A year of cajoling

The Utne Reader on Joe Hagan's fascinating Believer piece on Nina Simone:

Somehow Hagan, “after a year of cajoling,” convinced Simone’s ex-husband, Andrew Stroud, to talk about his nine-year marriage with the singer. Quite the feat, given that Stroud wouldn’t even talk to Simone’s biographer.

The striking portion of this access, though, comes not in Stroud’s discussion of his relationship with Simone, but through Simone’s own writing, which Hagan dives into to give a heartbreaking glimpse of the difficulties that at times stormed Simone.

It's not too late to get your copy of the Believer's 2010 Music Issue...You won't be sorry! Order here or grab one at the bookstore.

"It was like a Who song waiting to happen"

"Beautiful article," says Nada Surf, talking about Joe Hagan's Believer piece on Bill Fox. Then they proceed to cover Fox's "Electrocution." On WNYC's "Soundcheck" (jump to c. 15m in).

Rainy day connections #12 & 35

Remember Joe Hagan's great piece on Benji Hughes in last year's Believer music issue? (Yes.) You can read the whole thing online, and it has downloadable tracks!

Remember Priscilla Ahn, who covered "Julia" and who I occasionally embed videos of here? (By occasionally I mean a lot and by here I also mean here.)

Did you know that the song "Masters of China" on her album A Good Day is by Benji Hughes? (I didn't until tonight! I haven't left the house all day.)

Priscilla Ahn » Benji Hughes from The Voice Project on Vimeo.

READ HARD — Believer Music Issue — Beatles post-Beatles — AUGUST 5 PARK-LIT EVENT

I. Read Hard is out! It's a collection of some great pieces from the last five years of The Believer. We could have easily filled several more volumes of equal thickness—and hopefully we will someday...As an appetizer, McSweeney's excerpts my essay on the work of Charles Portis, a piece that appeared in the very first issue of The Believer, back in 2003. I've always like this list of food in Portis's first novel, Norwood:

With reportorial precision, and without condescension, Norwood captures all manner of reflex babble, the extravagant grammar of commercial appeal − stray words bathed in the exhaust of a Trailways bus. This omnivorous little book has a high metabolism, digesting everything from homemade store signs (i do not loan tools) and military-base graffiti to actuarial come-ons and mail-order ads for discount diamonds. Appropriately enough, the characters are constantly chowing down. On one leg of the journey, Edmund B. Ratner (formerly the "world's smallest perfect man," before he porked out) and Norwood's new sweetheart, Rita Lee Chipman, are described as having eaten their way through the Great Smoky Mountains. Norwood's decidedly humble (call it American) menu nails the country's midcentury gastronomy with a precision that today takes on near-archaeological value: canned peaches, marshmallows, Vienna sausages, cottage cheese with salt and pepper, a barbecue sandwich washed down with NuGrape, a potted-meat sandwich with mustard, butter on ham sandwiches, biscuit and Brer Rabbit syrup sandwiches, an Automat hot dog on a dish of baked beans, Cokes and corn chips and Nabs crackers, a Clark bar, peanuts fizzing in Pepsi, a frozen Milky Way.

II. The Believer Music Issue is also out! Q: What's in it? A: A lot.

Arthur Phillips (The Song Is You) on writing about music (or, as they say, dancing about architecture); Brandon Stosuy interviews Phil Elverum (here's a taste); Joe Hagan—author of the classic Bill Fox piece that rounds out Read Hard—on another underappreciated songwriter, Benji Hughes (the online version features two streaming songs that will make your day); Blvr editor Ross Simonini does double duty, writing about Jamaican dancehall and violence, and interviewing Radiohead's Thom Yorke; Greil Marcus; Michael Showalter and Michael Ian Black...a long piece by Michelle Tea...Justin Taylor with an excellent appreciation of David Berman's Actual Air, upon its 10th anniversary...a piece on Lawrence Welk...Ben Greenman...Hilton Als "performing" a sentence (à la Barthelme) about PJ Harvey...the inimitable Paul Collins, and more! Double issue! Get it before the newsstands run out! Because they always do with this one...

And I haven't even mentioned the Daniel Handler-curated CD, a real ear-opener, featuring names you know—Lloyd Cole (?!!!), Dave Wakeling, the Waterboys' Mike Scott, Sam Phillips, Stephen Duffy (!!?), David Sylvian (!!?!), Lisa Germano, and more—all great, but you cannot miss the Mike Scott song. It is an EPIC, like the best Waterboys songs (though also different).

(Blvr music issue trivia question: Who wrote an article for an earlier Blvr music issue entitled "The Song Is You"?)

III. One last thing I'll mention—David L. Ulin imagines the ideal Beatles '70s albums, using material from their disparate solo albums. In a nice bit of cross-magazine fertilization (eh??), the Utne Reader blog did an "imeem" playlist of the Ulin-imagined post-Fab Four album, Too Many People. It's fun to listen to...and it kicks off with "Imagine"...

IV. I won't be in New York for this, alas, and neither will Heidi, but the Believer and McSweeney's will be taking the stage for a Park-Lit event next Wednesday, August 5, at Bryant Park, 12:30 p.m.—lunchtime edification! (Here's more info at New York mag.)

Aforementioned music issue contribs Messrs. Phillips, Hagan, and Stosuy will be there, as will two new McSwy's novelists: Jessica Anthony (The Convalescent) and my old-PTSNBN colleague James Hannaham (God Says No). Amanda Stern hosts. (Copies of Read Hard and the music issue and the novels should be available.)

Audioboros

I. Dzyd Joe's Driftwood Singers blog gives us a chance to experience Earth's doom metal 'boros.

II. And the Cleveland Plain Dealer has a followup to Joe's Blvr piece on reclusive singer-songwriter Bill Fox. (Fox now works at the CPD.)

III. I always assumed that paper's name had to do with the Great Plains...but what if it means something like, "We are dealing with you plainly" (i.e., without subterfuge)?

Midget windows

I. There is a midget window on to the garden, where a monk in black is said to wander, but he's never troubled me. —Jane Gardam (Writers' rooms/Guardian)

II. Some news for fans of Bill Fox, and/or fans of Joe Hagan's Blvr. article on Bill Fox:

Something has changed in Bil Fox. Something that made him decide to come out of hiding and perform. In my brief exchange with Hagan, he hinted that Fox's return to music was spurred by the economy, and by the renewed interest in his music following the Believer story. It was a good story, and it could very well be the truth. However, for those in attendance last night, the whys, wheres and hows weren't important. We were seeing a Cleveland legend live, in person for the first time in a long, long time. —I Rock Cleveland

Strings attached

Those of you who swooned over Joe Hagan's Bill Fox piece in this year's Believer music issue should check out the Driftwood Singers Present for some tracks from The Revelers, a band featuring Fox's brother Tommy. (Woah...suddenly I had an out-of-body experience and thought I was writing about the Replacements!)

And those Driftwooders also lead us to this sublimely bad idea: Dylan interpreted by a string quartet.

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And—WOW—while I was trying to think of a headline for this post, I thought: Strings...Air on the G string...I'm not air?...no....

And then I thought I'd Google around to see if this 7" by a group called Baby Steps could be found online...The title of their (lone?) single "Air on a G-String" clever plays on Bach's "Air on the G string," and it's so great...I put it on the turntable all the time...and now you can listen to it right here! I love this song!

Here's Sarah Chang playing the Bach:

She understood European things

1. Dizzyhead Kosiya sends us to this treasury of Vulgarity—the Vulgar Boatmen, recorded live at a bunch of different shows. And proving that anything mentioned on The Dizzies inevitably intersects with anything else mentioned here, the VB cover Jonathan Richman's "She Cracked."

2. From Dizzyhead Sarah, this beautiful "Gallery of Book Trade Labels." (Idea for new contest?)

3. More on Bill Fox, including a couple of mp3s. (Joe Hagan wrote about him in this year's Believer music issue.)

No country for old Mice

Joe Hagan, author of the great "Transit Byzantium" piece in the current Believer, will be appearing on Marfa, Texas's 93.5 FM to talk about it on Tuesday, June 26 at 11 a.m.—you can tune in online. More info here.

(Also via Joe's site, listen to The Mice!)

Just My Bill

Visitors to the Believer website might have noticed that one article isn't available online at all—not even the first couple paragraphs, as is usually the case. The piece, entitled "Transit Byzantium," by Joe Hagan, is a stunner—and you can only read it by picking up a copy of the actual magazine!

This piece alone is worth the $10 cover price, I assure you. It's a perfect example of one of my favorite kinds of pieces: The search for the reclusive genius, the creator gone mute for years, an artist of the missing. The inquisitive reporter begins with a myth and winds up with something more human—and sadder—than previously imagined.

What makes "Transit Byzantium" even more poignant is that the character in question (who I won't name here, for reasons you'll learn by the end of this sentence) told someone, who told Joe, that he doesn't want to be on the Internet. Traces can be found, of course, and I'll provide some links below, but to respect his wishes as much as possible, this story is only readable between the covers of the magazine.

Two other things:

1) A member of Team Dizzies mentioned nearly crying after reading the piece, and soon thereafter buying the album (a track of which appears on the Believer CD) and savoring it. (It's iTunes-able.)

2) A few days ago a friend mentioned she'd been listening to the Bill Fox track "from approximately ten in the morning to three in the afternoon."

Further links:

More info (and more listening) over at Joe's blog, The Driftwood Singers Present.

Here's an appearance on KCRW (mentioned in the piece) by the artist in question, found by Dizzyhead Arlo.

And just for kicks, here's some rare footage of the musician's potent power-pop band, The Mice (very different from the material on Transit Byzantium, but a kick to watch)...

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And the Blvr. CD, by the way, is great. I'm From Barcelona's "The Painter" is a "Ballad of El Goodo" for the late aughts. (You can quote me.) "Don't give up on your dreams, boy/Don't give up on your dreams now, buddy," over and over again...

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Also, unrelated: Many thanks to everyone who came out last week for the LIT reading—that was fun!

(And note to Eugene H.—drop me a line via the address in my Blogger profile...the address you gave didn't work!)

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This weekend, picked up the new Esopus at Labyrinth. That's a dangerous magazine, because if you happen to glimpse it, you have to buy it. This issue has the usual wide-ranging smorgasbord...so far I've been particularly fond of the articulate and sublimely boring six-page found letter by a revolutionary (Kathy) to whom one imagines is her would-be swain, explaining why they can't get involved (all in massively thought-out political terms) . . . and the letter from Japan that artist James Lee Byars sent to MOMA curator Dorothy C. Miller. Actually it's not technically a "letter" . . . Ah, you'll just have to get the issue to see what it is.

But first—get the new Believer!