The Bagel And The Rat

Oh, the things Web research can reveal.

Over the summer I traveled back in time.

To my brother's place, to be exact.

He lives in a college town, but we weren't there to teach or learn; we were there to make an album. The recording studio was pretty state-of-the-art. My brother isn't.

He doesn't have a digital recording device or MP3 player.  Or a computer at home. Or cable or satellite TV (though he does have an idiot box on which he can watch rented movies).

He doesn't want these things.

He reads books he borrows from the library. I went with him to the creaky, homey old library a couple of times, to take advantage of its free wireless internet. I don't live in the past (unless you count the fact that I don't have a smartphone yet). I'd brought my laptop. I'm a freelancer and I have to stay in touch even when I'm away from home, in case any work comes up. And I have to be able to do the work, if it does.

More amazingly, for someone who lives in a small town in Vermont, my brother doesn't have a car. He walks to the school where he teaches. He takes commuter buses up and down the state when he wants to go somewhere. He rents a car now and then when a big trip is necessary.

On reflection, though, that doesn't conform to the theme of living in the past. It feels more like living in the future. But that's a story for another – a future – day.

After our studio sessions, back at his house, we went even further back in time: to our childhood, when we read books about dinosaurs. Only in those days there were maybe ten or twenty dinosaurs pictured in the books. Paleontologists have since discovered many, many more dinosaurs. I realized with amazement, paging through my brother's thick, heavy new dinosaur book, that every dinosaur we knew of as kids – tyrannosaurus rex, trachodon, triceratops, allosaurus, ankylosaurus, what used to be called a brontosaurus – is now known to be a whole family of sauropods, dozens or hundreds in each group.

Makes sense when you think about it, with evolution working on these creatures for tens of millions of years.

So there we were, two guys in our 40s, reading books about dinosaurs. Just like when we were six, seven, eight years old. Traveling back in time.

After our second and final studio session it was Friday night, time to celebrate having completed the basic tracks. I wondered if the brewery in town had a Friday night tasting. My brother had never been to the brewery at all, though it was practically in his back yard. It was about time. Sure enough: Friday night tasting! Complete with a cask ale. So there we were, standing at the counter in the brewery, drinking cask ale. Traveling back in time alcoholically too.

So here's to both kinds of dinosaurs – the ancient beasts who once roamed the planet, and the humans who stay just a little bit behind the curve, taking things a little more slowly, leaving time to contemplate.

If Twitter is the new way people are finding out about things, I guess I’m going to have to start doing it eventually. But so far I’m resisting, and here’s why.

6. I already have to “hide” three quarters of my Facebook friends because I don’t have time to read their announcements of “I’m off to the Post Office” and “I’m making lentil soup tonight.”

5. Speaking of food, I don’t know if I can afford another mouth to feed. With Facebook, two Myspace pages, a professional website, professional blog, personal blog, band websites, rehearsals, hustling for work, etc., etc. — not to mention those holdovers from a primitive era, actually working and having a social life — it’s hard to swallow the idea of hooking up yet another needy pipeline I must pump full of something on a regular basis.

4. Unless I’m talking about birds, I refuse to do anything requiring me to use the word “tweet.”

3. I like to maintain an inflated sense of my own importance, so I’m worried that no matter how many (or few) people might follow me on Twitter, it will never be enough.

2. Just to be plain ornery.

And the Number One reason I’m resisting Twitter…

1. Look outside — it’s a beautiful day!

Manda Mosher, Everything You Need

Manda Mosher's airy but sultry alto is a refreshing change from the little-girl voices that dominate pop music, and crop up a lot in today's rootsy music too. Mosher's sun-baked pop-rock doesn't fall easily into a genre either, though decades ago we could safely have simply called it "rock."

Mosher's dobro plucking and Dylanesque harmonica playing nod to the front porch, but her songs, especially in these keyboard-heavy arrangements, hark back more to 1970s arena rock (especially Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers) than to anything current. The sole cover, however, is a lovely acoustic rendition of Pete Townshend's sweet, slightly precious "Blue, Red, and Grey."

Though reasonably well-crafted, Mosher's songs are a little pallid, lacking in excitement. As if trying to make up for this, producer Guy Erez has overproduced the tracks, and they are recorded on the CD crazily loud. These choices don't serve Mosher's subtle vocals well. She's not a brash Kelly Clarkson or a squeaky Taylor Swift, she's more of a smoky Christine McVie or Joni Mitchell. But this CD tries to hit you over the head with her. I suspect I'd enjoy her music more if it were in a more intimate setting.

Slaid Cleaves, Everything You Love Will Be Taken Away

Slaid Cleaves is one of those consummate songwriters whose stuff would sound great coming from almost any singer you can think of. But like Kim Richey (of whom he reminds me), his own voice, though not a powerhouse instrument, wraps perfectly around his words and melodies.

Cleaves' first new CD of original material in five years is the kind of album it's hard to write about because the music doesn't invite much analysis. It's like trying to grab hold of an object so smooth and frictionless you can't get a grip on it. Gurf Morlix, one of Americana music's great unsung producers, keeps things spare and simple, as befits the literate but straight-arrow songs.

Cleaves' stories and vignettes range from workingman's plaints, like "Tumbleweed Stew" and the Springsteen-esque "Hard to Believe," to grim ditties of war and death like "Green Mountains and Me" and the relentless, Townes-sad "Twistin'." Although there's a lot of negative imagery in the lyrics, the music has an unprepossessing, almost dancing quality even when it's slow. This makes you lean into the lyrics to see the vivid pictures. Good-looking music, this.

Jesse Terry, The Runner

Here's an expertly crafted, beautifully produced CD of poppy country-rock from a singer-songwriter with an open, engaging, emotionally powerful voice and a knack for melodies. But the lyrics take it down a peg. Cliches and sentimental storytelling are OK in songs up to a point, of course, but only if they're put together in original ways, or if they sit perfectly with the melodies in that indescribable, magical way that turns a competent song into a really good one.

These lyrics too often disappoint in that sense, even edging into cheesiness at times, as with the title track. In other songs, like "Edges" and "Ghost Town," good setups with well-conceived tunes and imagery don't lead to strong musical payoffs.

Where Terry does connect, for me, is in his acoustic ballads, where rather than forcing his way to attempted big choruses, he seems to be simply saying what he wants to say. "Noise," "A Refuge," and the exquisite "Africa" flow with complete naturalness, like songs by the Beatles, Don Henley, or Kevin So.

Slowly but surely our new Whisperado CD project is progressing. This will be our first full-length recording, with a song count in the double digits! We’ll finish recording later this spring, and soon after that we’ll have a hot little product ready for download – and even available on old-fashioned plastic discs in break-y transparent jewel boxes!

But in the meantime, during a lull in the Whisperado recording process I went to Tom White’s studio in Schoharie County in upstate New York and recorded three acoustic songs: a very tardy tribute to the late John Entwistle of the Who, a (seasonally speaking) very early Christmas song, and a folksy version of “Hand-Me-Down.” So it’s not really an album – more like an extended single, or a really short EP. Whatever you want to call it, it’s yours free – email me at music / at / whisperado / dot / com for the link to download the songs.

9/11. I don’t know how to get it out of me.

It’s been seven years since I watched, from across the river in Brooklyn, that acrid smoke billow into a sky-overwhelming blot. By the time the buildings fell, they were no longer visible from Flatbush Avenue, where I had gone out to watch. I did see the towers fall, but inside, on TV, behind the head of a shaken newscaster. Soot and stink and tiny pieces of paper and who knows what else swirled onto our windowsills, but our direct view to Manhattan was choked off entirely.

Where I live now, near Union Square, I have a north-facing view of the Empire State Building. I love the sight of it, especially in the very late afternoon when the light over the city turns gorgeous shades of aquamarine and bronze. That view comes with a slight pang, though. The apartment across the hall, where my fiancee lived when we started dating, used to have the corresponding southward view of the World Trade Center. No longer. New York has its beautiful, overbuilt Art Deco emblem still. But that less beautiful, yet just as iconic pair of towers is – still shockingly, after what feels to me more like seven months than seven years – gone.

The other night I got home late from a gig and my fiancee was watching Paul Greengrass’s powerful film United 93 on TV. I’d seen it when it came out in 2006 – I’d hesitated, but then decided it might provide some sort of catharsis – and I then assumed I’d never want to watch it again. But last night I couldn’t pull my eyes away. For once I was thankful for commercials. The raw energy crackling out from the TV and into my spinal column was spurring me to get up and stride about the apartment as often as possible, thinking up unnecessary little errands: check email, wash a mug, make a note to call so-and-so tomorrow.

As the movie ended, with the passengers rushing the cockpit and the plane spiraling down, she and I were both in tears. United 93 was the plane that went down in Pennsylvania, the only one of the four hijacked airliners that didn’t reach its terrorist target. Greengrass’s reconstruction of events on the flight was speculative, of course, but that didn’t matter to us. The tragic shock of the events, combined with the pride in our fellow citizens who fought back, had gotten us both in the gut. Again.

9/11 is still as alive today in me as it was a week, a month, or a year after the event. Days go by when I don’t think about it. But all it takes is a few images on a screen, or, sometimes, a glance out the window to bring it all back.

From the archives of the "To Read Makes Our Speaking English Good" Department here at the Indie Round-Up, we present these promotional blurbs from some of the musical artists and music services that have come to our attention.

Musical talent doesn't necessarily require facility with the written word – we understand that. Still, we can make fun of these folks, because their fabulous phrasings were submitted in official press releases or biographies, and written by people whose native language is, presumably, English.

Nevertheless, the band and company names have been changed to protect the stupid.

"Exploding onto the music scene, this amazing new guitarist is storming the industry and catching the music world on fire."

"Barrie, Ontario, Canada hasn't been and still remains an unknown entity when it comes to hip hop venues."
(Hm… nor will it have expected to becoming one upon the future, I guess…)

"Horse Pickle Entertainment, as created and launch a new website to better help unsigned artist and bands of all genres types to promote and sell there music."
(Translated by a computer from the Chinese? I wish. Amazingly, you can actually figure out what they mean. And what a fascinating, original idea it is, too.)

"Once again Big Stomp Gargoyles, the band of illegal rock combatants is embarking on a mission to spread their word by trudging westward to create awareness of who they are and what they represent."

"As the landscape of music is carved throughout time, the work born solely to contribute to that progression is something to be appreciated."

"This record hearkens the classic rock sounds while giving it a kiss of modern sounds that fans of music young and old can get into."

"The band's unique sound unraveled in the studio as their fresh songs were warmed to a timeless glow by vintage sensibility."

"While her years on this earth are few, the directions in which her life has traveled are many aiding in her ability to possess her varying musical personalities."

"I believe our strident career choices have helped us to succeed outside within the industry's new paradigm."

From an indie label: "We are driven to succeed on our own terms and bring new texture to the bland pourage that is the pop music soundscape."

And finally, this modest jewel:

"Carmine Garbanzo is making a name for himself with a songwriting and performance style that's definitely listener-focused."