is trying to wring revenue out of everything we make, including our videos. But it needs to recognize the basic mechanics of the Internet. Curbing the viral spread of videos isn't benefiting the company's bottom line, or the music it's there to support. The sooner record companies realize this, the better -- though I fear it may already be too late."

Amen--and when I saw this on All Song's Twitter feed I was just going to retweet it and be done, since really, All Songs really covered the story. But then I thought a bit more about it. Given all the discussion around Google take-downs of music blogs, and the increasing move toward a splinter-net, I thought, anyone who tries to promote music via blogs, social media and the web in general really ought to support OK Go's basic position, which is to let the Internets do their job.

So here is the fabulous new Rube Goldberg inspired OK Go video and I am asking any blogger or person with a Facebook page or Twitter or Buzz account who wants to promote music to also embed this video so we might teach EMI and any other label that there is value in what we do here on these crazy linkable viral pages.

In addition to all of that, this is a fabuluous video for getting kids interested in physics, engineering, etc. (says the father who showed it to his boys, once, twice, three times--no really you need to go to bed now). And for the real curious, as All Songs notes, you can get links to the "Musicians and Nerds" series of videos about the making of this video over at Monkey See.

Now, embed it and viralize it people!