Scottunder

The Roches, Hammond Song

I just caught up with a 2007 music issue of Oxford American, a thoughtful magazine from the city of the University of Mississippi. Each year it comes with a mix CD, but since I stole this one from a hospital, I had to content myself with reading descriptions of the songs on it. However, there's one song on it from the Roches' 1979 debut album, which I have just about memorized. The trio have the kind of unusual harmonies that only seem possible in siblings, but they combine this ethereal sound with smart, funny, self-referential lyrics. Robert Fripp produced it and lent some guitar work, notably a beautifully Frippy solo in "Hammond Song," which is only one of the reasons it remains a favorite.

The songs on that album seem autobiographical, from the opening "We" to "Mr Sellack" to "The Married Man." But "Hammond Song," the second cut, seems to be rich with familial drama. The background is that Hammond is a town in Louisiana that the two older sisters, Maggie and Terre, spent six months in after singing on Paul Simon's There Goes Rhymin' Simon and releasing and touring to support their own album. The went to Hammond as a duo, but one is following a man. Either then or later, Hammond presents a life-altering decision: If you go down to Hammond/You'll never come back. This prediction seems to have been refuted, as the two returned to New York to have little sister Suzzy make it a trio.

I am most grateful that the OA article urges the reader to seek out a VHS recording of the Roches doing "Hammond Song" in 1983 on the show Soundstage. Because, by god, two years later here it sits on YouTube, apparently cut from a larger documentary.

The reviewer calls out a great moment to notice: Maggie (playing guitar) wrote the song, which is sung to someone else: If you go down to Hammond. Terre (high voice), seems to be the one who left, and sings her story solo: 

Well, I went down to Hammond
I did as I pleased
I ain't the only one
Who's got this disease
Why don't you face the fact, you old upstart
We fall apart.

At that same final note in the other stanzas, the trio hits a pure, high, laser-like tone, but on We fall a-PAAAART, Terre takes it solo and full-voiced, holding it out forever, over another accusatory line sung by Maggie and Suzzy, If you go with that fella. Then she steps back and lays out of the next harmonies, in what I take to be an echo of the period of the sisters' lives -- they sing, Don't be a fool. She puts her hands on her hips and seems to center herself before rejoining the song. Whether it's stagecraft, technique, or a bit of history, no matter. A great moment.

Slow Motion Destruction

The Brooklyn-based artist Jonathan Schipper has an interesting and slightly disturbing body of work. Trying to avoid the artspeak on his website, I'd say some of his work focuses on the physics of destruction and attempts to let us experience it at different time scales, slowing it down and/or repeating it endlessly. To this end, he engineers complex apparatus. His website makes for difficult direct linking, but most of the works on this page have videos attached.

This piece breaks and reassembles a tea cup in a slow dance, using an outsized machine that contrasts nicely with the dainty china.

In this large-scale piece, two muscle cars from the '70s slowly approached and crashed into each other over a period of one month. Lots of people see i as a metaphor for the death of the US auto industry, but I think he just liked the idea of crashing cars into each other.

Wedding video

Now this is a great idea for a wedding video.

Brian & Eileen's Wedding Music Video. from LOCKDOWN projects on Vimeo.

Spirograph!

A Spirograph app created by Anu Garg.

Guerilla art

Well, maybe "benign vandalism" or even "artful recycling" better describes it. I have a couple friends, sisters, nameless, who are slowly cleaning their parents' home in San Diego. They've decided to place some of their kitschy animal objets onto the lawn of a some unknown neighbor several streets away.

The menagerie now has three frogs and a chicken.

Exactitudes

Every couple of years I StumbleUpon this website, Exactitudes. The name comes from "a contraction of exact and attitude," and the photos, mostly shot in Rotterdam, show the conforming dress codes, poses, and styles of different social groups.

Music visualizations

Watching visualizations of music can be a rewarding wat to understand a piece on another level. Some of these are more successful than others. Of course, the simplest would be just watching a musician play.

The video Glenn Gould made of his second version of the Goldberg Variations is just stunning. Watch him play the last four variations (26-30) and the final aria.

Next, following along with the score as a musician plays is enlightening -- for instance, turning the pages for a pianist. If you can't do that, you can follow the score of John Coltrane's mighty Giant Steps.

Finally, Stephen Malinowski has made music animations for years, using MIDI files to control an application with several visualization patterns. The bar graph version is the simplest for me to follow, and it's pretty effective when used in conjunction with a following score and video of the pianist's hands playing.

Manga Buddha

I've read the first two volumes of Buddha, Osamu Tezuka's eight-volume epic on the life of Siddhartha. This is more like an action film than a biography, and uses a historical fiction framework to help us see the future spiritual leader as a child, a husband, and conflicted man destined for greatness -- even if neither he nor his family can understand how.

 The graphic treatment is like manga meets Will Eisner, and Tezuka even draws himself into the comics at points. Violence and death compete with humor, anachronistic dialogue, and some transcendantly beautiful panels to tell a spiritual story from thousands of years ago.

I look forward to slowly buying and reading the next six volumes.   Tezuka Tezuka

The Elephant Song

This is just about the best song ever. Written and sung by Eric Herman.

(Found on Boing Boing.)

Days with My Father

Days with My Father is a website of words and photos by Phillip Toledano about the last days of his father, who died at 98. It is a beautiful thing, with large, gorgeous photos and short, powerful passages about his father's short-term memory loss and character, and their relationship.

I remember Toledano's Phone Sex book, of telephone sex operators in their homes.