Collaborations

Collaborations by Ravi Shankar & George Harrison

George Harrison was first wowed by the sitar, a traditional Indian stringed instrument, on the set of the Beatles film Help!.  The young pop star was intrigued and transfixed by the music he heard.  He later went out and bought his own sitar at a shop in London and found his way round the neck enough to dub a part onto "Norwegian Wood" on the Rubber Soul album.  Harrison then wanted to go beyond his rudimentary plucking on the instrument and properly learn.  Well, why not get lessons from the master Ravi Shankar?

The two studied together in Los Angeles, California and later in India.  Though the Beatle did not pursue a career with the sitar after discovering the amount of years, intense training and discipline it takes to play classical Indian music, he and Shankar became life long friends.  This boxed set Collaborations celebrates the two musicians' friendship, spiritual connection and recorded musical partnerships.  Harrison was involved as a producer (and sometimes a musician) on three of Shankar's albums ranging from 1974-1997 and they all appear here along with a live concert dvd and a beautiful hardcover book.

Widow's War

Widow's War by Sally Gunning

Set on Cape Cod (in the area which is now Brewster), in the year 1761 we meet Lyddie Berry, whose husband drowns while whaling. She defies convention and chooses not to live with her son-in-law (and who could blame her), and holds onto the law of being able to use (but not own) 1/3 of her husband's property. She defies social, legal and religious strictures of her time, and makes her way through a world that is not made for independent women. Throw in some romance and intrigue with the details of daily life and you have a very captivating story. The author was led to the subject by her own historical research into her family, and her familiarity with the area is clear in the book.

Bread and Jam for Frances

Bread and jam for Frances by Russell Hoban. Pictures by Lillian Hoban.

I love picture books, but I generally refrain from posting children's materials to this blog. When I heard that the author of Bread and Jam for Frances had died, however, I wanted to share this book from my childhood. Bread and Jam for Frances tells the story of a young child (who happens to be a badger) who loves bread and jam and doesn't want to eat anything else. With memorable characters, and great illustrations, I the Frances books will be enjoyed by children and adults alike.

(Interestingly, the Wikipedia page on Russell Hoban reveals that he wrote books for adults as well. I didn't know that! Forbes Library has one of them, Riddley Walker, and many more are available through interlibrary loan!)

Tap [DVD]

Tap

Have you ever seen the Nicholas Brothers dance? If you haven't, take a look at some of their clips on YouTube. You might want to start with their famous performance in Stormy Weather (of course, you can borrow Stormy Weather from the library and watch the whole film). I'm also quite fond of Lucky Number, a charming song and dance routine performed by a younger Fayard and Harold. That's some fine dancing.

Tap is a 1989 film that celebrates the kind of syncopated, jazz dancing practiced by the Nicholas Brothers. Gregory Hines stars as Max Washington, a talented tap dancer who gave up dance for what he saw as a more profitable life as a burglar, got caught and went to prison, and then rediscovered dancing as a way to cope with his solitary confinement. The story follows Max after his release, and as he is reunited with old friends, all of whom seem to have an opinion on how he should live his life.

There is some great dancing in Tap. This is hardly surprising given the cast. In addition to the talented Gregory Hines, we also find a number of old tap greats, including Harold Nicholas (of the Nicholas Brothers!), Jimmy Slyde (of the Slyde Brothers), and most recognizably, Sammy Davis Junior of Rat Pack fame, in his last film role. Representing a younger generation, we also see a young Savion Glover. (Glover would eventually do the choreography for the the dancing penguins in Happy Feet, a fact that is hard to forget, though it is insignificant compared to his other accomplishments.)

Tap isn't a great film. It too often falls into cinematic cliches, and its final scene, which is supposed to be an inspiring combination of rock and tap, is a disappointment. Still, it is an enjoyable film, worth watching if you love dance, and a wonderful reminder of the great tradition of jazz tap, which has, sadly, fallen out of cinematic favor.

Rags & tangos [CD]

Rags & tangos by Ernesto Nazareth, James Scott, Joseph F. Lamb performed by Joshua Rifkin, piano

Put this in the CD player, close your eyes (assuming you're not driving) and be transported to turn-of-the-20th-century piano heaven. Ernesto Nazareth is the greatest composer you've never heard of. His music is descended from Brazilian choro, Frédéric Chopin, and the soul of dance hall piano. In between the Nazareth "tangos" --which aren't really tangos in any conventional sense-- are works by my two favorite ragtime composers: James Scott, the bridge from Joplin to jazz, and Joseph Lamb, who can make the romantic tradition sound like striptease music and fill your heart with nostalgia for places and times that never were. One listen is worth ten thousand words.

That is All

That is All by John Hodgman

Previously I reviewed John Hodgman's The Areas of My Expertise, his first volume of complete world knowledge.  Now, I'll take a moment to give more of the same praise to the third and final installment, That is All.  Again, Hodgman provides fake historical information and hysterically terrible advice (including the necessary tools to become a deranged millionaire).  In addition, he continues the page after page factoid calendar that appeared in More Information Than You Require; only this time he decides to predict the FUTURE right up to the coming apocalypse scheduled for December 21, 2012.

That is All is a magnificent read... and it even has its own trailer:

THAT IS ALL from John Hodgman     

Wild Flag [Music CD]

Wild Flag by Wild Flag

Dear Reader,

I would never lie to you.  And when I say to you that I like to rock, I hope you understand that what I am saying is an absolute truth.  Wild Flag's self-titled debut album is what rock n' roll ought to be: loud, fast, played live and without a lot of fuss.  This supergroup features ex-members of Sleater-Kinney, The Minders and Helium.  What stands out most to me musically is Carrie Brownstein's (of Portlandia fame) blistering riffs, the spirited drums fills of Janet Weiss and the harmony sound the four vocalists create.  The stellar musicianship of this bassless, garage rock quartet often propels these excellent songs into uncharted territory. 

Just a couple examples for you... The lead off track "Romance" has some reverbed out surf overtones and a chorus that can't help getting stuck in your head.  On "Glass Tambourine", the group certainly draws from the Nuggets archives, but then moves into a spaced out heavy jam that the late Jimi Hendrix would certainly appreciate.

I love this album and that's a fact!

Sincerely,

-JSM

P.S. Please enjoy this music video directed by Tom Scharpling.

Wild Flag - Romance from Merge Records on Vimeo.

Winter in Wartime [DVD]

Winter in Wartime

This beautifully shot period film follows 13 year old Michiel, a small town boy in Nazi-occupied Holland in the Winter of 1945.  Michiel’s childhood innocence and restless desire for adventure lead him into increasingly dark and morally ambiguous territories when the realities of war,  resistance and adulthood collide and converge upon his small town life. He is apprehensive about his father’s uneasy cooperation with their German occupiers and looks up to his uncle Ben, a resistance fighter whose connections, gifts and attitude intrigue Michiel. When an allied fighter pilot crashes near the village, Michiel and his sister, a young nurse, are drawn into the search for the pilot and must debate whether to take action or remain silent, and question who they can truly trust. The film, while somewhat conventional in some of its WWII era plotlines, offers enough twists and intrigue to keep the viewer’s attention, but its real appeal is grounded heavily in the films setting. The scenes are filmed beautifully and the village, woods, snow, bicycles, knitwear and natural light combine to give the film an enchanting sense of place, and ground the viewer in Michiel’s conflicted world, caught between action and fear, occupation and resistance and childhood innocence and the risks of adult responsibilities. This film is one of several Forbes films now added in Blu-Ray and DVD (both discs are included in one case, so patrons will not mistakenly get home and find the film unplayable), and the Blu-Ray is especially recommended for its crisp picture, which captures the film’s setting wonderfully.

Submarine [DVD]

Submarine

 Olivier Tate (played by young actor Craig Roberts), the protagonist in Richard Adoaye’s quiet, quirky, charming, dark and thoroughly enjoyable film Submarine is a likeable precocious Welsh boy searching for an identity and direction in the stifling climate of small town coastal Southern Wales.  He tries on affectations: "I've tried smoking a pipe, flipping coins – listening exclusively to French crooners, I've even had a hat phase". This quote is immediately followed of course, with a shot of him at the family dinner table, wearing a Blue Stetson, looking fairly ridiculous. His teenage flailing about for identity finds its focus when he discovers the dark and indifferent charms of classmate Jordana (Yasmin Paige), who lures him into more and more morally reprehensible schoolyard acts. She is outwardly resistant to his charms except when he is misbehaving, and seems most allured by his taking part in the bullying of a fellow school girl. The cast is fantastic, both Paige and Roberts inhabit their roles fully and believably, while the adult characters (Sally Hawkins and Noah Taylor as Olivier’s parents), are comically stuck in their own lazy unspoken despair, too wrapped up in their own ridiculous melodramas to offer guidance to Olivier. Paddy Considine appears as an almost incongruously broad comic foil and rival to both Olivier Tate and his father. Adoaye, most famous for his work on the UK sitcom “The IT Crowd”, who adapted the script from a novel by Joe Dunthorne, directs the film with care and fills it with beautiful shots of the beaches, woods and amusement parks of the Welsh Coast. There are aspects of the film’s plot, details and cinematic style which will appeal to fans of many other refreshingly offbeat comic films (Wes Anderson’s films in particular) but the unique characters, acting performances and Welsh character give it a charm all its own. 

Talking Tabla [CD]

Talking Tabla by Bikram Ghosh

Talking Tabla is an exciting recording showing off the work of a masterful tabla player. The tabla is a popular Indian percussion instrument, and is ubiquitous in the classical music of Northern India. The tabla consists of two hand drums of contrasting designs: on the left is a kettle drum with a deep sound and variable pitch; on the right is smaller conical drum with a high, fixed pitch. The drums are struck with the fingers and palms of the hands to create the sounds known as bols, these are the syllables of North Indian drumming and can be spoken as well as played; well performed, they sound very much like language, hence the title of this album, Talking Tabla.

On Talking Tabla Bikram Ghosh plays a variety of compositions, fixed and improvised, in a variety of styles, including a piece in the less familiar Carnatic style of South India. Although Bikram Ghosh's tabla is the focus of these recordings we are not deprived of melody—Ramesh Mishra does a beautiful job playing the sarangi (a kind of elaborate fiddle) on several tracks and on the third track Ghosh accompanies Tarun Bhattacharya's santoor (hammered dulcimer). In addition, Ghosh's beautiful baya (left hand drum) application creates a kind of melody of its own. (To fully appreciate this a pair of good speakers or headphones are recommended—don't listen to this one through your laptop speakers!) Even those who are bored by the idea of an album devoted to the drums should consider listening to Talking Tabla.

Maphead

I like maps, I like geography and I mostly liked this book. Ken Jennings' book had many interesting stories to tell; my favorites being the sections on early cartography, the London Map Fair and the National Geographic Bee. He lost me however with the couple of chapters devoted to GPS (games and navigation) and geocaching. I was disappointed that I did not love this book in its entirety but would recommend it nevertheless because of the author's informative and witty writing.