~notes~ (Vol. 8)
Joan Rivers, the musical genius & a utopic reality
Mad’s Music Mix
Wafia, “Let Me Love You” This is a delightful example of the cover outshining the original. Songstress Wafia gives Mario’s 2004 single a well-crafted rework with a melodic arrangement and smooth vocals. Watch out for Wafia.
Garrett Kato, “Hipster Kids” I’m immediately transported to steamy, languid scenes of a Brooklyn summer when I put this song on. Kato croons, “No job, hit the blogs, find the next thing to say to you.” Reverb-soaked tones and grungy vocals put your right in the middle of that hipster haze.
CATHEDRALS, “In The Dark” This track is brimming with very cool energy. Interesting vocal effects (and harmonies!) play with dynamic beats. Definitely add this to your Pump Up/Running Playlist.
Octave Minds ft. Chance the Rapper & The Social Experiment, “Tap Dance” Chance brings his spirited storytelling to Octave Minds’ jumpy beat. Here’s a whole lot of color for your week.
Music Vid Pick: Elton John ft. Joan Rivers and a Special Guest, “The Bitch is Back”
The very bizarre reality of celebrity deaths is that only through their death do you realize how much their presence meant to you. Joan Rivers was omnipresent in the cultural zeitgeist for as long as I lived (and for much longer). But it was only through the context of her death last week that I uncovered so much of her early work, and I realized what an icon she was. Needless to say, she was no basic bitch, and this treasure was shared as part of Noisey’s “Joan River Had a Genius Musical Ear.” Joan had a lot of exciting acts on her short-lived talk show. Not only does Elton and Joan have a duet where Elton screws up the timing at one point (it is live TV!), but a special guest joins them at the end. Watch it all the way through. Also check out this early interview with Ozzy Osbourne and his young children at the time — Kelly keeps yawning and scratching up her skirt while Jack wriggles about. Some things never change!
Jeff’s Journo Jems
The Foresaken: A Rising Number of Homeless Gay Teens Are Being Cast Out by Religious Families [Rolling Stone] Feel-good news about gay Americans has flooded the airwaves in the past half-dozen years, from the rising number of states that legalized same-sex marriage, to the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” to the quick rise in popularity of the It Gets Better Project. All of these stories of progress ignore a very real problem plaguing the gay community: LGBT youth homelessness. Conservative estimates find that 40 percent of the homeless youth population identify as LGBT, despite making up just 5 percent of the overall population. The stories of kids getting kicked out of their homes by evangelical parents seem like they’re from another era, but they’re peppered as real-time anecdotes in this must-read story in Rolling Stone.
The Dying Russians [The New York Review of Books] I’m fascinated by Russia. It’s not as enigmatic as a country like North Korea, but plenty of seemingly inexplicable stories still exist — like the fact that the population declined by 7 million people (5 percent of the total population) between 1992 and 2009 (aka my lifetime). This story in the New York Review of Books looks into the potential reasonings behind the major decline. The simple demographer’s answer is birth rates are going down while death rates (and the age that people die) are going down. The reporter digs deeper, however, to find out why seemingly able-bodied people keep disappearing.
The Reality Show That Wants to Save the World (But Probably Won’t [Medium] As a teen, I was obsessed with reality TV. I was fortunate that this obsession coincided with the rise in popularity of the TV genre. Every new show from “Laguna Beach” to “The Real Housewives” seemed to use the reality TV format. It’s been a few years since I hopped off that bandwagon, but I must say I’m intrigued by the premise of the new Fox show “Utopia.” Stick a dozen or so reality show stereotypes — the red-blooded American male vs. the hippie, for example — on a set that’s like Little House on the Prairie meets The Truman Show. Then, ask the cast to form a utopia. Simple enough, right?
How An App Helped Me (And 20,000 Other Women) Get Pregnant [Gizmodo] I’m probably too on board with big data for my own good. Instead of thinking it’s creepy that a pair of shoes I looked at on Zappos keeps showing up as a sidebar ad as I scroll through Gawker, I find it refreshing — after all, I’m finally being served ads for things I want (or supposedly want)! It turns out big data can help you get pregnant, or at least that’s the premise of Glow, an app that helps women chart their menstrual cycles to find the optimal baby-makin’ time. Even though this post reads a little like an infomercial for app, I love the idea that we’re personalizing the process of conception to understand that bodies work differently.
Throwback: Letting Go [The New Yorker] End of life care is a difficult topic to broach. In our medicalized society, the answer to all of our ‘what-should-we-do’ questions seems obvious: If we have a new procedure of medicine or experimental trial, we should try it. The reality is not so simple. Atul Gawande looks at everything from the economics to the psychology of end-of-life care in this amazing feature from four years ago in The New Yorker.
