cultural cocktail

musings on music, film, pop culture, literature, and whatever else is top of my mind

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

amazing zadie

Zadie Smith demurely and preemptively claims to be bad at writing novels. Ah, to be so unsuccessful that Michiko Kakutani pronounces your latest work "glorious" and "wonderfully engaging" is a paltry achievement indeed. It's possible to quibble with On Beauty's overly plotted march to its finale (though I found the ending of White Teeth, which gathered all the characters in an auditorium much more problematic and just plain clumsy). But then Smith is paying homage to Forster and Howard's End in On Beauty, so how can she be faulted?

I found On Beauty's story of two very different families a wildly entertaining read. At its center is the liberal Belseys helmed by an Englishman named Howard (who's a Rembrandt scholar at a fictional academy named Wellington in Boston), his African-American wife Kiki, and their three nearly grown children, Jerome, Zora, and Levi. The lives of the Belseys get entangled with those of the Kipps, a Christian, reverent bunch, headed by Trinidadian papa Monty, his sympathetic wife Carlene, their son Michael, and daughter and sexual provacateuse Victoria. What makes Zadie Smith such a joy to read is her remarkable ear for dialogue and her ability to very convincingly enter into the thoughts of her characters, whether it's a middleaged man or his teenaged daughter. She gets bonus points, too, for really capturing family dynamics. Highly recommended.

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Wednesday, March 22, 2006

like being 17 again

Last night I went with my friend Fernando to a concert to hear the Canadian supergroup The New Pornographers (truly an unfortunate name) and Belle and Sebastian, a Scottish group whose lead singer has been interviewed by Terry Gross. As I dimly recall, I hadn't been to a medium-sized concert hall in several years. At this one, the Concourse Exhibition's Design Center in San Francisco, the doorfolk scanned my ticket's bar code, like the checkers do at the grocery store. Anyhow, the place turned out to be a long, cavernous venue, one certainly not built for musical performances. By the time we arrived after 8 p.m., the New Pornographers had taken the stage, a fact we were wise to as we hustled down the street and could hear music blasting from the Design Center.

Brief interruption: I love the NP's CD, "Twin Cinema." It's power pop, heavy, heavy, heavy on the drums and guitars, the kind of CD that's made for rocking out to in the car (and I do so, whenever I have the chance). I didn't cotton to the disc on first listen, but when I gave it a second try, the music got under my skin and quickly became my interior soundtrack.

But back to the show: I tend to avoid concerts where I feel less like an audience member and more like a cow in the herd. Yeah, we got to stand around to watch the show, or, in my case as one of god's little people at 5'2", I got to stand and listen to the bands while I gazed at the back of people's heads or watched a gaggle of gals gyrate to Belle & Sebastian (I'd never thought of them as a dance band, but for some fans, they seem to be). A friend turned me on to Scottish popsters Belle & Sebastian some years ago. I have "The Boy With the Arab Strap" and "If You're Feeling Sinister" and like both CDS. Like, not love. Ninety minutes of their pleasant but not particularly interesting performance was more than enough for me.

The sound system was unkind to the NP. Regardless, when the band played songs I recognized from "Twin Cinema," I closed my eyes and swayed to the music, bilssfully unconscious of how I, a mid-lifer and not much of a dancer, looked in my attempt at rythmic moving. Ah, but nevermind, because the NPs music makes me feel young -- like the world is spread out before me ripe with possibilities. B&S attracts a smart, seemingly sensitive group of fans. The girls and guys looked urban hip, dressed but not dressed up. For the evening, I was one of them, even as I observed more than partcipated (a familiar vantage point), I had three-minute pop song moments of feeling like anything could happen, a fantasy worth the price of admission.

Saturday, March 18, 2006

Gogh modern






About the word "modernistic" in my URL: "Modernistic" is the title of one of my favorite jazz CDs by a great pianist, Jason Moran, who hails from Houston and studied with Jaki Byard. "Modernistic" is Moran's solo outing. It demonstrates quite beautifully how JaMo pays homage to past jazz greats and puts his own gangsta spin on the music, blending past and present and creating music that gives me hope for the future of the genre. I've noticed that when I've had a couple of (okay, well, several) drinks at home with friends, I put on Moran's music and subtly proselytize (well, I'd like to think I'm subtle, but that's doubtful).

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ola from oakland



I am caving in to the admittedly light pressure exerted by a blogging friend and have decided to join the legions who are sharing their thoughts, views, and passions with the masses (or those that happen to alight on their blogs). I feel certain that posting pictures of my cats is a prerequisite to blogger fame and fortune.