|
|
The shortlist for the National Book Critics Circle awards — which Amazon’s blog calls one of the “three big U.S. book awards” and in which I actually participate — were announced yesterday. The impact of my votes is about as I suspected.
None of my votes in nonfiction, autobiography or biography made the shortlist. In fact, I haven’t read any of them, although one of the biography nominees has been on my “I should read that” list nonfiction votes made the shortlist. The only place my vote seems relevant is in the fiction category, where one of the books I voted for made the shortlist. That was Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, which I previously said was one of the best of the year.
Wholly unrelated but also just announced is the shortlist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, which goes to the best science fiction novel first published in Great Britain during the previous calendar year. As is not uncommon because it is a British award, I have not read any of the books on the shortlist.
Perhaps it is, that high achievements demand some other unusual qualification besides an unusual desire for high prizes[.]
George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss
I’ve never been much of a YouTube user. I’ve found some interesting, usually humorous, stuff there but there’s just so much I find it hard to locate very intriguing material.
That said, a HUGE hat tip to the Godoggone blog for the Frank Zappa post that led me to video of a 1973 performance by Zappa and the Mothers in Sweden. It not only has a variation of one of my favorite iterations of the Mothers (the Fowler Brothers, George Duke, Ruth Underwood), Jean-Luc Ponty is also part of the band. The video in Godoggo’s post (some day I need to learn how to put YouTube video on the blog) is of a two-part video of a 15-minute rendition of the “Be-Bop Tango.” The second of the two vinyl discs in the 1974 double LP on which the tune appears, Roxy & Elsewhere, is amongst my favorite Zappa recordings. (It is a semi-permanent album on my MP3 player.) The “Be-Bop Tango” performance on the Roxy LP is also the source of my favor Zappa quote: “Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny.”
Whether on the LP or the video, “Be-Bop Tango” will sound a bit off the wall to the unsuspecting listener. The title is highly accurate. It takes a tango structure, adds bebop permutations and creates what Zappa calls “a tango event.” It is so replete with quick little notes (one of my technical music terms) it must be amazingly difficult to perform. In fact, Zappa notes on Roxy & Elsewhere, “This is a hard one to play.” Given the complexity of so much of Zappa’s music, him saying that confirms its level of difficulty for the musicians. Thus, to actually see it performed is wonderful. It also increases my regret in passing on the Zappa tickets I was offered for a 1976 Minneapolis appearance.
I’m going to spend more time with the Sweden clips because one of the few downsides to “Be-Bop Tango” is it doesn’t really feature Zappa’s guitar work. While you get a taste of it in the video, the man never received the popular recognition he deserved for his guitar skills. He would probably be included in my list of the top 25 rock guitarists of all time, if not perhaps even in the top 10. In fact, since watching the clips and starting to write this post, Shut Up ‘N Play Yer Guitar, a collection of nothing but Zappa guitar solos, has ended up in the CD player in my vehicle.
So, this is ultimately a long post just to acknowledge a post on another blog. Actually, that’s not accurate. It’s also a way of recognizing Zappa’s contributions, whether as a composer or a guitar player, and perhaps encouraging others to set aside any preconceptions they may have and listen to a musician who, sadly, did not necessarily receive the deserved public recognition for his musical talents.
WARNING! This album contains material which a truly free society would neither fear nor suppress. The language and concepts contained herein are guaranteed not to cause eternal torment in the place where the guy with the horns and pointed stick conducts his business.
Zappa-written disclaimer on some of his LPs issued
after efforts by the Parents Music Resource Council
to have warning labels placed on albums
Tonight I had tickets to the Stampede game and to the Jolie Holland concert. Since the Stampede played the same team Thursday night, I figured that was a fairly resolvable problem. Then I found out yesterday I would attend neither. Why? Tonight was the night selected to unveil the 2006 championship banner for my daughter’s volleyball team during halftime of the girls’ basketball game.
Of the three, it was a fairly easy choice. After all, this was the final honor for the dream they obtained. The team got a tremendous standing ovation, perhaps the longest they’ve seen even in this championship year. Yet it also turned out to be somewhat of a bittersweet experience. Not only was it the last chapter of my daughter’s high school volleyball career, this weekend marks the first of this season’s tournaments for the Sioux Falls West JO Volleyball teams. Thus, tonight helped reinforce that this will be the first time in five years or more where a significant number of my weekends from mid-January through April aren’t going to spent on the road and in hotels for JO volleyball tournaments.
While I will enjoy the free weekends and won’t miss the travel, I will miss the kids, the parents and the camaraderie. Still, when some of the parents whose daughters are playing JO this year told me tonight I was welcome to join them in Omaha this weekend, I declined, both graciously and gratefully.
The most important gift anyone can give a girl is a belief in her own power as an individual, her value without reference to gender, her respect as a person with potential.
Emilie Buchwald, “Raising Girls for the 21st Century”
I’ll admit I’m not the best at spotting trends and certainly am not, in the words of Frank Zappa, a trend monger. But it strikes me the apocalypse is in and hot, at least what based on what my RSS reader showed me today.
First, I saw that BuzzFeed updated its December compilation of posts and articles about the apocalypse. Then, I saw an interesting column by Scott Esposito on apocalyptic fiction. Shortly after (via Remaindered Links), I discovered the Reel Pop guide to the Top 10 Dystopia Films. Now granted, a dystopia may have nothing to do with an apocalypse but many involve post-apocalyptic societies. (As an aside, I don’t agree with the rankings, particularly the selection of the top film). Finally, while the end need not come from outer space, I see The Guardian has a short article saying the reason aliens haven’t found us yet is they haven’t had the time. (Also via Remaindered Links.)
I have long been a fan of apocalyptic fiction (see, for example, here and here) and related film. Yet this seeming conjunction raised a question in my mind, particularly as it comes years after the end of the Cold War and mutually assured destruction and after “surviving” Y2K and making it into the new millennium. Does this interest reflect people thinking the current state of affairs in Iraq and the Middle East is insoluble, the growth of rapture believers in places of political power or is it simply generated by the “Doomsday Clock” moving two minutes closer to midnight this week? Quite the thought process to start a weekend, eh?
UPDATE: This confirms it. Not only does Entertainment Weekly give us its list of the Top 20 dystopian movies, I tend to agree with it more than the other. (Via SF Signal.)
To minimize suffering and to maximize security were natural and proper ends of society and Caesar. But then they became the only ends, somehow, and the only basis of law — a perversion. Inevitably, then, in seeking only them, we found only their opposites: maximum suffering and minimum security.
Walter M. Miller, Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz
I’m not quite sure the source of the trend, but I have started and then put down more books in the two weeks of this year than I did all of last year. And to top it off, of the two books I have read, one of them took me far longer than it normally would.
What makes it more disheartening is the books I’m putting down aren’t “bad” books by any stretch of the imagination. They range from books by two Nobel Prize winning authors to standard non-fiction. It isn’t that they are poorly written or not worth the time. In fact, I would venture that 95 percent of the time or more, I would have read each one through to conclusion. It seems they aren’t striking whatever mood the reading part of my brain is in, I have no idea what that part of me craves or both.
Those that weren’t library books are going back in the bookshelf by the bed that contains what is arguably the “TBR” books. I just hope my inability to find what I want to read doesn’t taint them for the future. Fortunately, a book I started an evening or two ago has kept me intrigued and I’m starting another tonight for a review. (And to reassure those who know me personally, no, the SuperOptimist book under “Now Reading” is not a self-help work; it’s a parody.)
I just hope one of them strikes that intangible chord, the funk disappears and the reading life returns to normal.
Books are like imprisoned souls until some one takes them down from a shelf and reads them.
Samuel Butler, The Note-Books of Samuel Butler
|
Disclaimer 
Additionally, some links on this blog go to Amazon.com. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. There is no additional cost to you. Contact me You can e-mail me at prairieprogressive at gmaildotcom.
|
