Jarrett House North

So in spite of the random 10 I still have “Et Oedipus irrumpere, irrumpere et pulsare, et pulsare, et pulsare, et Oedipus pulsare, pulsare, ululare!” ringing in my ears from last night’s concert—that of course being the narrative when Oedipus batters down the door of his wife Jocasta’s room and sees she’s hanged herself, cause, y’know, she’s just found out she’s also his mom.

Anyway.

• Sigur Rós, “Mea Blóanasir” (Takk…)
• London Chamber Orchestra (James MacMillan, composer), “Eli, eli, lama sabachthani” (Seven Last Words)
• Daniel Lanois, “Fisherman’s Daughter” (Acadie)
• Mission of Burma, “Nancy Reagan’s Head” (There’s a Time and Place to Punctuate)
• Yo La Tengo, “Autumn Sweater (Kevin Shields remix)” (A Smattering of Outtakes and Rarities)
• Prince, “Goodbye” (Crystal Ball)
• Bobby Bare, “I Am An Island” (The Moon Was Bare)
• Danger Doom, “No Names” (The Mouse and the Mask)
• Prince, “Call My Name” (Musicology)
• Elvis Costello, “Shallow Grave” (Costello and Nieve: Live at the Troubadour, LA)

You know it’s been a long hard week when the Random 10 is my first post since Wednesday night. Someday, on the Final Reckoning, I hope I’ll get an extra day of eternal bliss in exchange for the day I had yesterday.

Anyway, the music:

1. Alberta Adams, “Remember” (Chess Blues)
2. Choir of St. John’s College (John Tavener, composer), “Song for Athene” (Christmas Proclamation)
3. Petra Haden, “Our Love Was” (The Who Sell Out)
4. Lou Ann Burton, “Shake Your Hips” (The Oxford American Southern Music Sampler, 2005)
5. Bill Cosby, “Oops!” (I Started Out As A Child)
6. The Velvet Underground, “Foggy Notion” (Peel Slowly and See)
7. Shirley Horn, “Fever” (The Main Ingredient)
8. Solomon Burke, “Diamond In Your Mind” (Don’t Give Up On Me)
9. The Dramatics, “Get Up and Get Down” (Dead Presidents Soundtrack)
10. Billy Jones & Ernest Hare, “Barney Google” (Edison Diamond Disc)

One last note: these are the random tunes playing in my iPod, but the tune playing in my head is Paul Simon’s “Mother and Child Reunion”:

Oh little darlin’ of mine
I just can’t believe it’s so
And though it seems strange to say
I’ve never been laid so low
In such a mysterious way
And the course of a lifetime runs
Over and over again

But I would not give you false hope
On this strange and mournful day
When the mother and child reunion
Is only a motion away

Special bonus: the connection between “Mother and Child Reunion” and Chinese cuisine.

On the train back to Boston with my coworker yesterday, I was looking over the sheet music for our next TFC concert when my coworker asked about my next performance. I told him, “The first week in May we‘ll be doing Stravinsky’s Œdipus Rex.”

“Cool,” he said. “I’ll have to bring my daughter. She’s thirteen and taking voice lessons. She’d love it.”

Ah, I thought. But will she—or you—love the story? It’s such a nice story too—just in time for Mother’s Day.

The music, though, is absolutely astonishing. Stravinsky wrote some of the most amazingly inventive, sinuous melody lines for this work, which sports a libretto by Jean Cocteau. I think my personal favorite is the herky-jerky chromaticism of the passage where Œdipus batters down the door, kills his mother/wife, and puts out his own eyes. The music, if you’re not careful, sounds a little like a circus act. Last night in practice it sounded like the arrival of the Furies: after a couple of rehearsals John Oliver’s intensity kicked up a notch and he urged us deeper into the meaning of the music, and the results were unsettlingly good. I am looking forward to hearing the orchestration next week.

Of course, the question is, can I in conscience recommend the piece to my co-worker? I guess I’ll have to do what I would want him to do for me when I have a kid: send him the synopsis and a pointer to some of the music and let him make up his own mind.

Quick update today. We drove all afternoon down to Lisa’s parents, including one seven-mile stretch around Newark that took about an hour. So needless to say I’m a bit mad at mechanical objects, am seeing red, have no desire to push a shopping trolley, and spent a good part of the afternoon seeing primary colors, mostly a red mix.

Ba-dum-psch.

1. Beth Orton, “Shopping Trolley” (Comfort of Strangers)
2. Woody Allen, “Mechanical Objects” (Woody Allen: Standup Comic)
3. Sundays, “24 Hours” (Blind)
4. Minus the Bear, “Fulfill the Dream” (Menos Il Oso)
5. The Cure, “Primary (Red Mix)” (Close to Me [EP])
6. Frank Sinatra, “Half as Lovely (Twice as True)” (The Capitol Singles)
7. The Stills, “Allison Krausse” (Logic Will Break Your Heart)
8. Blind Lemon Jefferson, “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean” (Anthology of American Folk Music)
9. The White Stripes, “Forever for Her (Is Over For Me)” (Get Behind Me Satan)
10. Bob Dylan, “Walls of Red Wing” (The Bootleg Series, Vol. 1-3)