SOUNDTRACK: BEN WILLIAMS & SOUND EFFECT-Tiny Desk Concert #170 (October 24, 2011).
Ben Williams is a jazz upright bass player (I didn’t realize bass players made band leaders, but clearly they do). In 2009, he won the Thelonious Monk Jazz Competition. And is an up and coming star.
He plays two original songs from his album State of Art.
It’s not often that the blurb describes a song, but it does a better job than I could have so for the first song, “Home”
the guitar (Gilad Hekselman) and drums (John Davis) lay down an aggressive, snappy foundation. The bass and electric keyboard (Christian Sands) fill out the polyrhythms. That groove, with its snappy hip-hop flavor, feels at home cruising down Georgia Avenue, then turning right on U Street NW, the historic African-American commercial district of Washington [D.C. where Williams is from]. Then the saxophone (Marcus Strickland) enters, and it’s game on.
That saxophone really runs the show on this song. There’s an interesting keyboard solo (I like the sound he chose, very Stevie Wonder-ish, but it’s a little quiet).
The sax switches to a smaller sax for the second song, “Dawn of a New Day.” The song is much slower and is more than twice as long as “Home.”
There’s a pretty lengthy bass solo (which sounds very old-school to me). It’s followed by an electric guitar solo that has an interesting effect on it which made me think at first that it was a horn. The horn comes next with a lengthy sax solo. The final solo comes from the keyboard (which now sounds like a piano). And then the song returns to that interesting main riff.
[READ: April 20, 2016] The Rest of Us Just Live Here
Sarah brought this book home and told me the premise–imagine what the stories of the other kids in the Buffy Universe would be like–wondering about all of those weird kids fighting vampires or whatnot.
At first I thought she meant that the other kids didn’t know what was going on, which would have been funny. But in this story, the kids know that there are vampires and other mystical things, they just aren’t any part of the action–they are not the Chosen Ones.
It’s a very funny premise for a book, and I looked forward to how Ness would create a story around people who aren’t “doing” anything.
But that’s not the only thing that the story is about. Ness makes the lives of the other kids so compelling and so, human (even if one of them is a quarter god).
One of the best things about the book is the way that Ness has structured it. Each chapter is set up as “Chapter the First” or “Chapter the Second” and after this fancy title, there is a brief summary–just like you’d find in books of old,except that the summaries are supernatural (and very funny).
Like:
Chapter the second, in which indie kid Satchel writes a poem, and her mom and dad give her loving space to just feel what she needs to; then an indie kid called Dylan arrives at her house, terrified, to say a mysterious glowing girl has informed him of the death of indie kid Finn; Satchel and Dylan comfort each other, platonically.
Awesome.
But what’s even more awesome is that the main body of each chapter has nothing to do with those indie kids. Their exciting story doing battle with the supernatural forces is entirely written as background to our real protagonists (who are the ones who called the other kids “indie kids’ (which is hilarious). Also hilarious is that all the indie kids have named like that Finn (there’s a few called Finn), Satchel, Dylan. I love it.
Our protagonists are Mikey (who narrates the book), his older sister Mel and his younger sister Meredith. There’s also Henna (a funny explanation about why she is not an indie kid with a name like that is that she is Scandinavian) and Mike’s best friend Jared. They are finishing up high school, all of them will be graduating in a few weeks (except Meredith who is a few years younger).
The gang is coping with teenage angst and the fact that most of them will be going off to separate colleges in a few months. They’re upset about he deaths of the indie kids–they knew most of them from class–but mostly they want to stay alive themselves.
Mike and Jared will be going to colleges that are fairly close–an hour apart. But Henna will be going to Africa (her parents are missionaries!) and Mel will be going far away as well. Mike and Mel are in the same grade but are not twins–Mel has an amazing, horrifying backstory that made her repeat a grade a few years back.
Mike is in love with Henna–has been for years–but he has never told her that. They have been friends forever, and she seems to have always been dating someone, so he never said anything. But now she’s free, and she’s leaving soon. He really needs to act.
It turns out that Mikey is a n pretty excellent narrator. He’s completely flawed (at times even unlikable–his jealousy is intense, unwarranted and off-putting) and he even has OCD–which has been getting very bad lately. But some great details are that he is nerdy and not very sexually active (although he’s not a virgin, which is a great addition, since that doesn’t become the goal of the book), He has fooled around a bit with Jared, who is gay, although Mikey is not. He is also completely understanding of his sister (and very helpful to her), and he enjoys hanging out with his younger sister (who is very smart, and whom they called Merde Breath).
His parents are also terribly flawed. His dad is an alcoholic who is barely functioning. And his mom, worse yet, is a politician. The last time she ran for office, the publicity nearly killed the family. But this time, when a new office unexpectedly opens, she promises that the spotlight will stay off of the kids (they don’t believe her). His mom also really doesn’t like Jared. Not because he is gay (although there is some of that–Mikey’s mom ‘s political party is not very progressive) but because Jared’s dad (one of the nicest guys in town) always seems to be running against her.
That’s a ton of background for this book but it’s all very useful to the story.
When the indie kids start dying (just like what happened a few years ago) our heroes are not unaffected. But the supernatural stuff only seems to get the indie kids directly. Until Mikey and Henna start noticing some really strange things. One night while they are in the car having a talk, a policeman raps on the window. His eyes are glowing blue and when they look up there are a dozen more blue-eyed policemen standing in front of them. There’s also an inexplicable herd of deer which nearly kills them.
I had mentioned jealousy and indeed that is a big part of the story. Mikey is so excited that Henna is free, he just wants to get the nerve to ask her out (he has no problem talking t her as they hang out every day). And yet out of the blue this new kid, Nathan shows up. They don’t understand why anyone would move to a new school just before graduation, but that’s not the worst of it. Henna feels all fluttery when he’s around. How can Mikey finally have a chance when there’s new competition.
Also, has anyone noticed that all the bad things started happening once Nathan came to town?
Bad things start happening in bigger scope. A concert (the whole thing about this band–a country boy band whom Meredith loves) is hilarious–until it gets pretty scary. And what happens when their mom’s political enemy (a nasty blogger) starts trying to bother the kids? And for the love of god, please don’t let the indie kids blow up the school just before graduation…again.
Oh, and just why do cats love Jared so much, anyway?
There’s many wonderful plot threads that interweave in this story–not to mention that in the background, it’s entirely possible that the world is about to end.
There is so much to like about this story–the loving nods to pop culture shows and movies–Mikey saying that he knows that saying x is totally cliché–all the while keeping a supernatural thriller as one of the plot lines. But more importantly, these characters are deep and complex, flawed but worthwhile.
And man, that cheesy bread sounds amazing.
The end of the book has an author’s note in which he says that as a way of raising money after Typhoon Haiyan, he (and other YA authors) offered various prizes. One that Ness donated was to have an auction winner’s name in the book. He says he couldn’t believe his luck when the winner proved to be Henna Silvennoinen (which is as improbable as it is awesome–there’s several jokes in the book about how you can’t pronounce the last name).
Oh, and parts of the book cover glow in the dark, too!
What’s not to like?
I was reading that Ness has written several other books, and I’m going have to check them out, too.
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