How can I not love lyrics like these, which speak perfectly to me:
Let it out, let me in, take a hold of my hand
There's nothing like another soul that's been cut up the same
And did you want to drive without a word in between?
I can understand, you need a minute to breathe
And to sew up the seams after all this defeat
All this defeat
Oh, you'd like another video? How about this relatively new one, which stars Elisha Cuthbert?
Handwritten, the album that the Gaslight Anthem released last Tuesday, has been on heavy rotation for me since I received it. I've recommended it before, and I do so again, but here I wanted to draw your attention to two nifty facets of it.
The first is, oddly enough, the liner notes intro, which Nick Hornby wrote. (If you don't know Hornby's work, get busy and read some.) In particular, I love this bit, in which he's discussing how you write--the advice applies to songs or books or whatever, though here he's talking about songs and music--in a world in which it's all been done before.
...you think, write, play and sing as though you have a right to stand at the head of a long line of cool people - you recognise that the Clash and Little Richard got here first, but they're not around any more, so you're going to carry on the tradition, and you're going to do it in your own voice, and with as much conviction and authenticity and truth as you can muster.
The second is this bit from the title track:
There's nothing like another soul that's been cut up the same.
And did you wanna drive without a word in-between?
I can understand, you need a minute to breath.
And to sew up the seams...after all this defeat.
This band, one of my favorites, has been working for a while on its new album, Handwritten. Recently, they announced that they had finished recording the songs and that the album would go on sale on July 24. I can't wait to listen to it.
Fortunately, we can hear "45," the first song from it, right now. To do that, all you have to do is go to this Rolling Stone exclusive (in the U.S.) page.
When your day job is all about confidential work, you don't give out details of novels or stories in progress, and you try to respect the privacy of others, the most you have to report on some trips is what you ate. That's my situation today.
Dinner tonight was an augmented version of the tasting menu at Asana, a lovely restaurant in the gorgeous Mandarin Oriental hotel. I say "augmented" because we added a foie gras course and opted for both the cheese course and the dessert; oink, oink. The meal was good but not great, but three courses were perfectly executed exemplars of their type: the truffled risotto, the foie gras, and the dessert. I'd go back just for those three.
I'm making my way through the second pass of Children No More, and after revising the first eight chapters, I'm happy to say that at least so far, I think this thing is pretty damn good. I must admit, of course, that I'm probably the worst person on the planet to judge it, and I haven't hit the part where I (intentionally, of course) juke the narrative in unexpected ways, but I was rather pleasantly surprised by this initial bit. Here's hoping the surprise continues.
On the music front, I've been wearing the electrons out of the (top-quality, WAV format, of course) copy of The Gaslight Anthem's The '59 Sound on my iPod. I'm chair-dancing as I work. I'm here to tell you that there's not a bad track on this one.
Join me in another one: "Great Expectations." Enjoy
and I'm writing this entry on it. I'm still installing apps, replicating email, and so on, but at least all of my basic computing functions are now available again, my iPhone is synced to a system, and the shadow of the system that died over the holidays is now fading from The U of Power.
The path to this point was not simple, in large part because the new computer uses a RAID 5 setup with four 15K SAS drives, and I had to make that setup work on my own; the machine did not come ready to run. I wanted to do it myself so I'd get some useful hands-on info, and indeed I did--but perhaps next time I'll choose a faster, less painful form of learning. (For the non-technical folks, all this basically means that the machine is wicked fast but took many hours to make work.)
I'm quite pleased to be able to report this progress.
Now, back to a job and a novel that are both calling my name.
While I'm away, feel free to listen to another great Gaslight Anthem song.
Jennie turned me on to this band, and I've liked or loved every song of theirs that I've heard so far. I can't wait to listen to their CDs, which I've just acquired.
While checking them out, I naturally ran across and watched several times the following video. The song is great, and of course Bruce Springsteen's appearance is a huge bonus. What struck me most about Springsteen's performance is how happy he appeared to be, rocking out with these guys for the sheer joy of it.
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