SOUNDTRACK: OLU DARA-In the World: From Natchez to New York (1998)
A friend of mine (Hi Jon!) made me a copy of this CD several years ago, and I just found it again and popped it in. I was delighted with how much I enjoyed it. I’d never heard of Olu Dara before, and I was quite pleased with the results. It’s a fun carribbean-esque/New Orleans jazz feeling CD. “Okra” and “Your Lips” are particularly fun. The only downside is “Jungle Jay” a rather uninspired rap. I just found that the rap is done by Nas, who is Dara’s son. I don’t know of Nas’s raps, but I assume they must be better than this one.
Overall, this record gives a nice upbeat feel of the heat in the summer time. Even though it has some raw sounding moments (his voice sounds quite vulnerable at times) it still maintains a good, solid sound. Knowing my tastes, I wouldn’t get more by Dara, and I wouldn’t listen to this all that often, but when the mood strikes, this will really hit the spot.
[READ: Winter 2006] What the L
I got tangled up in life, so I forgot that there were a number of books from a while back that I wanted to add to this blog listing. I’m going to intersperse them throughout here, but as you’ll see, some were read nearly two years ago, so I may not have all of my thoughts straight about them.
Kate Clinton is one of my favorite political comedians/satirists. She ranks up there with the late great Molly Ivins. Clinton often writes for The Progressive, a magazine I used to subscribe to, but which exhausted me because of how sad all the news made me feel. Most of the time Clinton writes about women’s/lesbian issues. (Hence the “L” in the title). I found this book because I was sent to weed the old books from our essays section of the library. (This one didn’t get weeded.) I was excited to see that she had a book I hadn’t read, so I checked it out.
One of the general problems with political writing/humor is that, well, several years after the fact (this book covers 2001-2004), the jokes aren’t really fresh anymore and the topics may not be easily recalled. Even if she was the first one to come up with some of these jokes, after two years, you’ve probably heard most of them already. Also, this book covers Bush’ first term. And, since we’re entrenched in his second term it kind of hurts all the more to be reminded how we got here.
Her pieces are usually short (about 4 pages) and they tend to pack a punch. Chapter headings like “Doing a W Take” and “Weapons of Mass Distraction” more or less show the direction the book is taking.
Clinton skewers Bush and all of his cronies, both fairly and in some snarky ad hominem jibes. But over all, they make you laugh about something that you should be feeling badly about.
The main complaint about the book is that Clinton tends to reuse many one liner jokes in her columns. Most of the articles were written over the course of 4 years, and in that time she reused a particularly good jokes a few times. In their original set up you may not have noticed the repeats. However, when you jam them all together in one place, you get a bit of repeat fatigue. If I were writing this in the Winter of 2006 I would remember the repeats, but you’ll have to read the book yourself to find them.
Not to say that the book isn’t good. Clinton is very funny, especially when she can lift your spirits about something bad. Ideally, you’ll read Clinton in the original publications at the time they are relevant, but if not, you can relive the past with this collection.
[…] with the Kate Clinton book, reading articles that were originally published months apart in one fell swoop can be […]