bindlestiffs

Essential Listening: Books

2012-05-15T14:36:57Z

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a nerd in possession of a mobile device is in wont of a good podcast. And for such nerds, it is the best of times.

Let's get our definitions clear. This category is specifically about book reviews and readings. We'll save podcasts about authors and writing for another day.

Man Booker is a name for a Dick Tracy character, not a book award.

This is a category that is close to my heart, (somewhere in the costomediastinal recess). As you may know, Americans are not eligible for the Man Booker Prize, which is why I haven't been short-listed. That and I haven't had a novel published. Yet!

In anticipation of my future literary success, I kept close tabs on my soon-to-be enemies, er, colleagues. In fact, book podcasts were my gateway drug into the seedy world of online audiophilia. It all started with the Washington Post Book World podcast. My interest in the subject outlived that winsome lass, sadly. But as gateway drugs always do, I moved on to New York Times Book Review and Selected Shorts and Libravox and Books on the Nightstand and Book Lust and and and...

What can I say? They're all great. Choosing the one essential podcast for this category, that's about as hard a task as man hath ever undertaken since the Deluge. "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."

Essential Listening: Books - The New Yorker Fiction Podcast

If any publication knows fiction, it's the New Yorker. Name an author and there's a sporting chance that they got their break in its hallowed pages. And it is this hallowed history that makes the podcast essential. The setup: an author who's been published in the New Yorker selects another writer's story from the archives to read aloud, followed by a discussion with fiction editor Deborah Treisman. Freakin' fantastic. My personal favorite (another Herculean task, picking that) is The Colonel Says I Love You by Sergei Dovlatov.

Music for Mondays: The Moldy Peaches

2012-05-14T10:10:24Z

All you need to know about the Moldy Peaches is that they are an ultra lo-fi, mostly-defunct duo whose biggest claim to popular fame is having a song in the movie Juno.

Want more? Okay, check out these lyrics for Downloading Porn with Davo.

Now that's what I call good music!

Sleepin' in a van between A & B
Suckin' dick for ecstacy
Paid a 70 year old hooker to make out with me
Now the "get high shack" is just a memory

Downloading porn with Davo
Downloading porn with Davo
Put a latch on the door so Mama don't know
That I'm downloading porn with Davo

Tried to buy your love, but I came up short
So I fucked a little waitress in exchange for a snort
My girl's got a dick hangin' out of her shorts
Me and Eric in the bathroom with the weather report

Adam Green and Kimya Dawson formed The Moldy Peaches in the halcyon days of the Clinton era, when our only concern was making sure everyone properly dry cleaned their dresses lest they endanger the free world. They've been associated with the anti-folk music scene, and are probably best remembered for their whimsically homemade albums. After the band went on hiatus in 2004, Kimya has had a bit higher profile, releasing a children's album called Alphabutts in 2008 and popping up on soundtracks here and there. Adam Green has a number of solo albums and plays in Regina Spektor's band, which is pretty damn cool.

And here's a little trivia nugget for you: Kimya means 'silent' or 'silence' in Swahili.

Hay Fever

2012-05-10T15:45:07Z

Music for Mondays: The Low Anthem

2012-05-07T14:11:15Z

NPR's All Songs Considered introduced me to this weeks M4M, The Low Anthem. If you're not familiar with All Songs Considered, and you're inclined towards music outside the mainstream, you have to check it out. Fear not, even though it's on NPR, it's not just jazz. They get into world music (which is a shit descriptor, like all the music outside of the English-speaking world is a single style), sub-genres, emerging genres, and everything in between. And their Tiny Desk Concerts really bring some of these bands to life.

From The Low Anthem website

The Low Anthem hits one of my happy buttons, having a mixed boy/girl line-up. On top of that, their most recent album, Smart Flesh, was recorded in a defunct pasta factory in Rhode Island. The cavernous space gives their tracks a subtlely haunting, lonely aspect that really resonates with their pained lyrics. If you read the reviews of their two studio albums, you'll see that many critics did not care as much for Oh My God, Charlie Darwin as they do the most recent release (Charlie Darwin was praised in many outlets when it was released, though). Certainly Smart Flesh is more cohesive and brings a consistent vision to the album. They clearly know their craft better. That said, I prefer Charlie Darwin. The title track is fantastic. And for my money, To Ohio is their best song. It has such a sparse, melodic presence, I will sometimes put it on repeat-1 when I'm writing or walking through the urban wasteland of Seoul.

If you're in the mood for something folk-y, you could do a lot worse than The Low Anthem.

Official Page: www.lowanthem.com

On Facebook: facebook.com/TheLowAnthem

On Twitter: twitter.com/thelowanthem

Essential Listening: Science

2012-05-02T15:56:09Z

Podcasts. Billions and billions of podcasts (say this in Carl Sagan's voice). In our lifetime, we cannot hope to listen to one tenth of one percent of extant podcasts. And every second, new podcasts are uploaded to the vast infrastructure that is the internet, several hundred hours of audio every day. Whole universes of knowledge and humor and pathos and crap, so so much crap.

We turn our ears to the speaker and yearn for sound waves to excite the thousands of cilia in our cochleas. When the podcast suits our tastes, the neurotransmitter dopamine is released, giving us a feeling of reward. Not unlike what happens with sweet and fatty foods, alcohol, and cocaine. Assuming we have a fairly typical mesolimbic system in our brain, the feeling of reward will increase our desire for good aural stimulation. The more we consume, the greater discernment most of us will apply to listening. Low quality work, boring narratives, repetition, unwarranted crassness, tension without payoff, these will not satisfy us.

Now, for many of us, we will experience a great deal of reward when we listen to something both entertaining and educational. Learning and fun, these are well established recipes for greatness. And what can be more educational than science? Fortunately, there are many, many science-related podcasts in our sliver of the universe.Unfortunately, we do not have an infinite amount of time in which to partake of them. So we must discern those that will cause us the most dopamine release. We can speed that process up through recommendations and reviews. Or by merely accepting what we say here (recommended).

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Okay, so Carl Sagan-y shenanigans aside, picking the essential science podcast has presented quite a challenge. There are a number of good science efforts, and there are a number of things that might be considered in the science category, like RadioLab and Professor Blastoff. What about skeptics' podcasts? Are they science? They cover science to quite a degree. Something like Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is almost entirely science, but they are technically approaching the subject from a skeptical point of view.

So, with this in mind, I've decided to do a separate entry for Essential Listening: Skeptics.

Without further ado, a tie...

Essential Listening: Science

This Week in Science - An irreverent review of the week's science and technology news, with neuroscientist Kirsten Sanford and Justin Jackson.

Star Talk - Neil deGrasse Tyson's podcast, and nothing Neil deGrasse Tyson does is not completely awesome.

Music for Mondays: Dengue Fever

2012-04-30T13:07:34Z

Horrible, fatal diseases can be fun. And not just for the horribleness and fatality. Case in point: the band Dengue Fever.

Based out of L.A., Dengue Fever is fronted by Cambodian karaoke legend Chhom Nimol, who was recruited by brothers Ethan and Zac Holtzman. She sings most of their original music in

Dengue Fever is spread by mosquitoes and social media.

Khmer, evoking the feel of Cambodia's surprisingly awesome 70's rock scene. To the degree that this era has seeped into American music conscience, Dengue Fever is responsible. A documentary about their critically acclaimed tour through Cambodia, Sleepwalking Through the Mekong, played a role in that, as well as their compilation of popular Cambodian artists Dengue Fever Presents: Electric Cambodia.

Not every song on their 7 albums works, especially when Zac takes a more central role. They're at their best when the songs cleave more closely to the heyday of Cambodian rock, though oddly enough 2 of my 3 favorite songs are in English.

If you've never listened to them or heard Carter-era Indochina rock&roll, you owe yourself a listen, if only to see what it's all about.

First, one sung in English.

And one in Khmer

Essential Listening: Storytelling

2012-04-25T01:03:37Z

This happened awhile ago, around 2009, give or take. Back then, if I had my earbuds on, I was listening to music. And I had my earbuds in a lot. There were just so many things around me that I didn't want to hear, from the freaky-permed ahjummas popping gum in their mouths, to the incessant saccharine drone of K-Pop painting every sidewalk in the city, grating scooter honks, pigeons cooing, neighbors fighting: the white noise of city life.

A moth.

The Moth.

Then something happened. Maybe I was listening to an archived episode of This American Life. Maybe I heard an interview with someone involved. Maybe it just permeated the ether. The details are fuzzy; there was a lot of drinking back then. Somehow or other, I became aware of The Moth. People telling true stories, live (when they were recorded), and without notes. Some were funny, some were vulnerable, some were enlightening, all were pure ear candy. It would not be terribly hyperbolic to say it changed my life. Well, that might be a bit hyperbolic, but I can say without reservation that it had a deep impact on me.

Immediately, I got hooked. I hit Subscribe in iTunes and probably listened to at least ten episodes that first day. Very quickly I had exhausted their archives and, like every addict, I started scrounging every nook and cranny for more. I was jonesing hard. I found a few more recorded segments here and there. I read interviews and transcripts. There was nothing I hadn't uncovered, distilled, and consumed. I still needed more. I turned to other sources, hoping for the same high. There was Risk! with ex-State alum Kevin Allison. It was good, occasionally better than The Moth, but different in its focus and tone in some ways. Every episode of The Moth consisted of segments from their live shows in New York and elsewhere. By contrast, Risk! began as a podcast and featured stories recorded in studio, at least initially. It has now grown into workshops and live shows and a host of other ventures.

But Risk! was not enough either. I found Storyworthy. I found Story Collider. I found podcasts that were quite different but still had strong narrative structure, like RadioLab and 99% Invisible.

Still not enough! I began considering how to organize something like The Moth here in Seoul among the expat and English-speaking community. Luckily, someone else got to it before I had to do it myself. Thus far, I've done two live storytelling events. While I was not the best storyteller of either night, I was also not the worst. Perhaps more importantly, those experiences changed the way I view storytelling in my fiction writing as well. And that is, in the end, what I am here to do.

Essential listening: storytelling - The Moth

Other storytelling podcasts worth considering:

Risk!

Story Collider

Storyworthy

Music for Mondays: The Dandy Warhols

2012-04-23T03:43:59Z

Last week, we looked at my favorite band, Victorian cello-rockers Rasputina. In the same vein, let's talk about another band that I <3: The Dandy Warhols.

I hesitated before choosing The Dandy Warhols, as they are not nearly as obscure as most of the bands we chronicle in M4M. At the risk of damaging my hipster credibility (ha!), I can honestly say that The Dandy Warhols are worthy of a listen. And since their new album, This Machine, is coming out on Tuesday, it just feels right.

You haven't heard of them? What?! They've been around since freakin' 1997! They've had hits, been in ommercials, done theme songs for television programs...Okay, I'll admit that I didn't discover them until 2006, when I ran across their single Bohemian Like You, a mere five years after its release. I might have known about them a year earlier, when my co-worker Courtney (a real-life manic pixie dream[ish] girl) gave me a mix CD that included a few of their tracks, if I'd actually listened to it. She claimed that all people named Courtney share an unbreakable bond, so she and Warhols' lead singer Courtney(a boy) Taylor-Taylor were cosmically bound. But the first couple of songs on the CD were Ani DiFranco and Dar Williams, and I just was not in the mood for so much estrogen.

When the band first came together, they gained fame and notoriety around Portland, Oregon for their nudity-laden performances, apparently. I don't know, I wasn't there. Certainly there was full frontal nudity in their video for Bohemian Like You . And while Bohemian remains their most popular song, their first hit was Not If You Were The Last Junkie on Earth. Many people learned about the Warhols thanks to Veronica Mars, which used We Used to Be Friends over opening credits. For some reason, the show used a shitty remix for the third season; and then they got cancelled? Coincidence?

The Warhols have put out eight studio albums and are working on a ninth as we speak. Of those eight, 2009's The Dandy Warhols Are Sound is the only one I can't recommend. The album is their original version of the tracks that went into 2002's Welcome to the Monkey House; they felt that Monkey House didn't capture the feeling and tone they wanted to convey. Personally, Sound sounds inferior to Monkey House. But then again, they're talented musicians and I'm...very much not. So their opinion deserves some consideration.

Official site: dandywarhols.com

On Facebook: facebook.com/TheDandyWarhols

On Twitter: twitter.com/TheDandyWarhols

Mornings Are Awesome: Here Comes the Sun

2012-04-19T14:16:10Z

Essential Listening: History

2012-04-18T02:22:09Z

Imagine if you will, a young person living in an era of excess. Where nearly any want or need can be filled with relative ease, almost regardless of social class. The kind of era where people are not starved for information, but drowning in it. Now picture this young person attempting to filter out the white noise from the good stuff. It's just about impossible; sure he or she could look to peers for insight, or trust the reviews of strangers. But at the end of the day, he or she's gotta just dive into the flood of information and see which resonate. And maybe, if they're lucky, they'll find a few coral reefs out of the sargasso seas.

But if that young person is looking for history podcasts, they're in a virtual dead zone. The coral reefs and pockets of life are few and far between. But if they swim far enough, if they can hold their breath long enough, they'll eventually come across one, just one. That one is Dan Carlin's Hardcore History.

Yes, there are others. Stuff You Missed in History Class, which drops on a much more regular schedule, is nice and generally interesting; as the name suggests, they try to cover things that are overlooked, especially women's perspectives that don't always find much space in other history venues. But HH brings such a degree of knowledge, passion, and insight, it's difficult to compare anything to it.

Case in point, Carlin's 6 part series on the end of the Roman Republic. The only word that describes those episodes is epic. The final episode is over five hours(!!!) long. You might think this is excessive, even navel gazing. You might picture a rambling old professor droning on, following random tangents. Nope, not at all. As long as that episode was, you wanted it to be longer.

Really.

If you like history at all, subscribe today.

Music for Mondays: Rasputina

2012-04-16T12:52:32Z

It's time to address the elephant in the blog-space; namely, that my favorite band in the world is a weird, esoteric faux-Victorian cello rock group: Rasputina. One of the reasons I haven't discussed them before is that, after wracking my brain for weeks, I cannot remember how I discovered them. I've narrowed down the possibilities to

1) I was trying to find Boney M's Rasputine and found Rasputina by mistake.

2) It popped up on some alt-rock Winamp stream, back when people stilled used Winamp and there were a ludicrous number of cool streams. That's how I got into Penn & Teller's Bullshit and Futurama.

3) One of their songs was in some random indie rock torrent.

4) It came to me in a dream

4a) And by dream I mean alcohol-induced fugue.

4b) And since this would have been about 4 years ago, the alcohol in question may well have been absinthe.

Okay, with that out of the way, let's actually talk about the band. While there have been a number of people in the band, the central figure has always been cellist and fashion rebel

Melora Creager. She grew up as a weirdo in Kansas, which, as a weirdo from Oklahoma, helps explain my empathy for her. Creager put out an ad for other cellists in 1989, formed Traveling Ladies' Cello Society, then grew and changed their name to Rasputina. They've toured with Nirvana, Marilyn Manson, Porno for Pyros, amongst others.

Though she often gets thrown into the goth label, due in large part to tracks like Transylvania Concubine(song) and songs about cutting and suicide(song), she doesn't think of herself that way. Her fashion-sense certainly doesn't match the usual goth motif, favoring hand-made clothes, often in pseudo-Victorian styles, and rarely wears black at all.

I could talk about Rasputina for hours, but all you need to know is that they write songs about crazy topics like the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire(song), the Little Ice Age(song), and Bounty mutineer Fletcher Christian and his on Thursday October(song).

Cello rock. Esoteric lyrics. Devil-may-care fashion sense. What is there not to love?

Official site: www.rasputina.com

On Myspace

This is not my favorite song of theirs, but it is, I believe, their only major-label video.

Mornings Are Awesome

2012-04-12T13:35:24Z

Music for Mondays: Rabbit!

2012-04-09T11:25:47Z

A few months ago, I was jogging (yeah, right, you scoff? It's mostly true!) and this song popped up on a podcast I was listening to. The tune had a kind of optimistic, fun sound, like a re-envisioning of the Monkees. Which might not sound like the best compliment, but it worked, and the song stuck with me 'til I got home. I looked up the show notes and found the band: Rabbit! The exclamation point is theirs, by the way.

I found this description of the band:

[They are an] indie electro-acoustic bubble gum pop collective that writes and plays music with the unique ability to coalesce the family unit. Rabbit! has been lovingly labeled "kids music for adults," with catchy and vibrant songs that appeal to the youngest of listeners, yet with enough wit and sophisticated craftsmanship to give grownups something to sink their teeth into. [source]

Make of that what you will. I don't disagree with any of that, per se, but it also doesn't - for me - capture the richness of their music.

Rabbit! hails from Mount Dora, Florida, and apparently they aren't scared of cooties, because it's two girls and two boys: Ashton Allen, Devin Moore, Emma Jean Branch, and Yara. They're an unsigned indie band and still gathering a following.

You know, with band names like this (and Yacht, to cite another m4m example), it is actually challenging to research them...when you are as lazy as I am about researching them. I think we may have reached peak band name.

Their 33-song(!) album Connect the Dots and Go For It comes out on April 10th.

Anyway, sit back and enjoy this:

Saverabbit.com

On MySpace

On Facebook <-- Seems to be the most up-to-date resource for Rabbit!

On Twitter

On YouTube

Essential Listening: Comedy

2012-04-09T02:27:29Z

I recall with (somewhat alarming) clarity a conversation I had with a rabid Apple partisan a few year back. She was, in between looking hip and wiping the foam away from her mouth, going on about how completely, soul-bleachingly cool podcasts were. Now, the conversation had some precedent, as I had recently purchased a shiny new 120gb iPod, and as the duly-anointed Mac priestess in our vicinity, my friend was obligated to make sure every aspect of my life became entangled in Apple's velcro. But, enamored as I was with the sheer amount of piracy I was now capable of, I had little desire to get into something as lamely named as pod cast.

Now, three years later, I listen to about seventy five hours of podcasts (not in a row)(that number is made up and hyperbolic to underscore the essential truth of the statement)(three sets of parans in a row is rarely necessary and not advisable). Therefore, it is now my obligation to jam some of these in your ear; really, it's in the iTunes EULA. Didn't you read it? Not even after that South Park episode? Come on, you obviously have time to read 60+ pages of legalese; you're reading this site and that's about as wasteful of time as anything.

Essential Comedy

What the Fuck? With Marc Maron

Of course. As someone (I don't remember who, don't make me look it up. Just trust me on this.) recently said, if podcasting has a face, it's Marc's. The story goes that after Air America collapsed under the weight of its righteous indignation at right-wing media, Marc's career struggled. Following his second divorce, his blend of anger and sadness on stage did not lend itself to filling the Peoria Chuckle Hut, or wherever. He decided to either try podcasting or kill himself. Fortunately, he got in at a very good moment for the medium. He wasn't the first; pioneers like Jimmy Pardo's Never Not Funny and Keith and the Girl had already been online

for a couple of years at that point. But something about the sheer raw vulnerability and the making-amends interviews with comedians he'd alienated on the road made for compelling listening. Over the years that he's been online, he's produced some of the definitive conversations of our age. Check out his Louis CK 2-parter, orhow about Todd Glass' coming out?

These days one has to wonder if Maron's life is getting to be too good and on-track to remain funny and compelling as it has been. Thanks to the podcast, he's filling clubs, got a pilot picked up by IFC, got a book contract, and he's said sorry to just about everyone he mistreated (you get the impression he pissed off Jon Stewart a long ago time and Stewart isn't ready to accept the apology, or maybe that's just me).

Just listen, okay?

Others worth checking out

The Dana Gould Hour - this show is quite new, but it ridiculously well-produced. It's monthly, because he spends so long working on it. The effort shows.

You Had to Be There - Comediennes Nikki Glaser and Sarah Schaefer offer a hilarious, female oasis in a medium that seems overwhelmed with male voices. They leave nothing off the table, so the conversations can get scatological, sexual, or grotesque, which is great. They also got a pilot picked up recently.

Walking the Room - Comedians Greg Behrendt and Dave Anthony are just plain funny.

The Smartest Man in the World - Greg Proops, who you might remember from Whose Line Is It Anyway?, brings a sesquipedalian cerebral voice to podcastdom. The show's a bit different than most others in the comedy field, and won't be to everyone's taste.

Music for Mondays: Ximena Sariñana

2012-04-02T13:12:09Z

We're returning to the fertile ground of Risk!'s all-music two-parter, where we find bi-lingual

Mexican singer-songwriter Ximena Sariñana. I had not heard of her until Different(see below) grabbed my attention and put it in a half-nelson. But of course I live behind the event horizon of K-Pop, with its culture-distorting gravity. Unbeknownst to me, Ximena had been nominated for 2 Grammies (the Latin variety, she is from Guadalajara after all).

Ximena did not get her start off as a musician. She was a villain in a telenovela, Luz Clarita, at age 11. She released her first solo album, subversively titled Mediocre, at the tender age of 23. The videos for singles off of Mediocre were filmed in Iceland, for some reason.

Asked why she chose the seemingly too-humble title, she said

"This whole idea of the perfect woman of the '50s is what the title song is about. There was no possibility of being something different, and that, in turn, created a prototype of a woman who was mediocre."

The track below is from her second, eponymous album. I'm not in love with all of her music, but in just a couple of weeks, Different has shot up to the 3rd most-played song on my iPhone.

Ximena's official site: http://www.ximenamusic.com/

On Twitter: https://twitter.com/ximenamusic