Train _My Private Nation_

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Once again, I am blown away by Train. These guys consistently put out albums that are good to the last drop.

I like Pat Monahan’s vocals. They are textured enough to keep my interest, and very singalong-able.

The music is catchy, and there is a lot of range. Energetic songs, slow depressing songs, and things in between.

The lyrics have good hooks, but they are abstract and intelligent. Wow! I love that about them. Every song on this album is a collaboration, usually involving almost everybody in the writing process.

That’s a sign of a tight band, they work together to create. I think that’s a sign that they will probably not split off into separate acts. I sure hope not, because I love their sound.

Well, I could say things about this specific album. But I think I can suffice to say that it is consistently good, like their other albums. It was not a disappointed at all, and I liked their other albums a lot.

Daddy Dale

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There was a free concert at Griffith Park yesterday. Surf Music! And they had the surf music God:
Dick Dale.

I have wanted to hear this guy for a long time. I guess he is not quite as well known outside of california. I certainly hadn’t heard of him til I moved here.

But he rips a guitar to shreds. He can play more notes in a shorter span of time than anyone I have ever heard. The energy! Wow!

So the concert was Free, all the more amazing. There were other acts, but I wanted to hear Dick Dale. Surprisingly, it was not too loud. I hate it when concerts are so loud that the sounds gets really distorted.

This was just the right amount of sound. He was great great great.

And he was getting old.

Many great rockers are.

Dale had the old rocker gray ponytail.

At first, he ripped through a lot of his classics. His backup band was also hugely energetic, and they bounced all over the stage.

He even was playing the guitar with drumsticks, with all the speed he had before. I couldn’t tell you how, you would have had to see it.

Then, some things changed. Dick Dale brought a musical guest on stage:

Jimmy Dale.

That’s right, Dick Dale’s 11 year old son got on stage and played with his dad. They play exactly alike! And Daddy was so proud! I’m not sure if this was Jimmy’s first concert or not, but he did better than most professional musicians I’ve seen.

An 11 year old kid! He ripped out his dad’s songs just like his dad.

It was so great. Really! I felt like we were sitting in their living room, hearing the two jam.

I would watch for Jimmy Dale. He’s already composing, even. I sure hope he gets a chance to make his mark. He deserves it.

Mary J. Blige

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Lady can do music!

I picked up a copy of Dance for Me by Mary J. Blige, and every song is making me happy.

Technically, they are all dance mixes of her songs. I am a sucker for dance mixes, so this is just about right for me.

The mixers took a lot of different samples, so the music, even though it stays true to the throbbing beat of dance floor favorites, doesn’t get boring.

It’s bootylicious, alright.

_The Children’s Hour_

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This play by Lillian Hellman traces the consequences of one schoolgirl’s spreading rumors about her teachers. The two women who run a school for children have to bear the insinuations of this unpleasant child that they are in a lesbian relationship.

This story fits in very well with Lillian Hellman’s experiences with the House Unamerican activities. Unproved rumors can be very unpleasant.

This story is surprising and very dramatic. Hellman gives a diverse portrait of different kinds of people’s character. She also handles the subject of homosexuality with a frankness very uncommon in that time.

There was also a movie made with the script, starring Audrey Hepburn as one of the teachers. It was made in the 60s, so dealing with homosexuality was just a hair less scandalous. But the story was still pretty good.

There’s a lot to think about in The Children’s Hour

Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid On Earth

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It’s a familiar story: Boy grows up without dad, dad enters boy’s life once more, boy must figure out what he thinks about it.

This time, though, the story is told by comics. Chris Ware takes nearly 400 pages to tell the story with comics. I’ll be honest, this is really an exciting example of a new way to tell a story. Pictures can say things, repeat things, that words cannot do.

I mean, how many times can you write the word ‘pathetic’ in a story? Ware seems to write it all over every page, but without the redundancy. You can use the same image, when you can’t use the same word. And this gives a weight to the story, the sadness of the little boy and the depths of his loserishness, that made it almost repellent.

Except, I wanted to flip the pages and see what the next page had.

In the same way that Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury was initially impenetrable, Jimmy Corrigan is hard to figure out.

‘what?’ i felt like asking. “what just happened here? Who’s that?” It becomes more clear as the book progresses, but not so much that all my questions are answered.

I am really thinking, now, about how different mediums communicate different ways.

_Camping with Henry and Tom_

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Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and the President of the United states are lost in the woods. No, that’s not the set for a joke. This is what happend in the play “Camping with Henry and Tom” by Mark St. Germain.

And it’s based on an event that actually occurred. President Harding, Edison and Ford were really on a camping trip. The imaginative recreation of that event is pretty funny, and really sharp. No matter what changes, things remain the same.

Businessmen often get the urge to go in and clean up politics. Anybody remember Ross Perot? but politics is not the same as business. People are much more complicated.

The three men in the story are gigantically successful. But St. Germain brings out their human side in the very human circumstance of being lost in the woods. The story shows how people really do have pretty much the same things to deal with, wherever they are.

_Broken Glass_ by Arthur Miller

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A perfectly healthy housewife discovers that she can’t operate her legs anymore, drawing her husband and the doctor into a frightening examination of past and present feelings. Set in New York, right as the Nazi party is on the rise, these American Jewish people are forced by the paralysis to consider their relationship to the world and ultimately, themselves.

Miller is good at the kind of story that dredges up buried feelings. I like his way of taking a thing and turning it around to see the different sides of it.

In this story is good because, in a way, you pretty much know what’s coming, but at the same time, you are surprised by the way it comes through.

It makes me think, which I appreciate.

And the actors were very good. The tension and the drama were very satisfying.

Iranian Blogs

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CNN.com – Prostitute diary tops Iran Web hit – Jun. 16, 2003

Looks like Iran is enjoying the same freedoms blogging brings:

“An Internet boom has caught officials by surprise and prompted them to draw up rules for the largely unregulated sector. The number of users has jumped by 90 percent in the past year. Still, only about three million of Iran’s population of 65 million — half of them under 25 — have access to the net. ”

But they have the same problem we americans do. It’s a small niche.

I’d like to find that prostitute’s website, actually.

John Hiatt- Bring the Family

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Hiatt is what’s called “alternative country,” a category that pretty much means he sounds like country music but not quite. In my opinion, that means he doesn’t go by the pre-fab hooks and cliched patterns that country music is known and hated for. He actually creates his own sound.

And it’s a good sound. The first song on the album is “Memphis in the meantime,” a great catchy dancey tune that makes me wish I knew how to line dance. I’ll tell you, I’d never really felt that before.

The rest of the songs are intelligent and fun. One other song in particular I really love you may have heard from the love scene n Benny and Joon: “Have a little Faith in Me.”

It’s a great song, and it makes you think you’ve heard it before, as if it were written by one of the greats-BB King or somebody. It’s so heartbreaking. Of course, I’m a sucker for piano songs, I’ll admit.

My boyfriend loves “Lipstick Sunset.” Maybe it’s a guy thing, I’m not so fond of it because it’s about a girl getting left. But the song itself is a good kind of mournful.

Hiatt really loves what he does, and it shows.

_High Fidelity_

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Yes, it’s John Cusack again! My only true movie star idol. But he’s got some other great folks in there too, like Jack Black.

I watched this movie in the theater alone the first time, because I couldn’t get anyone to commit to seeing it with me, and I really wanted to see it. I liked it a lot then.

But sometimes it makes a difference, to see a movie with someone and discuss it. This movie ended up being much better when I watched the DVD with a music nerd friend last night. It was AWESOME! we were poking one another to laugh at all the parts that were so true.

Who doesn’t go over their relationships like Rob Gordon(played by Cusack)? His Xes were just classic, too. He hit so many classic relationship dynamics.

In the movie, the judge of a good movie would be how discussable it was afterwards. You know, how many things sprung to mind after you saw it. Things that just made you chuckle to yourself spontaneously. or things that made you turn and ask the person you’re with a weird question.

I was going all that night and the next day with fuel on this movie.

Cusack didn’t let me down on this one.