The Glasgow School [CD]

The Glasgow School by Orange Juice

File this one under "neglected".

Due to odd sizes of items, value, age, et cetera, we sometimes have material here at Forbes that lacks a certain "browseability" or just isn't given an ideal sight line.  The Glasgow School certainly falls somewher under this category.  This cd, filed with our boxed sets because of its book bound style case, may be a little off the radar for our casual music browser.

Orange Juice, fronted by Edwyn Collins, was a group that successfully meshed clever, highly literary lyrics with danceable musical accompaniment.  The songs on The Glasgow School collects the band's first singles and outtakes.  These sessions sound more rough around the edges than the slicker produced records that followed.  Collins' romantic, baritone voice handles the majority of the lead singing with James Kirk interjecting some gems here and there (Kirk would leave OJ after the release of the classic full length debut You Can't Hide Your Love Forever).

Here we have inspired music from Scotland at the start of the 80's representing the lighter side of the post-punk era.  Lyrically, they match wits with the best.  Collins laments in Blue Boy "Oh curse and bless him with the gabardine which surrounds him/See him writhe at the sight of your eyes which repel him".  Their lasting influence is easily heard throughout the catalogs of the Smiths, Belle & Sebastian, Franz Ferdinand and hopefully, if people can find Orange Juice, many more musicians to come.

Doctor Who: The Awakening [DVD]

Doctor Who: The Awakening

Peter Davison stars as the Doctor with the cricket inspired get up and celery stalk fastened to his lapel. You'll have to wait until Davison's last appearance however to learn the purpose of the mysterious vegetable! Regarding this particular shorter story, the Doctor promises to reunite his companion Tegan with her grandfather in her present time of 1984.

If it were only that simple...

When they arrive at the quaint village of Little Hodcombe, they are greeted by people with long flowing beards in suited armor on horseback. The Doctor and his companions are led to believe the townspeople are taking part in some sort of reenactment of a famous civil war battle from 1643.

We soon discover that they have actually landed in a time parallel between the years 1643 and 1984 due to an underground beast who is also warping the minds of Little Hodcombe's citizens and projecting humans from the 17th century in their reality. Confused yet? Check it out for yourself and enjoy this entertaining two-part Doctor Who adventure.

Bach Unaccompanied Cello Suites [CD]

Bach unaccompanied cello suites performed on double bass by Edgar Meyer

This is one of the most amazing CDs I have ever heard.  Edgar Meyer is a musician's musician who is in high demand in the classical, folk and bluegrass worlds.  He has partnered with the likes of Yo-Yo Ma, Joshua Bell,  Bela Fleck and Mark O'Connor, and he composed a violin concerto for Hilary Hahn.  Here he partners with Johann Sebastian Bach in a new interpretation of the suites for solo cello with a much deeper voice.  He solves the technical problems of the bass -- larger reach and slower-speaking strings, for example -- with a technical mastery that is just mind-boggling. But this is not just virtuosic fireworks.  The bass sings under his fingers.  And you can hear the 30 years of practice and love for the repertoire in this recording.  Meyer is right up there with Casals on my shelf.

The Night Circus

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Evocative. Descriptive. Atmospheric. The Night Circus is a good story, but its the atmosphere that will keep you turning the pages. Set in the late Victorian era, The Night Circus tells the story of two students, Celia and Marco, forced by their individual teachers to compete against each other in a game they don't understand. Their playing field is an unusual circus, which becomes more and more fantastic as the two young magicians populate the circus with their increasingly elaborate creations. A carousel with strikingly realistic animals. A tree without leaves or flowers, but covered with candles which never go out or melt away. A hall in which hundreds of mirrors each show something unexpected. A garden made of perpetually unmelting of ice.

Everything about Le Cirque des Rêves is improbable, and much of the book is devoted to describing the circus and the experience of visiting it. The narrative shifts in time, place, and voice, but always describes the circus or the people connected to it. Some chapters are written in the second person, and while most of the book is written in the third person some chapters are completely without characters (unless you count the circus itself); these chapters especially create a feeling of immersion and they felt to me as if they were in the second person, even if they did not use the word "you".

The level of detail is appropriately, but sometimes startlingly, varied. Morgenstern often writes at length about minutia such the smell of the popcorn, or the costume of a particular performer, only to gloss over the details of a conversation in the most general language. These glosses may, perhaps, represent some lost opportunities on Morgenstern's part, where she could have further fleshed out her story, but on the whole I found them unobjectionable and even welcome; not only did they help keep the story focused, but they contributed to the tone of the novel, which I found unusual but very much enjoyed.

The Night Circus is a fantasy, and a romance of sorts, and will be enjoyed by many open-minded readers of both genres.

Chasing Fire

Chasing Fire by Nora Roberts

Rowan Tripp has been fighting fires since she was 18, and is the daughter of a retired forest fire fighting legend. We meet the new crop of rookies, and get to see the intense ways they train, as well as meet the surviving crew from the previous season when they lost one of their own. The fire season is difficult enough on its own, but we find that someone hasn't let go of last year's tragedy. The suspense is more in the people vs. fire, with a lot of details including training, equipment and on the line fire fighting. Although this definitely qualifies as a romance, I didn't find it too over the top, and felt the steam came more from the water vs. fire than the relationships. There is a secondary romance that adds an interesting element.

Let's Spend the Night Together [DVD]

Let's Spend the Night Together a film by Hal Ashby

I remember watching the Rolling Stones in Let's Spend the Night Together a few times on television when I was in high school.  I know this sounds unbelievable, but VH1 used to show concert films and was actually a music station back in the day.  Maybe I couldn't get behind the 1981 renditions of the classic 60's tunes at the time or was distracted by Mick Jagger's football tights ... truth is, I didn't really dig the concert film when I first watched it.

Fast forward to last night.  I popped in this dvd for nostalgia sake and wound up really enjoying myself.  The performances are unbelievable!  In addition, I made the statement to my friend who was sitting next to me on the sofa that "this just might be the best Stones concert film ever." 

The boys barrel through 24 songs in under 90 minutes with the right blend of machismo and camp that we expect from the band.  Despite playing a huge stadium, they're very, very loose with unexpected bendy guitar riffs distributed throughout by Ron and Keith , jazzy drum fills care of Mr. Watts and Mick's wild singing.  If you look close enough, you may even see a smile on Bill Wyman's face, too.  Some of the older songs appear to be unrehearsed to a certain extent while more recent cuts from Tattoo You, Emotional Rescue and Some Girls are played tight like a classic rhythm and blues review.  We're also treated to a bonus keyboard section featuring Ian McLagan (of the Small Faces & Faces fame) sitting behind the organ and classic stones session man Ian Stewart on piano.

It's also important to note that a serious filmmaker was on staff for Let's Spend the Night Together.  Hal Ashby, whose credits include Harold & Maude, The Last Detail, Being There and many other fantastic titles, directed the film.  It's always interesting to see the difference between a standard concert film and one that was overseen by a true artist.  Martin Scorsese's work on the Last Waltz and D.A. Pennebaker's Montery Pop are other excellent examples.  They tend to spend more time with the performers and not make pointless quick cuts.  There is something to be said in what these filmmakers find interesting and insist the audience see on stage. 

The real lesson learned however is that it doesn't hurt to revisit films you may not have enjoyed at one stage in your life.  You never know in what direction your taste may take you.

Kansas City [DVD]

Kansas City a film by Robert Altman

It's 1934 and on the eve of a local election in Kansas City, Missouri.

Jennifer Jason Leigh stars as Blondie, a comically fast talking wife of a petty thief. When her husband gets picked up by an intimidating local jazz and gambling club owner stroke gangster named Seldom Seen (played by the great musician and activist Harry Belafonte), Blondie hatches a kidnapping scheme of her own. At gunpoint she drags Carolyn Stilton, the opium addicted wife of a local senator, along through the city in an attempt to free her husband. Miranda Richardson and Altman mainstay Michael Murphy are cast as the seemingly loveless Stilton couple.

Tension enters the film only moments after it begins and it continues to build and build throughout. The backdrop of this chilling drama is the soulful and swinging jazz music that pulsates from Seldom Seen's Hey Hey Club. In addition, Steve Buscemi, in a role that seems to have served as a warm up for his stint on Boardwalk Empire, is one of the many actors who appear in memorable smaller parts.

Kansas City, though not as loose and off the cuff as many classic Altman movies of the 1970's, is possibly the director's most suspenseful.

Nook [e-book reader]

Nook

The Barnes & Noble Nook is one of ten e-book readers you can check out from the Arts & Music desk at Forbes. Each one has over a hundred books pre-loaded on it. I recently borrowed the Kobo to read a Sherlock Holmes story I needed for a class. It was my first time taking one of these little gadgets home to bed. Despite being devoted to the printed page since 1963, I confess to a certain attraction. Imagine my wild surmise when I saw that I could read over a hundred classics in any type size I wanted, while only carrying one little tablet. Next I'm going to check out a Kindle to get a jump on the waiting list for the bestsellers that are already on it. All the e-book readers can be used with free Overdrive library e-books, too, but I didn't have time to try that feature in my two allotted weeks. My bookshelf is already getting jealous.

Here's a little sample of the authors on the Nook in my hand:

Jane Austen, two Brontës, Lewis Carroll, Mark Twain, Joseph Conrad, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Hardy, Aldous Huxley, Henry James, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Sinclair Lewis, Herman Melville, Leo Tolstoy (world's lightest copy of War and Peace!), Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, P.G. Wodehouse, Virginia Woolf, Frederick Douglass, Henry Thoreau, William Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, and W.B. Yeats. There's also a whole (virtual) shelf of books on local history in and around Northampton.

Day For Night [DVD]

Day For Night

La Nuit Américaine, or Day for Night, is one of my favorite films. This 1973 film by French director François Truffaut shows the cast and crew of a dramatic film on and off the set. In addition to the obvious work necessarily to make a film—selecting costumes and props, learning lines, building sets, performing for the camera, adjusting lights, etc.—we also see these men and women as they make friends, suffer nervous breakdowns, fall in love, gossip, run away, return, and otherwise live rather complicated lives.

The film stars Jacqueline Bisset and Jean-Pierre Léaud as the film within the film's young stars, but the film truly has an ensemble cast, with many talented actors portraying a wide array of interesting and memorable characters. Truffaut himself is part of the cast, as he not only directs the film, but also plays the director of film within the film. The music is by Georges Delerue, who also worked with Truffaut on a number of other films.

Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag

This very short memoir of the association between Ingrid Nunez and Susan Sontag recounts their friendship/mentorship during the time that Sontag was writing “On Photography” and New York literary life in the 1970’s. Nunez was hired by Sontag to help sort out her correspondence. She then became involved with Sontag’s son, David Rieff, and for a period of time the three of them lived in the same apartment. There are many glimpses into Sontag’s writing life and habits which I found very interesting. Susan Sontag is often portrayed as a very difficult person and Nunez does show some instances of how that was true but she also rounds out the portrait with other details that showed Sontag as a complicated person with many aspects including vulnerability, conflicted and humorous and loving.