If you can make it past the band name, and the singer's fluctuating sort of warble, and the bizarre alliterate lyrics, then this is a great, great alt-country album. North Street Records in Normal, Illinois gave me many great listening opportunities, and this is definitely within the top five, if not three.
I spent a lot of time with the characters herein driving around my prairie college town thinking and thinking and thinking. Songs like "John Boat" and "Redway" were fun, absurd portraits; but "Shoe Money" and "Some Kind of Fun" prodded anxieties I felt bubbling in my own guts:
Well, I swear upon my mother and I believe with all my heart
That I could rule the world if I could get my car to start
But what would I do then?
With no tires around the flower beds, we'll have to ride the rims
I felt stuck, too, without much of an idea as to how to pull myself out. As an only child lacking an attention-span, I lived mostly in my own head, not the real world. This album gave me a blithe adult world; like Flannery O'Connor as interpreted by the Danielson Famile. Some Stupid With A Flare Gun (2000) may have better songs, but The Known Universe reinvigorated my love of narratives.
It also inspired me, in a way, to apply to Hamline University's Creative Writing MFA program. These songs are perfect short stories put to music, surreal ditties on death, religion, insecurities, and parrots. I followed my muse into fiction for quite a while, but sometimes a person has to look back to find their way forward. It was songs that gave me that jolt in the first place, and the right songs keep me coming back again and again.
Recommended Listening: Unfortunately, I couldn't find many individual songs from The Known Universe anywhere on the You Tubes, so I have at least pinpointed the times of selected tracks within this long-play file, thusly: Shoe Money (0:00), God Tells Me To (5:57), John Boat (29:55)
185. Hector Berlioz - Symphonie Fantastique (1830)
I won a scholarship in high-school to my local community college, and through four-and-a-half semesters I didn't quite take full advantage of my opportunity to indulge in electives. During my second (and last) year, I took a Music Appreciation course, and, just to brush up on my technical skills, Music Theory 111. I don't want to talk about Music Theory and the Steve Vai-worshipping "friend" I made...
Music Appreciation gave me the chance to dive into the orchestral, symphonic, and otherwise non-rock-and-roll works I grew up with through school band trying my best to avoid. When we came to the Romantic era, the material began to speak a little more directly to my interests. I was working on being a writer, so allegros, program symphonies, operas - these were stories told with music. Literature can live very comfortably with music, and Berlioz, Wagner, and Dvorak were the story-tellers I found the most attractive.
Symphonie Fantastique is still by far my favorite. The themes are beautiful and catchy, and the evocative use of supplementary instrumentation blew me away upon first listen. Most engaging, of course, is the narrative: love becomes dream becomes death becomes nightmare. A young man sees the love of his life devolve into a head devil which kills him and drags him into the pits of Hell. Every "concept album" owes Berlioz's masterwork a debt.
And (*spoiler alert*) when the guillotine takes the man's head in the fourth movement, the horns act as an aural frowny face...
Excellent.
Recommended Listening: Movement II: Un bal, Movement IV: Marche au supplice, Movement V: Song d'une nuit de Sabbat
I spent a lot of time with the characters herein driving around my prairie college town thinking and thinking and thinking. Songs like "John Boat" and "Redway" were fun, absurd portraits; but "Shoe Money" and "Some Kind of Fun" prodded anxieties I felt bubbling in my own guts:
Well, I swear upon my mother and I believe with all my heart
That I could rule the world if I could get my car to start
But what would I do then?
With no tires around the flower beds, we'll have to ride the rims
I felt stuck, too, without much of an idea as to how to pull myself out. As an only child lacking an attention-span, I lived mostly in my own head, not the real world. This album gave me a blithe adult world; like Flannery O'Connor as interpreted by the Danielson Famile. Some Stupid With A Flare Gun (2000) may have better songs, but The Known Universe reinvigorated my love of narratives.
It also inspired me, in a way, to apply to Hamline University's Creative Writing MFA program. These songs are perfect short stories put to music, surreal ditties on death, religion, insecurities, and parrots. I followed my muse into fiction for quite a while, but sometimes a person has to look back to find their way forward. It was songs that gave me that jolt in the first place, and the right songs keep me coming back again and again.
Recommended Listening: Unfortunately, I couldn't find many individual songs from The Known Universe anywhere on the You Tubes, so I have at least pinpointed the times of selected tracks within this long-play file, thusly: Shoe Money (0:00), God Tells Me To (5:57), John Boat (29:55)
185. Hector Berlioz - Symphonie Fantastique (1830)
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Music Appreciation gave me the chance to dive into the orchestral, symphonic, and otherwise non-rock-and-roll works I grew up with through school band trying my best to avoid. When we came to the Romantic era, the material began to speak a little more directly to my interests. I was working on being a writer, so allegros, program symphonies, operas - these were stories told with music. Literature can live very comfortably with music, and Berlioz, Wagner, and Dvorak were the story-tellers I found the most attractive.
Symphonie Fantastique is still by far my favorite. The themes are beautiful and catchy, and the evocative use of supplementary instrumentation blew me away upon first listen. Most engaging, of course, is the narrative: love becomes dream becomes death becomes nightmare. A young man sees the love of his life devolve into a head devil which kills him and drags him into the pits of Hell. Every "concept album" owes Berlioz's masterwork a debt.
And (*spoiler alert*) when the guillotine takes the man's head in the fourth movement, the horns act as an aural frowny face...
Excellent.
Recommended Listening: Movement II: Un bal, Movement IV: Marche au supplice, Movement V: Song d'une nuit de Sabbat
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