Tag: review

Summer Playlists on the Torg Stories Podcast

Summer Music Playlists Discussion on this episode of the Torg Stories Podcast!

Last week we did our favorite things to do on a nice day in Los Angeles and Boone, NC and this week we’ll go over the music we’d listen to on these beautiful days. We talk about how we got to these lists of songs, and we listen to an excerpt from each of our ten songs.

BOONE, NC (Bill): It’s a beautiful day in Boone, what songs am I listening to? 

  1. “Motorcycle Drive By” by Zach Bryan
  • 2022 release. Born in Japan. Parents in Navy. Moved to Oklahoma. In the Navy for 8 years. 
  • Lyrics “I will be in Richmond by tonight” and “I think it’s about time we headed home”
  • It has a motorcycle that propels you and they are going somewhere like me in my car on the beautiful day. 
  1. “In a Big Country” by Big Country
  • 1983 release. Scottish rock band. Participated in “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” song. This song came out in 1983.
  • Lyrics: they say “Ha!” or is it “Shock!” to open and “Shout!” in one sentence lines. 
  • Think it’s guitars to sound like bagpipes 
  1. “Motion Sickness” by Phoebe Bridges
  • 2017 release. From Pasadena, CA. About her relationship with Ryan Adams.
  • Lyrics: Somebody roll the windows down. There are no words in the English language I could scream to drown you out. 
  1. “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man” by Bob Seeger
  • 1969 release. 80 years old. From Detroit. This song was on his debut album in 1969. 
  • Lyrics: ‘Cause I was born lonely down by the riverside. Learned to spin fortune wheels, and throw dice. I was just thirteen when I had to leave home. Knew I couldn’t stick around, I had to roam
  1. “Just Drive” by Erin Kinsey
  • 2022 release. From Texas. 24 years old. 
  • Lyrics pretty much what we are doing here: You and me, this white Toyota. Paramore on the radio Going 90, down 40
  1. “Castle on the Hill” by Ed Sheeran
  • 2017 release. A love letter to Suffolk. NE of London. It’s the Framlingham Castle mentioned in the song. He wanted to make a song like Bruce Springsteen’s “The River.” 
  • Lyrics: I’m on my way. Driving at 90 down those country lanes Singing to “Tiny Dancer”
  • More lyrics: He writes, “but I can’t wait to go home.” Does this exist for us? 
  1. “See You In the Afterlife” by Foster The People
  • 2024 release. Formed in LA in 2009. They sang “Pumped up Kicks.” Singer Mark Foster is married to Ozark actress Julia Garner. 
  • Most interesting song lyrically on my list? Today I woke up crying, so I went into a church to pray. They said, “Excuse me, but you’ll have to leave or we’re calling security”
  1. “And We Danced” by The Hooters
  • 1985 Release. Philly origins. Wrote it in the Poconos.
  • They took their name from a nickname for the melodica, a type of keyboard harmonica.
  • Lyrics: I met my be-bop baby at the Union Hall. She could dance all night and shake the paint off the wall
  1. “Space Age Love Song” by A Flock of Seagulls
  • 1982 Release. Liverpool origins. A singer from The Stranglers yelled at them, “A Flock of Seagulls.” They decided that would be their new name. 
  • Not a lyrically interesting song other than maybe a minimalist approach. 
  1. “Takin’ It to the Streets” by The Doobie Brothers
  • 1976 Release. First to feature Michael McDonald on lead vocals. 

LOS ANGELES (Anne): It’s a beautiful day in LA, what songs is Anne listening to?  

  1. “Close To You”by Dayglow
    • 1/20/21, Day glow is Sloan Christian Struble, Texan.
    • Lyrics, “I’m only overthinking when I’m close to you”
  2. “What a Fool Believes” by Self
    • Remake of Doobie Brothers song, played entirely with toy instruments. Did an entire album being played with toy instruments.
    • Original song written by Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins released in 1978.
  3. “Fever”, by Inner Wave
    • 2021. Inner Wave is from LA.
    • Lead singer says song has “driving up the coast vibes” 
  4. “All My Happiness is Gone”, by Purple Mountains
    • 2019. David Berman, a poet and musician.
    • Sadly committed suicide a month after release. He was 52 and in rehearsals for tour. First album after 10 years. Known for lyrics.
    • All the lyrics in this song are great, “Mounting mileage on the dash, Double darkness falling fast, I keep stressing pressing on”
    • By A song that sounds uplifting but lyrics hit hard. I listened to another song about his mom from this album, made me get teary eyed at work.
  5. “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi”, by Radiohead
    • 2007
    • A song that ends in a great climax, great guitar ending.
    • Lyrics “Everybody leaves, if they get the chance, and this is my chance” “I hit the bottom, hit the bottom and escape”
    • Great backing vocal, eerie vocals.
  6. “Escapism”, by RAYE, 070 Shake
    • 2022. 
    • Its about partying to forget your pain, in a bad place. Lyrics: “Just a heart broke b****, high heels, six inch, in the back of a nightclub, sippin’ champagne
  7. “Wait a Minute”, by Willow, 2019 became a hit from TikTok trend
    • 2015, she was 15 years old
    • Willow is daughter of Will Smith and Jada Pinket.
    • First heard this on a youtube of Coachella performance
    • Lyrics: “Wait a minute. I left my consciousness in the sixth dimension”
    • Pronounces things as tings in song to good effect
  8. “Fire”, by Waxahatchee. Jump in
    • 2020.
    • Katie Crutchfield, named after a creek in Alabama. 
    • She is a twin
    • I saw her open for someone at Hollywood Bowl, maybe Haim, this song stuck with me.
  9. “Never Too Much”, by Luther Vandross
    • 1981. Debut song written/composed/produced by him alone
    • I of course know Luther Vandross, but only recently have listened to this song a lot because I heard on TikTok
    • Great vibe song, a happy song

10. “Where She Goes”, by Bad Bunny

  • 2023. Coachella really brought me to Bad Bunny and he released this shortly after that with a great desert video filmed near there.
  • I don’t know Spanish, but the opening lyric is easy “Baby, dime la verdad” (Baby, tell me the truth) I also like singing “Quisiera volverte a ver” (I would like to see you again). Also in English he says “I go where she goes”

We’d love to hear what’s on your summer playlist!

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Torg Stories Podcast!

Did the PCC’ers Visit You On Your Way Marriage?

As Josh Henkin’s novel Matrimony kicks off, there is no sign of marriage, just college dorm hilarity when the PCC-ers—Peer Contraceptive Counselors—come for a visit to educate the new freshman dorm dwellers.  Given the pacing, I forgot that this was a book that purported to be about marriage and I started to expect a story that took place in a small college over a couple of days, or at most, a semester.  I could feel some of my own Love on the Big Screen story coming on when there was some early bathroom talk between the protagonist Julian and his roommate Carter:

It’s bad enough to pee in your own shower,” his roommate said.  “But in a communal shower?”  He looked up at Julian.  “You don’t pee in the shower, do you?”

“No,” Juian said.  From time to time, he had.  Didn’t everyone?

Joshua Henkin's novel, MATRIMONY

I love Henkin’s timing with his “From time to time, he had,” line.  The sentences are full of those sorts of attention-grabbing surprises, and you’ll hear a lot more from Julian and his roommate, interesting stuff, about how men navigate relationships, especially when those relationships overlap.  Henkin deftly takes big jumps in time when it comes to the narrative, and this is mostly achieved by dividing the story into geographically organized sections:  Northington, Ann Arbor, Berkley, Iowa City, and New York.  It’s with these jumps in time that Henkin is able to go down into specific detail while still telling the story of what it is to be married, at least for Julian and his wife Mia.

Julian and Mia make decisions that have consequences and things happen to their marriage that sometimes happen in relationships.  In reading the book, I’m reminded that I heard Henkin say several times at the Wesleyan Writers Conference something to this effect:  When writing, you want smart characters who are capable of intelligent mistakes.  While none of the events or mistakes that concern Mia and Julian are shocking, all of them are a surprise, probably because the range of things that can happen to any couple—get hit by a car, find out the apartment is full of rats, or make a million in the stock market—is nearly infinite.  Things happen to the couple and it’s interesting to read about how each character responds and interacts with and toward their spouse.

A Picture of Henkin from His Website

Matrimony can sometimes feel like a book on the art of writing.  Julian and his friend Carter are both writers who attend a workshop class taught by a Professor Chesterfield who spouts guidance such as this:  “THOU SHALT NOT CONFUSE A SHORT STORY WITH A RUBIK’S CUBE.”  I sometimes hear folks criticize writers who write books about characters who want to write books  (I see their point) but I think the writing process of everyone who writes is so highly personal and individualized that it’s usually interesting to hear how writers do what they do.  This is a book more about marriage than writing, but there’s also a funny bit where a character writes a story with a character who thinks about breaking up with their boyfriend for over 20 pages.  Thankfully we don’t have to read the pages; we just comically hear about the story from other characters as the novel proceeds.  In this way Henkin is a skilled comedian who uses repetition to make the joke even funnier than it was the first time.

Henkin keeps the language fresh, and for awhile I was thinking that maybe there was at least one vocabulary word for me on every page.  Here’s a few I jotted down that I had to look up:  petard, jejune, peremptoriness, bathetic, somnolent, and bivouacking.  Of course there is much more to fresh language than my vocab list, but I found myself marking interesting word choices as I read.  Most of the characters are book lovers and part of the reward for reading this novel was their lively wordplay banter.

For a guy like me who has spent a lot of time thinking about how relationships work and don’t work, Matrimony presents a view of marriage that makes sense to me:  hard stuff happens and the couple tries to hang in together and on some levels they succeed and on others they fail.  Part of what was interesting here was to see what the couple decides to do about splitting up or staying together.   From the complexities of in-laws to a crazy dog in a small NYC apartment, Matrimony shows readers a marriage worth paying attention to.