Greg Brown is a great performer, and it helps that he's got an 8am whiskey voice, a no-nonsense sort of attitude and eyebrows like you feel like only the devil and Riad should have. Joe Price is an amazing and rather self-deprecating blues guitarist; his only vanity appeared to be his cowboy boots. And Vicki Price not only plays the steel guitar in excellent and stately rhythm, but she has a serious set of pipes on her. Those are three performers from Kansas/Iowa and parts flat and distant whom you feel have seen most if not all that this world has to offer.
I love how you can viscerally trust good musicians. Like Patti Smith and Neko Case and The Hold Steady.
So, then in the local scene, Eilen Jewell is a light, small, serious performer who's just really enjoyable to listen to. I only call her light because her musicality is impeccable, and her songs are well-written, and she's got a lot of good old country blues and folk-style songs... but I haven't heard a lot of her more personal music. Angry or sad, she's always so smooth. Which is why I'm excited about her new album, and a bit sad that I didn't wander over to Johnny D's after the Greg Brown show, because her first act was canceled, the cover was free on account of the Sox game, and she would have been setting up to play just as I walked in. But where I went, there was bluegrass, so I feel like it all came out alright.
Anje Duvekot is playful (and stunningly, multi-dimensionally attractive) and her songs are all over the place in tone and subject. She writes what she thinks, she's friendly, and her live performances are better than anything I've heard from her that was produced and recorded.. but it's hard to polish a performance for a recording and add accompanying artists without losing some of the original dimension. I've never heard a better cover of, "Your Famous Blue Raincoat."
I love living in this city. It's so nice when you go to a show, because you/the crowd feeds back to the performer. You and your friends, you're all there together. And you're so close to home. So, then you can go to someone's house and break out the guitar, because the only thing better than listening to music is making it. So, I'm glad I'm here. I'd feel so lost if all I had was a condominium, a Leonard Cohen anthology and the radio to keep my heart warm.
And it makes me even happier becase I'd never have started to appreciate live music and good music and different styles of music if it wasn't for my friends.
Now, get out there and go support your Musician's Local 405.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
End of an Era
I've only been minimally following traffic on a few mailing lists, but apparently, MIT is doing away with the 6.00X course structure for introductory courses, including 6.001 -- Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programming (in scheme). Is this the last year for the traditional double-ohs? IF (TRUE) THEN it's time to whip out the, 'My other CAR is my CDR' bumper sticker and Knights of the Lambda Calculus buttons and pocket protectors.
"Relive the glory days of .001, or experience them for the first time before the end of an era.
Be a cons cell! Velcro yourself to your friends to make a box-and-pointer diagram! Wear your favorite lambda expression!
October 30th, 6.001 lecture, featuring the illustrious, adorable, and ever-quotable Gerald J. Sussman: Tuesday, 10am, 32-123. Costumes encouraged."
"Relive the glory days of .001, or experience them for the first time before the end of an era.
Be a cons cell! Velcro yourself to your friends to make a box-and-pointer diagram! Wear your favorite lambda expression!
October 30th, 6.001 lecture, featuring the illustrious, adorable, and ever-quotable Gerald J. Sussman: Tuesday, 10am, 32-123. Costumes encouraged."
Friday, October 12, 2007
Monday, October 01, 2007
Expressionless
Ice wine and Belgian beer sit, warming themselves, slowly eking out a meager thermodynamically-challenged existence. Interminable. As time goes on, these pretty presents of an ephemeral/ephemeric celebration feel themselves decaying, decrying, with each passing moment becoming less the delicious beverages that they once were. I find myself perversely sympathetic to their degradation. They inspire me.
Biochemically powered, enzymatically enabled, driven by a desperate need for self-destination, I leap forth! In comparison! But to do what? To think and to do and, inevitably, to be the expressed and expressionless. To exist. To act, and irrationally, to justify. To prove to myself that I am autonomous while driven. I am a product of post-destination, a place where you follow from whence you came, sighing and satisfied with walking down the sidewalk and seeing roses, Queen Anne's lace and purple strawflowers, smelling the end of September while listening to the tiny drifts of yellow leaves crunch beneath wandering feet. I love these flowers because my mother grew them. I am happiest in the season in which I was born. And I will not believe you if you tell me this, even as I make my own inevitable way. I am a Calvin-compensated self-activating force majeur.
My day has inspired me: somewhere, I lost a touch of stomach flu; I opened gifts; I joined a gym; I made plans to see my Mother; I lipped rice paper and tofu; sketched a bike; pulled weeds and wanted to write but had nothing to say. Giovanni brought me Kazuo Ishiguro to remind and delight me as I discover that I still remember French. I find my verbal gesticulations cause my roommate to giggle; her laughter is pleasant. I can't make anything coherent from these observations, yet. But I am their master. I will wait, consuming, collecting, controlled, collected, composed, composing and patient.
And still the beer is sitting, STILL IS SITTING, ever warming, ever still, as it waits upon the countertop, expressionlessly anticipating a destiny that is yet to be fulfilled.
Biochemically powered, enzymatically enabled, driven by a desperate need for self-destination, I leap forth! In comparison! But to do what? To think and to do and, inevitably, to be the expressed and expressionless. To exist. To act, and irrationally, to justify. To prove to myself that I am autonomous while driven. I am a product of post-destination, a place where you follow from whence you came, sighing and satisfied with walking down the sidewalk and seeing roses, Queen Anne's lace and purple strawflowers, smelling the end of September while listening to the tiny drifts of yellow leaves crunch beneath wandering feet. I love these flowers because my mother grew them. I am happiest in the season in which I was born. And I will not believe you if you tell me this, even as I make my own inevitable way. I am a Calvin-compensated self-activating force majeur.
My day has inspired me: somewhere, I lost a touch of stomach flu; I opened gifts; I joined a gym; I made plans to see my Mother; I lipped rice paper and tofu; sketched a bike; pulled weeds and wanted to write but had nothing to say. Giovanni brought me Kazuo Ishiguro to remind and delight me as I discover that I still remember French. I find my verbal gesticulations cause my roommate to giggle; her laughter is pleasant. I can't make anything coherent from these observations, yet. But I am their master. I will wait, consuming, collecting, controlled, collected, composed, composing and patient.
And still the beer is sitting, STILL IS SITTING, ever warming, ever still, as it waits upon the countertop, expressionlessly anticipating a destiny that is yet to be fulfilled.
