SOUNDTRACK: THE ARCS-Tiny Desk Concert #504 (January 25, 2016).
Okay so the Tiny Desk folks make a pretty big deal out of this being their 500th show and I am stating that it is their 503rd show. I have to guess that they post some shows out of order because I have counted twice and gotten the same number. So we will choose to disagree with our numbering system, but I will also agree that this was their 500th episode because, why would they lie?
The Arcs are a band that I wished I liked more. Everyone seems to enjoy them, but I really don’t. Of course, I don’t like The Black Keys either, so this is no surprise, really. Nevertheless, Dan Auerbach, who is in both bands, has a great voice and writes some interestign songs, I just don’t care for his arrangements–the very soulfulness that attracts fans, I guess.
They are accompanied by three members of the Mariachi band Flor de Toloache, who did a Tiny Desk Concert a few weeks earlier (although I’m guessing it was the same day, hint hint). They play a great accompaniment–sometimes all of them play, sometimes just one, and they add interesting elements to the songs. They also sing backing vocals.
The band plays three songs from their album. “Pistol made of Bones” which I like in this version (I don’t know the original, I don’t think). I especially like the way the horn and violin play along with the melody and give it a very Mexican feel. It removes some of the soul that I don’t really like about the songs.
The other two songs are the two singles from the album and I find that I like them less (I guess I’m a deep cuts kinda guy).
“Stay in My Corner” is a fine song. I like the guitar lines and the way he sings it. It’s just not my thing. I really enjoy the backing vocals by drummer Homer Steinweiss, who has this hilarious style of tapping out these beats while leaning (practically asleep) on the drum machine–totally low key.
I really enjoy Auerbach’s singing delivery in “Outta My Mind.” I just wish the song would do more. I want it to be…something else.
So the 500th (ish) episode was probably a lot more fun in the Offices than it was for me. Although I enjoyed the confetti cannons.
But congratulations anyway! Here’s to 500 more–but take a break for a few weeks so i can play catch up, okay?
[READ: January 4, 2016] “Interesting Facts”
I hadn’t been reading all that many short stories at the time that I read this because I had been focusing on graphic novels and books. So jumping back into the short stories at Harper’s has been a real treat. And I really enjoyed this one.
Although I’m always leery of stories that center around a main character with cancer, I thought the way this was done was clever and interesting and it absolutely drew me in to the story. Plus it was funny (at least at the beginning).
I loved the way it started: “Interesting fact: Toucan cereal bedspread to my plunge and deliver.” It doesn’t even fully make sense by the end of the story but an essential part does and I enjoyed the way it was presented like this.
The story is told from the point of view of * a woman who developed breast cancer a few years back. She says that “I’m going to discuss the breasts of every woman who crosses my path.” And indeed she does.
It begins with her and her husband talking about dead wives (they had just been to a book reading where in the story within the story, narrator’s wife had died and eighteen months later he met someone new and was happy. That story concluded “it’s always richer after a man has discovered, firsthand, the painful fragility of life.” Our narrator amends, “Well secondhand.”
So she asks her husband how long he will wait until after she dies before he’ll date again and he jokingly asks how long it takes to get a death certificate.
I enjoyed the dark humor that the narrator celebrated.
On her first chemo treatment she says she saw another woman there who was also getting treatment. But that woman was clearly not going to make it so she tried not to look at her. And she says this is how people treat her these days. Like when she walks into her house and sees their neighbor Megumi with her hand on her husband’s shoulder.
The story is also sprinkled with “interesting facts” like that the Manson house in is in their neighborhood.
The “interesting facts” come from their youngest daughter who would walk around and begin every sentence with the phrase “interesting fact” before stating whatever it was. However, on the day that the narrator went in for chemo, the girl stopped speaking altogether “and turned into the horse-child, galloping around the nursing station, expressing her desires with taps of her hooves.”
“Interesting fact” the kanji for irrational is a combination of the elements woman and death.
The scene in which the narrator feels herself enter the body of a dying woman is amazing–so powerful and elliptical (but not) at the same time. She says you don’t need to die to know what it’s like to be a ghost. And she relates the story of the day her doctor gave her “the news.”
We learn that the narrator and her husband are both writers, although the narrator’s books have never been published. And one night, he takes and idea of hers and starts working it into a book. This enrages her–it is her idea after all–how can he take it?
There is so much unsaid in this story and it is so well-crafted. I really enjoyed it a lot, even if , or maybe because, it wasn’t as funny as I thought it was going to be.
I’m here 5 years after you’ve written this, but you said “It doesn’t even fully make sense by the end of the story but an essential part does and I enjoyed the way it was presented like this.” And I have to tell you that I’ve just finished reading, and I think it does fully make sense! I believe it means “cancer spread to lung and liver.” Heart-wrenching. What a good story this was! As a woman, it was hard to believe that this was written by a man. This narrator was a damn believable woman.