Vivian Maier

Here's something that doesn't happen every day. Vivian Maier, a Chicago nanny who passed away in 2009, has been discovered to be a closet street photographer, working from the 1950s to 1990s. Based on a just a scratching of the surface of some 100,000 negatives, her work looks to be absolutely masterful. Here is a clip from a recent Chicago TV broadcast on Vivian:


Read more on the tribute blog started by John Maloof, who discovered her work at an auction. The blog includes John's story of the discovery, plus links to other media commentary on her photography.

The Blizzard

Camera Obscura (Scottish indie poppers of Honey In The Sun fame) covers this 1964 Jim Reeves Christmas classic:

Sorrowful Songs, More ...

Last month, we marked Henryk Gorecki's passing with this remembrance. Today, I came upon a worthy addendum to that piece, this done by the blog of the ASC (American Society of Cinematographers.)

A New Joy

I have mentioned this before. I just finished a hearing of the Estonian Chamber Orchestra Choir's A New Joy - Orthodox Christmas, a collection of Orthodox Russian church music that had been suppressed by the Communist government in the past. This CD is just about "perfect" on all counts: wonderful source material, spellbinding performance and exquisite recording. We found it about four years ago; I think it might have been cited by David Stabler of The Oregonian. Still is the go-to Christmas music I recommend to anyone who asks. You can get a lo-fi preview here.

Captain Beefheart, Gone For Now

I remember when I brought my first Don Van Vliet (aka Captain Beefheart) album, Trout Mask Replica, home to my late 60s Hollywood apartment, where a co-worker had stopped by to drop off some papers and asked how I could possibly listen to that stuff. I wondered how he couldn't. I came upon Beefheart through his association with the wonderful Frank Zappa. When I hear people like Dr. John and Tom Waits, the Captain often comes to mind. Beefheart was a sort of psychedelic blues musician and an avant-garde precursor to punk. He was a poet, sculptor and painter (one of my treasures would be his Doc At The Radar Station album that features cover art that Beefheart painted himself). Captain Beefheart died today, but let's see if we can find some Captain Beefheart for you now:



More ...



Here's a piece from the LA Weekly blog today: "Top 14 Reasons Why Captain Beefheart Was a True American Genius".

Hallelujah

Wednesday night, Leonard Cohen performed at the Rose Garden in Portland, a performance that I missed, even though it greatly pained me to do so. (Check out The Oregonian's run-up piece and review.) Nevertheless ...

Last night, winding down on a Friday from a week of intense work, I sat back for a bit of my kind of luxurious living -- five hours of uninterrupted music. Earlier in the day, friend Jamesa brought me a surprise in the form of a new DVD documenting a 1972 tour of Leonard Cohen. Entitled, Bird On A Wire, the film is said to have languished in storage by Cohen's manager, Marty Marchat, until Marchat's death when Cohen acquired and hid it away, only recently turning it over to the original director, Tony Palmer, for re-edit and completion. Now released, Kim and I starting watching at about 7pm, followed by a hearing of just about every Leonard Cohen album that I have so far committed and converted to my FLAC library, finally slipping off to bed around 1am.

The film, while ragged in places and including some unneeded VietNam footage, does show Cohen in very human form, and is undoubtedly a must-see for any serious Cohen fan.

Arising at 6am with Leonard still resonating in my head, I started prowling the Web for more backstory on the film while listening to still more that we had not heard by bedtime. Then, at the National Film Board of Canada website, I discovered this 1964 documentary, "Ladies and Gentlemen... Mr. Leonard Cohen":




This early film is quite intriguing and even shows Cohen's youthful skills as a stand-up comic. Another must-see, but be warned: this 44-minute online experience needs pretty decent bandwidth Internet connection.

More on Leonard Cohen: http://eyeavenue.blogspot.com/2009/09/happy-birthday-leonard.html

London Calling

The Clash, with frontman Joe Strummer, was probably at the top of my most-listen band of the 70-80s punk era. Now I find that the Clash Radio blog has for awhile made available for download podcasts (in MP3 and Ogg) of the late/great Strummer's half-hour BBC radio show done between 1998 and 2002. Here and maybe here. Mixed audio quality, but great, great content. In the meantime, if you haven't seen the posthumous 2006 film tribute, The Future Is Unwritten, here is a preview:

Song of the Day: I Want To Sing That Rock And Roll

By Giilian Welch from her 2001 Time (The Revelator) album

Check out this perfornamce on YouTube.

Here's another of my favorites, from the 2004 Cambridge Folk Festival a few years ago.

Here, Gillian works with The Decemberists -- one of our favorite "local" indie folk rock groups out of Portland -- Friday night:

Henryk Gorecki Leaves Us

Today we learn of the passing of Polish composer Henryk Gorecki, undoubtedly best known for his "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs" for soprano and orchestra. I remember well my first listen nearly twenty years ago, staring out into a rainy Los Angeles night from my darkened downtown loft, hearing Dawn Upshaw and the London Sinfonietta.

Here is a different performance (in Auschwitz) of the music, but one which conveys the feeling from that night. The text of this movement is said to be taken from a prayer inscribed on a cell wall by a 17-year-old Polish girl who was imprisoned and tortured by the Gestapo in 1944.

Soprano: Isabel Bayrakdaraian, Sinfonietta Cracovia, conducted by John Axelrod.
Taken from "HOLOCAUST - A Music Memorial Film from Auschwitz". For the first time since its liberation, permission was granted for music to be heard in Auschwitz and a number of leading musicians were brought there to perform music for the film.

I have to wonder how many people across the planet are listening to Gorecki's symphony now, tonight ...

Happily, my music collection also includes the Gorecki string quartets commissioned by the Kronos Quartet. A remembrance is posted here by Kronos' David Harrington.

Some background on Gorecki if you are not familiar is here and many other places on the Web, like Wikipedia.

Esperanza Spalding

Tonight, on the PBS NewsHour:

Dylan and Google

If you are a Google user (who isn't?!), you may be aware of Google Instant, a realtime progressive search mechanism that is demonstrated to good effect by ... Bob Dylan!



This video has generated a fair amount of Internet buzz, with an example and some history here.

NPR 24/7 and some tangents

NPR announces their new All Songs 24/7 Music Channel. Also find there a listing of NPR member stations with continuous music streams (I think they are categorized as Rock/Pop/Folk, Classical, Jazz/Blues and Other). This kind of stuff may not be ideal for audiophiliac-type hard listening (about the best you can expect from Internet radio MP3 streams is 128kbps), but it is a good way to keep music in the background at home or in the office.

I have made quite a few discoveries of music I would not have found otherwise by listening to Internet radio, going back to the early Internet days of Shoutcast. We used to listen often to KCRW's Eclectic 24 and other kcrw.com programs (when I lived in L.A. I was addicted to KCRW, Santa Monica College's public radio station), but now Kim usually has Radio Paradise streaming via Roku while she goes about life in the kitchen and rest of the house. My bedside Logitech Squeezebox usually puts me to sleep/wakes me up to the alt/indie pop/rock stream from OPBMusic. All of these sources are recommended, but one of my very favorites that I connect with now and then is David Byrne's stream of whatever is on his current playlist: right now he has a terrific playlist of tangos featured.

Geminus Guitar Duo

Foti Lycouridis and Hideki Yamaya are the Portland-based Geminus Guitar Duo, and last night they performed at our local library.



Their instruments are 6-, 7- and 10-string guitars, restored mostly from 19th century instruments they have salvaged throughout the world, often via eBay.








Their program consisted largely of music of that time as well, and represented pieces and composers that were quite new to me. Their program ranged from Johann Kasper Mertz, an 1800s Hungarian guitarist/composer, to some more contemporary Greek dances by Argiris Kounadis.



If you visit their fascinating Website, you can see that Lycouridis and Yamaya have heavyweight CVs and some terrific examples of their work.

The Wilderness Downtown

When the new Arcade Fire album, The Suburbs, was released a couple of months ago, I found myself somewhat nonplussed. Long a fan, it nevertheless has taken some time for the album to gradually grow on me. One of my favorite cuts is We Used To Wait. If you have installed the Chrome browser and have a decent amount of bandwidth and processor, arguably the best way to hear that song is by visiting thewildernessdowntown.com.

The Creole Choir of Cuba

Credit the B&W Society of Sound for bringing this one to my attention. The Creole Choir of Cuba is a group of Haitian migrants to Cuba, doing a'capella "undiscovered music of the Caribbean". Visit their Website, YouTube and Myspace site to hear this intoxicating stuff. In the meantime ...

Hilary Again

Fresh from our mention the other day, Hilary Hahn appeared on the radar again last night when the PBS Newshour did a piece on her collaboration with composer Jennifer Higdon, which you can see here. (Here is a most interesting NPR (National Public Radio) interview on the same subject, also.)

A plus was Hilary's bonus performance of Bach's Sarabande in D minor...



You might also like to check out one of the earliest interviews with Hilary I heard back in 2004 on NPR. Over the years, NPR has included Hilary in quite a few pieces, which I encourage you to explore on its site.

Finally, I must turn you on to one of my favorite CDs ... Bach: Violin and Voice in which Hilary accompanies Matthias Goerne and Christine Schafer in a variety of Bach cantatas and selections from the Mass in B minor and the St. Matthew Passion.

The Jazz Loft

If you are interested in jazz history, this piece from the ASC (American Society of Cinematographers) is a must-read. And, if like me, you also have forever admired and been inspired by the photography of W. Eugene Smith, you gotta read this story.

http://www.ascmag.com/blog/2010/05/10/w-eugene-smith-david-x-young-and-the-jazz-loft/

Hilary and More

Profound disappointment. This weekend Hilary Hahn (remember her from this post?) will be performing with the Oregon Symphony. And I won't make it. Here is a piece from The Oregonian on Hilary.

Other good things went down in Portland this week. Arcade Fire was in concert, with Calexico as its opening act. Holy cow! I understand that Calexico was even covering Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart" something that brings back my hours of listening in punk-era Los Angeles, with and without Kim. Again, The Oregonian (by way of Jeff Baker, its book editor) comments.

My typical Saturday night at home, searching out musical treasure on the Internet, has now at least these three ways to go...Wonder if that Joy Division cover is out there somewhere? But, of course:




Can't stop there, of course. Joy Division itself:



Now that that is taken care of, I am going to return to violin and Arvo Part's Spiegel Im Spiegel, which I was hearing when I read about the Hilary concerts ...

Six Years of Noah

I tried something like this in the pre-digital 70s, but, alas, couldn't get past the first 30-some days.



Lots of people do this, I guess. Here's another one, a bit less ambitious:

An Offer From David Byrne

All The Pretty Little Horses

I've been listening to and exploring the music of Odetta today, triggered by the previous post on Water Boy. In doing so, I came upon her rendition of All The Pretty Little Horses, said to be an old slave lullaby sung by a mother who had to leave and lost her child to tend to the master's children:



I'm a pretty big fan of Calexico, so was delighted when I then found their take on this song:



Next, here is Laura Gibson's recent rendition. Gibson is gaining a big following here out of Portland:

Water Boy

Have been away for nearly three weeks in the Midwest with my brother and sister, dealing with our mother's funeral and its run-up and aftermath. While going through her belongings, we came upon a CD mix that brother Dennis has custom-compiled for her some years ago, including Odetta's Water Boy. When we were playing the CD, he mentioned that his favorite rendition was Don Shirley's, but he had been unable to locate or hear it for years. So, returning home, I can now present the Don Shirley Trio, circa 1962, with Water Boy:




This, too, was one of my favorites, nearly once forgotten (by me). The trio's (piano, cello, string bass) playing is wonderful, subtle, moving stuff.

Of course, Odetta's take on this is very special itself:

Beyond Shutter Island

Last night, Netflix sent along a copy of Shutter Island. I had forgotten that it had entered the queue -- we have a practiced tendency to preload the thing based on particular actors or directors without too much other information. As Leonardo DiCaprio is one of our favorites, he becomes a "first-round default". Before we sat down to view the thing, Kim looked up a few reviews and stayed with me to watch only rather reluctantly, now expecting only violence and scariness and little else.

The music turned out to be, by far, the best thing about this movie. I was taken by surprise when we started hearing the likes of Max Richter and Brian Eno, and it just kept coming -- stuff by John Adams, John Cage, Krzysztof Penderecki, Morton Feldman, Lou Harrison and more. And it was all interwoven into the film with a very subtle touch. Really interesting was a mix by Robbie Robertson that played during the final credits roll, overlaying Max Richter's On The Nature of Daylight with (the late/great) Dinah Washington's rendition of This Bitter Earth.




This Bitter Earth / On The Nature of Daylight Mix

Captured: America in Color from 1939-1943

The Denver Post's always-interesting photo blog recently published an array of color photos, taken between 1939 and 1943, by photographers commissioned by the Farm Security Administration and the Office of War Information. See them all on the Denver Post's Plog.

The photo at left was done by Jack Delano, one of the famous FSA photographers recruited by Roy Stryker to document the Great Depression, its aftermath and other Americana. As such, Delano was on the same team as the likes of Dorothea Lange and John Vachon (Vachon, interestingly, was "rediscovered" recently when a series of his very rare Marilyn Monroe photos from the 50s was published this year). I also find it interesting that Delano was also a composer of music.

Back Again, The Society of Sound and Afro Celts

After a 4,000 plus mile July auto/photo trip from Oregon to/through Idaho, Montana, South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah and back, I am ready to return to home bound life and new music listens.

Hoping not to sound like a commercial, I just made a foray into the Society of Sound (sponsored by the highly-reputed audiophile British loudspeaker makers, Bowers & Wilkins (B&W). I had often heard of the Society of Sound as being a source of 16-bit and 24-bit lossless digital music of extremely high quality through blogs, Stereophile, etc., but I have finally got around to starting a three-month trial membership, which lets me download selected samples. If what I downloaded and heard last night is a good indication of what can come of a full subscription (I think it is only about $60/year), I'm pretty much getting right in line.

One of the files I grabbed was a 10-minute piece called Mojave by Afro Celt Sound System (a group I used to hear often on a public radio New Age program whose name escapes me at the moment). Absolutely stunning running through my Xonar Essence sound card into my old Sennheisers. (And today I received a UPS package from John Grado, containing my Grado cans fresh back from repair by Grado Labs, so I have to try that configuration, too.) And I heard just the 16-bit FLAC version, so can't wait to hear a 24-bit version. You can get a little taste of some of Afro Celt's music -- including a lower-fi version of Mojave -- on its MySpace site. Or check them out at the Society of Sound blog. Great stuff. Btw, it appears that the Society of Sound album is a special remix-remastering available nowhere else, at least in this particular compilation.

Peter Gabriel Covers Tom Waits For The Voice Project

Peter Gabriel » Tom Waits from The Voice Project on Vimeo.

Thanks again to John for turning me onto The Voice Project and sharing with me our interest in the music of Tom Waits.

Do It In Your Living Room

Friend John tells me that his friend Keith and other fans helped pull off this "2010 Living Room Tour" event, inviting the Trashcan Sinatras to perform in a Portland living room to unofficially kick off their U.S. tour. Read about it here.

Try the Trashcan Sinatras Myspace page if you want to hear some of their music.

Bettye LaVette, The Morning After

A couple of days later, and more listens, I must admit that my enthusiasm is waning somewhat. As much as I like Bettye, her take on every piece in this album (see Bettye LaVette and the Brits) seems pretty much the same so far. You be the judge.

Bettye LaVette and the Brits

Found out about this while listening to that great radio humor-news show, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me on NPR Radio this morning:



If you even begin to like soul-funk-rhythm/blues goddess Bettye LaVette as much as I do, you will probably love this stuff. I'm ordering my own copy immediately.

Visit Bettye

Lost, and Then Some ...

Okay. People keep asking, so I may as well get it over with.

Daughter Ivi talked me into staying up with her for the finale Sunday night of LOST.

What a disappointment. Smaltzy, cliche-ridden, cop-out, juvenile, boring are all terms that come to mind, even though I suppose that in a general way it is almost the best that could be hoped for, given the corner the writers seemed to have painted themselves into. Some nice moments here and there, but mostly gratuitous and rather insipid. Reminded me of Indiana Jones films in places. Jack (I suppose that one mark of the show's success is how I think of such characters as "Jack" and not Matthew Fox, for example) seemed rather foolish and pathetic. "Sawyer" continues his stream of overacting (probably trying to act his way out of bad writing), etc. The worst of it all -- Ivi and I were both in agreement on this -- was the music; the soundtrack seemed like something from a cheap Hollywood film or TV show from years past, almost canned off-the-shelf stuff that might be included in do-it-yourself video or slideshow production software for amateur home users. If I had never seen any interviews of the writers, it might have helped; they seemed uninspired, almost juvenile, a bit too full of themselves and the "importance" of their themes and willing to go off in whatever direction their whims seemed to take them. You could almost imagine storylines coming out of a Cheech-and-Chong-like pot-smoking session.

I have refused to let Lost waste any more of my life, so I am avoiding any reviews or post-mortems, but I do get the drift that as many people loved it as hated it, and it continues to be controversial. Perhaps some sort of movie sequel(s) will emerge later on. Heck, maybe a video game.

ADDENDUM #1: I recently rather accidentally discovered my latest fix for TV dramedy: Six Feet Under. For some reason, I had never heard of that five-season HBO series that had launched in 2001 or 2002, nor did I know anyone else who did. Stumbling across the fact that Radiohead had some part in its OST, I had to take a listen. Figuring that if Radiohead was involved, it couldn't be all bad, so I Netflix'd the first disk of season one, and have become hooked. Closing in by now on season five, I have to move Six Feet Under to position two, just behind my current "all-time" TV fave, Mad Men. Battlestar Galactica is probably number three, and Lost has slipped to fourth spot. If you haven't done Six Feet Under, I highly recommend that you give it a go. I do get sick and tired of, say, characters like Brenda, but after all that is how it often works out in real life with people you still stick with. These are characters you come to really care about, in contrast to the Lost characters, who mostly gradually became increasingly meaningless. But the Six Feet Under acting is great (the women actors are especially impressive), and the writing and other qualities don't let up. (By the way, I have imagined and speculated on an end to that series -- please, no spoilers -- that would perhaps be something like I had hoped for with Lost, only done right ...)

ADDENDUM #2: I also find myself currently following ABC's Flash Forward, for escapist fare that suits my sci-fi fancy when I come home from work so wiped out that I cannot seem to leave my easy chair. Mostly good fun. Lost's "Charlie" really comes on as a great sometimes bad guy in this thing, and I find myself somewhat drawn to the Janice and Dmitri characters, but the others are mostly forgettable.

ADDENDUM #3: On one of those recent occasions when I fell asleep in aforementioned easy chair, I was to awaken for about half an hour to catch a chunk of a new BBC Hamlet done in modern trappings, led by the Doctor Who character (a favorite of my kids in that series; I forget his name) playing a barefoot, rock tee-shirted, levis-wearing crazy-making Hamlet. This one must be revisited when it comes around again, or maybe I will seek out the DVD -- there must be one -- when I get a chance.

The Tallest Man on Earth

Friend John suggests this one ...

Song Of The Day: Sorrow

This piece is from High Violet, a new album from The National.



You can stream the album in its entirety from NPR First Listen until its release date on May 11. Don't know if the embed above will go away at that time. I pretty much like everything on High Violet; but I have been a fan of The National for some time now ...

The Jerusalem Project

Jordi Savall is responsible for one of my favorite CDs, period. It is the 1991 soundtrack to the film (which is worth a watch, too), "Tous les matins du monde".

So my interest was aroused when I learned that he was doing The Jerusalem Project at the Lincoln Center this week. This thing seems to be a pretty ambitious presentation of music that came out of the religions and cultures that influenced the city's development over the past six centuries, using authentic instrumentation and voicing when possible. Much different than the Baroque music from Tous les matins du monde, it is nonetheless a compelling listen. You can stream it from NPR now, all two and a half hours' worth. Listening to this -- and I haven't finished it all yet -- is today's birthday present to myself.

Singing Poetry

Natalie Merchant has just released an album, Leave Your Sleep, generated from a six-year-long project to put to music the words of a number of mostly 19th- and 20th-century poets: Robert Graves, Ogden Nash, others. Here is a sample:



Whether the singing of these things is a better experience than the reading of them, I suppose, is a question. But, they certainly do provide some inspiration to revisit or discover the originals. And I will be listening to this music again.

Find an NPR piece on this project here.

Jacques Offenbach, E.T.A. Hoffman, et. al.

Last night I watched the Met production of Offenbach's Tales Of Hoffman on PBS-TV:



I don't know much about Hoffman (played by Maltese tenor Joseph Calleja) himself, except that he was a real 19th-century German poet/musician/artist.

Always rowdy and a bit weird, this zany Fellini-like production included the androgynous muse (Kate Lindsey), topless ladies dancing with dwarves, guys making out with mannequins, an incredible coloratura performance of the singing "doll" (Korean soprano Kathleen Kim) in Act I (seen by Hoffman through his rose-colored glasses), and much more craziness from the 19th century, perhaps a precursor to French and German cabaret.

This opera, as you may know, is probably most famous musically for its second (or third?) act barcarolle, probably one of the best known pieces in all of opera. I browsed up half a dozen or more performances, of which the following was my favorite variant, as done by Romanian opera sisters, Irina and Christina Iordachescu:



Keep on an eye on your local PBS station and don't miss this production when it inevitably reruns.

What The Still Photo Still Does Best

Friend and fellow photog John sends along a link to this New York Times piece on recently-deceased civil rights photographer, Charles Moore and the role of photojournalism.

Toby Works Out - Practicing With A New Drum Kit

Remember Imelda?

Here is some information on the unusual David Byrne project on the life of Imelda Marcos, for the soon-to-be-released Here Lies Love album:

Learn more here and here.

Also don't miss the video for the Please Don't track.

Don't know who Imelda is? She was one of the most famous women in the world at one time -- do some Googling and sharpen your knowledge of world history.

Johnny Carson and the Rat Pack

A friend sends along this rarity, for those who might be old enough to appreciate it:

Veering A Bit Off Topic Here

But I can't resist ...

How Did Beethoven Really Sound?

Over the years Michael Frederick has assembled in the Frederick Historic Piano Collection an array of antique, restored pianos from about 1790 - 1907, all housed in a Massachusetts village. A recent article from Slate takes us on a fascinating visit, comparing modern piano sound with that of the Beethoven era.

A Couple For Valentine's Day

First, the Tom Waits classic:

And something for Kim (by Roberta Flack):

Song Of The Day: This Land Is Your Land

This Land Is Your Land by Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings.

Last night we watched "Up In The Air", an Oscar nominee this year. This song led off the film, and is not what you may be used to hearing from Woody Guthrie, its composer, or, say, Pete Seeger.

Sharon Jones did her version a few years ago. Although I am a fan of her gospel/funk/soul sound that makes me imagine a blend of Mavis Staples and Tina Turner, I had never heard it before. But you can now:



Coincidentally, we happened to see Sharon Jones a couple of weeks ago on Saturday Night Live, so you can probably find a video clip of her performance then.

Song of the Day: Blagdon Lake

Blagdon Lake by Beak (Invada Records)



Beak is three-person group, including Geoff Barrows of Portishead, whose work I have followed and admired for many years. Also Matt Williams and Billy Fuller.

At today's currency conversion rates, I paid a mere $1.12 to download a FLAC version (many other formats are available, more than I usually see in one place). You can do the same or just get more information at http://beak.bandcamp.com/album/beak

We Shall Overcome

Here, in celebration of MLK, two takes on the iconic hymn. First, in the 1960s by Mahalia Jackson, then Diana Ross in the 1990s:

Song of the Day: Wedding Bells by Lissie (EP: Why You Runnin')

More like the song (and EP, from Fat Possum Records) of the Past Few Weeks!

First heard Lissie doing this remarkable (and almost unrecognizable) Hank Williams cover on KCRW, then OPBMusic and NPR. Right now, I can't seem to get enough of Lissie. And she has triggered some memories and other side-thoughts ...

My brother used to live in a place where the Mississippi River flows "sideways". I would sometime stopover at his Davenport, Iowa home on my flights from LA to D.C. or New York, and see dearest niece Gabrielle, then a very small child (whose own child, Toby Ellis, just recently served up the drumming while laying down some tracks on a project with Crazy Horse's -- of Neil Young fame -- bass player and vocalist, Billy Talbot). Across the street from their apartment the train passed several times a day, and "Rock Island Line" (originally sung and perhaps composed by Lead Belly, and popularized during my boyhood by Lonnie Donegan) figured frequently in our songs and conversation. This was the "Quad-Cities" area (actually I think it encompassed five cities). One of the constituent cities, just south of the river, was Rock Island, Illinois.

So when I found that Lissie Maurus originated in Rock Island, I took notice. Now she is in Ojai, north of Los Angeles, a neighborhood also well-known to me. Listen to her on her MySpace page, during her guest appearance on KCRW (try to ignore Jason Bentley's unfortunate questions and comments) and as previewed on NPR's World Cafe.