More summer reading: The Keep

I had never read Jennifer Egan before. The reviews of The Keep were so good that I put it on my list about a year ago. It was very enjoyable; I kept thinking that it really was a perfect vacation read--neither too light or too ponderous. It was a satisfying mix of the contemporary and the old-fashioned gothic thriller, complete with a castle, ghosts, murders, dream sequences, dungeons...the whole nine yards (to mix in a sports metaphor). There's text and there's metatext, and maybe a little meta-meta-text. Fun! It reminded me of both Stewart O'Nan's The Speed Queen and Peter Cameron's Andorra (two old favorites) with a side of Horace Walpole!

I'm nearly finished with Zadie Smith's On Beauty. To be such a youngun' she certainly seems worldly and wise. Also, the other W -- witty. It's a campus novel, an homage to E.M. Forster (so she states upfront, and I definitely see the link with Howard's End), a clash of ideologies, and an almost bedroom farce...almost. She's rather relentless in not letting any characters off the hook. I like this description from Time magazine: "Cultures don't clash in Zadie Smith's books. They arm wrestle, get in one another's faces and climb into one another's beds." That's hitting the nail on the head for White Teeth as well.

Divisadero

Michael Ondaatje is the master of the loosely connected narrative. Seemingly unconnected people and events in his novels wind around to brush up against one another. Where the characters end up overlapping is often the way their stories are illuminated, even as they spin away again into their separate worlds. Divisadero traces the paths of two sisters, Anna and Claire, and the boy, Coop, who they grow up with on a California farm. Their lives are suddenly altered in the aftermath of a disastrous love affair, and they move out into the world apart, but still living intimately with the memories of their former existence. Anna's voice moves in and out of the narration, as she researches the life of a French writer, Lucien Segura, in a remote village in France. There, she takes a lover, Rafael -- the son of gypsies whose caravan lies at the periphery of Segura's farmhouse where she works.

The story then becomes as much about Segura as Anna, Claire, and Coop. The sections set in France, both in the near present and in the early-1900s of Segura's life are very beautiful. There are many parallels between these lives, decades apart. Segura's war was the devastating conflict of the Great War; in the present, the Gulf Wars hovers in the background of Coop's life as an accomplished gambler in the casinos and dives of Las Vegas and Tahoe.

This is one of those novels that bears a second reading, just for the pleasures of its prose, but also to discover all the tenuous filaments that tie its characters together. I've admired all of Ondaatje's novels that I've read: The English Patient, In the Skin of a Lion, and Anil's Ghost -- but I think this and Anil are the ones that I found to be the most moving.

O Lord, what fools these mortals be!

I kicked off my summer (a bit early) appropriately by re-reading A Midsummer Night's Dream. One of the things that I like about Shakespeare is that he remains so darn funny. I was chuckling all the way through the Pyramus and Thisbe scene, which is so silly and touching at the same time. All the while Bottom and his fellows are murdering the play with their literalness and malapropisms (Ninny's tomb!) and the royal onlookers are making their snarky comments, you are acutely aware of their earnestness and their sense of duty. They are the best of good 'ole boys paying their respect to king and queen on their wedding day having spent their zero leisure time preparing their lines and being set upon by mischievous fairies!

I was reading something the other day about the play that reminded me of all the spells lifted to put things to rights at the end, Demetrius was left under a spell. He didn't love Helena until the potion was put into his eyes, but the fairies didn't mend their magic, so essentially, it's only magic that ties him to Helena. For Shakespeare, of course, it paired off all the lovers neatly at the end. If he had indulged in sequels as much as we do today, he could have written a further tragedy (or maybe one of those dark romances) in which Demetrius awakens from the spell and is married to a woman that he doesn't even like! Possibilities!

I think I'm going to read The Tempest again too; then Faust -- both Marlowe's and Goethe's. It's all John Crowley's fault!

Endless Things -- last of Crowley's Aegypt series

I just finished Endless Things, after reading the four novels of Aegypt in succession. I've been a big Crowley fan for a while now, but I never read this cycle, which began twenty years ago (Aegypt came out in 1987)! I think you could think of the four volumes as one very, very long novel. I usually do that terrible thing where I try to compare a writer to a similar writer, but I don't think I can do that with Crowley.

To the uninitiated, this series focuses on the scholar/historian Pierce Moffett, who finds himself out of a job, then "buswrecked" in a small town where he decides to remain, or doesn't "decide" -- Moffett tends to let things happen to him , and is, in fact, almost incapable of making decisions about anything pertaining to his future plans. So, the peripatetic Moffett drifts, or is pulled, on a journey through four novels that echoes the thinking, yearning, searching quests of Renaissance philosophers John Dee and Giordano Bruno. It would take entirely too long to explain the intricacies of this story or the cast of characters, but if you are interested in such things as ancient religions and mythologies, alchemy, magic, the occult, the Renaissance, the Inquisition, werewolves, Appalachian lore, witches, angels and demons, literature, the nature of time, astrology, possession, and of course, love... well then, this might be for you. You get the picture. It's complicated, but in a delightful way.

Crowley is, by far, one of the more erudite novelists around, and you do have to pay attention. The reading is demanding in equal measure to the pleasure you will get out of it.

If my rambling is too vague, then you might want to check out the laudatory review in the Washington Post. Also look out for a piece by Michael Dirda in the Post; he mentioned it in one of his weekly online chats, which I highly recommend for book nerds everywhere. Not many mainstream reviews out there. But they're just scared of him, no doubt. Awed to silence!

Summer reading bonanza

It's challenging when all of your favorite authors have new books at roughly the same time! My summer reading is usually decidedly not new. I believe last summer I was reading Colette and Robbe-Grillet, for instance. I like to catch up on quirky old novels or the forgotten classics that I never got around to. But this summer, already waiting for me, are new novels by Ian McEwan (On Chesil Beach) and Michael Ondaatje (Divisadero); I'm currently in the middle of Crowley's Endless Things, following up the third volume, Daemonomania. I keep changing my favorite, of course, but I really loved D. It was dark, sad, and of course, beautiful and mysterious. The Solstice Masque scene near the end was amazing. I don't know how he does it. But I digress....

I'm pretty darn sure Suite Francaise was on last year's list, but it's on my nightstand still. And scattered 'round the bed, the sacred and profane: King James Bible, The Way of Hermes, May issue of Vogue, an encyclopedia of occult philosophies, Bullfinch's Mythology. Most of these point their way back to Crowley, except just possibly, the Vogue.

I was also planning to finally read something by Michael Chabon -- the new one seems pretty interesting (Jews in Alaska! A minyan for Fleishman...); Haruki Murakami, Don Delillo; I've never read anything by Martin Amis -- is it skipping ahead to read the son before the father? Oh, and The Keep by Jennifer Egan, also on my list for about a year. And it's not like I don't have anything else to do. I suppose I feel compelled to make up for that 60 appalling-percent of my country people who confess to reading nothing at all! This explains much, eh?

Jim James and James Brown ...sort of

I had another really cool weekend of music -- just by happenstance I attended two benefit concerts. The first was a benefit for Kush Griffith, trumpeter and arranger (I think) for the Godfather of Soul James Brown. Kush was in a wheel chair but still very capable of delivering the funk. Playing along with him were two other members of the band, drummer Melvin Parker and his brother Maceo on saxophone. We went on the spur of the moment; it was a show also featuring Brigid Kaelin on keys and vocals. I've seen her a couple of times, as a guest artist at other shows and she's always impressive. We do have a wealth of local talent in Louisville. It was a lot of fun--and the music was great.

We were lucky enough to get tickets for Jim James (featuring Sarah Elizabeth and Ron Whitehead) along with local artist and musician Andy Cook, and Jim's My Morning Jacket bandmate, Carl Broemel. The concert benefited the owners of the venerable Rudyard Kipling -- a performance spot for artists of all types for a couple of decades in Louisville. The first set was Ron W.'s poems interspersed with Sarah's songs (including several duets with Jim). Sarah has a beautiful voice that blended very nicely with Jim on House of the Rising Sun, Sound of Silence, and (way cool) White Rabbit.

It's hard to overstate what an immensely entertaining, warm, lively, and sometimes dreamy set that Jim and friends put on in the second half of the evening. I've never seen MMJ live and I've only seen Jim on Austin City Limits, so it was quite a revelation. First of all, we're in a room that probably holds about 100 people, sitting and standing, and although there were a few feedback issues, the sound was really beautiful and rich. I know I'm lucky to have been in on this show in such an intimate setting. Jim is an unflagging powerhouse of a performer. He played for at least two hours just in his set, so I now understand why those marathon Bonnaroo shows are so legendary! I think his voice can't be appreciated as much if you only hear the recordings -- it ventures somewhere between the poles of ethereal and wailing, swathed in the dreamy reverb.

Inasmuch as you can get a vibe about someone just by observing them on a stage, Jim exudes a very gentle warmth, part down-home Kentucky boy, part Buddhist monk. There is something incantatory about his songs; they have a quality of snatching after something elusive. I suppose sitting in such an intimate setting, musically beguiled for such a length of time, tempts one to deconstruct the experience, but I'll heed the warning of Wordsworth -- to murder is to dissect -- and leave the rest to the imagination.

Brandi Carlile

I've only been listening to Brandi Carlile for a couple of weeks but she's already in my Pantheon of favorite artists. I kept hearing her name and decided to check out the free tracks on Rhapsody. They were off her first recording, and I was immediately blown away. I rushed right out and bought that one -- and who was I kidding -- also bought the new, T-bone Burnett-produced CD (The Story) a few days later. I've been listening to both and spreading Brandi-fever to my friends and family. I don't usually link to MySpace, but her space has the streaming music, of course, as well as a lot of cool links to video (check out the ATT Room, featured prominently).

Honestly, I haven't been this excited by a new find since Marah's Kids in Philly. Brandi has a beautiful voice reminiscent at times of KD Lang, Janis Joplin, and Patsy Cline, but of course, just shades of those great singers -- she's really unique. She has even inspired in me, the ham-fisted, a desire to learn to play guitar. I mean, everyone wants to play the guitar, but actually having the discipline to learn and practice, which is another thing altogether.

She and her band members (The Twins!) write all the songs (although there is an excellent live Elton John cover on the first one). I also like the fact that in the picture on the back cover of The Story, she looks a bit like Jack White. That's a good sign!

The pleasures and pain of live music

A lot of people -- including myself, when younger -- don't like live music, because they want to hear the performers sounding *exactly* like they do on the record. It's taken me awhile to appreciate hearing performers live, warts and all, but I think that's become one of the most entertaining aspects of trekking to concerts: the unexpected. It's fascinating to see how performers relate (or don't) to a live audience and how they respond when things beyond their control, perhaps, go haywire.

I like getting a little glimpse of how they relate to band mates, how their nerves manifest themselves, or how they conform (or don't) to the mood of the audience on a particular night. You can certainly tell from reading concert reviews (non-pros more than pros) that performances vary wildly from one night to another, one city to the next. The artists themselves recognize that certain intangibles make one show electric and another one completely flat. What makes a performance "transcendent" and what merely good?

I had an excellent opportunity to explore all of these things during a public radio sponsored concert over the weekend that included this wonderfully diverse line-up (in order of performance): Paula Cole (back from "Where have all the cowboys gone?" post-Lilith Fair obscurity); Charlie Louvin (introducing songs he first recorded in 1955!); Suzanne Vega; the trippy rock band Vietnam; and finally, our hero, Ryan Adams.

The anxious fanboys and fangirls had crowded in early for Ryan, and yeah, I was mostly there for him as well, although I was really looking forward to Vega and checking out Vietnam, who I didn't know much about at all. So first Paula Cole: great voice, sexy little black dress, cool heels, and some really bizarre dance moves. As we say in the south, bless her heart. She was a bit hard to watch. She either needs to wear the dress and be a softly swaying songstress or check into some blue jeans more conducive to rocking out, if that's her version of it.

Charlie Louvin broke out the old school country and gospel tunes that your grandaddy might have been singing along to after returning from Korea (the War, that is). He was a treat and such an old hand. He wasn't the least bit confounded by the kids in their baby doll t-shirts and dyed mohawks. Introducing one old love'em and leave'em crying song, he observed wryly to the front rows, "You're too young to have lost anything yet." He served up the stage banter he's been rolling out for a good fifty years, and it still mostly works.

Suzanne Vega is just Cool. She's got a sexy, smarter-than-you, big-city elegance that I wasn't really expecting. She sounds amazing, which I was expecting. Her new CD "Beauty and Crime" is coming out this summer and sounds like it will be strong. One of our household, all-time favorites is "Nine Objects of Desire," which I guess was her last full release, not counting retrospectives.

I liked Vietnam, after my initial fright (two of those boys look like Charles Manson, without the crazy eyes -- although I may not have been close enough). Seriously, there might have been more total hair on display than My Morning Jacket. In fact, they make MMJ look Esquire-groomed by comparison. Plus, MMJ doesn't scare me. Whoa--I don't know what the songs actually said, but their sound is very authentically post-911, the world is fucked, and we're-here-to-witness (they're based in Brooklyn). I also called them "attack of the Allman Bros." because the drummer's blonde hirsuteness was more hippy-smooth than the others. They're sort of Bob Dylan crossed with hairy southern rock with some goth undertones. What the hell? I thought they were creepily compelling and sure to be condemned by the likes of Karl Rove, W., and company, which makes them aces in my book.

Ryan, Ryan. In his defense, he apparently tore a ligament while skateboarding and can't play the guitar. Okay, accidents happen. The show still goes on and the brat boy had such a wonderful opportunity to ingratiate himself by showing up, being charming and self-deprecating (I know, I know). But, no. First of all, I wasn't aware that he'd had any sort of accident, so he and the band gather in near total darkness toward the back of the stage, sitting on stools, making it hard to decipher just which one was Ryan Adams. Finally, his disembodied voice (like an angel, of course) emerges from the crouched and hooded figure near the piano.

So the lights never came up, no one ever said diddly to the audience, and though the songs (new ones) sounded pretty good, we were all too bemused/disappointed/miffed to notice. What the heck is he doing? Is that a splint on his hand? Did he tear an eye-ligament (big-ass, ridiculous sunglasses, despite the gloom)? Is that a shower cap he's wearing under the hoodie? Is he reading the music off a stand (I definitely saw him turning pages)? Is that actually Ryan Adams or a changeling? So many questions. His first and only words were good night and thanks as he and the band left the stage after playing about 30 minutes. If only we'd had pitchforks and torches on us. Who knew?

Jazz Fest Weekend One

Whoops -- I saved this as a draft and never got around to posting, so...better late than never:

I made my first trip to New Orleans for Jazz Fest this year. We went all three days and saw Dr. John, Van Morrison, Rod Stewart, Norah Jones, Gillian Welch, and Arturo Sandoval. The weather was hot, but not nearly as humid as I expected, and we had bright, sunny skies all three days. Unfortunately, we had to choose between Van and Lucinda Williams, but parked ourselves for The Man, since it's less likely we'll see him again. It was good, even though we were pretty far away in our little patch of chairs. People run their flags up for a good reason in that crowd. Once you leave your campsite and try to find it again, you can end up flailing around for awhile in the mass of humanity!

It's a great festival--colorful, friendly, and eclectic. There's much more music than what I listed above, which were the headliners. Next time, I would spend a little more time in some of the smaller tents, not only to get out of the sun, but also to sample some of the variety of acts and local music. We caught some of the Creole Indians and Pete Fountain, but as the crowds increase, it's harder to move around.

Since I'm not that much of a crowd person anyway, I have to say my favorite moment of the festival was being up close for Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings. It's the first time I've seen them live, and both were fantastic. That, followed by Sandoval on the final day was certainly a highlight.

Love and Sleep in preparation for Endless Things

I finished Aegypt and I'm currently in the middle of the next installment, Love and Sleep. I really enjoyed the early chapters of L&S, which covered the young Pierce Moffett's childhood in eastern Kentucky. I think that since I'm reading these back to back and they were written almost 10 years apart, I'm finding the redundancy in the latter parts of L&S a little offputting. I'm sure the exposition would be more needful for someone reading it as a standalone or for the poor person who had been waiting seven years to get to volume two! But that's a fairly minor point. I should probably reserve further judgment until I've finished it.

Meanwhile, I've been amused and delighted by John Crowley's blog. I had no idea he had one, but came across the link on Wikipedia. Lots of good things there for word nerds and people who like witty, literate commentary--from both blogger and commenters.

In music, I've been listening to James Hunter for a little retro vibe -- I saw him live recently, and he was really fun. Also, I've been listening to Cold War Kids. I had heard them on an MTV podcast (I think that's what it was). Very compelling, story-like lyrics about people whose lives have gone tragically awry for the most part. It's not groovy lounge music by any means. I really like the piano parts.

On to fiction!

I finally finished Niall Ferguson's War of the World, and after spending a month with the likes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and their minions, I am more than ready to spend time in fictional la-la land. I just had time to start John Crowley's Aegypt, which should put me as far from reality as I can get, as it promises to deal with Angels, alchemy, and alternate worlds. Weirdly, when I picked it up last night, the first date mentioned in the book was March 8, which is today and the setting was a coal mining town in Appalachian Kentucky, which is close to where I hail from. Weird, huh?

Aegypt was originally published in 1987 as the first novel in a tetralogy, and the fourth one, Endless Things, is due this very April. In other words, I need to get busy.

The War of the World

I've been reading Niall Ferguson's history of twentieth century conflict. I'm a bit more than half way through, but the going is getting tough. It is an excellent effort, thorough, and offers interesting insights, but I've been on hiatus because it became so disturbing. I've read a lot of military history, so I'm no stranger to violence recounted, but the litany of horrors from World War II has just about done me in. And I haven't even got to the section on the Rape of Nanking. I think the stark, documentary accounts of neighbors killing neighbors (and sometimes family members)--the more "intimate" nature of the mass murdering that went on ahead of the Nazi industrialization of death--is the thing that got to me. It is difficult to understand, although Ferguson attempts to enumerate some of the contributing factors, how seemingly ordinary people can turn into killing machines. The line is too fine between "humanity" and bestiality, and it is a phenomenon that can not be safely relegated to the past. All you have to do is look at Africa, not to mention the Middle East. So, as I am not one to abandon a book--especially when I'm 400 pages in--I'll have to tackle it again.

Random play

One of the best things about MP3 players is the random shuffle feature. Some people claim that their devices are in sync with them to a preternatural degree (don't these people choose the songs, themselves-duh!), but I'm not here to debate that. They do however, sometimes cook up a particularly heavenly run of songs that have nothing to do with each other, but somehow seem just right. While walking on the treadmill, I heard, in succession:

• Looking for someone like you - Kelly Willis
• Ordinary Joe - Terry Callier
• Off the record - My Morning Jacket
• Strawberry Road - Sam Phillips
• My heart is the bums on the street - Marah
• When I was cruel - Elvis Costello

Anyway, it was pretty awesome. That's all.

McEwan's life is as strange as his fiction

I loved the story in the Times this week about Ian McEwan discovering an older brother he never knew about. The details sound like the premise of a really great novel! Clandestine affair, a baby given up to strangers during wartime, the death of a husband in Normandy...

In other news, poet Seamus Heaney won the TS Eliot Poetry Prize for his latest collection (which I haven't read yet). Also a writer from Kentucky won a British prize for short stories: Willie Davis for "Kid in a Well." You can read it on The Guardian's site.

Woolf and the creative process

I just finished Julia Briggs' Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life. What distinguishes this "biography" is that the focus is squarely on Woolf as an artist. Woolf was an exemplary diary keeper, and Briggs' uses great resources to show how she created her books from conception to publication. Even if you are not a particular Woolf fan, any one interested in how artists work, in the mystery of the creative process, would enjoy reading this book. Also, for anyone doing research on specific works by Woolf, this is an excellent reading guide. I found myself--a devoted Woolf fan--newly impressed by her serious work ethic, complicated as it was by her fragile mental health and fragmented by two major wars. (The Woolfs split their time between the country and the city, but Woolf was passionate about London. One of her former homes was destroyed, and her last home in London was damaged by WWII bombing.) She was deeply devoted to her craft. She could have reeled off traditional narratives by the score, but she was passionately attached to the idea of finding new forms to get at the truth of being. She wanted to write books about the inner workings of our minds, about all the invisible things that shape what we are and what we do.

I also highly recommend Hermione Lee's full-length biography of Woolf, which is more of a traditional "life" bio. It came out several years ago, and this spring Lee is publishing a new biography of Edith Wharton, which I will probably pick up. In addition, Claire Tomalin (Jane Austen, Samuel Pepys) has a new bio of Thomas Hardy out now that sounds very good. They're all dropping at the same time!

My next "big read" is history, however. I just started Niall Ferguson's War of the Worlds: The Descent of the West. I think it's going to be really interesting, if sobering. He's looking at the extraordinary violence of the last century and attempting to analyze it in new ways--apparently he's turning a few standard arguments on their heads; for example, instead of the rise of Western power and influence, he sees a "reorienting toward the East." Anyway, I've plowed through the 70-page introduction and just begun the first chapter.

Red in tooth and claw

While taking my walk at lunch the other day, I saw something I hadn't seen before up close: a red-tailed hawk was on the ground of an open park-like lawn, energetically disposing of its unfortunate prey, which appeared to be at least squirrel-sized. There was no one else around, so I was able to sidle up pretty close--maybe 50 feet away--and watch the hawk at work. Grisly, but fascinating. I admired the way he flipped it around with his strong talons and sturdy, white legs. I could hear the snap, snap of his beak, picking the bones clean and see the tufts of white fur flying up on the breeze. Every now and then, he would pause and seemingly look straight at me, but I guess I didn't pose much of a threat as I was standing beside a lone tree, quite still. Finally, I decided to back away and walk the loop around the old house. By the time I got back around, I could see the hawk sort of hop-dragging the carcass beneath a big holly tree. It was on my second loop around that the impressive shadow of a vulture swooped overhead. All of this food-chain observation reminded me too, of the baby turtle I had found the day before--on the same loop--flattened into a perfect medallion on the asphalt. I suppose one of the Great Blue Herons I sometimes see at the neighboring pond had dropped it mid-flight.

It's heartening to see nature carrying on in the heart of an otherwise soulless office "park;" although, further construction in the area will shortly wipe out most of what's left there too. For the moment, a few ground hogs, rabbits, and chipmunks still have the run of the place, and hawks can enjoy a midday picnic. There's a pile of brush at the end of the circle that is providing cover for the winter birds: doves, mockingbirds, juncos, and what I think are some migrating warblers. They are very secretive, whatever the little birds are, and I couldn't get close enough to identify them. I'm sure someone will eventually clean off the brush pile, and that will be the end of that.

Project Feeder Watch

To help combat the winter blahs, I decided to sign up for Project Feeder Watch, which is sponsored by the Cornell Ornithology Lab. I've put up a feeder for the last couple of years in my little, postage-stamp yard and enjoy watching the birds who come to visit. This year I'm going to count my birds and send in the data. I love watching the chickadees, finches, titmice, etc., duke it out around my feeder, or queue up on the back fence, if they're feeling courteous. Then there are the squirrels...arrrgghhh! They're diabolical--but at least I have something to distract me from the cold, gray days and the bare trees. The thing that sent me to Cornell's site was a book called Songbird Journeys by Miyoko Chu. If you're interested in songbirds, particularly their migratory behavior, this is a great book. It is always so humbling to be reminded of how much our lives are connected and intertwined with the rest of the natural world. Chu makes you think about the small things that you do (or don't do) that can affect our songbird populations, migration patterns, and ultimately their survival.

Ozomatli and Los Lonely Boys

I like Los Lonely Boys, but I have to admit I showed up mostly for Ozomatli--a gem of a band that I stumbled onto with Street Signs. I 'm no hip-hop expert, but I like the way these guys do it with lots of Latin music influences and all kinds of other stuff thrown in like Middle Eastern and African beats, symphony strings (on the recording, not live), brass and a plethora of percussion. They had to work hard to win over a crowd waiting for LLB at the show, but I think they did it in the end with great energy, dance moves, and playing bravely to a Kentucky audience that didn't come out for any hip-hop dudes from LA. At the end of their set, they jumped off center stage, over the pit barrier, and led a Samba-style march up the center aisle. It was pretty awesome. I spoke to a couple of the guys out in the lobby after, telling them how I actually got scolded for standing up during their first song. Dudes! That lady was lame. Thankfully, they got the house standing for the last two songs at least. Vindication. It's not music you should sit through!

LLB were pretty entertaining. I like their sound, but I don't get that much into the long, jamming guitar solos. I admire the dexterity, but I'd rather hear the songs. I think they've got great harmonies when they're not overwhelmed by the instruments. That's just my preference. I'm sure guitar-heads would beg to differ.

Anyway, for heaven's sake check out Ozomatli! They have a new CD coming out soon.

Barenaked Ladies are Me!

We saw Barenaked Ladies in Columbus on their BLAM tour. Being a true fan girl, I had already bought third row tickets as soon as they were available, but unbeknownst to me, my surfer hubby (Web surfer, that is) had entered a Microsoft Live Spaces contest and outdid me by winning front row tickets and backstage passes. Darn him. We met the band before the show, which was equal parts kind of cool and painful. I was dreading it a bit because I knew it would be contrived and weird. So it was contrived and weird, but they were all very nice about it and took the time to sign autographs and say hello. I think it's usually NOT the big fans that end up in an official meet-and-greet, which probably accounts for the subdued, slightly apprehensive atmosphere. They probably approach everyone with the thought, okay, is this person going to be a complete headcase? I think it's mostly people who happen to work in the venue, were caller number nine, or are there for some other purely random reason that may not have anything to do with being a BNL fan. My primary goal was to be as polite as possible and go get in my seat.

I enjoyed every minute of the show. They sound great live and look like they're having a good time. Everyone seemed to be in fine voice, and I'm a sucker for a tight harmony. And I always admire Steve's super-high leg kicks. When you get to the 35-and-over checkbox, you find that you are not as springy as you used to be, so it's that much more inspiring. Sometimes I'll get a wild hair and want to turn a cartwheel or roll down a grassy hillside, and invariably I think--I could really hurt myself. Still, I'm totally enchanted by their willingness to frolic on stage. I like a little frolic every now and then myself.

They played a very fan-friendly mix of older songs and new stuff. I was secretly hoping for something a little more obscure from Maroon like "Conventioneers" or "Off the Hook," but they did a couple of different ones. One of our favorite songs from the last album is the bluegrassy "For Me," which we did get to hear. It's the second time I've got "Alcohol" live, and I thought it was a real treat to hear Ed sing "When I Fall." That, with "Hello City," "Jane," and "Brian Wilson" were fine classics. Of the new stuff, I love, love, love "Home;" and "Running Out of Ink" is fantastic. I like songs, as Ed put it, with lots of words! They don't really do the yeah, baby, yeah too much. They are the literate person's band.

When We Were Orphans

This is the only novel I've read by Kazuo Ishiguro, and granted, it may not be representative of his work. It left me kind of cold, even though it had moments that were really nice. It's one of those novels where the sum of the parts didn't really add up to a satisfying novel for me. I think I was disappointed because I thought I was being tuned up by an unreliable narrator for a really BIG denouement, but it sort of pooped out in the end. As it turns out, the narrator-detective Christopher Banks was only moderately delusional and the effect was sort of--well--boring. Oh, well, they can't all be gems.

I'm not sure what I want to read next. Perhaps Richard Ford. He's just published the last novel in a trilogy that I've not started, so start at the beginning with The Sportswriter. It's that time of year when curling up with a good book is especially cozy. The holidays are almost here, and it seems like it's been such whirlwind of activity lately. I've been really fortunate to see so many great musicians this year: Marah, Jackie Greene, Joe Ely, Tom Waits, Bruce Cockburn, Eric Clapton, Barenaked Ladies, and next week--Ozomatli and Los Lonely Boys. My goal is to catch the elusive Kelly Willis somewhere next year. I keep hearing whispers that she's been working in the studio. I didn't get to see the Raconteurs, but it was getting really hard to squeeze in yet another out-of-town concert trip. I can start plotting for next year.