An Elliott Smith podcast is out

As I’ve mentioned previously on this weblog, the current political climate has had an unexpected impact on my listening habits. Where months ago I was languishing in 2016’s many Good New Albums, humming along in the shower to songs about dancing and kissing, the day-to-day grand mal anxiety I’ve been feeling lately has driven me back into the arms of music I haven’t listened to since George W. Bush was president. Emo music, pop punk, shoegaze—anything melancholic and melodramatic ends up hitting the spot. And with those cravings in mind, Elliott Smith has been in heavy rotation.

The other night I watched the documentary about him that came out in 2014, thinking that that was it—I was now officially “up to date” on all of the media surrounding the deceased singer I loved so much in high school—but days later I’ve been proven wrong. It turns out it’s almost the 20th anniversary of Smith’s album “Either/Or,” and in addition to releasing an expanded reissue of the record, Kill Rock Stars has partnered with Sean Cannon’s “The Guestlist” to make “Say Yes: An Elliott Smith Podcast.”

There will be six episodes total, and the first one features interviews with Kevin Devine, Sadie Dupuis (of Speedy Ortiz), and Jessica Lea Mayfield. It’s nice to love things together.

Friday reading roundup

No one warned me, I want to say, but of course everyone tries. And maybe there are just no words to describe how it feels to realize that you have brought into the world and are now responsible for someone whose innocence you will watch the world gradually — gradually if you’re lucky! — destroy. Worse, it is your job to watch. It is even your job to do the innocence-destroying, sometimes; better you, gently, than someone else, not-gently.

Airplane

Live-and-let-live used to be the Lancaster County style of conservatism, Gray said, because of the Amish influence. Living next door to people who don’t drive cars and plow their fields with mules and don’t bother anybody instills a sense of empathy for outsiders. “If you live around those kind of people, you tend to accept that being different as not being all that unusual,” Gray said.

How Middle America is treating refugees

Just to reiterate, with his actual, biological son seemingly unwilling to take part in his lame dad’s flame wars, Michael Rapaport enlisted his assistant to pose as his son in order to own the trolls online, going so far as to roleplay parenting his fake son on Twitter. And the cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon…

New trends in getting mad online

For the most part, I have experienced America as the place it believes itself to be. I wasn’t born here. But while I have lived here people have been good to me, institutions have trusted that I would make something of their resources, and, above all, public policy has been generous at precisely the moments it determined my path. This remains a narrow, remarkable experience. It’s only chance that any of us — walking down a street, or through airport security — are ever spared the arbitrary, corrosive spotlight that comes from being born into whichever population the white American power structure has lately decided that it should fear.

What It Means to Be American in the Trump Era

Mm, clicky: Widower seeks new fishing partner | RIP Chyna | Pwease no steppy | Just a great image choice

What are your dreams like these days?

It took me a couple of months to have my first dream about President Obama. I remember waking up one morning in March after imagining a whole scenario where I was at the White House with Barack and we were talking about ways to work through the financial crisis. I burned with shame and anger at my subconscious for being so basic and obvious, but at least it had gone a decent amount of time before it finally let him burrow through. This guy, though? I’ve been having dreams, if that’s what we want to call them, since somewhere in the first week. And they are not the kind where I am asked for advice. They are filled with fear and terror and the sense that there is no escape. I guess I should be happy that I am able to sleep at all. Also, I’ve had a bad cold the last week or so and I’ve been taking a ton of decongestants, so my dreams have been pretty vivid and wild. I mean, I also had one where everyone was excited that the cast of “Friends” had decided to reunite for a full season of new shows, which as dreams go is more embarrassing than anything else that ever pierced the veil of sleep before. So it could just be the medicine. Or it could be that I’m an idiot. That is usually the explanation for things. I guess what I want to know is, what are your dreams like these days? They’re not good, right?

Anyway, Resident Advisor calls this one “expansive, atmospheric, string-laden,” and all three of those things are indeed true. Enjoy.

A reflection in verse

Last evening as I lay awake and waited for the dawn,

I wondered, “How much longer can this lunacy go on?

The bursts of strange, abhorrent news that come throughout the day?

The nauseating feeling as each custom falls away?

The gross display of ego that determines every act?

The calculated onslaught against certainty and fact?

The way each revelation leaves you feeling sad and sick?”

I know he’s going to kill us all, I wish he’d make it quick.

Can YOU figure it out?

Everyone wants to know what time the big game happens this weekend, but there are very few places where that information is available! Lucky for you, we learned exactly when the whole thing kicks off. Hidden in the grid above you will find the start time for the contest and a special, secret message that only sports fans like yourself will really understand! Playing is easy: Simply go through the grid and circle words you recognize. Words can be horizontal (left to right), vertical (up and down) or diagonal. Actually, you know what, we’ve all got a lot going on, let’s just make it easy on everyone and stick with horizontal (left to right). A word at the center has already been identified to get you started. Good luck, and enjoy the game!

★★★ The assistant principal in his usual post at the gates was warning the inflowing crowd that the schoolyard footing was treacherous. One of the adults, having gone in, doubled back to pull him away from his post to show him that the footing was very treacherous indeed. Children took tentative slides on the lumpy, glossy ice. For lineup time, the five-year-old’s teacher picked a spot that was still trampled powder, slick but less so, and visible. The temperature out in the day bounced back up into reasonableness. There was time between the uptown train and the end of the sitter’s shift to get to and from the supermarket, walking quickly, with no more fear of slipping.

“Comfort in the smallest of gestures”

Is Lampchop the best band of the last 25 years? That’s a stupid question, one that only guys ask, because ranking something so subjective — so impossible to determine — is an act of such idiocy that no woman would ever even think about doing it. It’s a declaration of hubris and an act of irrelevance all wrapped up in one. So yes, I have to say that Lambchop is indeed the best band of the last 25 years. And guess what?

Just in time for its 15th anniversary, Lambchop’s 2002 album Is a Woman will be available on vinyl in North America for the first time on March 3…. To those who embraced its predecessor, 2000’s Nixon — whose luscious country soul grooves provided the sprawling Nashville collective with a significant breakthrough — the deceptively gentle Is a Woman administered a quiet but compelling shock. The album’s remarkable “My Blue Wave,” where Kurt Wagner depicts a world of helpless tragedy in which comfort can nonetheless be found in the smallest of gestures, exemplifies the true spirit of this record.

For some reason I feel like this is something we could all benefit from at this moment? Enjoy.

Chuck the groundhog

This morning, at New York’s Staten Island Zoo, Chuck the groundhog emerged from a dwelling and was greeted with no shadow, meaning that the greater metro area can look forward to an early spring.

Just In: #StatenIslandChuck did not see his shadow = early spring! @StatenIslandZoo

 — @NY1

All of this sounded like business as usual, but one factoid in the background information really stood out to me. According to the New York Times, “Chuck boasts an 80 percent success rate, according to the Staten Island Zoo. Phil, by comparison, is right only 39 percent of the time.”

Now I’m not a mathematician, but 80% strikes me as… 30% more accurate than you’d expect in a scenario with 50/50 odds*. 49% accuracy, sure. 54%—why not? But at 80% this ‘hog sounds gifted.

I did a great deal of looking into the particulars of Staten Island Chuck to see if there were any things about him that made him stand out from his peers, and… here is a recent history of New York’s Groundhog Day Groundhog:

Previous Chucks lived for drama.

During 2009’s ceremony, mayor-at-the-time Michael Bloomberg got his stylish leather glove bitten by Chuck:

And in 2014, mayor Bill DeBlasio had Chuck leap out of his arms as he was giving him back to a handler:

Happy Groundhog's Day! Hope Mayor DeBlasio doesn't murder another groundhog today! https://t.co/GGXHv0qkxr

 — @jbillinson

That groundhog died days later, though there’s never been official confirmation that it was due to injuries obtained during the fall. Completely unrelatedly, current Chucks do their readings from inside a roomy glass enclosure that they enter and exit using a tiny elevator called a Chuck-a-vator.

Bill DeBlasio decided to sit the event out this year.

Probably equally because the world is ending and he’s up for re-election, New York City’s mayor opted to let Chuck do the reading solo today (for the second year running). No picture with a groundhog is better than another picture of you dropping a groundhog.

Our current Chuck is genderqueer and came here to make friends.

“This Chuck (full name: Charles G. Hogg VII) is actually female,” says the Times. She’s four years old, 8.5 pounds, and because of previous snafus, she’s also apparently gone through some social training that her predecessors did not. “In preparation for today, Ms. Chuck spent months training and socializing with zoo caretakers to ensure an elegant public appearance… and a confident, correct, shadow-or-no-shadow verdict.” So in a way, this morning’s event was like watching a young starlet do her debut interview on The Tonight Show after her first big role. Iconic.

In addition to not biting, Chuck’s skills include a high-five, which according to her trainer “is also really good as a medical move because you can then clip her nails.” As an addendum, they add, “(She does not, however, take baths or get her teeth cleaned.)” Stars! They’re just like us!

Does any of this explain Chuck’s above-average accuracy? Not that I can tell. But clearly New York’s Groundhog Day program is… exceptional. What choice do our rodents have but to follow suit?

_______
*And also 39% Phil? Loosen up, it’s just a game.

Classical Music Hour with Fran

It can be tough sometimes to find good books about classical music that don’t make you feel like a complete and utter idiot. I say this mainly about myself, not you — many musicographies are too dense for my own understanding of music, and biographies are often just very long. Who has that kind of time, especially if you, like me, find yourself frequently en route to protests? The times: they are bad.

In light of all of that, I’ve been reading Absolutely On Music: Conversations with Seiji Ozawa by Haruki Murakami the past couple of weeks. Murakami, of course, is an acclaimed Japanese writer and novelist, known best for his magical realism, and Ozawa, perhaps unknown to you unless you are very up to date on your 20th century classical music, is an acclaimed conductor, known best for his work with the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

The book is a series of transcribed conversations between the two of them on classical music. Even if you don’t know a lot about classical music in the first place, the book is easy enough to parse. Murakami professes to mostly just being a fan of classical music and not an expert, to which I am kind of like LOL because Murakami knows a lot, down to recordings and conductors and can spot differences in the sounds of orchestras. I can’t even do that! But I can read music and Murakami can’t so there’s my one-up on an award-winning novelist from my weekly classical music column.

It’s low-stakes, nice and entertaining reading on a variety of pieces and recordings and composers and conductors. Some of the pieces discussed in the book are ones I’ve written about for this column! Others are by my enemy, Gustav Mahler, whom I’ve yet to write about and will maybe eventually come around to. But even reading Murakami and Ozawa talk about Mahler, a composer whose work I really do not understand for the most part, makes me want to spend a full day trying to understand him.

Here is a good way to know if this book is for you: do you ever read comedian memoirs (look, it’s okay, we all do it) and think to yourself, “Wow, what a useless anecdote from your childhood, can you please tell us more about your process?” Hm, maybe I am the only person who thinks that, but regardless, I do. This is a lot of process in this, which I think is a good thing! Have you ever wondered how a conductor does… anything? I do! I do all the time!

Anyway, the first big piece the two discuss in Absolutely On Music is Beethoven’s Piano Concerto №3 in C Minor. They go over a few different recordings of it, but of those, I’m partial to this Leonard Bernstein and Glenn Gould one from 1960. I haven’t dedicated much time to concertos in this column yet, but for definitional purposes, a concerto is a composition of classical music usually consisting of three movements (compared to a symphony’s four) featuring a solo instrument. So a piano concerto would have a lot of piano solos, these ones played by Glenn Gould.

Piano concertos, in particular, are very overwhelming for me to listen to as a former pianist who was, uh, kind of bad at piano. And I don’t mean that in a “Haha, I was bad” way but in a “I really only ever got to a certain level of aptitude and the type of skill required to play a concerto of this nature baffles me so completely that I mentally shut down” way. In the first movement of this concerto, the Allegro con brio, the piano enters at the 3:27 mark and you’ll see what I mean. That first minute of featured piano solo is mind-bogglingly good. There’s this little bit at the 4:25 mark when Glenn Gould is just playing so perfectly — I want to listen to it over and over again. In fact, I have listened to it over and over again. It’s amazing. His fingertips sound so light on the keys. It’s hard to imagine, with a piece so difficult, having the ability to play lightly and confidently and quickly.

Murakami and Ozawa spend a fair amount of time discussing the Largo of this piece, namely in just how slow it can be. This particular Bernstein and Gould recording is known to be quicker and livelier, even in its slow sections, which is perhaps what draws me to it. I’ve never had a ton of patience for a power ballad, so Gould’s sense of urgency is appreciated. I wrote last week that cello is the best instrument. I stand by this, of course, and in turn, I’d love to draw your attention to the 1:55 mark where in combination with the basses, there’s this beautiful little melody supporting the woodwinds. Finally… it is time for the low strings to shine. I’m ready.

The concerto’s third movement, the Rondo, a melodic round, has this dizzying effect to it. Gould really just gets going right in the first few seconds of it. There’s this section right at the 1:36 mark where the piano is quite literally dancing atop of the rest of the orchestra. I guess not “quite literally,” but you’ll listen and it does sound that way. It’s perfectly balanced and repetitive in a way that feels like putting your favorite song on repeat. Murakami and Ozawa don’t touch on the Rondo too much which why I feel confident enough swooping in to say: this movement really trucks along. It has all of the drama and poise of a normal Beethoven symphony — drama and poise is honestly a good description for most German music — and the joy of a concerto is often that you can really hear an individual musician at the top of their game.

And that’s what’s also so wonderful about Absolutely On Music. This book is essentially two experts in two different fields having in-depth conversations about a subject they both love and guess what, it is unfairly pleasant. It’s artists appreciating art. There’s nothing better! Honestly, there isn’t. These guys are tremendous nerds, but guess what, you made it to the end of this column, so you are too.

Fran Hoepfner is a writer from Chicago. You can find a corresponding playlist for all of the pieces discussed in this column here.

Try one out for yourself!

The news is bad lately. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. What’s been more surprising to me has been watching my non-political news outlets also shift in tone. Take Scientific American, for example. Where there’s usually a fair amount of, “Did you know birds could do this?!” coming out of their corner, suddenly everything is observably… graver. Climate change, extinctions, and conflict management seem to be on their writers’ minds a lot. And rightfully so! But along with all of that president-questioning data comes a lot of really amazing descriptions of phenomena that I’d like to share with you here. Mostly in case you are a thirteen year old gearing up for your middle school’s battle of the bands.

Their headlines essentially assemble a press kit for you, you just need to pick a name for your band:

Hot Fossil Mammals

Hot Fossil Mammals May Offer a Glimpse of Nature’s Future

Facts Fail

How to Convince Someone When Facts Fail

Doubts Cloud

Doubts Cloud Claims of Metallic Hydrogen

Cosmic Lenses

Cosmic Lenses Show Universe Expanding Surprisingly Fast

Enigmatic Pterosaur

Enigmatic Pterosaur Was a Terrestrial Stalker

Ancient Meteorites

Ancient Meteorites Were Different

Crowd Wisdom

Hive Mind: New Approach Could Improve on Crowd Wisdom

Hope for Elephants

Is China’s Ivory Ban a Sign of Hope for Elephants?

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Sea Unworthy: A Personal Journey into the Pacific Garbage Patch [Slide Show]

And while we’re here, pick one or two of these good titles for your LP and/or first single:

• The Universe in a Cup of Coffee
• Power of a Meaningful Life
• The Delusion of Alternative Facts
• Not an Extinction. A Transition
• How to Learn Morse Code—Semiconsciously
• Despair Not This Earth
• Galactic Murder Mystery
• What It Would Take to Reach the Stars
• Are Wormholes a Dead End?
• Soft, Sticky Frog Tongues

Now invite your friends over and practice once for thirty minutes in your stepdad’s basement, then kill it at the teen center this weekend. I know people say this all the time in show business, but I’m rooting for you.