The Office of the Deputy Alpha Geek

I really wish I could say that I was there in DC at the 9:30 Club last night when Neko Case went on stage and played. But at the time I was getting out of work in my sleepy little city where I keep my day job as a web monkey while she was getting on stage.

I wanted to see her play, which would give me the same sensation as those sailors as they dove off the ship to the sirens. Instead I’m trying to shove my head into the Firewire 800 port to dive into that same abyss of pure bliss(a horrible way to die, but I won’t care, the siren’s songs acts as a pain killer).

Shamelessly stolen from NPR's site of Neko Case at the 9:30 Club in DC.

The one thing you have to understand about the allure to Neko Case is her voice. She can sing softly and gentle and within three bars, her voice and brim with with such strength you have to wonder if it’s the same person. The music also compliments the voice and you can feel that it’s in perfect harmony. This is coming live. No electronic equipment dubbing her and she sings. It’s all her. And she does it so perfect that you really have to wonder how she does it. It’s rare to hear an act in this age of manufactured music something this pure, raw and wonderful.

It feels like a dream at times.

I’m going to have to say, and I own most of Case’s albums, the live show is better than the recorded tracks. At points you can hear the act skid into jazz and the backing band sliding into improvisation. People hated when jazz acts improved on stage to their favorite songs, but Case’s backing band, a superb band, made it so beautiful I’m actually disappointed in the albums that I own.

Thirty minutes into the session I had to switch from speakers to headphones. I was losing something in the translation. I wanted to feel like the act was being belted from those giant speakers that every stands next to be closer to the band as they play on stage. Going deaf. Happily deaf, but deaf from being that close where you can feel the wind being pushed around from the band as they strum the guitars and bass or from the bass drum as it pounds.

Live shows are wonderful. Even if you can’t be there. At least you can hear all the people screaming affections to her.

What was nice about hearing the show, was that Case was unsure of herself about the songs that she wasn’t use to playing. Her staple songs. Instead she was mixing in her new tracks. But every time she played them, they sounded just as good as her staple of songs that she has been playing for years.

There was also a set up from her about how she was starting to sing with one arm behind her back as if she was a skating back in the 19th century. She’s a geek, but she proudly admits to that fact. It’s another reason to love her music even more.

The only bad thing about this show. And it’s a minor thing, I wasn’t there and I don’t have those large speakers that would allow me to hear the music play was I walk over to the office fridge to get something to drink. That’s the only negative of the entire show. The entire TWO hour show.

Neko Case : Middle Cyclone (2009)

You too can listen to the entire show from NPR and in due time download the podcast and be amazed at Neko Case. For those that are barely hearing of her, this is a perfect first exposure. It has a great deal of new tracks from her latest album, Middle Cyclone, and many from her older albums. There are over 125 tracks to get from iTunes and Amazon, or from your local music store.

NPR Stream.

A Lesson in Crime EP

I have to say, I’m excited about music again. I haven’t been for a long time now. I’d have to say from about 1999 until about 2003 my music purchasing was way sided to nothing but Pop Culture Press, diving the dollar bins to replacing albums that had became scratched and purchasing follow up albums from bands I already followed. It’s a lonely life to live when you live without nothing but the same old music all the time. Even lonelier when you’re paying for Nicklebag’s new albums since it’s basically the same as the last album.

Lo and behold I took a chance on eMusic and fell in love with sound all over again. I was listening to and downloading all this new music. Some of it fresh and new, other not so new, but that’s OK. It was new to me and that made it great to enjoy now. It was new to me. And now I hope that it will be new to you too.

Toyko Police Club a band based out of Toronto, that’s in Canada for people who failed geography, released an EP in 2006 called A Lesson in Crime. Sweet Baby Jesus! This EP is what they play when men and women grow 50 feet to battle giant alien robots and mutated monsters in downtown metropolitan areas.

Not to say the music is psychedelic(we’ll talk about Astroid Galaxy Tour on the 18th of May). Not in the slightest. It’s this high beat fast guitar action that lends you to getting up to fight giant alien robots and mutated monsters. These are fight songs and stand offs. Each track is under two minutes and forty-five second.

I highly recommend that you start to create a comic book about giant alien robots and mutanted monsters invading a large metropolitan city while listening to this EP.

The only other side note I have, is that this is the band that I had always heard in my head but never knew existed when I was reading Scott Pilgrim. I fear that I might get let down by the new movie coming out soon by Edgar Wright and starring Michael Cera if this isn’t the band used for the music.

To sell the music there are a couple of full sample tracks at the page for A Lesson in Crime EP.

The three places to get the music.

iTunes eMusic Amazon

Tiny Tyrant vol.1 Ethelbertosaurus

:01 second Publications presented us with Tiny Tyrant. The story of the toddler king who everyone had to listen or risk something bad happening to them. The new pressing of Tiny Tyrant in larger format allows smaller children the chance to read and look at the beautiful artwork.

Writer Lewis Trondheim and illustrator by Fabrice Parme, give the world of King Ethelbert a surreal land of Portocristo the feeling of Mister Magoo and Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends. The lines are crisp and the color is a little more vibrant then either of those cartoons have ever been on the small screen. At the end of this review, there is a page from the book, or you can read an excerpt from the book.

:01 Second recommends this book for children in the upper elementary age range, which is all fine and dandy, but at the same time, if you read to children and are able to use voices for the characters, you can reach children as young as four. I learned this while reading this to my son, periodically stopping to ask if he got what was going on in the story. He got it all.

There are six stories in this volume. What was going to turn into a single story a night before bed, turned into a read along radio play for my son while I switch between voices and sound effects while he became in grossed into a story about a child king named Ethelbert. My son now wants more. It’s hard to explain a child what publishing schedules are and that another one won’t happen for a while.

He laughed as King Ethelbert demanded that Santa Clause teach his own chef to make cakes with nothing but sugar. Only to have Santa spank him for acting like a royal pain in the end. It was at that point where I had to ask, does he know why Santa spanked him. It was here where my son grabbed the book from my hand to flip back in the pages to show me how the king was acting “naughty.” It is a great thing when a child can learn something from images.

Trondheim, Fabrice Parme developed such a fluid comic language that children can understand the concepts of right and wrong from a character that under any other circumstances would be considered a total terror, to a character that you can’t wait to find out what will happen next in with his thinking and actions.

Tiny Tyrant, like all :01 Second publications is a recommended reading. If not for you get it for someone else(lovers of comics and children(get them in early)). It’s $9.95 and going to be out on April 26th, 2009. Order it from your local comic shoppe or from your favorite bookseller.