Archive for October 2004

Wednesday 27 October 2004

Holiday in Peru: John Peel passes away

By jekyll | Music & Noise ~ Obits & Memorials

excerpt:

There cannot be a better way to go out from this world than on holiday. Godspeed, Mr. Peel.
News can travel slow from Peru to the UK to Seattle. Influential British DJ John Peel passed away on Monday from a heart attack. I have never owned a “The Peel Sessions” album or disc of one band [...]

more jekyll | more Music & Noise ∞ Obits & Memorials

hair raid

By spaceneedl | Design & Style ~ Health & Fitness

excerpt:

according to the sacramento bee and our friends at clairol, brunettes are big. and by that i mean women are increasingly down with brown.
and by that i mean “bah.”
not that i have anything against brunettes. or blondes, for that matter. let’s face it, i love women of all stripes. but there can be no argument: [...]

more spaceneedl | more Design & Style ∞ Health & Fitness

Justice on a Sliding Scale

By vmi | Community & Culture ~ Law & Politics

excerpt:

Recently, I paid one of my many debts to society. Pray for my soul. I served jury duty.
Growing up on the mean streets of Mercer Island, Washington (an affluent, white, white suburban Seattle community) my thoughts on justice ran parallel to my thoughts on teenage sex. It was to be swift; if you delayed, it [...]

more vmi | more Community & Culture ∞ Law & Politics

Monday 25 October 2004

i ain’t skeert

By spaceneedl | Life and Society ~ War & Peace

excerpt:

no, I’m not scared. but i am a little worried.

Terrorists in the park?
Add Magnolia’s Discovery Park to the locations of alleged terrorist surveillance efforts in the Puget Sound area. According to two women who refused to identify themselves to police, two Middle Eastern men on the afternoon of Oct. 11 were “definitely watching ferries through [...]

more spaceneedl | more Life and Society ∞ War & Peace

William Shatner, Has Been

By Gonzo | Music & Noise ~ Theatre & TV

excerpt:

When I ran across that headline — William Shatner, Has Been — a couple of weeks ago, my first thought was: true enough. My second thought was that The Guardian was being a bit harsh. My third thought, the actual question of whether or not to read the article, was swiftly followed by my fourth [...]

more Gonzo | more Music & Noise ∞ Theatre & TV

FlossQuotes

And where we are met with cynicism and doubt and fear and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of the American people in three simple words — yes, we can.
– Barack Obama

Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings - Naturally
If anyone's been paying attention, I listen to a wide variety of music, only a fraction of which I've reviewed here at Transcendental Floss. I tend to go through phases when I'll be stuck on a particular artist or genre, really immersing in it for a few weeks at a time, and what I find so interesting and exciting is that during each phase I have this experience where I feel like there's no better music than what I'm listening to right then and there. Well, I've just discovered Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings and I can say with complete confidence that this is the best music I have ever heard. Seriously, this is magical stuff. Brooklyn, New York's Daptones Records have managed to produce record after record of fine R&B/soul/funk music using vintage musical equipment and analog recording techniques in the ultimate homage to the legendary Motown and Stax catalogs. The Dap-Kings, serving as the Daptone house band, are the modern day equivalent of Stax's Booker T & The MGs, laying down the tastiest grooves, sweetest guitar riffs, and of course the horns that make this music so electrifying. Sharon Jones is the quintessential soul singer, able to capture moments of tenderness just as easily as moments of gritty passion. Enjoy!
— Gonzo

Van Morrison - His Band & The Street Choir
As much as I love the 1991 movie The Commitments, Van Morrison, some 40 years earlier, had already proven that the Irish have plenty of soul. Perhaps my favorite album of his, His Band & The Street Choir could easily be said to share some DNA with the music of Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings (soulful crooning, grooves, horns, etc.), yet with a decidedly unique twist that is all Van The Man. This music simply makes me feel good on a deep, deep level. What's so great about Van Morrison is that he's covered such a variety of genres, from soul to blues to country to jazz to celtic to a kind of meditative, almost new age sound that is all his own, and so as I move from phase to phase of musical immersion he's very often right there with me.
— Gonzo

Be Kind Rewind
I was not prepared to love this movie nearly as much as I did. While I've liked a lot of Jack Black's work, he's a guy with limited range who I can easily see wearing out his schtick. However, teamed with a very sweet and funny turn by Mos Def, an equally sweet Danny Glover, and under the direction of the mad genius of Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Science of Sleep), Black's occasionally formulaic performance does nothing to keep this film from achieving success as a comedy and a bittersweet slice of life in Passaic, New Jersey. I was surprised over and over again how Gondry unapologetically went sentimental, eschewing so much of the cynicism that passes as gritty realism these days, which is music to my unapoligetically sentimental ears. I laughed. I cried. I learned that Mos Def is by far the best artist to crossover from music to acting that I've seen in a long, long time.
— Gonzo

Franny & Zooey - J.D. Salinger
I work at a university where I supervise a team of student employees. One employee, in painfully embarrassing hindsight, reminds me an awful lot of me, but before this hindsight came into focus he was a big, fat pain in my ass. Relentlessly sarcastic and arrogant, yet brilliant, this guy pushed my patience to the limit. Then, one day, I saw him sitting under a tree on campus reading Franny & Zooey and it hit me like a lightning bolt. I know this kid. I WAS this kid. So, I stopped to talk to him about the book and about Salinger in general. He'd read The Catcher in the Rye first, then moved on to Nine Stories, which, with the story A Perfect Day For Bananafish, introduces the reader to the inimitable Glass family. Franny & Zooey, then, becomes the natural next choice, with Raise High The Roofbeam, Carpenter & Seymour: An Introduction to follow, and this was exactly the same sequence that I followed 20+ years earlier. Ever since, while we're not buddy-buddy, there's been a new-found understanding between us, a sense that I'd been his shoes, that we shared some interests. Oh, and I went back and re-read Catcher, Nine Stories, and am currently falling in love all over again with Franny & Zooey.
— Gonzo

Lick your chops and chip through the nuggets of past Floss Aid recommendations.
— floss aid

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Archive for October 2004

Wednesday 27 October 2004

Holiday in Peru: John Peel passes away

hair raid

Justice on a Sliding Scale

Monday 25 October 2004

i ain’t skeert

William Shatner, Has Been

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