998 recordings to go…

So it’s taken a long time for me to put this post up, because I couldn’t stop listening to Paul’s Boutique. Since I purchased it, I have listened to it every day without fail. So I decided to move on, and force myself to stop listening to it.

For some reason, I didn’t own Paul’s Boutique when it came out. I was aware of it, I knew most of the songs before I listened to it, but for whatever reason I never bought it. What a mistake. It’s freaking amazing.

These days, one can pretty honestly say that there will never be another album like Paul’s Boutique. Primarily, the labyrinthian copyright law developed by and after the landmark Biz Markie lawsuit pretty much ensures that no one will sample the way the Beastie Boys/Dust Brothers did in Paul’s Boutique.

With that required description out of the way, this album is a revelation, as I’m sure it was then, and it still is today. When talking about hip-hop (and this is a subject I honestly don’t know a lot about), I think it’s standard to discuss both the beats and the lyrics.

The beats are awesome, well-placed, and familiar yet different. Sometimes you can tell exactly where they come from, and other times they’ll only sample a single note or drumbeat and you can’t tell, yet it all sounds coherent.

With the unfettered, unrestrained, unbelievable sampling abilities of the Dust Brothers providing the backing tracks, the Boys are allowed to really show off their lyrical chops. The lines are memorable, quotable, funny, and interesting. The Beastie Boys clearly display their influences, from TV (Chuck Woolery), baseball (Sadaharu Oh), dealing with the homeless (Johnny Ryall), movies (High Plains Drifter), and on and on. I get the references, and I love them.

While individually the songs are great, the real strength of the album is the beginning to end flow. Paul’s Boutique was made in a time when albums were still in fashion, and music did not, nor was not always divvied up into bite size portions. While some tracks are stronger than others (my favorites include Shake Your Rump, Johnny Ryall, and Hey Ladies), there’s not a weak track, or really even a weak moment, on the whole album. It flows perfectly from the half/song intro to the multi-part B-Boy Bouillabaise finale.

I can’t recommend this album enough. If you don’t love hip-hop, you should start here. If you don’t like this album, then I hope you come to your senses soon.

Sleepwalk with Me

Last night, the wife and I saw Mike Birbiglia’s Sleepwalk with Me. At dinner afterwards, we tried to categorize the show, because that’s what humans do.  Going into the show, the wife didn’t know that Mike is a comedian.   She grew up in NYC, and assumed that this was going to be a standard one man show by an actor, who she assumed to be funny, but she didn’t know he is a comedian.  I approached it assuming it was going to be an extended stand-up set, with some differences.  But what it becomes is a cross between the two, which we could only wind up describing as storytelling.

Everyone has a story (can’t wait for this podcast to start).  This is a great story, and Birbiglia tells is beautifully.   It’s mostly funny, with a couple of touching, poignant moments.  He creates a solid connection between his sleepwalking problems and his relationship problems, but without bashing the audience over the head with the metaphor.  I laughed, I was entertained, and at the end I felt a connection to Birbiglia in terms of what it’s like to grow a little bit older, and have to start dealing with things.  And there’s not a lot more you can ask from a show.

EXCEPT! Birbiglia answered questions after the show, and then previewed an upcoming story for This American Life.  The story was really good, if you had an awkward high school relationship, you’ll get it.  The questions kind of got annoying.  There were a couple of initial decent ones, piggybacking off the show, but then people decided that this was no longer a performance, and they were going to insert themselves into the discussion in a very overt and annoying way.

When there is a question and answer session after a show or performance, I wish I could exclude the people who have decided that their question is so important that it MUST BE ASKED.   Let me clue everyone in as to how these things are supposed to work.  The performer (that’s Mike) says he will answer questions.  People then raise their hands and he calls on people.  When he’s done answering questions, he stops calling on people and then moves on to the next thing (in this case, reading his This American Life story).   This does not include you yelling out your question so that it can be asked, nor does it include your random LOUD comments after he answers a question.

For example:

Audience Person 1 (she was called on): “When was the last time you sleptwalk?”

Mike: /Describes incident from the previous night where he thought that the water level of the city was rising and flooding his apartment. (Includes humorous exchange with Audience Person 1 who blurts out that she studies rising ocean levels in the city and invites Mike to her “meetings,” to which he promptly responds “NO!” It was funny).

Audience Person 2 (NOT called on, and in the middle of Mike’s story about the previous night): “Were you in the US Air flight that crashed in the Hudson?”

/instant crowd+Mike reaction of “What is she talking about?”

Audience Person 2 (to her friend, which I heard because she was right behind me): “What, it sounds like the water level rising from that?”

WHAT? What the fuck are you talking about, lady?  Seriously?   Was he in the Hudson crash?  NO.  NO HE WASN’T.   I don’t even have to do research.  And even if he WERE, what the fuck does being in your apartment and thinking the water levels are rising in the city have to do with an airplane crash?  Also, the same woman behind me committed the cardinal ‘Seinfeld’ sin of saying, TWICE, “oh that’s funny.”  If it’s funny, just laugh.  Don’t say “Oh that’s funny.”

Sorry for the rant.  The show was great, I highly, highly recommend it.  Oh, and I got my new favorite shirt.

999 More Recordings to Hear Before I Die

I listen to a lot of podcasts.  One of them is the Sound of Young America, with Jesse Thorn.  I recently listened to an interview with Wendell Pierce and Andre Royo of the Wire.  (Yes, I am one of those Wire fans that will constantly be making references to it.  Deal with it.)  In it, Jesse Thorn referenced the completely awesome Charles S. Dutton (for some bizarre reason, I was a huge Roc fan growing up.

Bit of background – David Simon was a newspaper reporter in Baltimore who eventually wrote several books, one of them (cowritten with Ed Burns) was turned into an HBO miniseries called The Corner.  The Corner served as a jumping off point from which Simon and Burns then created the Wire.  Charles S. Dutton directed The Corner.

Jesse read this quote from Dutton:

“I know that David Simon can visit and sit with as many black folks in this city as he wants to,” Mr. Dutton said one day in late September, standing on a crumbling stretch of sidewalk in the rain. “They can pay the families to get the stories. They can listen and walk around with dope fiends. They can write about murders, and they still won’t know a damn thing about black people. Not this, you know. Not this.”

He added: “I know the pulse of this. I know what people think the minute they walk out them doors. I know what mothers feel when their sons and daughters walk out of the house to go to school. I know what it feels like to kill somebody. I know what it feels like to get shot. I know what it feels like that people be looking to kill me. I don’t have to show up as a crime journalist after the fact.”

I thought about this quote in the context of listening to Bobby “Blue” Bland’s album ‘Two Steps from the Blues.’  If you separate out the pure musicality of the album, which I can appreciate, and think about the context of the emotion, there’s always going to be something I don’t get or I don’t understand.  Now, because pain is universal, there will be some things I get.  I’ve had relationships, some that ended badly, and so I can relate to songs about lost love and hurtful women.  But there’s something else that I can hear in Bobby Bland’s voice that I can’t quite get to, and won’t ever get to, because my life has been, up to this point, quite privileged and fortunate.

This is by no means a new idea, but one that I just had hit me at this particular moment.  This album is great, by the way.  It’s a little more up-tempo than the blues that I am used to, and the use of horns was surprising, but I really enjoyed it.  Overall, when I listen to it, I think that it falls more into “Rhythm & Blues” than Blues, but, to echo Tom Moon, when Bobby Bland starts singing, I know it’s definitely the blues.

…and then you die

So recently I picked up this book, 1001 Albums to Hear Before You die, 1000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die by Tom Moon.  While the book almost automatically makes you think this guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about (No Neutral Milk Hotel!?, Ray of Light over The Immaculate Collection!?), he actually does know a lot.  So I decided that I’m going to trust him, take a journey, and see if I actually can listen to all of these before I die.

A lot of these I haven’t ever listened to.  I have a fairly huge background in rock, and more than a cursory knowledge of blues and jazz.  But Classical, Opera, and World I know little about, so we’ll see how far I can get.

Of course, some of these I’ve already listened to, but I’ll still include them and re-listen.  So be prepared for my thoughts on these albums, I’ll listen to probably about one a week for the next 20 years or so.  Hopefully I’ll live that long.

Introduction & Welcome

Hello, no one. Welcome to my personal blog.

During the day I practice law, during the nights and weekends I contribute to this blog, and engage in a variety of activities: hanging out with my wife, reading, watching moves & TV, playing video games, going to comedy shows, occasionally walking the dog, and listening to podcasts. Generally, I try and take advantage of the city I live in (New York), though sometimes that doesn’t happen.

Anyway, here’s my personal blog. It’ll primarily observations that aren’t necessarily thematically geeky enough to fit in with my other blog.

Oh, the name. Hupomnema (here, I’ll save you the Wikipedia link) is an idea I found through Foucault. Basically, it’s a concept of a notebook where you write stuff down to revisit, which is what I’d like to do here.  I’d like it to remember all those things I forget.