Music Review: Scratch My Back/ And I’ll Scratch Yours by Peter Gabriel

March 13, 2014March 3, 2014 / Susan O. / Leave a comment

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Are you more loyal to a particular song, or to the artist who sings it? Does one artist “own” a song, is it destroyed when someone else sings it? Or can a different interpretation make it better – maybe worse – or just ‘different.’

That’s the question put forth by Peter Gabriel’s pair of albums, Scratch My Back (which was originally released in 2010) and And I’ll Scratch Yours, the just-released companion. In the first release, Gabriel sings the songs of other artists, putting an often-times melancholy spin on popular songs. In the second release, other artists sing songs Gabriel made popular.

I must say, while I have several collections of a single song done by many artists (I have at least five different major artists singing the Mama’s & the Papa’s California Dreaming, and I love all of them), I’m of the artist-loyal group. Sometimes an artist can really rock a song (can you really say who sings Proud Mary better – Tina Turner or Creedence Clearwater?), other times they destroy it so painfully you want to cry (Willie Nelson, I love you, but please, for the love of Arlo, don’t – just don’t – sing City of New Orleans ever again). Yet, on the two albums combined, there was only one song I did not care for.

Do not expect this to be an album you will get up and dance to, unless it’s a slow, hypnotic pas de deux. Gabriel’s songs are backed up by full orchestration, with chirping violins beautiful in tone, making the album slide back and forth between the sounds of symphonic Pink Floyd and soft Dire Straits a la Brothers in Arms. The songs are slow, aching, haunting, jazzy, and gorgeous, as if Gabriel had stopped by, started playing around with your piano, and tapped out some random torch songs from the top of his head, and you caught them on tape. No shocking monkeys here. While I still prefer Springsteen, Philadelphia would seem to have been written for this album, this style, and this singer.

In the second half, And You Scratch Mine, the songs are a bit more upbeat, but still in that somewhat aching, torch-lounge style, while each artist still twists the songs to fit themselves. Arcade Fire’s Games Without Frontiers remains strong, if not particularly inventive. Randy Newman leaves his mark on Big Time, so much that it’s hard to believe he didn’t write it. Paul Simon cannot be anything but mellifluous on Biko. The only song I did not care for was Lou Reed singing Solsbury Hill. I’m all for twisting things up, but it’s a light, sweet bouncy melody; Reed seems to unroll the song, pound it flat, and leave it wounded in the gutter. I tried twice, but could not finish listening to the end of it. If you really like Reed’s style, you may love it, but to me it was a bad fit.

This was planned and released as a concept album pair; it is a type of experiment, and in all experiments, some things will hit the mark and some won’t. Is it the song that propels a singer to fame, or does a singer pull a particular song into the history books? Would we love Stairway to Heaven as much if it were sung by Britney Spears? Would we even remember Love Me Tender if it were sung by anyone but Elvis? What would The Scream look like if it had been painted by Rembrandt? That’s the question to ponder as you explore this fascinating piece of musical concept art.

Susan Reads: The Riddle of the Labyrinth by Margalit Fox

February 27, 2014February 15, 2014 / Susan O. / Leave a comment

Every now and then a book comes along and all you can say is, “WOW!”

That’s my reaction to The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code, by Margalit Fox.

Ever hear of the minotaur, the half-man, half bull that lived in the center of the labyrinth, built by King Minos on ancient Crete? As with most myths, this was one of those partly based on fact. There was a palace of Knossos, on ancient Crete (which lies in the middle of the Mediterranean), and there was a King Minos, although the name seems to have been a general title, not a specific person. His palace was huge, hundreds of rooms built, well, in a maze-like fashion. For reasons unknown, the palace burned down sometime between 1450 and 1400 BCE, or about 3400 years ago, and that marked the end of the great Minoan civilization. And this we know for fact because Arthur Evans dug up the palace in Heraklion, Crete, in 1900.

And he found a storeroom.

With more than 2000 written clay tablets, baked by fire, still sitting there.

But what script was it? It wasn’t Egyptian hieroglyphics. It wasn’t Phoenician. It was too old for Ancient Greek. Unraveling the mystery would shed light on Bronze-age European civilization. Scholars worked on it for years, including one Antiquities professor of Brooklyn College, Alice Kober. Kober, with incredible intelligence, scientific method, and a knack for languages that was almost frightening, through extreme perseverance managed to work out the basics, realizing that the mysterious language – known as Linear B – was written left to right, had different endings for masculine and feminine, and was a syllabary – a language where each symbol (read ‘letter’, if you wish) stood for a syllable of a word, not an individual letter, much like Japanese kana does. Kober poured her life into decoding the script. She came very close, but died before she could finish it.

Enter Michael Ventris, a quirky little upstart twenty years younger, a lonely child prodigy who, like Kober, mastered languages the way a sponge absorbs water (because everyone should know ancient Hittite and Etruscan). Ventris had been intrigued by Linear B since he was 14, if not outright obsessed. Untrained (he went to a trade school to become an architect, but never took a college class at all), he corresponded with some of the greatest scholars of ancient civilizations, read Kober’s papers, put ideas together, sometimes wrong but sometimes right, and just 18 months – 18 heartbreaking months after Kober’s death, broke through the code of Linear B – a writing system native to Crete, but bent to write an ancient Greek dialect 400 years older than Greek was thought to be. The discoveries of other, similar tablets also written in Linear B on the mainland of Greece and surrounding territories corroborated the information. A whole new era in historical understanding was broken open, and the timeline for civilization had to be pushed back to accommodate it.

This book reads like a fascinating detective novel. I could not put it down. It’s like watching the film of Titanic – you know the ending, but you’re gripping your seat the entire time anyway. Fox’s style is extremely easy to follow and to read – she drops little hints about what’s to come and then speeds ahead, and you can’t stop reading. If you love ancient history, if you love languages, cryptology, biographies of women in science or just a really good story, then read this book. It was truly a pleasure to read it.

Top Audiobook Picks Around the World

February 8, 2014February 8, 2014 / Susan O. / Leave a comment

Do they even HAVE audiobooks in other countries? They most certainly do! Here are the number-one audiobook requests from iTunes around the world, so grab your earphones and go global with these best sellers. Can’t find it? Request it! We’d be happy to get it for you!

UK – Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy – Helen Fielding Bridget Jones has hit middle age, facing the challenges of single parenthood and re-entering the dating world with all its technological traps in this funny and enjoyable sequel.

France – Inferno Brown takes on Dante Alighieri and his Divine Comedy as Robert Langdon races through Italy to solve the clues and save the world from a terrorist plot to infect the world in his latest mystery thriller.

Canada – Winners – Danielle Steele Steele weaves together a tale of loneliness and companionship as a surgeon and her patient’s father are faced with grief and tragedy, and learn to live again.

Ireland – The Garden Party and Other Stories – Maeve Binchy. A collection of short stories by best-selling author Maeve Binchy. Stories included are: The Garden Party read by Niamh Cusack; The Special Sale read by Dervla Kirwan; The Sensible Celebration read by Doreen Hepburn and Dollys Mother read by Stella McCusker.

Portugal – The Blood Crows – Simon Scarrow Two thousand years ago, Prefect Cato fights with native tribes to maintain Roman control over Londinium and England. Back in Rome, Emperor Claudius struggles to maintain his empire with or without England.

Sweden – The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho Santiago, a simple Andalusian shepherd boy, dreams of finding the greatest worldly treasure ever discovered. From Spain he travels to the markets of Tangiers, across the Egyptian desert, to a fateful encounter with the mysterious alchemist.

Netherlands – The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon A moderately autistic boy witnesses a crime, and struggles to make understanding of what he saw.

Greece – Jonathan Livingston Seagull – Richard Bach The 197o best-seller about the spiritual journey of a seagull, who thinks soaring is a loftier goal in life than eating. A short book of few words, it packs a powerful punch as the seagull learns to realize that sometimes personal goals may not be popular with those around you, but the journey of self-discovery is sometimes the loftiest goal of all.

Germany – The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson. In order to avoid his 100th birthday party, Allan Karlsson climbs out the window of his room at the nursing home, heads to the bus stop, steals a suitcase from a fellow passenger and winds up on a strange and sometimes dangerous adventure, which is nothing new to a man with a lot of history under his belt.

Denmark – The Preacher by Camilla Lackberg A child stumbles upon the body of a murdered woman. Soon two more bodies are discovered, and another girl disappears. Can the constable find the murderer and find the missing girl before it’s too late?

Six Picks – Great Environmental Reads

February 2, 2014February 1, 2014 / Susan O. / Leave a comment

Debating global climate change is as useful as debating whether a tomato is a fruit. The climate has changed before, without man’s help, and it is definitely showing signs of a bad mood swing again. The question we need to think on is how will we survive that change, and what can we do to calm the changes as quickly as possible. Here are six excellent books on a variety of ecological issues currently plaguing us. You may not agree with all of them, but they are food for thought and quite worthy of debate.

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson The grandmama of them all, Rachel Carson’s landmark 1962 epic of how chemicals were destroying the planet. Her work led to a banning of DDT, which had nearly wiped out dozens of bird species such as the American Bald Eagle, by making eggs so brittle chicks could not survive. This is the book that started ecology, Earth Day, and so many other great causes. It was required reading in my high school; if you haven’t read it, it’s high time you did.

Cadillac Desert: The American West and its Disappearing Water by Marc Reisner The American West has been settled for barely 150 years. It was desert then, and with massive amounts of finite water diverted from rivers and aquifers, we’ve pared back tiny portions to create oases like Phoenix, Reno, Los Angeles, and San Diego. Despite trillions of dollars to build dams, drill wells, and pump water thousands of miles in pipes, the west still remains one of the driest places on Earth.

Plastic: A Toxic Love Story by Susan Freinkel Plastic. It’s everywhere. Not only around us, but inside us as well. Freinkel shows us not only the impact plastic has on our daily lives , but how all that pervasive plastic affects us in ways we don’t realize – such as the soft plastics that leach out of IV lines. Some plastics are more toxic than others: generally the softer the plastic, the more toxic it is. And every time you heat your food in a plastic dish in the microwave, you put yourself at risk. No plastic ever degrades, it just crumbles, which creates hazards of its own. Plastics have their uses, yes, but at what cost to our health and environment?

Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet by Mark Lynas In 1816, the climate change from the eruption of Mount Tambora was estimated at seven degrees. For 18 months, global weather patterns were upended, resulting in relentless heat in the wrong areas, extreme drought in others, monumental flooding, and snow and freezing temperatures twelve months out of the year as far south as Georgia. In Six Degrees, Lynas walks the reader through the changes the world can expect to experience with each degree of increase of average daily temperature. The picture is not pretty. If man has difficulty adapting to such major swings in such short times, how can we possibly expect plants and animals to adapt?

The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance by Laurie Garrett. Bad drinking water, misuse of antibiotics, deforestation, wars, refugees, poverty, and unsanitary living conditions all factor to create superbugs. The diseases have always been with us, but it’s the close proximity to carrier animals that allows the diseases to pass to man. Garrett outlines the path these diseases take, and how it’s not too late to prevent another devastating global plague. This book will scare you in all the right ways.

The Lorax by Dr. Seuss. Ignore the dayglo movie. The Lorax, first published in 1971, is a wonderful way to introduce ecology and respect for nature to children. When the Trufula forests are in danger of extinction from overuse, it brings out the Lorax, who “speaks for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.” The Lorax is a fable about caring for nature, sustainability, and never taking more than we need.

Pete Seeger, An American Bard

January 29, 2014January 29, 2014 / Susan O. / Leave a comment

Pete Seeger, the granddaddy of American folk music, passed away peacefully in his sleep January 27, at the age of 94. Pete left a legacy of not only a tremendous contribution to American music, but of political activism and ecology with an emphasis on peace.

If you’ve ever heard The Lettermen sing “Turn, Turn, Turn,” if you’ve ever heard “We Shall Overcome” sung at a protest, if you ever listened to Bruce Springsteen belt out his We Shall Overcome album, you’ve been touched by Pete’s music. If you’ve ever driven along the Hudson River in New York and noticed the lack of garbage floating in it, you’re looking at Pete’s work.

Pete began singing with the Almanac singers back in the 40’s, alongside the bedrock of American folk singers such as Woody Guthrie (who wrote the iconic and ironic song “This Land is Your Land”), Lee Hays, and Cisco Houston, among others. The Almanac singers morphed into The Weavers by 1950, with Lee Hays, Ronnie Gilbert, and Fred Hellerman, and enjoyed great popularity (including a number one hit in “Goodnight Irene”) until 1953, when they were blacklisted by McCarthyites as being suspicious for singing about such things as worker’s rights and political oppression around the world. This did not stop them from playing Carnegie Hall in 1955. By the 1960’s folk music was only increasing in popularity, and Pete had a great influence on such upcoming folk singers such as Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, and Arlo Guthrie, Woody’s son, with whom he kept a life-long friendship. Seeger – four of his six siblings are also folk singers – continued to influence music through the 80’s, 90’s, and 2000’s by working with mega-musicians such as John Mellencamp and Bruce Springsteen, who released a well-received folk album after mentoring from Pete.

If Seeger was anything, it was tireless. It was he who introduced Martin Luther King Jr. to the song “We Shall Overcome.” In 1966 he became part of the Clearwater effort to clean up the toxic waste and raw sewage that was destroying the Hudson River in New York, something he never stopped doing. He stood behind Occupy Wallstreet. He played at President Obama’s inauguration, at the age of 89. He was still playing and giving concerts at 93. He was predeceased by Toshi, his wife of 70 years, just last summer. He has been a part of, well, generations of American history, from WPA projects to serving in World War II to facing down the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities to the civil rights movement, ecology, founded music festivals, and more. He is truly an American Icon, one we can all be proud of.

If you want to listen to classical truly American music, if you’re looking for great songs for singing or guitar, if you want your children to listen to some fun and rolicking children’s songs, check out some of Pete’s extensive legacy. Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen walk in his shadow, but there is no one alive who can come close to filling Pete’s giant footprints.