Media

This a YouTube video from a series (of two cartoons) called Simon’s Cat that is not only hilarious, but very Mojo-like.

     Apparently there is a local radio show here in Cambridge called Phoning It In on WMBR which is MIT’s college radio station. This show, it turns out, is all about people “phoning it in” and on February 21st one of my music-heroes, Eef Barzelay, called in and played a few songs. I’ve broken up the recording into separate tracks with the “talking” bits in between the songs as they were in the original broadcast. Despite being crappy phone quality, I was quite pleased to hear an unrecorded song, Buffalo, which (if memory serves) he played at the Ben Folds concert he opened for in Worcester MA. Enjoy!

     I probably shouldn’t (and won’t for now) embed the music in ChezMojo because it is ~650 MB and eight hours long, but I stumbled across a personal website that contains a hand-picked mix of songs that I listened to over the weekend and really enjoyed. The website suggest that you “Enjoy with your favorite psychedelic.”, but it works just fine with a homebrew. Anyway, it is a huge download and one continues eight+ hour track, but really flows well and functions superbly as background music while you work.

Music Mix (http://sweetpea.tentacle.net/beyond/)

     Since we’re just getting this blog going and I’m just learning how to blog, I will try to introduce you to two of my favorite things via this blog entry. The first is Daytrotter.com which is the website of a studio where musicians stop by on their way across the country and lay down four tracks that are then made available for free via the website. Here is how Daytrotter puts it: The best part--besides the totally free downloads of unique songs by great artists--is that they record all-analog. For those of you who know anything about sound engineering everything is done digitally now. This is great for people like me who can buy a couple of condenser mics and lay some tracks down on their MacBook, but many professional studios have completely abandoned the tradition of analog recording. You’ll notice that the songs from Daytrotter feel warm and close, like the band is sitting in the room with you. This, much like the difference between film and digital photography, is because analog tapes don’t hard-clip when they can’t keep up with dynamic range, rather they sort of bleed or shoulder into it. The lower fidelity and dynamic range of analog means that you often hear this contribution to the recordings. Anyway, go check it out--you’ll probably find a new band to love, I know I have. And hopefully I will highlight more of my favorite Daytrotter Sessions on this blog.
     On to Eef! Last March I ventured to Worcester MA (pronounced “whuhsta” by locals) to see Ben Folds play in a college gymnasium. The sound sucked and I was one of the oldest people in the room (did you know that kids now hold up cell phones instead of lighters at concerts?), but Ben was great. The opening acts were...Well, I’m not going to trash artists trying to succeed...except for Eef Barzelay. Eef got up on stage in a white suit and gave a short intro, then played a few songs on his acoustic guitar. The music was like nothing I had ever heard before. It smacked of jazz, country, and 80’s rock, but with a hint of bluegrass and wonderful lyrics. Eef embraced his nerdy (as a nerd myself I use the term affectionately) aura wholeheartedly and even poked fun at those guys that go to guitar stores to show off their mad skills at reading tab and playing pentatonic scales. After the concert it started to snow cats and dogs, but I was scrambling for a pen to write down “Eef Barz...” I couldn’t remember the rest. I picked up his solo album Bitter Honey and was blown away. I later found his four tracks on Daytrotter, after which I spent weeks teaching myself “Apocalyptic Friend”, “Thanksgiving Wave”, “Well”, “Jews for Jesus Blues”, and others.
     I was browsing YouTube for Eef songs and I noticed that he introduced himself as “Eef Barzelay of Clem Snide”. I grabbed a few YouTube videos of ClemSnide and thought “these guys are just getting in his way”. Google pointed me at ClemSnide.org where I found recordings of Eef playing live at coffee shops and bars--cool!
     Wanting to support a talented, independent artist, I picked up Clem Snide’s End of Love and dropped it on my music player (NOT an iPod BTW) to listen to on the train. Wow! Clem Snide quickly became one of my favorite bands! End of Love, Soft Spot, and The Ghost of Fashion live in my car, my music player, my laptop--I listen to them constantly. Maybe some day I will put some of my favorite Clem Snide tracks up here for a listen, but until then here are the completely free songs available from Daytrotter’s Archives of Eef Barzelay. Enjoy!

     I’m a huge fan of animation and particularly of cartoons, so I was biased towards Persepolis to begin with, but this really is an excellent movie. As I understand it, the cartoon is based on a French graphic novel which is in turn based on the life of Iranian expatriate Marjane Satrapi. The movie follows her life, growing up in Iran in the late seventies and early eighties in a family of anti-establishment communist activists. The animation follows the style of thick black lines and high contrast that is common to “dark” graphic novels and I just love it. Periodically it cuts back to the future, which is in color, but only just.

     The movie is in French, but takes place in Iran and Austria, and apparently the dialog is even better (so says Clo) if you understand French I spent most of the time focused on the terrific animation and the surreal story of living in Iran during the take over by the Shaw. At one point Marjane’s aunt needs to apply for a passport to get her husband out of the country for needed surgery--at this point in the movie the Iran-Iraq war is tearing the country and its people to pieces. The man denies her request, citing “God’s will”, and the aunt angry points out that this man used to wash windows, but since the Shaw he has grown a beard and now runs the hospital... According to “God’s will”. Marjane herself speaks to God, very casually, throughout the movie in a casual an non-confrontational way that is unfamiliar to American cinema. Her irreverence truly manifests itself as she challenges her religion teacher, refuses to pull her head scarf over her face, and as pictured in this screen shot, sports a jacket that says “Punk is not dead”. The two teachers point at her button of Michael Jackson and she says “No, it is.... Malcom X”. Fearing for her safety her parents ship her off to a French school in Austria and a hilarious bit of animation ensues during which she matures into a woman.

     If you want to read a real synopsis of the movie, you can check it out at the IMDB, but if I were you I’d drop what I was doing and go see this movie... Or if you’re in Europe, go rent the DVD