William Carleton, Counselor @ Law

Imprecision

Lotta confusion about how to get into the show
People waiting in random lines, you can't know till you get to the window
You at the wrong will call, she says, good luck picking the right one, dear
The band was on in Vancouver last night, I hear

PA looping a recorded broadcast message
All patrons subject to search before passage
Those who don't submit will receive a full refund
But will not be admitted to the arena; that's the way it's done

Paul and Katrina have a different philosophy
This kind of imprecision doesn't bother them demonstrably
It's not that they don't plan, they just focus on what's in front of them
I'd like to carry myself, in my next life, just like them

Finally we muddle in, happy to not get scolded
You folks are on the floor in seats that are folded
There's a number written in chalk under each one
I think that's clever - for the next show they can mix the seats up some

I walk off the floor for a pee and to get me a beer
Gal at the bar asks for ID, I say what's the fear
That I'm 18 and had plastic surgery to look 55
No, she says, looking for punch holes in your license, they do that if you get so drunk you can't drive

The warm-up act comes on and have a pretty good flow
He played guitar on a couple of the headliner's albums years ago
You say their sound is pretty clean
I agree but some of this sounds like a PBS Irish dance scene

But we enjoy the main act, the effort now seems small
None of the songs we know best sound anything like how we recall
And that feels honest, the way an old guy stays new
I want to be like that, hostile to nostalgia, just like you

Photo: Angelo Amboldi / Flickr. This verse copyright 2012 William Carleton.

Sister Oh Sister

There's an extraordinary song performed by Rosanne Cash on a multi-artist album just out.

The song is called "Sister Oh Sister" and the album is titled "Kin."

The lyrics express a complexity of feelings wrapped up in admiration of an older sibling. No question but that the song is a tribute, but metaphors are arranged to suggest that tension is part of what makes the tie so strong.

Here's how it starts:

"Sister, oh Sister
I miss your shadow
I miss your shade"

Living in a relative's "shadow" is of course the way we express the frustration of failing to be recognized for one's own personality or accomplishments. But consider here how the singer says she misses that shadow. Then, subverting the metaphor, the next line names the shadow "shade," as in relief, protection.

The play with expectations is taken in an opposition direction in later lines:

"Sister, oh Sister
You've been my seawall
You've been my flood"

This time the metaphor for protection, "seawall," comes first. But the next metaphor, "flood," acknowledges a paradox: the protector might also be the very menace against which her protection is employed!

"Kin" is a collection of songs written by the poet Mary Karr and the country singer-songwriter Rodney Crowell. I don't know the prior work of either, but this engaging feature on NPR tells the story of how Crowell pulled Karr into the music business. And the liner notes to the CD show how blown away Karr is to have talent like Rosanne Cash singing her very first songs. Who wouldn't be!

Photo: Evan Leeson / Flickr.

Sirens

Friday, my girlfriend Helen and I heard the world premiere of Sirens at Disney Concert Hall.

It's a half hour piece by composer Anders Hillborg, written for the following instruments (quoting from the program notes):

"3 flutes (all = piccolo), 3 oboes (all = English horn), 3 clarinets (all = bass clarinet), 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 4 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, percussion (crotales, glockenspiel, tubular bells, vibraphone, wind chimes, tam-tam, bass drum, glass harmonica), harp, piano, and strings, plus soprano and alto soloists and chorus"

Actually that inventory is not comprehensive. The percussionists also "played" four half-filled wine glasses (running index fingers along the rims to make that sound that half-filled wine glasses make when you run your index finger around the rim) and the chorus snapped their fingers like beat poets at a hipster club.

The piece is about the gamut of Sirens encountered by Ulysses in Homer's The Odyssey. And there was more dramaturgy than typical for staging an orchestral work: the players were bathed in a variety of strong, colored lights, as though they were to represent a tossing sea; the black gowns of the women in the chorus were lined with blinking micro-Christmas lights; and the conductor, Esa-Pekka Salonen (to whom the composer dedicated the work), in black tunic, hair curling around his neck, evoked Alan Rickman playing Snape in the Harry Potter movies.

We were surprised to hear violins, not screech in strokes, but sustain a screech for what seemed like minutes at a time.

The libretto featured synesthetic lines such as, "Clouds of sweet fragrance swelling and roaring around you," together with unmistakable if economical references to the Beatles' A Day in the Life ("I'd love to turn you on") and Nelson Riddle Sinatra ("come fly with us").

After the show, we walked the roof of the Hall, to let the parking garage thin out. We also dropped by the store to get a closer look at Emmanuel Axe, the soloist for the Beethoven piano concerto on the first half of the program, who was signing CDs.

We tarried long enough that the garage was nearly empty as we reached the car my brother lends me when visiting. No question that we preferred the Beethoven and found the Hillborg more challenging, but Sirens proved powerfully suggestive: as we pulled away, spiralling to the mouth of the garage five floors higher, we could hear a sustained screech of tires and power steering columns reverberating from an unseen car (or cars) above or beneath us. Sirens again! The garage the synesthetic sea!

Recorded Music

New social media service?

I'll try it.

I try almost every one I am invited to or hear about.

Some of them - Twitter, Foursquare, Path, G+, Trover - stick.

Digital music services? Not so much.

I think I may have signed up for Pandora once, but lost interest in about 10 minutes.

Someone invited me to Spotify, and I claimed the wac6 username. That's all.

I don't even like downloading music from stores. iTunes is as exhausting as going to a suburban shopping mall. (Though not as depressing.)

I see more live shows as an adult than I did in college, but I don't listen to recorded music now as much as I did then. Pretty much the only place I listen to CDs is in my car, and then on weekends (weekday commutes are for radio news).

But something new may be afoot.

My friend Rob Dent, drummer for the awesome band Stag, gave me a vinyl single of the band's two newest songs.

Songs I've heard the band play at shows.

Songs that have not been pressed on CD!

You can guess what I did.

And not only did I purchase a turntable. I got the most analog, mechanical turntable I could find.

With the simplest design I could find.

This one doesn't even have a switch to change speeds. To go from 33 rpm to 45 rpm or vice versa, you lift the platter off its base and loop the belt over a different rim of the "stepped motor pulley" (pictured).

The record sounds great! As good as the band in person? Better than a CD!

By the way, Stag plays tomorrow (Wednesday) at the Tractor Tavern in Seattle.

Arctic Monkeys Confound the Fed

In a week when the Fed revealed it had no more bullets left in the chamber than the London Metropolitan Police, the Arctic Monkeys reminded Seattlites of what endures.

Not governments, not central banks, not police authorities.

Showmanship.