Nancy Davis Kho's Blog, page 41

Turn Down the Music and Read: The Jesus and Mary Chain – Barbed Wire Kisses

Here’s the thing about music biographies: I sometimes think the writers bank on readers being such superfans –grown up former readers of New Music Express and Rolling Stone desperate to submerge themselves into the details of their musical idols – that they believe they can just string together a narrative account of gig after gig after gig, punctuated by the occasional first-person quote from one of the band members, and call it a comprehensive biography. Comprehensive it may be, a book worth reading that is not. Not even for superfans.

Thank god music author Zoë Howe doesn’t work that way. The Jesus and Mary Chain: Barbed Wire Kisses (St. Martin’s, 2014) follows a chronological approach, yes, but mercifully pulls back now and again to talk about the context in which the band’s journey takes place, the reasons for and implications of individual events. We follow the big-haired, black clad brothers Reid (William and Jim) from their roots in East Kilbride, Scotland in 1984 to reunion tours in 2013. In between we get a deep understanding of the forces that tied the introverted siblings together, drove them to succeed, and for a significant period of time, caused them to to clash in potentially career-killing ways.

Just a quick primer for any of you who have forgotten your Mary Chain basics: they were famous for playing loud, Loud, LOUD shows that lasted 20 minutes tops; for coming onstage so drunk that all equipment was imperiled; for playing with reverb and feedback that, it turns out, was because they couldn’t afford proper equipment in the early years; and for winding up journalists with provocative answers delivered in a barely-intelligible Scottish whisper. Oh, and their album Psychocandy is widely regarded as creating one of the 100 best albums of the 20th century.

As much as I appreciated the Mary Chain history, what I really loved about this book is that Howe is not above injecting humor into the work, as when describing an awkward early meeting (actually, all meetings with the famously shy Reid brothers were awkward) with a rep from a major label at their manager’s mum’s house outside Glasgow. The manager’s mum had set out cups of tea and pastries; Howe observes, “The path to rock’n’roll stardom is lined with cake. And coke, of course, but mainly, at this stage, cake.” She’s good at finding the ridiculous in the Mary Chain world, as in, for a long time there they were only hiring people into the band that they knew. Even though these people were not musicians. You’re a receptionist for our label? Fine, now you’re our drummer, here are some sticks. As a narrator, Howe feels like the smartest music girl in the room who wants to make sure you see the absurdity as she tells you the story.

Two things could have improved the book: while virtually every other player in the story gave their views, William Reid didn’t participate, so his side of the story is created via quotes from past interviews. Not ideal, but this entire book stands as an explanation of why the elder Reid brother didn’t join in.

And I would have liked pictures. Even after I realized there were no photos in the book, I still looked for them longingly, if only to get a visual of which drummer I was about to read about for six pages before he got replaced by another tenuously related non-drummer who was about to step behind the standing two-drum kit. I made do by Google image searching on names, but then I fell into a Mazzy Star/Hope Sandoval hole and didn’t emerge for four hours. So pictures right inside the book would have been cool, and time saving.

Wish you’d seen them play back in the day? The Reids have mended fences and they’re on tour again – hitting San Francisco on May 16, to play Pyschocandy in its entirety. Tickets are still available at weirdly low prices – check here for those and other tour dates.

Barbed Wire Kisses is an entertaining, illuminating read – check it out at your local bookseller or come out to the Midlife Mixtape Dance Party at the Cat Club SF this Thursday Feb 12 at 7 pm. One lucky dancer will go home with his or her own copy!

***

In opposition to brilliant, evocative Mary Chain lyrics (i.e. “making love on the edge of a knife,”) we have current pop radio (“Boom clap.”) Click here for a list of pop lyrics I would like my kids to please ignore, over at NickMom.com.

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Still in Rotation: Abraxas (Santana)

Still in Rotation is a guest post feature in which talented writers tell Midlife Mixtape readers about an album they discovered years ago that’s still in heavy rotation, and why it has such staying power.

Last summer I made the genius decision to attend the Book Passage Travel Writer’s Conference, and even if I’ve written barely a word of travel prose since, it was the best introduction I could have asked to a group of super-talented writers consumed by wanderlust. One was Erin Byrne, an award winning writer of essays, poetry, and screenplays, and in this piece I love how she captures the full body takeover that is falling in love with music as an adolescent.  This essay is an excerpt from Erin’s story, “Avé Métro (which is in itself an excerpt from her upcoming travel memoir, Wings From Victory.)

Abraxas (1970)

by Erin Byrne

AVÉ MÉTRO

My job in this life is to give people spiritual ecstasy through music.

—Carlos Santana

Even before birth, the sounds of Dave Brubeck, Ella Fitzgerald, and Charlie Parker formed and nurtured my growing ear-for-music, and a record player was playing in the foreground nearly every second throughout my childhood in the 1960s. As a girl, I constantly pestered my mom to play my own records: Hans Christian Andersen, The Sound of Music, and Mary Poppins. When I was ten years old, liberation: My own 45 rpm singles blared from a new record player in my bedroom, and I sang into a hairbrush microphone to the Monkees and a band called Smash.

Then, one day in 1971, when I was twelve, my cool, long-haired, college-aged cousin gave my parents a shocking gift: a record album with a languishing naked black woman on the cover. Another lady, red and nude as well, stood in profile, straddling a drum: Santana’s Abraxas. My dad, a drummer, pianist and jazz purist, blanched and set the album down on the coffee table. I instantly seized it as my own.

I could not believe it. Santana. They’d been at Woodstock.

The family drifted off to the dining room and I was alone in the living room, just me and the giant, wood-paneled stereo console. I turned the knob, removed the black vinyl disc from its cardboard casing, slipped it out of its paper sleeve, and placed it in the elevated position where it wobbled and hovered, suspended above the spinning, plate-sized rubber disc.

The whir of the base circling emptily was interrupted by the click-clatter of the record dropping. The needle arm lifted and moved over above the record and then dropped. There was a fuzzy, anticipatory static followed by the whisper of a stylus scraping the groove…then…two dramatic piano chords, wind whirling through tinkling chimes.

A few more solid chords, tinkles. Notes ascending.

The wail—the primal, scintillating wail—of an electric guitar sliding, climbing, soaring. It was like a kite in a hurricane and I was attached to the string, legs flailing as the music looped and circled, suspended then swooped up, up, up—the highest I’d ever flown.

Exotic drumbeats along with untamed, unidentifiable sounds grabbed a place between my throat and my chest, pulled something out and used it to tie my stomach in knots. The electric kite pulsated into my body, then out, but I was still attached to it.

It was as if I danced with my own being, apart yet fused, separate yet one.

The shush between songs sounded for a second. Next came an eerie, mesmerizing melody and the guitar returned. In a weird but really cool way this music was somehow calling to something deep within my skinny, knobby-kneed body. I stood with my hand on the trembling top of the waist-high console and the vibration traveled from my fingertips inward. I felt plugged in somehow: Zzzzt.

My hips swayed with a surge of naughty rebelliousness, a rising bubble of “No!”

A voice: “Got a black magic woman…”

From that moment on, I’d follow Carlos Santana wherever he’d take me.

Where he’d taken me with those two songs, Singing Wind, Crying Beasts and Black Magic Woman was someplace deep inside myself; he’d got his spell on me, baby.

Abraxas caused a riot in my adolescent body, mind and soul, although at the time, I didn’t know what that meant. Now, forty years later, I think it meant I attained spiritual ecstasy through music. Even today when I listen to that album*, my rib-cage vibrates and the soles of my feet tingle.

*I, like many another child of the 1960s and 70s, will always call them albums.

 ♪♪♪Erin Byrne writes travel essays, poetry, fiction and screenplays.  Her work has won numerous awards, including Travelers’ Tales Solas Awards for Travel Story of the Year, and appears in  publications including World Hum, Vestoj, Burning the Midnight Oil, Adventures of a Lifetime, and The Best Travel Writing.  Erin is writer of The Storykeeper, an award-winning film about occupied Paris.  She is occasional guest instructor at Shakespeare and Company Bookstore, and is co-editor of   Vignettes & Postcards From Paris, winner of ten literary awards. Erin is currently working on a travel memoir, Wings From Victory, and Vignettes & Postcards From Morocco.  Her screenplay, Siesta, will be filmed in Spain in 2015.  www.e-byrne.com.

                    CommentsWow, is all I can say. I'll be looking for your book when it ... by EllenRelated StoriesStill in Rotation: Jesus Freak (dc Talk)Still in Rotation: The Nutcracker (Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky)Still in Rotation: Steady On (Shawn Colvin) 

Behind the Scenes at the Grammy Awards

Hard to believe that a whole year has passed since my husband and I set off for LA to attend the 2014 Grammy awards, a prize I won from Hilton Hotels for writing an essay on the topic: “The music act I never miss.” (Spoiler alert but probably not really if you read this blog: Neil Finn.)

With the 2015 Grammys only a few days away, I’ve been reminiscing about the crazy behind-the-scenes, up-close-and-personal experience we had last year. I don’t know about you, but I don’t hang out at entertainment awards shows much. So I soaked it all up like the big turnip truck escapee I felt like, then turned it into three blog posts (with lots of photos.)

In case you care to stroll down memory lane with me while we wait to hear which overplayed radio song will win “Song of the Year,” check it:

Part 1: The Pregame. In which we walked the (plastic covered) red carpet with a bunch of models, touched Ringo’s drum kit and the LA Kings’ hockey nets, and ended up hearing an Americana tribute highlighted by the amazing Rhiannon Giddens and the Carolina Chocolate Drops. (She’s got her first solo album coming out this week and it’s getting huge buzz.)

Part 2: The Main Event. In which I tried and failed to apply false eyelashes, Willie Nelson tailed me down the auxiliary red carpet, and the Taylor Swift move that turned my husband into a dedicated lifelong non-fan.

Part 3: The After Party In which I find out that my purse is the best conversation starter ever, my husband screams “Russell Wilson, baby!” at a music industry party, and we are provided with enough chewing gum to make it through the 21st century.

Here’s Rhiannon playing with The New Basement Tapes alongside Elvis Costello, Taylor Goldsmith, Jim James and Marcus Mumford – an Americana supergroup. Coincidentally the hoodie/jeans combo she is wearing here is what I plan to wear while I watch the 2015 Grammys from my couch.

Feeling February-ish? I have a new post over at NickMom.com that may speak to your malaise: “Here’s What Happens to Your January Fitness Plan in February.” Cardigans every day!

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Dance Party FAQs Based on ‘80s Song Titles

Last year, I started hosting a quarterly ‘80s early evening dance party at the Cat Club in San Francisco, fueled by my twin passions for dancing to the music of my college years and sleeping a full eight hours every night. The next Midlife Mixtape dance party is two weeks from tonight – Thursday, Feb 12 at 7 pm– and I thought it might be helpful if I answered a few of the questions that I’ve fielded frequently since this global party phenomena started. And I’m going to do it using songs you all know and love.

I do want you (to come to the dance party.) So much that the doors are open to EVERYONE who wants to come – invite your friends, your coworkers, your mah jongg ladies. Bring your husbands, boyfriends, and brothers too – it’s not Ladies Night. I HAVE noticed that it tends to be only women who climb into the Cat Club cage to dance. Maybe tell your husbands, boyfriends and brothers that tidbit, if they’re acting balky.

There’s an invite on FB to which you can RSVP, but that’s really more making it easy for you to invite your Facebook friends. Which you could go do right now, if you felt like it.

I think what you’re asking is whether it’s an ‘80 costume party. It’s not, unless you want it to be. Like the time my friend Miles showed up at an earlier Midlife Mixtape Dance Party in his glitter shirt. Which was a.) a more ‘70s vibe and b.) awkward because we had already gone home to bed. (PS check out the size of the smartphone in this video, and then scare your kids with it.)

No idea. When we first started doing the dance party I knew 98% of the attendees, but it gets bigger and better every time. That’s why the first 50 people through the door get a special Midlife Mixtape badge to wear, like the one pictured at the top of this post, so when you pass each other on the streets at a later date you can give each other the Dance Party salute.

 

I do know how you feel. You like to dance, you like the idea of meeting your friends out for a beer, but you have that stupid 8 am staff meeting every Friday morning. Look at it this way: this dance party lets you do it all, AND if you go out on Feb 12 you can pretty much check “Valentine’s Day celebration” off your list. Stop moping and get on the dance floor. If we’re lucky DJ Damon will play some cheery Smiths tunes.

No, I certainly do not. In fact I’ll be showering you with giveaway goodies while you dance – a new book about The Jesus and Mary Chain called Barbed Wire Kisses, some cool pillowcases that look like mixtapes, and who knows what else. It’ll be the opposite of hurting you.

Duh. Stay. I mean, go. I mean, whatever is the right answer that puts you at the Cat Club on Feb 12. See you there!

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Still in Rotation: Jesus Freak (dc Talk)

Still in Rotation is a guest post feature in which talented writers tell Midlife Mixtape readers about an album they discovered years ago that’s still in heavy rotation, and why it has such staying power.

I first heard of A’driane Nieves through her searing blog post, “America’s Not Here for Us,” about what she said to her son asked, “‘Mom-are we still slaves? Do people still hate us, African-Americans?'” Seeing her read the piece during BlogHer 2014’s Community Keynote was even more powerful, and I’ve been hoping to have her over here for a S.I.R. ever since. Even if I have pickles in the fridge that are older than the artist/writer/activist known as addyeB…

Jesus Freak (1995)

by A’Driane Nieves

In 1995, U2, Nirvana, Seal, and Nas released a monumental album together.

I’m kidding. They didn’t. BUT, if they had, it would sound like dc Talk’s Jesus Freak, an album made for Christian teens who were into grunge, R&B, rapcore/hip-hop, and alternative rock, but needed some Jesus in the mix to make head banging a form of worship. It was a breakthrough and unexpected album that permanently altered the landscape of contemporary Christian music; which at the time was heavily dominated by the pop sounds of artists like Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, and Steven Curtis Chapman. Stylistically, it was unlike anything group members Toby Mckeehan (tobyMac), Michael Tait, and Kevin Max had done in their career. While their previous albums were largely rooted in pop and hip-hop, all 13 tracks on Jesus Freak are hybrids of the group’s musical influences in pop, classic/modern rock, R&B, and hip-hop. In interviews, the group often described title track off the album as an “experiment” with the grunge sound that dominated the music scene, designed to “speak to a generation” of youth Christian and non Christian alike.  Their experiment paid off- Jesus Freak climbed both the Christian music and Billboard charts, and quickly became one of the best selling Christian albums of all time. Hailed by critics, it won the Grammy for Best Rock Gospel Album 1997, the group’s second.

I was part of that generation dc Talk wanted to speak to through that album.  As a new Christian youth at age 13, it became a soundtrack that defined the early years of my fledgling faith during junior high and the beginning of high school.  I grew up listening to artists like Prince and had a love for hip-hop, but I also secretly enjoyed Guns N Roses. I was starting to discover classic & alternative rock when grunge emerged from Seattle and took over the airwaves. Like most teens my age in the mid ’90s, I quickly succumbed to it, while also thoroughly enjoying the strange yet amazing mix of alt rock, hip-hop and R&B that existed.

What was missing though, was music to help me navigate discovering who I was as a young Christian. I wasn’t big on Gospel music, and contemporary Christian music mostly bored me-like I said, for someone who was a Prince fan, I found the CCM scene pretty stale. But Jesus Freak became the album that shaped me during that time as both a Christian and teenager. It helped me embrace being the nerdy Black girl who liked rock music and was an outsider at a school where I was one of the two Black students in attendance. It helped me worship and connect with God in a way that felt true to who I was at the time. Tracks like “So Help Me God” enabled me to sing lyrics like

“Won’t You take my heart,

Won’t You take my soul

Won’t You make me whole again,

You, You’ve got what I need, and You never retreat,

Unto You I will concede

So help me God to put my faith in you,

So help me God before I come unglued

Call it my addiction, I can’t get enough of You

So help me God to put my faith in You.”

The album help me explore my thoughts on topics touched on throughout it: atheism, race and racial justice, the complexities of friendships and relationships, doubting faith, struggling to live a Christian lifestyle, and many others.

It went from being an album to an identity, becoming both a challenge and a declaration that emboldened me to be more accepting of my emerging faith and being labeled as a “Christian” when doing so (especially at my school) wasn’t the “in” thing to do.  I adopted Jesus Freak as a nickname and signed all of the notes I passed to friends throughout the school day with it. When the self-proclaimed “Satanist” crew did a lip sync to Marilyn Manson’s “Beautiful People” during drama class in 8th grade?  My self-proclaimed Jesus Freak friends and I felt it was our duty to balance things out by head banging and moshing our way through Jesus Freak’s title track for ours.  (Our drama teacher found all of it pretty hilarious, and looking back, so do I. Ah. So young. So impressionable. )

Now at 32, I haven’t abandoned my faith in God, but the type of Christian I am has evolved into something much different than the one I was back then. I’m nowhere near as heavily into Christian and Gospel music as I was in my teens and even 20’s. But there are some albums from both genres that I go searching through my iTunes library for when I need to feel grounded and connected spiritually-especially during pivotal seasons in my life. Jesus Freak continues to be the first one I always go back and rock my soul out to.

  ♪♪♪

A’Driane Nieves (or addyeB) is a USAF disabled veteran, writer, artist, and activist passionate about social good. Her mother says the first song she ever sang along to was Prince’s When Doves Cry. She was 2, so she considers this as evidence that she’s been a proud Prince fan since birth. When she’s not elbow deep in caring for her 3 kids and talking tech with her futurist husband, she’s painting, writing, or heavily involved in a project related to mental health advocacy. She’s rarely on Twitter these days, but just launched a new site addyeb.com, is self-publishing a book due out in February titled Art+Words: Finding My Voice Through Motherhood, Story, and Paint, and enjoys sharing all the links related to social and racial justice over on Facebook. 

                    CommentsI love the description of the lip syncing in drama class. ... by Liz @ ewmcguireThanks for a great SIR contribution, A'Driane. I'd never heard ... by EllenYou are the best, A'd. I LOVE YOU. by alexandraI can imagine that if a group of cool American Jews came ... by AnnRelated StoriesStill in Rotation: The Nutcracker (Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky)Still in Rotation: Steady On (Shawn Colvin)Still in Rotation: Soul Mining (The The) 

Happy National Readathon Day!

I’m always impressed when I get fundraising letters from friends who are walking from San Francisco to LA, or snowshoeing across a tundra, or finishing their first marathon, all in support of a worthy cause. I am a sucker for those requests because I have yet to find the BLANK-a-thon or the cause that would coax me to commit that much of my own time and energy, especially in a sporting endeavor in which I undoubtedly have no talent. Easier to just write a check.

Until now.

Tomorrow is the first ever National Readathon Day, organized by Penguin Random House and the National Book Foundation. From the website:

- NRD is a nation-wide marathon reading session on Saturday, January 24 from Noon – 4pm (in respective time zones)

– You can share your love of books and support programs that promote reading by pledging to read and fundraising for the National Book Foundation

– It’s like a walk-a-thon charity drive, but we’re turning pages instead of walking laps.

Turning pages instead of walking laps? On a Saturday afternoon for four hours? I have been training for this my entire life.

I have loved reading since I first memorized the Little Golden Book version of Jack Sprat at age 4 and read (recited it) confidently to my mom, who made a huge fuss over what an early reader I was and cemented “good reader” as a centerline of my identity. I read fiction, non fiction, YA, mystery, blogs, cookbooks, the back of cereal boxes, and the “guess the ailment” column in the Sunday New York Times magazine. I cannot imagine how empty my life would be, how much dumber I would be, really, if I weren’t reading all the time. I dream of putting a book out into the world that will affect people the way that good books affect me, taking me for a few hours or days out of my regular world and plunging me into a new understanding of someone else’s.

Still, life is busy and the number of books on my Goodreads “Want to Read” list is six times longer than I can reasonably get to in the next five years. Especially when I’m so easily distracted by Buzzfeed lists and videos of cops lip-synching Taylor Swift songs. I think I still read as many words, but I know I read less longform work since the iPhone was invented.

But I still have it in me. When we were on vacation in December and my only daily responsibilities were to show up and be fed, I powered through three novels in seven days. It was glorious. I was drunk with words, proud of turning the last page on each one, this close to calling my mom and bragging about what a good reader I am.

So I’m going all in on National Readathon Day. I’m turning off my phone and parking in my living room from noon-4 with “The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller” by John Truby (a gift from my friend Heather.) Because so many published authors have recommended this book to me and because…and I’m shuddering even as I type this…I think I have to rewrite my completed midlife music crisis memoir as fiction if I’m ever going to give it the dramatic arc it needs to find a publisher.

Put plainly, Mama just ain’t got enough drama. So I need to see if freeing myself from the constraints of what really happened (since I don’t want to get into James Frey territory) will let me write a more compelling story, even if it means starting over from scratch. (She said weakly, from her position crumpled on the floor.) Maybe four hours of Truby will help my confidence with the task at hand.

If nothing else, four hours on a couch reading will make a regular January weekend feel like a little vacation. Join me?

You can sign up for NRD here, and donate to support the National Book Foundation’s program. But I’ve decided to stay local and make a donation to Oakland 2020, which supports classroom literacy projects here in Oakland via matching grants on DonorsChoose.org. I pitched in for a Community Carpet and chapter books for middle grade readers. Join me in that, too?

Happy National Readathon Day, everyone. May your books be fabulous and your papercuts few. What are you going to read?

Just replace “Can you read my mind?” with “Can I read my book?” and you’ve got yourself a theme song.

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Turn Down the Music and Read: Emergency Anthems

I couldn’t wait to get my hands on Alex Green’s just-released poetry collection Emergency Anthems (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2015.) One, Alex is one of my favorite music writers, at the helm of blog-turned-tumblr “Caught in the Carousel,” the insider’s insider when it comes to music. (You can read a “Still in Rotation” guest post he wrote for me here.) Two, even though I am seriously intimidated by poetry and Alex has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize in Poetry, Emergency Anthems is a book of prose poems. As in, beautiful morsels of poetry that read like extremely short stories and are even accessible for poetry idiots like me.

Alex’s musical chops inform the entire collection. What I loved about reading this slim little book is how much it replicates the experience of listening for the first time to an album that you are destined to wear out and buy in two additional formats. At first read-through, the stories are a disconnected. A guy plays the Stone Roses for a girl who doesn’t fall for him, a woman writes a book about the history of the parasol, a captain sets his boat on fire. Maybe you like Songs 1 and 3 and 6 immediately, but the rest of the album may take a few more listens.

Then you listen (read) again, and themes emerge, threads that tie the whole work together: sharks, love doomed to miscues, musicians whose bands break up. A third read and you’re picking out which stories thread together, skipping pages to see what happens if you read this poem next to that poem instead of the way they’re sequenced. It’s the book equivalent of playing albums in reverse and seeing if there are any hidden messages. (Fun fact: I just Googled “backmasking” and learned that if you play “Detour Through Your Mind” by the B-52s, you’ll hear “”I buried my parakeet in the backyard. Oh no, you’re playing the record backwards. Watch out, you might ruin your needle.” B-52s, you sassy rascals.)

At the same time, each poem story is a little universe in itself, satisfying even when it suggests there’s more to the story. If that’s not the definition of a perfect song, I don’t know what is. Everyone who reads this will have a favorite poem, a favorite line; mine may be “Air Fountain,” with the line “I hope you come home soon. No one else things I’m funny.”

Emergency Anthems is a fabulous way to add poetry to your music-loving life, and to give yourself fifteen things to ponder while you stare into the middle distance. And I’ll make it easy for you. Alex is reading from the collection tomorrow night, Wednesday January 21, at Great Good Place for Books in Oakland at 7 pm. (Join me there if you can!) I’m going to have him sign a copy to send to a Midlife Mixtape reader, who I’ll pick at random using Random.org. To enter, just leave a comment below with what message YOU’D like to see backmasked into an album. I’ll announce the winner on Friday, January 23 at 5 pm PST.

And in Alex’s honor, since he’s a huge Stone Roses fan (he wrote The Stone Roses volume in the 33 1/3 book series that I’ve raved about to you before,) here’s Fools Gold from a band whose anorak game had no equal:

                    CommentsCount me in! Backmasked message of choice: Tea time is the best ... by Michelle ThreadgouldRelated StoriesTurn Down the Music and Read: Mad WorldFavorite Music Books of 2014Turn Down the Music and Read: Mo’ Meta Blues 

An Open Letter to the Selfie-Stick Wielding Tourists on Alcatraz

Dear Adorable Young Couple:

Last Sunday our paths crossed on a rock in the middle of San Francisco Bay: specifically, Alcatraz, the federal-prison-turned-federal-park that sits, foreboding yet irresistible, just off the shore of San Francisco. I was there with my family and two visiting nephews from Upstate New York, whose wish list of Bay Area sites was topped by a visit to the famous jail.

You were there with his n’ her selfie sticks.

I had actually only seen my first selfie stick about an hour earlier, while we were milling around Tourist Central in San Francisco, aka Fisherman’s Wharf. Near where the sea lions and their eau de poo scent entrance foreign visitors, people were attaching their cameras and smartphones to extendable metal rods and taking pictures of themselves with the barking pinnipeds in the background. Guess it’s easier than asking someone else to take the shot, though you meet fewer people, and you’re probably trading the risk of someone making off with your camera with the risk of your camera falling off the selfie stick.

At any rate, we probably arrived on the same Alcatraz ferry, at which point my kids and their cousins scampered away from us to explore the island. My husband and I have visited Alcatraz enough that all we really wanted to do was sit in the warm Bay winter sunshine for a while, on a bench near the lighthouse that overlooks the city. That’s where we observed you and your dueling selfie sticks (two different lengths) and the thirty minutes you spent in an American national park taking pictures of: yourselves.

You pouted, you shrugged, you extended the selfie stick back and forth for various depth ranges. Sound effects were made. The wind that ruffled the beautiful wildflowers in the Alcatraz garden also blew your hair across your faces, and you liked that so much you snapped even faster. You were filling up that camera card, moving toward a railing, up a step, near the lighthouse, and back again to capture every angle of: your own faces.

Our favorite move, though, was one that you must have practiced in your hotel room repeatedly. It was almost like a pas de deux. First you’d squeeze together and reach your arms forward to layer your palms onto the camera, covering it. Then, on cue, you’d both pull your arms back with a wiggly finger move, then blow kisses to the camera. That’s when the real fun started, because you would then spin in a 365 degree circle waving and blowing kisses while capturing the arc of scenery behind you: the city skyline, the Golden Gate Bridge, the tourists on the bench, and the lighthouse. You did this spectacular selfie stunt at least five times, spinning and giggling and blowing kisses. It was impressive.

Anyhoo, the point of this WHOLE note is that I thought it might be helpful if I’d described to you what you missed on Alcatraz because you were busy memorializing your own faces. My goal is to round out your vacation memories so that when people ask, “What did you do in America?” you have a better answer than “Took selfies from a metal stick.”

The sight of the San Francisco skyline from Alcatraz is really special: you’ve got a sweeping view of the Embarcadero, from the Ferry Building past Ghirardelli Square and on up to Fort Point. It takes only a little bit of head swivel to see both the solid red of Golden Gate Bridge and the showy single tower of the new Bay Bridge, each connecting like a Tinker Toy to other parts of the region. It was such a gorgeous day on Sunday, blue skies with just a few white clouds scudding across. You would have liked it.

I doubt you made it into the cellblocks because the selfie stick lighting there is suboptimal, what with the weathered windows and light-swallowing concrete walls, but there’s something undeniably eerie about peering into three floors of cells and the visitor stations. Our favorite part is always the cells made up with the actual dummy heads that fooled the guards during the real Escape From Alcatraz back in 1962. Take my word for it, it’s cool. As is the exercise yard and the abandoned Officer’s Club.

The biggest thing you missed, though, is the temporary exhibit called @Large, by Chinese dissident artist Ai Wei-Wei. Since he’s not allowed to leave China, he conceived of a wide-ranging temporary exhibit that celebrates and contemplates prisoners of conscience, just for Alcatraz – get it, a jail? It’s displayed in buildings like the infirmary and New Industries building that are normally off limits to tourists; worth going just to see what those buildings are like inside.

The artwork is gripping, disturbing, thought-provoking, about the jails we see and the ones we can’t see, how freedom is taken from us and how we sometimes give it away.

A selfie stick that prevents you from experiencing what’s actually happening around you could be a kind of jail, now that I think about it.

I assume you’re probably in Joshua Tree or Vegas by now, capturing pictures of yourselves, but I hope this helps round out the San Francisco version of your trip. And there’s no need to thank me. If, however, you’re wondering who I am, just look at the spinning Alcatraz panorama shots on your camera card. I’m the blond in the black leather jacket flipping you the double bird every time you spun past my bench.

Best regards,

Nancy

The part of the Ai Wei-Wei exhibit that hit me hardest was the soundscape section, where you could go sit on a metal stool in a cell and hear the poetry, music, and speeches of political dissidents. From Martin Luther King on America’s entry into the Vietnam war, to the Robben Island Singers doing a version of “My Darling Clementine” about the prison where they were incarcerated alongside Nelson Mandela, and Pussy Riot singing an anti-Putin song, the juxtaposition of the music and words in the frigid, bare cells was powerful. But when I heard the Pavel Haas symphony – one of eight works he composed as a prisoner in a German concentration camp in WW2 before he died – it put me over the edge.  It’s on the Rock until April 26, and is free with your Alcatraz ticket. Get there.

***Speaking of letters, I’m speaking about them this week over on Tue/Night. Check out “Family Archivist,” about how the unexpected silver lining of being the faraway satellite to the rest of my family.

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Midlife Mixtape Concert Review: Chuck Ragan

The Band: Chuck Ragan, January 9 2015. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to be more spontaneous with concert-going in 2015. Last year I had my monthly shows mapped out seasons in advance and missed out on a few shows I would have liked to see but that came up last minute. So I bought tickets for Ragan, a Tom-Waits-sounding folk-rock singer and songwriter from Grass Valley, California, exactly six days ahead of time, knowing nothing at all about his music except that he has a rock-Americana-fiddle vibe that I liked.

The Venue: The New Parish, Oakland. One of my qualifications for picking this show was that it had to accommodate my two under-21 nephews from Upstate New York who were coming to town for a visit (more below.) I also wanted to give them a taste of the Oakland Uptown renaissance and for that, you can do worse than the New Parish. It’s around the corner from hoppin’ Telegraph Ave’s bevy of bars and restaurants – we stopped at Xolo Taqueria beforehand for some crazy good shrimp tacos and Mexican Coke.

Best thing about the New Parish – get there early and head straight upstairs to grab one of the small tables that line the balcony. Puts you about eight feet away from the band AND you can sit down.

The Company: My nephews Tristan and Alex, who are cousins and have grown up together, were in town for a whirlwind Bay Area sightseeing visit between semesters of college back East. They’re game for anything, including their aunt taking them to a show of a guy they’ve never heard of. The boys’ trusting nature, however, is best exemplified by the fact that on the day after Chuck Ragan, when they were loose on their own in San Francisco and looking for the Full House house in the Haight, some old lady in a sedan offered to take them sightseeing in her car. AND THEY WENT WITH HER. Who is crazier in that scenario, the old lady loading two giant stranger boys into her car or the boys who say, “Sure, we’d like to see the Mrs. Doubtfire house”? All emerged alive.

The Crowd: Hoodies, hats, and plaid. The boys and I spent much of the evening debating the gender of someone in the crowd who had his/her back to us and wore a fedora, a “Drop Pucks, Not Bombs” hoodie and had calf tattoos peeking out from under long shorts. For the record, I was right. It was a girl. Welome to Oakland, y’all.

The Opening Band: Pawnshop Kings. Brothers from SoCal who spent time on a family farm in Arkansas, Joel and Scott Owen bring both “the beach and the bayou” to their alt-American sound, as they characterized it between songs. I’ve always had a soft spot for brotherly harmony so I was an easy sell, but Alex and Tristan both thought they were great too – from their guitar work to the range of their songwriting. Would definitely go see them play again.

Age Humiliation Factor: For once, not mine

I thought I’d write about the fact that even if you add Alex and Tristan’s ages together, I’m still almost a decade older than them.

But then we proffered IDs and the bouncer saw that they boys were underage. So he snapped a special wristband on them and bellowed down a long hallway to the guy who was about to sell them the mandatory Under 21 $5 drink ticket (for the world’s most expensive Sprite): “HEY MAC, THESE TWO ARE UNDER 21!!!” while everyone else in line snickered.

I wish you could have seen the looks of sheer mortification on my nephews’ faces. It was like mine whenever a bouncer waves me through and says, “Yeah, I don’t need to see YOUR license.”

HAHAHAHA youngsters.

Cool Factor: Carpe Diem

When it comes to concerts, I tend to do a lot of research first. Probably too much. I have a long priority list of who I’d like to see, of who’s on tour, of who I can afford, of who might be on his farewell tour for real. Sometimes it’s exhausting.

So just picking a name off a venue web site a few days ahead of time and having the night turn out great feels like a pretty damn good change of pace.

Worth Hiring the Sitter? If only for the comedy material

Chuck Ragan came out and I spent the first song Googling him because in every video I’d watched ahead of time, he had long hair, and I wasn’t sure if the rather clean cut dude on stage was actually him (or whether it was the other opener listed on the bill who just never played.) Once I established that I was indeed seeing Chuck Ragan, I settled in an enjoyed his growly rock. He has a high energy style, even sans band which – a little weirdly – he introduced anyway, even though they weren’t there. “On drums we have…” etcetera, gesturing to the empty stage behind him.

Which brings me to the real delight of the evening – being in the company of two young men who have spent their entire lives cracking each other up, and who simply looped me into their shtick for the night. Whether they were riffing on Chuck Ragan’s ghost band, imitating the two Chuck Ragan Superfans in the front row who not only knew every lyric and bellowed every background vocal but also sustained a head bob/fist pump movement more normally seen at a death metal show, or simply sighing and saying, “Guess I’ll go order another Sprite,” I laughed through the entire night. (You can see more of their comedy stylings at @TristanDavis57 and  @imalexpackard.) It was like a comedy club on top of a concert night, and that’s a pretty dope way to start the New Year.

Next show on the calendar: None. Who should I see in February?

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Color of the Year

Did you hear? Did you hear the big news? Pantone, which I heretofore believed was a manufacturer of paint chips, has revealed the 2015 color of the year and it is…wait for it! Wait for it! MARSALA! That’s dark red to the uninformed set to which I belong, whose crayon wrappers were always missing in action back when we were pulling waxy stubs out of old cigar box.

I try very hard to picture the meetings of the Pantone Color Picker board, the heated discussions in which the Color Powers That Be determined that 2014 was a very radiant orchid year, while 2013 had more of an emerald green vibe going. All I come up with is an image of Robin Williams in a Hawaiian shirt playing all members of the board at once, each with different accents and gaits, and one of whom keeps screaming “Chartreuse is the third Mitford sister of the color wheel!”

Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute, was quoted as saying, “Much like the fortified wine that gives Marsala its name, this tasteful hue embodies the satisfying richness of a fulfilling meal, while its grounding red-brown roots emanate a sophisticated, natural earthiness.” Dark red with red-brown roots does all that? I don’t understand it, but after seeing this clip from The Devil Wears Prada, I can’t discount it.

So it’s official: non-natural redheads, this is your year. And I assume it’s party time for these Marsala-adjacent entities.

Marsupials – I don’t know if there is a Mammal Class of the Year Picker board, but I vote for Marsupials in 2015. Actually, I vote for them every year because marsupials include numbat, bandicoots, bettongs, quolls, and quokka. All words I considered for my “Word of the Year” announcements that were floating around on Facebook last week. (I ultimately went with numbat.)

Mars – to be fair, Mars was already having its close-up during 2014, what with the Rover Curiosity mission mapping the red planet and beaming back fantastic photos of Whale Rock and the Mars outpost of Mos Eisley’s Cantina. But calling it “red” planet will not fly anymore. For the rest of 2015 let’s refer to it as the Marsala Planet, due to its shade and its “sophisticated, natural Mars-iness.”

Chicken Marsala – I’ve never cooked it, but since one of the girls renounced pork for her New Year’s Resolution (curse you, Charlotte’s Web) this year is shaping up to be Chicken Every Way Except Bacon-Wrapped. Anyway, I’m generally a fan of any dish that calls for simmering in fortified wine.

Malala. It should always be her year. Has anyone printed up a What Would Malala Do? shirt yet? If you do, please make it reddish brown and send me a sample.

Masala Bhangra. It’s still January, plenty of time to make a fitness resolution to incorporate this Bollywood dance fitness craze into the list of things you’ll give up by February. We can always wear wine colored workout clothes. WHO’S WITH ME?

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