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(Items from the Vault)
Erin McKeown - Grand Nettwerk Records
Originally released: 2003
"'Born to Hum'?! Talk about single entendre!" This sort of quip was my first exposure to Erin McKeown. I went to the Hotel du Nord in Paris for a night of good ol' ex-pat humor, where the travelling comic found a copy of McKeown's Grand lying around. The lyrics were taken completely out of context, but it did prove for an interesting few minutes. In an attempt to make up for the totally immature dissection, the comic tried to take steps back and say, "No, I shouldn't do that. She's probably a great act. I mean look, she's darlin’. I guess it's fair game if she starts singing my jokes on stage next week, like "ooooh, the one legged chick is 50% less likely to step on a landmine...."
One lonely day, I downloaded the song "Slung Lo" and was blown away by how grand it indeed was!
For five months, those little jabs at the folk singer bounced in and out of my head along with my great impression with the song "Slung Lo." So, I special ordered my CD from the local record store. Eagerly ripping the bastardly packaging open, I put the CD in the player as soon as I could.... only to find it was folksier than I'm used to. Boo! Not another chick folk singer! I mean, how many times do we have to hear the whiny feminist with too much to say for three chords? But this Erin of which I speak is not completely that stereotype. Even when she gets to the point of being the troubled intellectual trying to lay her poetry on a musical background, it is almost enjoyable. For example, the lyric in “Cosmopolitans,” “Panic makes quite a morning cocktail of insecurity.”
Lyrically, she's less about save the whales and feminazi views and more about political overtones, bad ex-lovers, and dealing with showbiz.
Musically, the majority of the songs are mostly simple. A Gretsch acoustic-electric guitar, drums and maybe a piano. The beginning of the album starts upbeat and peppy and ends on a mostly somber, Billie Holiday-esque, tweaked 40s jazz note.
I would definitely recommend the CD for at least "Slung Lo." Erin McKeown definitely doesn't deserve to live in this sort of obscurity that she does, so go buy it and tell three friends. The rest of the CD is a good change of pace from a typical female vocalist and pretty decent chill music, when you get sick of hearing the Postal Service for the umpteenth time in a row.
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Original Release: 2003
Reviewed by Elizabeth Hayes
Have a hankering for a bit more of the tolerable electronica? Do you like voices to be able to carry a tune without being obnoxious and your music to be well funded without being bubblegum? Well, look no further, friend. Kenna is here for you.
In 2002, Kenna's mainstream exposure hit MTV2 with the single "Hellbent." You might remember the video with crazy little clay aliens working perfunctory shifts in a factory, when the sad creature discovers "bliss" through magic goggles. (This short is actually called "More" and the original soundtrack is different. Fun film fact.) Though, when this video was released, Kenna had no actual album to plug or try to sell. It wasn’t until 2003 that Kenna released his album "New Sacred Cow" (which doesn't appear to have any special connection to Bill Hicks' old "Sacred Cow"...).
This musical holy bovine needs a home on your happy iPod. The LP starts from silence to a chaotic soundtrack with the distant plea addressed to anyone who can hear his cry. Then chaos is brought to order and immediately brought into a distorted first riff of "Freetime," the first real song of the album, which expresses the need to get away. (The CD also comes with the video for your CD-ROM). The verses in “Man Fading” are mainly drum and bass, but even when the beat drops, the vocal harmonics prove to have an eclectic aural experience for the complex musical ear. There are tracks that feel like your own personal space odyssey with an 80s robot voice that speaks to you specifically. Other tracks are catchy, but with such tight beats that one could envision a snappy choreographed dance number performed by back up dancers for Janet Jackson, complete with fake aggression in a dance battle.
Some songs have three mostly simple melodies going at the same time, with a depressed piano part accompanied with oboe and percussion. On some of the most intricate songs I could imagine where there are at least eight different electronic, vocal, and percussion beats going on at the same time.
There are so many good things to say about this album, although it might be hard to get into at first, you'll definitely end up getting songs stuck in your head. If you are all about the mental dissection of songs where you actually think about what's going on and feel the groove, this is definitely for you. I also recommend this for a long plane ride, especially if you plan on traveling until the end of time losing hours of your life during a lengthy layover, because every time you listen to it, you hear something new...which could even help you in that situation to maintain your sanity.
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1000 Places To See Before You Die Workman Publishing Company
By Patricia Schultz
Original Release: 2003
Reviewed by Deborah Beckers
Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take but by the places and moments that take our breath away ~Anonymous
1,000 Places to See Before You Die - A Traveller’s Life List delivers on the promise of giving us places to make our own breath-taking moments. Part personal travelogue, part travel guide, this “on and off the beaten track” guide take us from the wilds of the Scottish highlands to the Park Hyatt in Tokyo. A result of seven years of research and a lifetime of hands on experience 1,000 Places to See Before You Die takes us to places we have only dreamed about travelling to. Patricia Shultz’s wanderlust started early and has propelled her into a rewarding and exciting career in travel writing.
1,000 Places take us to the usual spots but then also veering off into exciting and little talked about place like the Imichil Betrothal Fair in the Middle Atlas Mountains of Morocco:
…If she decides he is a kindred soul, they walk to the scribe’s tent, the two families close in to negotiate, and that evening the couple is married. The fair lasts just three days, and the music and dancing make it feel like one large wedding reception.
By mixing important information like estimated costs and contact numbers with a small look at what’s in store for the intrepid traveller Schultz makes this not just a travel guide, but a dreamers guide. The locations are a fascinating mix of the new and old, the known and the unknown. For all its brevity on locations it holds a wealth of knowledge for the experienced and inexperienced traveller alike.
This book offers inspiration for the fiction that I write in my “spare” time and my copy is getting dog eared from my many thumbing through its pages. There are numerous Post-it Notes lining its pages along with my dreamer’s scribbling in the margins.
Some of the new “World’s Wonders” included in the book are:
- A Balloon Safari over Masi Mara;
- Canyon de Chelly;
- Oaxaca’s Saturday Market;
- Sailing the Grenadines;
- Climbing Kilimanjaro;
- The Pushkar Camel Fair;
- The Buddahs of Borobudur
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Money Penguin
By Martin Amis
Original Release: 1986
Reviewed by Deborah Beckers
John Self seems to have it all; money, a cool job, connections, a great flat, money, a fashionable car, a willing girlfriend and ummm - oh yes – MONEY! Not only does he have money, he has a way to make loads and loads more, legally. John is an ad man, specializing in directing T & A commercials for junk food franchises, tobacco companies, nudie magazines and liquor distributors. The problem is that John is also an addict. He’s addicted to junk food, tobacco, nudie magazines and liquor. John wallows in his addictions, bringing the reader along for the ride down that slippery slope. We follow him on his quest for more money, watching him stagger between New York and London. John is going to make a movie, loosely based on his life. He encounters many surreal characters, actors, prostitutes and many, many bartenders along his way to the top. Someone is out to get him; I mean the money is fine (it’s taking care of itself really), but John keeps getting mysterious phone calls and contracts put out on his life. The show must go on, blackouts be damned - there’s money to be made somewhere.
Money is an odd kind of book. John Self is not the most sympathetic hero I have ever encountered. He’s pathetic and strangely naïve about all that’s going on around him. This is usually an endearing quality, but I found myself wanting to shake him really hard and smack him around a bit. Another oddity is the voice of reason character: Martin Amis. That’s right - he wrote himself into the book, which is weird, but it gives the reader a better idea of what John is going through. It’s like they are two sides of the same coin, over-indulgence and under-indulgence. Other than Amis, none of the characters are likable, no redeeming characteristics at all. They are all users with addictions of their own. This strangely makes the plot a lot more interesting - you keep searching for a character that deserves to be cheered on and you end up settling for John Self.
All this may make you think that I didn’t like this novel. I loved it. Martin Amis has captured the early 80’s money mania so accurately that nothing seems out of place. The only other novel I have read that captured this decade so accurately was Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho. Money is mean and unapologetically nasty. It’s like sitting down with a toxic friend who drinks too much and tells you the juiciest and most disgusting gossip. It’s absolutely addictive, although it may be a few months before I can read anything like this novel again.
Will John survive his lessons and grow up? I finished the book and I still don’t know the answer to that. Money is a dirty, sticky journey into the fetid inside of Martin Amis and one hot shower is not going to get you clean.
Martin Amis has been a highly praised novelist since the publication of his first book The Rachael Papers in 1974, which won a Somerset Maugham Award. For more information about Martin Amis and his other novels visit his web page at http://martinamis.albion.edu/
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Reading Lolita in Tehran A.B. Tauris
By Azar Nafisi
Original Release: 2003
Reviewed by Deborah Beckers
In 1995, Azar Nafisi formed the ultimate book group. After leaving her teaching position at the University of Tehran due to “oppressive policies,” she gathered seven of her former students and started private classes in her home. In our western life experience we wouldn’t think that this was anything special, teachers take on extra students all the time… But this was an oppressive Fundamentalist Islamic country. These brave women were putting their lives and their family honour on the line. Just for the chance to see a world outside of their borders.
Tehran in 1995 was ruled by the Ayatollah Khomeini. Morality Guards kept an iron grip on the people of Iran subjecting women in particular to public indignities and harassment in order to keep them in line. These seven women came from Islamic homes that ranged from the strictest fundamentalist to the more liberal revolutionary ones.
Initially awkward with each other and unused to speaking freely (without dire consequence), the women began to slowly trust each other and their teacher. They spent two years exploring banned western novels, sometimes reading from photocopies and burning the pages when they had finished. They not only began to learn about cultures outside of their country, but they began to see parallels between themselves and the characters; they were the heroes and heroines of the stories.
There in the living room, we rediscovered that we were also living breathing human beings, … no matter how intimidated and frightened we were, like Lolita we tried to escape and to create our own pockets of freedom.
Part memoir, part literary criticism, Reading Lolita in Tehran is a fascinating look beyond the veil of revolutionary Tehran. In the book the women talk openly and freely about their life experiences including the Iran/Iraq War in the 80s, their hopes, fears and family life. By putting a human face on a culture we westerners haven’t likely been exposed to and juxtaposing it against our most revered novels, Nafisi gives us a connection to these women who, but for the circumstance of birth, could be us.
This is a powerful book, challenging our perception of women surviving and thriving in an oppressive society. Making us take a look at how something as simple as the written word can be so powerful; bringing hope and a sense of connectedness between two disparate cultures.
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Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West Regan
By Gregory Maguire
Original Release: 1995
Reviewed by Lisa Hood-Anklewicz
In 1995, Gregory Maguire virtually came out of nowhere with the release of Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West and had an instant hit. Picking up on a pre-existing literary classic as well as a classic Hollywood film, Maguire started answering the questions that had been left unanswered for all these years.
L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz and the resulting film tell the story of Dorothy’s adventures in Oz, and her experiences with the Wicked Witch of the West. But what happened in Oz prior to Dorothy’s arrival? Who was the Wicked Witch of the East that she unintentionally killed? Why was the Witch of the West persecuted? Could she just be misunderstood? And why is the Wizard such a recluse? Maguire takes all of these questions into account and goes back to the best place to start uncovering the answers. To the parents of those that would eventually become the Witches of the West and the East.
Wicked immediately introduces the reader to Brother Frexspar, a member of the Munchkinland clergy and his pregnant wife Melena. Everything begins to go wrong when Melena gives birth to her first born, corresponding with the arrival of The Clock of the Time Dragon, a travelling puppet show of sorts that seems to reveal the secrets of the lives of the people around it, and possibly the future. Frexspar and Melena’s child, a baby girl they name Elpheba, is born “damaged.” She is green-skinned and already has a full set of razor sharp teeth. Many years later, they try again and have another daughter, Nessarose, who was born without arms. From there Maguire leads the road through the upbringing of Elpheba and Nessarose, both in Munchkinland and in the Emerald City.
Maguire takes Wicked beyond just a fairytale fantasy, and explores many deeper themes; political unrest that is taking hold of Oz, the fight for the rights of a race of people, secret underground rebellions. And through all of this, Maguire concentrates on the friendships and loves that grow between a group of school friends and weaves them into the tapestry of all the themes. By the time Dorothy enters the story, Maguire has completely altered the readers take on the original literary work that Baum created.
This year, Wicked celebrates its tenth anniversary, and in those ten years Maguire has taken the same concept that created Wicked and has begun a small library of fantasy fiction that leave you re-thinking what you previously took for granted. Wicked has also had the honour of being adapted into a critically acclaimed Broadway play recently. Not bad for the first time at bat as a novelist.
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Doctor Who: Lost In Time (Collection of Rare Episodes) BBC Video
Starring William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton
Original Release: 2004
Reviewed by Adam M. Anklewicz
With season 27 of Doctor Who having just started, it is a perfect time to review this set. To fully understand what Lost In Time is you must understand a few simple things first. Each Doctor Who story was a collection of half hour episodes, rarely as few as one episode, often as many as a dozen. The series ran from 1963 through to 1989 with a TV movie in 1996. Nine people have played The Doctor in BBC productions, however BBC’s archive is missing stories from the first two.
In the 1960s, the BBC did not have a video library and only archived film. Unfortunately during the 70s, BBC Worldwide decided to junk the film prints they had made for international distribution assuming that other departments of the BBC had copies. Making a very long story short, they didn’t and 108 episodes of Doctor Who are currently missing.
Lost In Time is a collection of orphaned episodes. One episode might be available in a four-part story or three episodes of a twelve-part story. The three disc collection features orphaned episodes from 12 stories spanning 1693 to 1969. One disc is dedicated to episodes starring William Hartnell and two starring Patrick Troughton.
Some episodes I wish were lost forever (“The Underwater Menace”), some I’m glad survived and left me wanting more (“The Enemy of the World”). Overall the quality of these episodes is very good, if only we could see the rest of the stories. Troughton’s performance as usual is great, and Hartnell bumbles through the episodes but still has that endearing quality that drew so many into Doctor Who.
The Lost In Time release features episode 2 or “The Daleks’ Master Plan” which had never been available before since it was only discovered shortly after the BBC released a similar VHS set a few years back. I’ve never been too fond of stories feature The Doctor’s arch-nemesis, The Daleks; I always found them to be too fantastic to be enjoyable.
The special features are sparse but good; A documentary on the junking and recovering of episodes, audio commentaries on select episodes, the complete audio for missing episodes and surviving clips. One of the most interesting of the clips is the “regeneration” scene from the final episode of William Hartnell’s years.
Lost In Time leaves you wanting more as the majority of these episodes are high quality. After finishing the set, I wanted to watch more and popped in one of my other Doctor Who DVDs.
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