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Frank Black recommended Sally Can't Dance by Lou Reed in Music (curated)

 
Sally Can't Dance by Lou Reed
Sally Can't Dance by Lou Reed
1974 | Rock
7.0 (1 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"I like a lot of Lou Reed’s records but before I got into him, I heard this record in my college dorm, courtesy of [Pixies guitarist] Joey Santiago. I knew that I liked the record but when I got into listening to it again, some years ago, I realised: I know the record really well. I really like the production and sound of it. It’s very toppy and it’s got some really good sounds. It’s very thin, 70s rock radio production. I’ve never really met Lou. I mean, I’ve been in the room with him on a number of occasions on tour and hanging out in the same breakfast rooms, but they’re situations when you don’t want to bother someone. I don’t remember the Quietus interview where the guy compared me to Lou Reed, but right now if someone wanted to mention me and Lou Reed in the same breath, it’d be a huge compliment. He’s obviously one of my rock & roll heroes."

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A Whispered Wish
A Whispered Wish
Cindy Louallen | 2014 | Fiction & Poetry, Paranormal, Romance
Zoe hates camping. She loves air conditioning and staying indoors and cozy, but when her friends and boyfriend drag her out into the middle of the woods, she comes along. But things get even more complicated when she wakes up far away from her tent– as a pixie.

Can she become human again with the help of Prince Crispin, a handsome pixie? Or as feelings grow between them, will she even want to go back to her human life?

I decided to give A Whispered Wish a shot thanks to a ridiculous one-star review on Smashwords, written by someone who hadn’t read past the first two lines. But the novel was so cringeworthy, I almost sympathized with that asshole reviewer.

Just reading the novel was a toilsome task, thanks to the obvious typos and grammatical errors infecting the text, not to mention the random tense changes that yanked me out of the story every other page.

But even if I’d been able to be absorbed into the story, there wouldn’t have been anything to be absorbed into. Nothing freaking happens for two thirds of the book!

The beginning involves flimsy world-building and back story and preaching about how humans are horrible and they “can learn a thing or two from the pixies.” That line appears not once, but twice in a book meant to be read by adults, not five-year-olds.

This would be more tolerable if it was the pixies saying this to Zoe, who, as a human, defended herself and humankind. But instead, it was Zoe who instantly accepted that she and all other humans, including her friends and boyfriend, was hellspawn.

She accepts that humans are monsters about two minutes after realizing she turned into a pixie when she asks the other pixies if she can tell her human friends what’s happening.

 “is there a way that we can let them know? Please? I can’t let them keep looking for me. They will be so worried,” tears still flowing. Only now, she can’t stop them.

Fionna pops up beside them, “I’m sorry Zoë, but we just can’t. To let them know that we exist is very dangerous for us.”

“You have to understand,” Brigid said, “they will exterminate us just to find out what makes us what we are.” Zoë knows they are right about this, anything new or something they didn’t understand as humans they dissected or destroyed.

A Whispered Wish, page 30
Are her friends effing Nazis? I can’t think of another reason for why she would have so little faith in them. I’m not saying they should tell the press, but maybe Zoe’s best friends and her motherfreaking boyfriend won’t kill her just because she sprouted wings and shrank to two inches.

Conflict doesn’t flare up until two thirds into the book, and even then, the conflict is more like brief sparks instead of a raging fire. There are a few action scenes, but the action was over so fast, I had to reread them to actually process them happening.

The main conflict between two pixie kingdoms feels more like an afterthought than an actual plotline.

All of a sudden, the pixies stop being this shining beacon of superiority and start being savage and warlike. Prince Crispin and his friends, who have never seen battle before, become expert fighters the second war is declared. It’s contrived and borderline absurd, but that’s fine because the final battle is over in like two pages.

Perhaps A Whispered Wish could have snatched a third star from me with the skin of its teeth if the characters had good chemistry, funny dialogue, or even an ounce of personality, but no.

All the men are strong, athletic, and ready to save the females while making sexist jokes about how women take forever shopping. The women are all kind, girly, and able to manipulate the men with their puppy eyes.

The two most interesting characters are the Queen of Devonshire, and Jaxxon, a defect from Pembrokeshire, and they only have a couple of scenes. Everyone else absurdly boring.

So, A Whispered Wish is a solid two-star read. With some heavy editing and revising, it could have been good, but as is, it’s less interesting than the average hospital waiting room. A Whispered Wish is free on Smashwords.
  
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Joey Santiago recommended Album by Public Image Ltd in Music (curated)

 
Album by Public Image Ltd
Album by Public Image Ltd
1986 | Rock
7.0 (2 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"Jesus Christ, that album is just stupidly good! I didn't know this, but a lot - Ginger Baker, Tony Williams, who played drums for Miles Davis, Steve Vai - it was a supergroup! It's a perfect record, it's like the perfect, cool record. The guitars on it, it just sounds like it's flying! It's like, ""Wooo, there goes Steve!"" There'd be divebombs - he had a Floyd Rose whammy bar - it just tanks - it goes down and then it goes up, up into the stratosphere, and then he'd go really down on it. Jesus Christ - talking about sonics! And it's surprising how many of the drum riffs that I like are by Tony Williams: the first song ['F.F.F.'] on it is just awesome; I would've thought that was Ginger Baker. I guess the producer employed two jazzy drummers! I was listening to this pre-Pixies. I listened to it a lot with my brother, my little brother who's excellent with the guitar. I still lived at home at the time and we would just flip out in my bedroom. He would actually show me [how to play something], because I would be so frustrated: "Goddamn it! What is this?!""

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Adam Green recommended Teen Dream by Beach House in Music (curated)

 
Teen Dream by Beach House
Teen Dream by Beach House
2010 | Rock
(0 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"Beach House are one of the best bands around right now. Victoria Legrand's voice has all the character of someone great like Nico but her voice is actually vaster and more beautifully skilled. It's better than Nico – and I'm not knocking Nico. Alex Scally's guitar is a subtle, refined style that I'm going to compare to Joey Santiago and the Pixies or John Fahey. It's where someone takes a not necessarily very complex finger picking pattern but has such an interesting melodic approach that what they hold back becomes so powerful. It's minimal but there is so much information in it. The ideas on this record are so crystalized. They're both so smart and so talented yet laid back, that they let you feel like it's a laid back relaxed and chill concise statement but there's actually so much intellect and nuance in the performance that it's flawless. The opening song 'Zebra' is one of the best songs I've ever heard. It's on another level. I always wanted to hear Victoria sing 'A Whole New World' from my Aladdin film, I think she'd do it really well."

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