What Is Dave Doing ?!? – Part 3

With our busy week preparing for the live recording of Sneaky Dragon and getting the artwork together for new Sneaky Dragon t-shirts, I haven’t had a lot of time for reading this week. Still, that doesn’t mean I can’t tell you WHAT IS DAVE DOING?!?

READING: Anthony Trollope’s La Vendée

My Anthony Trollope reading challenge hit a bit of a snag this week when I started Trollope’s sole (I think) historical novel. The novel concerns a revolt against the Republican revolution in France in a region known as La Vendée, when Royalists with support from the peasant population rejected the anti-clericalism of the Republic and would not allow conscription of locals into the Republican Army.

I have not yet finished the book, but so far my feelings are that it doesn’t play to his strengths as a novelist; that the dialogue, striving to be “historical” perhaps, is stilted at times with a lot of “thee” and “thou-ing” and “forsooth-ing”; and it has that sense of inevitable tragedy that was equally off-putting while reading The MacDermots of Ballycloran. (Arguably, the “thees” and “thous” could stand in for the tu/vous delineation, but it is not consistently used.)

That said, it is Trollope and Trollope’s vivid and empathetic imagination applied to human lives can only be interesting. The descriptions of the various fight scenes are pretty good, but the description of one character’s experiences in battle is absolutely riveting – as if Trollope himself was a battle-worn veteran of many a war instead of a junior clerk working for the post office.

I’ll say a little bit more about this book when I finish it.

LISTENING: Stephen Malkmus and the Jinks, Real Emotional Trash

This has been a particular favourite of mine for a while now so I always like to pull it off the shelf and give it a listen. My favourite song is Elmo Delmo, but there are several stand-out tracks including Cold Son, Out of Reaches and the ten-minute Real Emotional Trash. Many of the songs stretch out instrumentally and I enjoy the sort of alt-psych on display – some really good playing. My only reservation is that the lyrical surrealism makes the songs sort of distant for the listener – as though you’re hearing a conversation in unrelated snatches.

LISTENING: Funkadelic, Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow

Early 70s funk as soul/r&b began to incorporate psychedelic rock stylings (usually) à la Jimi Hendrix. In its time it must have been a perfect stoner album to listen to on headphones in your parent’s basement. There’s a lot of wah-wah pedal and guitar distortion from the amazing Eddie Hazel, but for a band that evolved from a singing group with doo-wop stylings the vocals are very weak. The title song is great, but what is it saying? “The Kingdom of Heaven is within” is a twist of traditional Christian thinking that would have appealed to knee-jerk anti-authoritarian hippie-types, but doesn’t bear much deeper thought and is not very healthy in the long run. After that stellar beginning though, the album slowly runs out of steam until the final song, which is basically spoken word with sound effects and rather dull.

LISTENING: Inspiral Carpets, Life

On a recent episode of Sneaky Dragon, Ian asked me if there were any records in my music collection that I was embarrassed of and I answered “no” – much to his frustration! I’m not embarrassed by things I like, but the closest I would come is the music I bought in the late-eighties/early-nineties, searching for new great bands. It was a bit of a fallow period in pop music, in my opinion, and the pickings were slim, but you kept on trying! This album suffers from one of the biggest problems of the 80s/90s: producers and bands trying to figure out the new CD paradigm. The unfortunate answer was to throw out the LP format of a 40 to 45 minute set of songs programmed for two sides and replace it with bloated albums of 65 to 70 minute lengths with most of the good songs front-loaded.

The Inspiral Carpets were a Manchester band that rose to some prominence during the whole “Madchester” scene with the Happy Mondays and Stone Roses (Remember them? No?) The band’s main point of interest was the Hammond organ playing of Clint Boon – oh, and the controversy stirred up by their t-shirts of a crudely drawn cow with spiral eyes that read “Cool as fuck” – but you know what? You soon find that a little Hammond organ playing goes a long way. Oddly, I find the slower songs more appealing then the Seeds-like fast ones, which seem too rushed. It didn’t inspire me to get my baggies out of the closet and do some freaky dancing. Oh, and at sixteen songs the CD is way too long!

LISTENING: Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks, Selected Shorts

This is second album from Dan Hicks stint on Surfdog Records that took him from total obscurity to semi-obscurity. His comeback album, Beatin’ The Heat, is really great. This album is a little bit spotty with some weaker material. Hicks was in The Charlatans, the band that arguably kicked off the San Francisco scene in the 60s. He then formed the Hot Licks in the late 60s and they had some renown in the early 70s before sinking out of sight. If the combination of Stephane Grappelli/Django Reinhardt playing combined with the Andrew Sisters and louche, drawling vocals singing humorous songs sounds attractive then Dan Hicks is the man for you! Special guests include Willie Nelson and Jimmy Buffet, which seems right in Hicks generational wheelhouse, but also Gibby Haynes from Butthole Surfers, which is not so easily explicable (since Haynes isn’t much of a singer, his contribution is more of a dialogue – literally phoned in).

READING: Peyo, La Soupe aux Schtroumpf

My daughter “Phyllis” brought this bande dessinée back from France for me when she went on a school trip to Europe. Of course, “Schtroumpfs” is the original Belgian name for Smurfs (and never seems quite as good a name as Smurf, quite frankly, but then I suppose it’s what we’re used to). La Soupe aux Schtroumpfs (or Smurf Soup) is the main story and is about a giant with an enormous appetite sent by Gargamel to find the village of the Schtroumps where he can have some delicious Schtroumpf soup. I believe this is the only story that has an outsider find the village and even Gargamel stumbles upon it, but Papa Schtroumpf soon fixes their little red wagons. The second story concerns Schtroumpfette – who was created by Gargamel to destroy the Sctroumpfs, but somehow didn’t quite, but is too disruptive to live with them – up to more coquetry and tormenting the poor love-stricken Schtroumps with her unreasonable femaleness. (Hey, I don’t write ‘em; I just read ‘em, folks.) The Schtroumps are more for children then Johan et Pirlouit and Benoit Brisefer, but I could stare at the beautiful artwork for hours – all those cute mushroom houses and the gorgeous ink lines. *gush!*