a special request blog

Tonight I was talking to my brother George. I said, “George, what am I going to blog about in the next three hours? I have no ideas.” I asked him to give me an idea. Without pausing, he said: “Go over to your cd player, and write about what’s in there. Why, of all your cd’s, is that the cd in your cd player? Where did you get it? Why do you like it? [He listed off a whole lot of other questions here but I forgot every single one]” He ended by saying, “I’m just glad that you don’t have a 5-cd changer.”

What’s kind of weird about George’s prompt was that earlier this evening, when I got home from work, I poured some wine and listened to the cd that is in my cd player twice while I experimented with colored pencils. And I remember thinking, “I wish I could figure out a way to write about this cd, and how much I like it.” Lo and behold, the time has come to do so.

The cd currently in my CD player is “Middle Cyclone” by Neko Case. It came out last week, on the same day as the new U2, as a matter of fact. I ordered both CD’s from Amazon, and while I’m not quite ready to say that I’m underwhelmed by the new U2 yet (though everyone tells me I will be), I haven’t really given it a chance because I’ve been too busy listening to Neko. The few reviews I’ve read of “Middle Cyclone” have been decidedly mixed, but I give it two enthusiastic thumbs up.

Here are some things about Neko Case, in case you’ve never heard of her. Rolling Stone’s online bio of her says she is “a teenage punk-rocker turned alt-country chanteuse” but she has said repeatedly that she dislikes the term alt-country so now I feel bad even having typed it. She sings occasionally with pop super group the New Pornographers. She loves animals. She grew up in Washington and has said that she had a hard upbringing, and she left home at 15. She creates amazing conceptual packages for her albums. She was banned from the Grand Ole Opry for taking her shirt off at a Nashville party (she says she was getting overheated). She just bought a farm in Vermont. She looks different in almost every picture I’ve seen of her. She’s on a very short list of people that I would actually like to meet and hang out with, but I don’t think that I could keep up with her.

I just wanted to mention that I do feel bad that I bought the cd on Amazon, and not from some independent record store. Amazon is so cheap, though! And the economy is so bad! But it’s sad because all the cool artsy places are going out of business and there will be no arts left soon! I guess that is a subject for another post.

Anyways, I think I started off on that rant because I’m having a hard time thinking of what I’m actually going to say about this album. The thing that most people are talking about, it seems, is that she recorded the frogs on her farm and included 30 minutes of their croaking at the end of the album. But no one talks about the 40 minutes of music that precedes that. (For the records, I love the frogs so far. Today I lay on the floor with my wine and listened to them croak. I’m not saying I’m always going to listen to them. But still.)

To address the music….most people love Neko for her voice, and I am one of them. But I guess the thing I like most of all about Neko Case music is that each song is this mini-world that is evocative in a way that very little other music is to me right now. And more than just being this little world of its own, it kind of brings me in and makes me want to create something, immediately. When I’m listening to Neko Case in my car, I tend to want to pull over and write short stories, which is an urge that strikes me at almost no other time, unfortunately. And this evening, as I said, I listened to the new cd while I played with my new crayons and colored pencils (I’m trying to be more artsy). I just kind of doodled and then wrote down words and lines that I liked from the songs. When something that I see or listen to makes me want to do something of my own….well, I don’t take that lightly.

Each listen of this cd is still revealing things to me, so I’m not quite ready to go track-by-track through it, which was one of George’s suggestions, now that I think about it. I would say, though, that if you are looking for a place to start with Neko Case music, most reviews I’ve read have said that “Middle Cyclone” is no “Fox Confessor Brings the Flood,” which was her last album, and that one is also excellent. I don’t know which one I like better yet…I will probably end up making a mix of the songs that move me most and listening to that.

I don’t know. Sometimes I don’t think I explain why I like music very well. But that’s what in my Cd player, and will probably continue to be for quite a while. Thank you for the blog idea, George. The only problem I foresee is that I'm going to see Neko Case in concert on April 2, and now I might not have anything to write about then.

If you want to hear some songs and whatnot: http://www.myspace.com/nekocase