Progressive Wednesday

The big three, part vi.

Today, well, today’s our first Monday back in the saddle, so it’s kind of a special Lunes, Lundi, Montag, and Seg around these here parts, partner.

It took some somewhat serious searching, but I hunted around and found a theater nearby (assuming you consider 45 minutes away “nearby”) playing Into the Wild, the based-on-a-true-story flick Sean Penn directed and scribed based on the book by the same name. It’s a must-read (it’s my favorite book for now–I’m assuming my first book will ultimately take over the top slot) and a must-see. But it’s also a must-listen. The original soundtrack was written and performed by Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam fame, and his grizzled vocals mixed with killer lyrics lift the film to another level like an aesthetic elevator.

So first up, here’s the video for the song “Hard Sun.” Dig it.

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Here's a poem. (Those of you rolling your eyes, be prepared to have your lids pulled back by the beauty of this gem.) So, like I was saying, here's a poem by my friend Aimee Nezhukumatathil from her latest book, At the Drive-In Volcano.

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WHEN WEAVER ANTS CUT (A VALENTINE)
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I love the dance of every one helping.
Each ant chews and chews a bit of juicyleaf
and stands on his back four legs to raise
the leaf shape up high above his head.
The congo line– ”a honey shimmer of bodies
rushing to bring the cut leaf home. For twelve
years, the ruler of Garwara was a jackal.
All the laughing in that town cannot
compare to what you have brought
into my home: a filament of light inside
a dark jellyfish bell. It's this dance of ants
down a tree, around a stubborn frog– ”I want
to dance with you– ”how brave the line,
how tiny the step, a hundred green valentines.

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(Do yourself a favor, buckaroo, and order her book by clicking here.)

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Finally, I’ll toss you a delightful bubblegum-pop softball in the form of “Beverly Hills– by the band Weezer. I'm a fan of this video because it was shot at the Playboy Mansion. And that's not really why I dig it. I dig it because the irony of the song was lost of Hugh Hefner and his delicate brand of misogyny.

The big three one, part v.

Okay, it ain’t Monday, but, you know, most of the white-collar United States world had the day off, so here we are with a pick-me-up on Tuesday (particularly useful if you’re a Bills fan and watched a colossal disappointment on last night on MNF).

Instead of three, I’m only giving you one today, because I can’t pull myself away from this tune enough to come up with two others I’d rather hear, and therefore, rather share, dear readers. The song? “1234.” The musician? Feist. This number blends all the right things together, resulting in a bittersweetness morphed into an infectious hopefulness. It calls to mind the group singing of Polyphonic Spree, the avant-rock orchestral arrangement of Anathallo on “A Great Wind More Ash” and Arcade Fire on “Wake Up,”and the pure pop of Fiona Apple’s “Paper Bag” and Wilco’s “I’m Always in Love.”

And the lyrics? Check these out: “Sweetheart, bitterheart, now I can’t tell you apart. / Cozy and cold, put the horse before the cart. / Those teenage hopes, who have tears in their eyes, / too scared to own up to one little lie.”

In my book, “1234″ is the best of many worlds, and a welcome reminder of the power of music done “just so.” Plus, I’m a sucker for hand clapping, baby. So here’s the “official” video for the song, as well as live versions performed on Letterman (a must-see!) and O’Brien. Enjoy….

Instant Karma’s gonna get ya…

Besides being the greatest tune John Lennon inked post-Beatles, Instant Karma is a campaign being waged by Amnesty International to help stop the genocide in Darfur. Officially called “Instant Karma: The Campaign to Save Darfur,” the project is fairly simple in its action, fairly Incredible-Hulk-powerful in its aim.

As we noted on a previous Wednesday, the situation in Darfur, Sudan isn’t “a situation” at all: it’s a mass-killing, a raping and pillaging, and a starvation of innocent and helpless Sudanese people. In short, it’s one of the most horrific human rights catastrophe imaginable. And it’s happening while much of the world watches at best, ignores at worst.

So Amnesty International has teamed with Yoko Ono and 50 musical artists to record an album of Lennon’s songs. But it’s not limited to the music. The music is simply a vehicle calling for action.

According to the site:

The CD, “Instant Karma: The Campaign to Save Darfur,” [was] released by Warner Brothers Records and [arrived] in stores the week of June 12th. Additional singles from the album [were] released leading up to the full album, along with special product offers coupled with opportunities to take action. Proceeds derived from the entire campaign will go directly to support Amnesty International’s urgent work on Darfur and other human rights crises worldwide.

So you’ll get a disc with phenomenal covers of phenomenal songs, and you’ll help protect the innocent. Three of the songs — covered by Green Day, R.E.M., and Los Lonely Boys — are available for download through iTunes.

But if you swing by the site, you can do even more by taking simple actions of your own. From the Instant Karma “Take Action” page, you can sign a petition to President Bush urging him to use the UN to create a peacekeeping force that can protect the people of Darfur and of Chad, and to take the necessary actions to stabilize the region. You can also write your Senators and Representative in Congress to do several things in their power, not the least of which is funding the necessary peacekeepers. You can also join Amnesty International — it’s easy, trust us.

So, in short, look for the album in stores or in iTunes (I hear Regina Spektor’s cover of “Real Love” kicks some). Sign the petition. Write your members of Congress. Protect innocent people suffering atrocities we could only concoct in our worst nightmares. Let’s not wait a moment longer. It shouldn’t take another 300,000 people slaughtered to finally wake up.

Photo c/o this imaginative picture-clicker.

The big three.

T.S. Eliot, overrated poet that he is, began his overrated, pedantic poem “The Wasteland” this way: “April is the cruelest month, breeding/ Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing/ Memory and desire, stirring/ Dull roots with spring rain.”

Whatever.

April holds its own in my book. While Eliot was wrong about those 30 days between March and May, I’m probably equally right about this: Monday–filled with those first eight or more hours of the work week–is the probably cruelest day. Plus, for crying out loud, could Monday Night Football have found a worse trio of announcers than Tirico, Jaworski, and Kornheiser? Maybe Greta Van Susteren, a pony, and Scott, my AAA customer service agent from the other day, would be a bit less entertaining, but it’s a tough call, and one I’m glad I don’t have to make.

So, anyway, Mondays don’t have to be so bad, and we’re here to help. I was telling someone recently that there are about three things that keep me going, and one of the big three is art, baby, art in all its permutations. Every once and a while, Monday will be a day we showcase a trio of stuff we think will do your trick, lifting spirits, eliciting a laugh, getting your head bobbing up and down to that beautiful beast called rock.

Here goes, yo:

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Up first, Jim Gaffigan, easily one of my favorite comics, doing a five minute bit on (wait for it…) Hot Pockets. Gaffigan is someone you might recognize from commercials or his frequent visits to Letterman and O’Brien, where he’s appeared over two dozen times. These days you can also check him out on the TBS sitcom My Boys.

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And here’s a poem, one that taught me that verse needn’t be cryptic, needn’t only be fascinated with trees and darkness and oblivion, needn’t be restrained as an inmate, or worse, a politician. So here’s William Matthews at some of his best:

A POETRY READING AT WEST POINT

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I read to the entire plebe class,
in two batches. Twice the hall filled
with bodies dressed alike, each toting
a copy of my book. What would my
shrink say, if I had one, about
such a dream, if it were a dream?

Question and answer time.
“Sir,” a cadet yelled from the balcony,
and gave his name and rank, and then,
closing his parentheses, yelled
“Sir” again. “Why do your poems give
me a headache when I try

to understand them?” he asked. “Do
you want that?” I have a gift for
gentle jokes to defuse tension,
but this was not the time to use it.
“I try to write as well as I can
what it feels like to be human,”

I started, picking my way care-
fully, for he and I were, after
all, pained by the same dumb longings.
“I try to say what I don’t know
how to say, but of course I can’t
get much of it down at all.”

By now I was sweating bullets.
“I don’t want my poems to be hard,
unless the truth is, if there is
a truth.” Silence hung in the hall
like a heavy fabric. My own
head ached. “Sir,” he yelled. “Thank you. Sir.”

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Even though New York ain’t no Georgia, there was a parade celebrating peaches in a town nearby the other day, and as my saying goes, “Everybody hates a parade.” I thought I’d close this Monday with an anti-tribute to parades (just watch the video), and so here comes Green Day kicking their Celtic-punk “Minority.” This tune’s off Warnings, an underrated album from the ’00s (not to be confused with the ’80s, the decade that music forgot).

Music? Why not? It is Monday.

Since it’s just a plain ole Monday Labor Day, which, of course, falls on a Monday, it seems like a little music is in order. I’ve got a forum, so I might as well use it to share some of the best out there to the brightest reading this (yes, yes, I’m a sycophant).

First up, the Foo Fighters performing “This is a Call,” the most bizarrely optimistic and encouraging all-out, break-your-sticks and smash-your-guitars rock song I’ve ever heard. Plus this live versions ends with a pretty sweet mini-solo by Taylor Hawkins–he’s the one holding court behind the kit.

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So here we’ve got the Stereophonics kicking the hell out of “Dakota,” a punk/emo number that lifts my spirits like church lifts others. (I have no idea why it’s called “Dakota” since this band is from Wales, but I don’t really care.)

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And I don’t know why, but for me, rock comes in threes, so here’s the final one in this three-chord triptych: Anathallo’s “A Great Wind More Ash.” This band is like The New Pornographers meets a marching band. The recording could be better, so if you’d like to hear the studio version, just go to their MySpace page by clicking here.

New tunes on our block.

It seemed like it was time, once again, to share some music with you, dear readers, tunes we hope reflect a kind of progressivism simply by being quality pieces of art.

First up, give a gander — with your eyes and ears, and maybe even your head and heart — to the avant-rock band Explosions in the Sky performing “The Birth and Death of the Day.” You might recall, faithful followers of Progressive Wednesday that you are, that we mentioned this outfit last Friday, because Explosions in the Sky wrote the score for the flick Friday Night Lights. Here, as is the case with much of their music, you’ll witness an instrumental post-rock band using repetition that calls to mind the prose of Gertrude Stein and the Cubist paintings of the early 20th century. It’s probably going to be something new for most of you out there, and all we ask, as is the case most days, is to give this piece of progressivism a chance.

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Batting second for today’s musical post: Now It’s Overhead, and music video for their catchy, guitar-energized alt-rock tune “Walls.” This is one of the songs on heavy rotation on my iTunes. I saw Now It’s Overhead perform within the past year at the Mohawk Place in downtown Buffalo, and since then I’ve been hooked, often returning to their killer album Dark Light Daybreak.

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Now we’ve reached number trois, Okkervil River’s “For Real” off their heralded album Black Sheep Boy. This band came highly recommended by a good friend of Progressive Wednesday. So I checked out this outfit last October at Soundlab in Buffalo, and it was a show I won’t soon forget. Okkervil River is band with honesty and energy, with lyrics meant to be read and music dedicated to advancing the vocals. There’s a passion here that can’t be ignored — it’s infectious. And I can’t seem to get these gorgeous words out of my brain for the life of me: “And if you want it to be real, come over for a night: we can really, really climb. And those blue bridge lights might really burn most bright while we watch that dark lake rise.”

Music ’cause I’m 31.

For some reason today feels like an art day, so below you’ll find trois videos/tunes that I can’t get, thankfully, out of my damned skull (a skull, I might add, that turns 31 today).

This first one I’m sending out to my sis, ’cause I know she digs on it and has a killer memory that’s directly tied to it. Below you’ll find The Killers and their song “All These Things That I’ve Done.” And I love it because most any rock tune that features a gospel choir is a hit in my book (see also “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” on U2′s Rattle and Hum).

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When you live in Ohio for 9 years, you have to work at it not to fall, maybe not into love, but at least into “like” with the Dayton, Ohio band, Guided By Voices. The song? It’s called “Glad Girls.” But please, do yourself a favor and don’t watch the video — it’s horrendous. (Of course, I realize that since I said not to watch it that you’ll probably watch it.) If you can manage it, just listen, baby, just listen.

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And finally, what’s a list of tunes I dig without a little touch of Wilco. And so here they are kicking one of the best pure rock tunes of the last dozen years: “I Got You (at the End of the Century).”