A huge thank you to the generous Michael Sundlin for loaning me his lovely bass!
This was an opportunity to chart the boundless abyss that is my comprehensive lack of prowess as a bass player, failing utterly to play anything resembling the bass line I’d imagined for one of the tracks I’m working on. I was going for “Pixies meets the Flaming Lips”; what I achieved instead was “this guy only knows how to play guitar, so he tries to get by playing chords on the bass, which generally misses the point of the instrument”. Totally didn’t work.
But I did mess around with another (much slower) song, plunking along mostly on the root of each chord, and that actually worked pretty well. I’ll just get somebody else to play bass on that other track. Because as it turns out, I am not even remotely about that bass.
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RIP Daniel Johnston. A true inspiration. An unfiltered voice capable of communicating pure pathos and passion. My many happy memories of his music include discovering him with my friend Justin way back when. Thank you for your work, Mr. Johnston. We're better off for it.
“Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon-- and the Journey of a Generation” by Sheila Weller. A little ways in I thought to myself: this is one of the best books about music that I’ve ever read. Eventually I realized no, this is just plain one of the best books I’ve ever read.
Weller chronicles the lives and work of Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon while contextualizing them in the era they’ve moved through. The intertwining stories have a lot to say about what it’s meant to be female during this time, and how each woman has both affected and been affected by the norms and changes thereof.
While I’ve always appreciated Carole King and have been a longtime Joni Mitchell fan, the real surprise here has been delving into the work of Carly Simon. I’d never really listened to her before, and delving into her first few albums, I have to say she’s an ingenious writer. Even the radio hits I’ve thought I was familiar with resonate a lot more with the background provided in this book.
“Girls Like Us” does a great job of exploring the work and personal lives of each subject, getting just as intimate as necessary for an examination of such confessional artists. This is a truly rewarding book. I’ll probably read it again someday.
