Mumble Herder

To give you Five Norwegian Chaps Singing a Parody Version of Wham!'s "Last Christmas" in nonsensical German:



(Via justinhowe.)

Happy Glockenspielen' Holidays.

I seem to have no capacity to write anything interesting or clever today, so I am stealing links from my f-list.

Via warren_ellis: Scientists may have located the seat of free will in the human brain. I don't know about you, but I am getting ready to exercise that part of my brain in order to run and hide from the scientists who are currently making plans to remove it.

Via glvalentine: Keanu Reeves to star in an adaptation of "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." This will only be good if Alex Winter plays Hyde.

Via matt_ruff: Artificial Owl, a blog of structures humans made and then abandoned. See also urban_decay and rural_ruin right here on LJ. (Also: They made a SERIES out of Life After People?!? And me having gotten rid of the History Channel, too. Sigh.)

Via tanaise: The makers of the (extremely awesome) Samorost games are coming out with a full-length game called Machinarium.

Finally, because it makes me happy:

Jan and Haddayr tagged me, so you all get to suffer.

Think of 15 albums that had such a profound effect on you they changed your life or the way you looked at it. These are the albums that no matter what they were thought of musically shaped your world. Get the idea now? Good.

1. The Mary Poppins Soundtrack, Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke, et. al. I could have picked any of the Disney LPs, but this is one that I still love, so. Someone gave our family all that stuff when I was young, and it all had my name on it because I was the oldest. "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" taught me to love absurdity.

2. "I Love Trash" b/w "Goin' For a Ride," Oscar the Grouch & Anything People. Later in life I had friends who referred to me as Eeyore, but my true role model was always Oscar.

3. The Muppet Movie Soundtrack. The Muppets were my first fandom, I guess. I don't think I've seen this movie more than once or twice but I was obsessed with the LP. I did all the voices and dreamed of becoming a Muppeteer. Once I brought this in to my 4th grade class, and years later classmates remembered that I had sung along with every word of it.

4. One of Barry Manilow's Greatest Hits Albums. No idea which one, but if I made an effort I could probably name all the songs on it. Mom was a Manilow fan, and this was how us kids spent a lot of our afternoons, listening to her LP of this. It had big hits like "Copacabana" and less-big-hits like "Bermuda Triangle," but we listened to it over and over until I, at least, had it memorized.

5. One of K-Tel's compilation cassettes. I wish I could remember it and find it, but it had Eddie Rabbit's "I Love a Rainy Night," which I thought was the coolest song ever, and something by Rick Springfield, maybe. This marked my first, tentative, movement towards something like rock and roll, which having been raised on AM pop and hippie church music was still a bit frightening to me as a kid.

6. The Police, Ghost in the Machine. I've written about the Police elsewhere, but as an adolescent it was the darker parts of this cassette, about death wishes and alienation, that first hooked me into music in a serious way; first it was because I felt like Sting was describing my life, later it was because I began really listening to the lyrics and the parts -- more Andy's weird un-guitary guitar parts and Stewart's frenetic-but-precise drumming than Sting's I-could-play-that bass parts. I was a band kid, so I was sort of a musician, but I had never really been serious about listening before this.

7. R.E.M., Document. First album by any band that I bought the day it came out. My friend Steve Lang had introduced me to R.E.M., as well as The Cure and Talking Heads; those three and the Police were my favorite bands for a long while to come. Document is where R.E.M. plateaued, in my opinion, but they didn't start down the cliff until sometime on Green. I memorized "It's the End of the World As We Know It" but my favorite song was probably "Oddfellows Local 151" because it was odd and so was I. It was twenty years before I realized that "Strange" was a cover of a Wire song. R.E.M. set me on the indie/college rock track that was my primary musical course for the next decade.

8. Prince, Sign O' the Times. The first album on this list that I still unreservedly love. I'd grown up in the Cities, so I knew Prince, but I knew Radio Prince, which meant "1999" and "Little Red Corvette" and "Raspberry Beret." I knew he was supposed to be a weirdo pervert but not why, really. Sign was not only my true introduction to Prince, but retroactively to James Brown, Sly and the Family Stone, Parliament, Hendrix, Dorothy Parker, Gospel, and Autogynephilia. There are moments on any Prince album that are transcendent, but this one kills me back to front. My favorite stretch starts with "I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man" -- with its out-of-body guitar solo and its "One, two, one, whoo!" -- winds through the spare gospel harmony of "The Cross," and climaxes in the What-a-fucking-party! glee of the live "It's Gonna Be a Beautiful Night." Sheila E.'s Transmississippirap kills me every time.

9. The Beatles, The Beatles (AKA The White Album). Reasonable people disagree on this, but early Beatles does little for me; at the time it may have been groundbreaking, but nowadays it mostly comes across as shallow pop. This album, though, made me laugh ("Rocky Raccoon"), rocked me ("Helter Skelter"), and probably most memorably, scared the shit out of me. I'm thinking of "Revolution 9," which was unlike anything I'd heard to that point and which, listening to it after dark in the basement of my friend Joe's parents' house, had my Catholicism-warped mind half-convinced that some kind of devil shit was going on. Yeah, I was a sheltered kid. But without that track I don't think I'd have been open to, say, Can, or Tom Waits, or the Liars down the road.

10. A Tribe Called Quest, People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm. I could add more of the Native Tongues posse here, but this is the album that hooked into me the most. Fuzzy-funky with a lazy, almost nerdy feel to the lyrics, and some hilarious shit going on in nearly every song. "I Left My Wallet In El Segundo" is still one of my favorite tracks ever; in some ways it maps onto DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince's "Parents Just Don't Understand," but instead of being bland and cliched and subtly moralistic it's surreal and spacious and funky. Sometimes I think that, if not for these guys and De La Soul and the Beastie Boys, hip-hop might have missed me altogether.

11. Fishbone, Truth and Soul. Like I said, I was a band kid; one of the things I took from that experience was a love of brass. '80s pop has much to answer for in what it did to the saxophone, but as far as I'm concerned a nice balanced horn section is an automatic win. That, and this album, made me an easy target for ska in all its forms, but most especially aggressive, fast, and slightly unbalanced. Without Fishbone I may not have learned to love the Mighty Mighty Bosstones or the Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra, and I damn sure wouldn't have bothered to check out the Skatalites. Besides, I can't listen to "Bonin' In the Boneyard" and be in a bad mood.

12. Old 97s, Wreck Your Life. I was aware of the Old 97s through my friends in the band Junior High, who opened for them in Madison and semi-worshipped them. The first two songs of this album remind me why. It's Ken Bethea's guitar work, yeah, and it's the young-n-earnest of Murry and Rhett's vocals, with their hearts breaking on just about every note, but really it's the lyrics. "Victoria": "This is the story of Victoria's heart/ You might think it's stupid, but I still think it's art./ She lost her lover to an accident at sea/ She pushed him overboard and ended up with me." Then there's murder ballad "The Other Shoe": "One old brown shoe falls in slow motion/ and the bedsprings hover right above your head/ as bedsprings do when you're beneath them/ someone else just climbed into your bed." At the time, I loved this album despite the twang, but it was the first step on a long road to re-discovering country.

13. Johnny Cash, Live at Folsom Prison and San Quentin. Even though I was one of those kids who claimed to like all music "except country and classical," I knew Johnny Cash was cool. I had loved "A Boy Named Sue" as a kid, and, hell, the Beastie Boys had sampled him. When I made the decision to Learn Country Music, Johnny was the first place I went. At first it was the mean edge of songs like "Cocaine Blues" that I loved, but Johnny's sincerity got through to me, too, even on songs that I might otherwise sneer at, like "Greystone Chapel." And of course there's "Jackson" with June, still one of the greatest duets of all time. Like many converts, I became a fanatic and an evangelist, and Johnny led me to other artists; it took a while before I could admit to myself liking, say, Dolly Parton or the Dixie Chicks, but after Johnny it was inevitable.

14. Sarah Harmer, You Were Here. It gets tricky, at this point in the list, to pick out individual albums, because perspective begins to break down. But I don't think I really came out of my indie-kid phase, in terms of that being my primary musical focus, until I learned to love singer-songwriters. My vitriol at Paul Westerberg's early solo stuff, for example, was as much motivated by feeling like he had abandoned some "gang" ethos as it was dislike for his new direction. But partly because of the Man in Black, and maybe because I was learning to be OK with the fact that I was myself a loner, I was becoming more attracted to solo artists. So this could have been Neko Case or Kelly Hogan or Lyle Lovett or Dwight Yoakam, but it's Harmer, because this CD didn't leave my car stereo for months, literally.

15. The New Pornographers, Electric Version. Nowadays when it comes to the indie music I am, by most yardsticks, out of touch. I have never heard a song by Death Cab for Cutie or Arcade Fire, I don't know the Killers from the Strokes, and I didn't even realize the Mendoza Line had broken up. Much like with fiction, I've decided I'm more interested in understanding where things are coming from than in keeping track of the new to figure out where they're going. It pleases me, though, that I have at least one hip "new" band to devote myself to, one that changes keys and time signatures like it changes lanes, one that loves harmony and smart lyrics and doesn't make much of an effort to explain itself. I'm speaking of the band as an entity, which is weird, but their super-group sound is oddly more unified than that of many conventional bands, where the members feel more of a need to assert their own musical thoughts without the release valve of a solo career. The New Pornographers turn the cliche of the rock-star ego on its head in a satisfying way.

Books 1-10.
11. Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood by Ann Brashares.
12. Standing Fast: The Autobiography of Roy Wilkins by Roy Wilkins and Tom Mathews.
13. Women, Culture & Politics by Angela Y. Davis.
14. Everyone in Silico by Jim Munroe.
15. Daughters of the North (AKA The Carhullan Army) by Sarah Hall.

16. Petal Pusher: A Rock and Roll Cinderella Story by Laurie Lindeen. So I am the ideal audience for this book: a Midwesterner who has spent the bulk of his life in Madison and the Twin Cities, and spent a significant percentage of the '90s in dirty bars watching underappreciated bands play until my ears rang. Laurie Lindeen grew up in Madison and launched her music career right here in Minneapolis. Zuzu's Petals was a female rock trio that put out two albums but never broke big, partly because it was the Age of Grunge and they weren't grunge--their stuff was by turns jazzy, poppy, even harmonic. Lindeen chronicles other challenges the band had, from casual (at times malicious) sexism to slimy promoters to a label that pushed the band to follow up their first album before the band was really ready. Oh, and there's the matter of Lindeen's multiple sclerosis, diagnosed in her early twenties and always lurking. As a chronicle of bands on the road, it's a sort of expansion of the snapshot song "Range Life" by Pavement, only more reflective. Lindeen is brutally funny and brutally honest, and she's particularly tough on herself. And as a story of an artist who ends up wondering whether it's all actually worth it, I found it thoughtful and sobering.

One idea here at Mumble Herder that I never managed to get together was "Ernie and the Elephant Review Albums That Were Never Made," in which Ernie (of Bert and Ernie) and an African elephant (of Loxodonta Africana) would expound at length on collaborations by unlikely artists, à la Kot and DeRogatis on "Sound Opinions." The first feature was always going to be the never-released ('cause it was never made, get it? Am I overexplaining this yet?) Ramones Jones, in which George Jones shared lead vocals with Joey on covers of various hillbilly classics, show tunes, and an original called "Drunk Tank." The joke would be that since the recording happened during one of Jones's alcoholic binges, he claimed to have no memory whatsoever of the event, and blocked the album's release.

I am thinking about this today because there are certain artistic juxtapositions that seem so natural (like, say, Emmylou Harris and Tom Waits) or so perfect (how about Missy Elliott and the Pixies?) that it makes me sad to think they have never happened and likely never will. Forget fantasy baseball, I want fantasy super-groups. In a world where Bing and Bowie got it together, why can't PJ Harvey and Can?

Since this entry is less than a complete thought, I put it to all y'all: what artists, living or dead, real or fictional, would you lock in a studio together if you ruled the world?

Did any of y'all see the movie Elf? Even if you don't like Will Ferrell (and I do, at least sometimes), Zooey Deschanel did a smoky rendition of "Baby, It's Cold Outside" (while in the shower, no less) that blew me away. Now she's got an album coming out from Merge Records, made with M. Ward, and it's streaming over at the Merge Records site. I nearly quit listening during the first track, but the second ("Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?", which I know I've heard somewhere--I'm thinking it was a soundtrack, since I never listen to the radio) is wonderful, and the rest is likable if a bit uneven. (This link especially for mrdankelly.)

Am so far spending my vacation struggling with a story that I started back in January. It's at 8700 words and I can't see the end yet. AGH. Despite my frustration at the slooow progress, I'm liking where it's going. Recently my short stories have mostly been very contained, almost entirely thought out beforehand. It's like I've known the dimensions of the story-box even if I wasn't certain of the contents--I think they're good stories, but they're also complete thoughts, or nearly so. This story has tentacles, and it keeps on moving between states, so there's really no point in trying to assemble the box. Every time I think I know what it's about, it changes. And I'm thinking that maybe that's what I need right now, because I've been feeling a little constricted by outlines and word counts and marketability and those sorts of things that I have never been very comfortable with. I'm going to try not to worry about where the hell I'm going to sell something like this once it's finished.

In other news, I can't stand the news anymore. Whether it's random talking heads informing me that prostitution is a victimless crime or once-sensible people claiming that people who think they are racist are SEKRITLY racists themselves, I am officially tired of everyone. Shut up shut up shut up.

The highlight of my holiday weekend had to be seeing Exene at the Hideout. Knuckel Drager opened; I'd not heard them before, but they were pretty entertaining for a surf metal band. Had to be the monster masks. But Exene rocked the house and got me off my ass. Some X tunes in the mix, a lot of solo stuff, and some covers. ("Ghost On the Highway"!!! Awesome!) I may have to start wearing earplugs, but I hope I never get too old to go to shows.

I just saw "Little Miss Sunshine" last night, and when they flashed to Alan Arkin during the ceremony I had a moment of shock, because I was thinking he was still dead.

Things which it would be hard to believe have ever happened to anyone else: last night I had my headphones on, listening to iTunes while I wrote, and I started air-drumming to the Poster Children, pen in hand. I was into it, head bobbing, eyes closed. I opened my eyes to find that the pen had begun to leak ink, and droplets of black ink were all over the wall, blinds, and futon.

Also, I was nearly run over on my way home, and I wasn't even jaywalking. Stupid right-turning Chicago drivers. I think I may have hurt my hand banging on the guy's hood. Typing with two fingers in an improvised splint? Not so very easy.

I downloaded some "Ugly Betty" and it may be my new favorite show. (I still love you, Veronica, but it's not as easy as it once was.)

According to yesterday's poll happiness is "Something to do with food," with "A warm puppy" and "A chemical imbalance in the brain" rounding out the top three. Please adjust your expectations accordingly.

On the way to work I saw a woman doing perhaps the weirdest walk I've ever seen in a non-physically challenged person. She would walk normally for a quarter-block or so, then hunker down and sort of lope forward (in the lupine sense, not the equine), taking really long strides and staying low to the ground like she was stalking prey. It was like running, only really slow so I can't figure out any benefit as far as speeding up her commute. I was fascinated and also freaked out. Keep on keepin' on, weird lady! Rock on with your weird self!

Today I am very excited about my book, specifically the new one I am still writing. This doesn't happen every day, so I thought I'd mention it.

Speaking of rocking on with your weird self, as we were before the commercial break, HOLY SHIT DUDE I KNOW EVERYONE ALREADY LINKED THIS BUT IT'S LIKE THAT "ASTRO-NUTS" SHOW COME TO LIFE IF IT WAS ABOUT CRAZY ASTRONAUTS. I think Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin need to give this woman a good talking to.

The Writers' Block has an interview with rockstar editor Ellen Datlow. Check it out. And Strange Horizons has a story from the talented Joey Comeau. It's kind of a meditation on the scary power of blood and words. Check that out as well.

I had this whole thought forming about how 24 is a workplace drama and the turnover is making it a less interesting show, but then last night's episode wasn't bad so I kinda lost interest in it. I was going to tie it into Studio 60 and how Sorkin's shows all pretty much reflect a worldview in which everyone loves their jobs and works all the time, which is pretty far from my own experience. The shows sort of work--Sports Night is a fun place to work, and The West Wing is about the most important place in the world you could work, but one of the problems with Studio 60 is that everyone is too caught up in their little dramas all the time, and they won't shut up about them, and pretty soon you just want to go get a nice quiet job as a parking lot attendant.

Prince at the Super Bowl. (Part Two is here.) Man, that makes me feel good.

George Jones speaks.

AP: "He Stopped Loving Her Today" is considered one of the greatest country songs of all time. Why do you think that song was so special?

Jones: It may sound corny, but all my life I've wanted to write exactly that song, or I've hunted for it. I wanted to hear a song or write a song about how you could express your greatest love for someone. Bobby Braddock and Curly Putnam brought it over that day and that was the first thing I thought of-—"That's the song I've been looking for."

AP: What do you think about the state of country music today?

Jones: They say they're upgrading country music. I tell them they need to find a new title and let us have back our traditional country music. They've stolen our identity. I don't feel like the real thing will be back for quite a while. I'd like to see new artists recording traditional country music. Not for me. I just hate to see it not heard. I hate to see the new country artists not doing their thing because they're told what to do nowadays.

If you've never heard George, you're missing out on one of the greatest voices in all of music. The song referenced above, "He Stopped Loving Her Today," is gorgeously sad and heartfelt. You ought to give it a listen. And, of course, he's also a famous drunk, once widely known as "No-Show Jones" for his propensity for missing tour dates while on a binge:

AP: Is it true that you once took off on a riding mower to get a drink?

Jones: It happened in east Texas when I was married to my boy's mother, Shirley (his second of four wives, the former Shirley Ann Corlea). I had been on about a two-week binge. I came home and naturally nobody was there. All my vehicles were gone and the big tractor was gone. I couldn't find a thing that looked like wheels. It was a Sunday morning and I'm dying, you know. I am hurtin' and I need a drink bad. Finally, after I half-a-day suffered, I finally looked out my bedroom window and I saw this little Cub Cadet sitting there, a little 10 horsepower. I said, "There ain't no key in there. Surely they took that out." I went out there and sure enough the key was in it and it kicked right on. I headed to town as far as I could go on it.