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Thursday, April 10th, 2008
I got into the theater and discovered it's a lovely room. Who knew there was a beautiful ballroom on the top floor of Manhattan Center? I did not. My seat was in the front row -- the dance floor had been covered with rows of seats -- about 15 feet away from the performers. The crowd was mostly white, but exhibited a wide diversity of age and of fashion sense. Robyn walked out onto the stage and informed us the building was originally an airship, until it was taken out of comission in the thirties, "around when many people believe the Marx Brothers peaked." -- From there he segued into a story about Groucho Marx traveling cross-country on ducks, "very long ducks that moved on rails and belched coal;" this was by way of introducing his first song, "Heaven," which I did not recognize though I believe I've heard it before -- it is a sweet love song. Next was "Daisy Bomb," which I'm sure I've never heard. It is startling and catchy, and I thought, Awesome, this is going to be a night of new songs for me. Sometimes a bomb is not enough
To express the way I feel Robyn spent a minute tuning his guitar and explained how tuning as part of the show is very important, "tuning up a guitar is the sex part of" sex, drugs, rock n' roll. You see, if you as the audience absorb the tuning-up vibes through your coccyx, you will be able to radiate them outwards later on, when you go up to the tower to feed your pet hamster, or gerbil, or rodent. Be careful, you don't fall over and set fire to his straw! And he played "I Got the Hots," beautiful and funny. He seems to play this very frequently and that is alright by me. A lovely pantomime with his guitar at the beginning of it. Robyn talked about his being "Nick Lowe's psychedelic younger brother," and how that was reflected in the shirts they buy and wear. Then he played "Wax Doll" and "The Cheese Alarm," two more songs I was not familiar with. I guess a large area of his catalog remains for me to explore!
A little more tuning -- Robyn talked about how he was "tuning by consensus -- you see if two strings agree, I will tune the third to match them, even though the third might have been the one that was correct all along... like the people who thought we should not invade Iraq. The majority rules." He played "Full Moon in my Soul," which I love, love, love, and "One Long Pair of Eyes," and then talked about how Gandhi kept a Stratocaster and a Marshall stack next to his bed, but never played -- it was an exercise in resisting temptation -- "He never even touched the strings..." and played "Glass Hotel," which I think he plays nearly as often as "I Got the Hots," and which I like, but not quite as well as the other. The last song of this all-too-short set was a new song, possibly called "I declare that we are free," written for the 60th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights. Robyn said he had been asked to write it on short notice "because David Crosby was not available," and that it is going to be performed in a stadium in Holland, so we should imagine that it is "produced and in tune". And he left the stage! But, came back out for encores after Nick Lowe did his set. The final two encores were just tremendous, the best thing in the whole show: Robyn and Nick and surprise guest Elvis Costello playing "If I Fell in Love with You" and "Mystery Train", the whole audience was a single body. Robyn took lead vocal on both, totally appropriate given that he has the best voice of the three.
 Lowe's set was, well, a little corny it must be said. He is a handsome man and an excellent, charismatic showman; but his songs are lacking in the spark of genius. He played "Cruel to be Kind," "What's So Funny About Peace, Love, and Understanding," "All Men are Liars" and some other tunes I thought I recognized, plus some new stuff. Some lovely tunes but just a bit corny. Update: Here are some pix from SketchGuy... who blogs about the show here.
posted morning of April 10th, 2008: 5 responses
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Wednesday, April 9th, 2008
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posted evening of April 9th, 2008: Respond
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I told Bill I will be happy with whatever Robyn plays tonight; and that's true, short of Beatles covers, which I'll suffer through if I have to.* But... it would totally make my year if he would play "Birds in Perspex". (Listen to it here -- aah, beautiful.) He seems in interviews to have sort of repudiated the album "Perspex Island" but it's hard for me to figure out why, precisely. So I guess I will just cross my fingers, and maybe get lucky.
 *(Not that I don't like the Beatles or anything, I just don't think Robyn does a very good job of covering them. OTOH he's done some great covers of Lennon's and McCartney's solo work so who knows.)**
**(Note: this thesis is now null and void.)
posted afternoon of April 9th, 2008: Respond
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This just seems like a really poorly composed headline to me: Petræus Urges Halt in Weighing New Cut in Force ...Wait, he urges what? A... halt in... weighing... a new cut in... force! Ok, so Congress is weighing a new cut in force. So Petræus is not urging them to reject the cut, he's urging them to stop talking about it! But you need to parse the headline for about 30 seconds to figure that out. (Not happy about the content of the article either but that is more a quibble with the times than with the Times.)
posted afternoon of April 9th, 2008: Respond
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Tuesday, April 8th, 2008
Hmm. I seem to be using too many exclamation points of late... Not sure why (maybe excitement directed toward tomorrow's concert?) -- will try to keep that under control.
posted morning of April 8th, 2008: Respond
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Monday, April 7th, 2008
Minivet has a blog! With lots of playful etymology! Also, he links to an excellent feature from the NY Times.
posted afternoon of April 7th, 2008: 2 responses
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Sunday, April 6th, 2008
I didn't know about the Leningrad Cowboys until my dad sent along this clip today. Utterly fabulous. There are many songs of theirs on YouTube, and they have a couple of movies: Leningrad Cowboys Go America, Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses, Total Balalaika Show. Awesome.
 (Speaking of Scandinavian bands, it's always worth while linking to Hurra Torpedo's cover of "Total Eclipse of the Heart": you
will never think about 80's power pop in quite the same way.)
posted evening of April 6th, 2008: Respond
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Robert Fagles died this week, 74 years old. I am sorry to hear about it. I just loved his translations of Homer -- reading them really opened my ears to what epic poetry should sound like. I heard him read from Ulysses one Bloomsday several years back; if I remember right he signed my Iliad. (Sure where it is, I am however not; since then I got the big hardcover printing of his Iliad and Odyssey when they were published together. I wonder where I put the paperback copy? I may have loaned it out.) One of these days I will get to reading the Æneid, and I will be glad there is a Fagles translation available. (I remember making a start on Fitzgerald's translation, in my teens -- somebody gave it to me for my birthday one year -- and finding it impenetrable.)
Looking at his Wikipædia entry, I see he also translated the Oresteia, the Theban plays of Sophocles, and the poems of Bacchylides. Of these, I loved Lattimore's Oresteia when I read it long ago (in a way I did not love his translations of Homer); I never would have thought a new translation was needed. And yet I would probably recommend Fagles unread to someone who asked what translation they should get. Lattimore's Sophocles did not make much of an impression on me; I ought to read Fagles'. Bacchylides I have never heard of (to the best of my recollection).
posted afternoon of April 6th, 2008: Respond
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Sylvia and her mom are using the computer to write an invitation to her upcoming sleep-over party. Sylvia: "Mom, could you spell something wrong? I want to do a spell-check!" ... "Dad, look! We're going to have 'lots of foon'!" This game is occupying her for a long time. (Speaking of games: she's very taken with the physics simulations which Thoreau linked a little while back. Thanks, Thoreau! Among other cool details she noticed that you can make David's pants fall off if you aim the cannonball correctly. She's still trying to smash David but I suspect it is not part of the software.)
posted morning of April 6th, 2008: Respond
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Saturday, April 5th, 2008
Tyler Cowen says of Pamuk's books that "The Black Book is the one to read last, once you know the others." I wonder how true this is, and why. I am, coincidentally, reading The Black Book last (leaving aside that I never finished The New Life -- Cowen thinks I would understand it better if I had knowledge of "how Dante appropriated Islamic theological writings for his own ends," which is certainly possible), and it does seem like a good position in the reading order for it. On the other hand I have recommended it to some friends who have not read any Pamuk, principally on the basis of their liking Pynchon -- this book seems to me to have a lot in common with Pynchon's writing, which I don't think any of Pamuk's other books do, particularly much. I think Snow is a great book to have read first -- principally because I relate very strongly to the lines from its first few pages that I quoted here -- Ka driving into the blizzard is (in certain ways) like me starting to read Snow.
posted evening of April 5th, 2008: Respond
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