Birthday pelf:
Simon Schama - Landscape and Memory
Jim Harrison - Returning to Earth
Shisaku Endo - Stained Glass Elegies
Manuel de Landa - A New Philosophy of Society
Kate Grenville - The Secret River
Michael Chabon - The Yiddish Policeman's Union
Waddled over to Other Music, which I hadn't entered in quite a while, and just picked up the first four items that attracted my attention:
Drumm/Menche - Gauntlet (Mego)
David Garland - Noise in You (Family Vineyard)
Ligeti - Clear or Cloudy (complete Deutsche Grammophon recordings)
IMJ 2006 issue (Berlin)
also on hand, the two new Formed discs,
Nakamura/Capece - Ij
Mersault - Raymond & Marie
Of these, I've only listened to Ij so far...
Off to the beach for the day...
16 comments:
Happy Birthday Brian!
Happy birthday!
happy birthday, dude. someday you'll look at the ErstDist listings before spending more elsewhere, or maybe not...
Feliz cumpleanos, Brian! Just *try* & stop me from putting up a virtual birthday cake over at Bags!
Happy Birthday!
Happy Birthday Brian. Enjoy the beach and the tunes.
Many happy returns, my friend.
Regarding your previous post: When I was a wee lad, my grandmother bribed me into eating my veggies by taking me on a trip to San Antonio. I flew in an airplane for the first time, and visited the Alamo and all the other cool missions. The nadir of the trip was this stuffy old art museum, the only redeeming quality of which was the neat indoor courtyard with a koi pond. Otherwise, it was The Most Boring Place in the World.
Much later during my university years in San Antonio, I made the rather delirious discovery of the McNay Museum. I spent hours engrossed in all its subtle beauties, both those intrinsic to the space and those found in its holdings. You know where this is going: at the end of the visit, I was startled to recognize that very same koi pond.
They call it maturity. Or senescence. Or something.
Thanks, all.
Nice day at the beach! I've never been to the Jersey shore (if you don't count an ancient trip to Atlantic City and and even more ancient one to Asbury Park where I saw Jefferson Airplane in their "Volunteers" period--"Up against the wall, motherfuckers!", erm, yeah) but had heard good things about Sandy Hook, a federal park at the northern tip of the Jersey barrier island/strip. Oddly, it's directly across New York Harbor from Coney Island (maybe 10 miles distant--you can see the apartment buildings and amusement park clearly) but to get there by car you have to do this large loop into Jersey, maybe an hour's drive.
But physically, it's nothing like it's NY counterpart; maybe what it was like 200 years ago. Very nice, relatively undeveloped land, overgrown with bayberry bushes and an extremely wide beach area, well over 1,000 feet from dunes to water. Not all that many people and of those, only a handful of obnoxious ones, most involving toddlers. Unfortunately, I'd forgotten which of the beaches was the nude/gay one, always the shore of choice since, aside from potentially enjoyable viewing, there won't be any young ones. Next time.
Finished Kinsgley Amis' "Lucky Jim" while there, a very good, funny read. Hugely dated (at least, I think and hope so regarding British mores, but who knows with those people?!?) but nonetheless consistently engaging.
Listened to the Garland on the way down. He's never quite lived up to my hopes for his work since first encountering him on the Guy Klucevsek contemporary polka collection from the mid 80s, but he still, once in a while, manages to combine seemingly relaxed song form with nonchalant-sounding lyrics that get to places few others do. He knows his stuff though finding evidence of that can be daunting; here, a piece's subject is Cage's experiment with the anechoic chamber. Sufjan Stevens guests on several tracks; not sure how I feel about that....
Out for birthday dinner now; will try to listen to the rest of the stuff tomorrow.
Happy birthday, big boy!
Cheers,
Turk
Happy birthday, Brian. Landscape and Memory is a wonderful book, probably my favorite from the three of his that I've read (Dead Certainties and the French revolution one are the others). Be sure to post something about the other books when you get through them, they all look interesting.
He he -
You're old
- he he
hey- happy birthday. I'll be interested to hear what you think of the David Garland. When was that released? I was just talking with someone in Santa Fe a few weeks ago about Garland and wondering what became of him.
PB
Hi Peter,
I think the Garland is a recent release. The pieces he wrote for Klucevsek, like "The VCR Polka", have always been favorites of mine. His own records tend to be a bit (maybe intentionally) unfocused. Patrice Roussel put one out maybe 8 years back that was more miss than hit, imho. I've only listened once to the current album, but my general impression is--eh, ok, but nothing to jump up about. There's a familial aspect to it, kind of a singing late at night on the porch thing, that has a certain amount of appeal but, for me, a limited one.
Hey again- oops, I was thinking of Peter Garland. He was a sort of minimalist creative composer who lived in Santa Fe for a time, don't know if he was or is related to David. I saw him perform one of his pieces there-- involved a long piece of lumber designed to press down all 88 keys on a piano at once, which he would do with the sustain pedal down, while Jack Loeffler played bull roarer.
PB
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Garland
the first two CDs listed there are quite good, especially Walk In Beauty.
Yeah, I thought you might be confusing Garland's (there's a relationship, yes?) Haven't heard anything of Peter's in quite a while, dunno what he's doing.
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