Stoneagebooksandmusic's Blog

This is a low, Franny

stoneagebooksandmusic — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:30:56 +0000

Getting the momentum to write on a regular basis has been far more challenging than I imagined. The self censoring that occurs on the page is nothing to the mental redacting that is such a habit. That said, I am going for the plunge school of “just fucking do it” attitude.

Lately I have been re-reading books and stories instead of digging into new ones. It started with Harry Potter this summer, and that is another post unto itself. A few weeks ago I read “Raise High The Roofbeams, Carpenters” for the first time in I don’t know how many years, and was immediately struck by how new it felt to me. This morning, in hopes of a similar reaction, I opened “Franny and Zooey” for the first time since I left a fair amount of angst by the side of the road.

The “Franny” portion started as I remembered, the amazing note to the editor in the frontspiece (the term “cool lima bean”never gets old,), and later, there were the same disparaging references to Bennington girls. Somewhere in the middle though, I was reading a totally new story. I recognize Franny’s sense of being unmoored, her search for something beautiful and meaningful in a world that seems to offer little of either. Unlike other times I have visited her though, I was more interested in the quiet that she found, the retreat that she creates for herself, than in the clever arguments that she and Lane hash out. Quite simply and wonderfully, I am no longer my own Franny Glass. I have thus decided that this winter will be an exercise in revisiting books, and as always, music that are well worn favorites, but that haven’t been touched literally or metaphorically in eons. We’ll see how this goes.

Another Girl

stoneagebooksandmusic — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 16:14:12 +0000

What more is there to say?

As good a place to start as any

stoneagebooksandmusic — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 15:51:48 +0000

How does one begin a blog out of the blue? People clearly do it at an alarming rate every day, and I am willingly adding myself to those ranks. So, I am going to start with an easy post about a favorite band of mine. Easy because they lend themselves to review and accolades as a group not making cookie cutter rock/ pop/ indie/ retro/alt-whatever, they sound like themselves, a very difficult thing to do these days. Easy, because while others have written about them to great extent, and their music is available in all the usual places both legal and otherwise, they still fly under the radar.

Please meet The Teenage Prayers. Based in NY by way of the Midwest, they combine disparate loves of rock, and soul and country, and hip hop and even glittering pop, to create deeply textured songs that sound nothing like anything that is out today except that you can pinpoint your favorite within the musical and lyrical references. There’s Solomon Burke, and VU, and The Clarke Sisters, and The Stones, and Nilsson, and masses more. The Prayers have two full length albums True Love Through Better Music, and Everyone Thinks You’re The Best, as well as numerous single and Eps. I’ve chosen a relatively new song to showcase, one that first heard live about 6 months ago, and it stopped me dead with it’s spareness after a set full of their usual songs that sometimes feel like you’ve been leveled by a train. I still felt leveled after hearing “Knoxville”, but in a way I had been wholly unprepared for. It’s creeping and close, and keeps looping you around it’s finger until it drops the string.

Here is “Knoxville” from the spectacular session The Prayers recorded for Daytrotter, as well as a video clip from their recent tour.