Best of FR (Timothy Huff Edition)

It might be obvious to some of my faithful readers that I am losing steam with this blog. I just don't quite have the motivation that I used to for posting here. Mike Ward and Ricky B both found new motivation this week, and provided two great posts after a failed recipe week. Bravo guys...a job well done. I'll get you a Natty Bo next time I see you. Consider it a business expense on Friends Recommends' tab.

Before I completely fail at this blog I wanted to revisit some of the things that have really stood out for me. When I first get these lists I try to check out everything possible. Albums, YouTube clips, some television shows, and some movies were all easy to check out in a relatively short amount of time, while books, etc. took a little bit longer to digest. There are things on each of these lists that stood out to me as being particularly great, and have stood the test of time. Since I've picked up a few readers along the way who may not have backtracked and read about these things I'm going to revisit a few from each list that I think are particularly note-worthy. My only rule for this is that these are things that I checked out as a result of this blog, and not things mentioned on the list that I was previously aware of. Sort of my thank-you to the list-makers, the movers and the shakers who provided me with some great picks that I have in turn re-recommended.

From the Huff list there are two (kind of three) recommends that are stand-out, knock-down great picks that I think everyone can enjoy. You have to be a little bit weird to enjoy the second one, but anyone who made it through recipe week and is still reading this blog is probably a little weird. So here they are:

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close--Jonathon Safron Foer

This was the first thing I checked out as a result of Friends Recommends and it remains in my top-3 favorite things I discovered as a result of doing this blog. It is probably in my current top-3 favorite books as well. I know that Eric, Ricky, Heather, (Jessica?), and others all read it as a result and all had positive reviews. This book will break your heart, I don't care who you are. Break your heart in a good way. Well, not really a good way, but in a way that isn't bad, OK? I know it made Eric wear heavy boots on his cruise last year which he gave me crap for. Whatever, just don't read it if you are looking for something light. I have some Danielle Steele novels to recommend if you are looking for a beach read. Anyway, I would tell anyone I know to check out this book, and I would stand behind it strongly. So if you missed it the first time around you have a second chance. Here is the link to my original post about the book in case you missed that as well.

Cheap at Half the Price--Fred Frith

This one has also stuck with me for the past 8 months, and everytime I listen to it it gets better. I have since moved on to checking out some other Fred Frith work, but this one is still my favorite. Wacky music, but with a pop-ish, sing-along-ish element in a real weird way. I also think there is something for everyone in this pick...it just takes a little work and some repeated listenings. The reward will be that you end up loving Fred Frith. Link to my original post with some sound clips as well. Man, I just went back and listened to those clips and it made me smile. Great stuff.

Anything by Murakami

So far I don't feel strongly enough about Murakami to recommend anything by the guy, but some of his books have been stand-out great for me. I will discuss these further when we visit the lists of people who recommended specific books, and not just this little man.

Anyway, I highly recommend you go back and check these two things out if you didn't the first time around. I wouldn't have posted about them originally if I didn't feel strongly but the fact that I am willing to post again about them should make you run to the store and buy the things. Also, I am about to re-read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close which says something, right?

Cory should be up next. We'll see how long I can keep this going...maybe I can get through everyone. If I don't get through everyone it is nothing against you, OK?

More Changes, The New Wilco, Recipes?

Well, some more changes around the Friends Recommends parts. Our good friend and beloved blogger TJ Huff has resigned his duty as our Thursday blogger. I hold this against him in no way because I have often thought of resigning my blogging duties as well. I guess I pretty much resigned my blogging duties (at least a good portion of them) when I enlisted the help of TJ, thechristophermyers, and Mike Ward (help which I am very grateful for). Anyway, I am certain that TJ will still be around in the comments section, happy to be relieved of his blogging responsibilities. Although, I am very interested in a blog about Radiolab, so maybe he can give us a guest blog on that when the time is right. For now watch out for our good friend Ricky B to take over Thursday blogging. He has admitted to having no idea what he is going to do with it but I'm sure it will be entertaining to most people (especially Erichop).

I had hoped to have another Jenny recommends for today, but when I went to Netflix to watch one of her movies (I've never seen Clue!) none of them were view instantly. More of those are coming soon...I promise. She has invited all of us to go Letterboxing with her sometime. I'm sure she would regret this as soon as it happened.


I'm positive nearly everyone who reads this has at least heard that a new Wilco album titled "Wilco (The Album)" is coming out at the end of June. I'm sure most of you know that it is streaming in it's entirety HERE and I'm sure at least some of you have listened to it. I heard the first half two days ago, and this afternoon when I sat down to do computer things I found that I heard the whole album all the way through. I'm listening to it again right now and I really love it. I want to have it in CD form so I can listen to it while I drive. I am already anticipating this being a wonderful thing. I don't have too many thoughts about the album yet, this being only the second time I've really heard it all. I can tell you that I think the songwriting is solid, Jeff Tweedy sounds GREAT, and as always the guitar work of Nels Cline doesn't disappoint. I still haven't checked out Sky Blue Sky and although it has received very mixed reviews from friends I still intend to buy it. I really love A Ghost Is Born and Summerteeth, but for totally different reasons. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is one of my favorite albums ever, so I guess I compare all Wilco albums to it. Wilco (The Album), at least so far seems to lean back towards Summerteeth in it's feel-good rockiness, and away from the experimentation/drony/soundiness of A Ghost Is Born (which I also love). And although I can't give a total impression just yet, I can say that as soon as this album is released on June 30 I am going to buy it. It is certain to at least be an album that I really like, and will listen to obsessively for a week or two. It will at least be that for me, with a strong chance for more. Good job, guys. I recommend you listen to the first song (Wilco (The Song)) and see how it hits you...it gives a pretty good impression of what else is coming, but by no means tells the full story. Those of you who have listened, what do you think so far?

Lastly, there have been rumblings around here of people interested in posting some of their favorite recipes. This will have to be more than just posting a recipe, but I am willing to give another week in the blogsphere to this idea somewhere down the line if people actually want to do this. I don't know how to turn on an oven, so I am out for this one. But if everyone is dying for the recipe to Ricky's mashed beer potatoes coupled with some hilarious anecdote then I will not try to stand in the way.

The TJ Top 5

i thought this task was going to be easy. it was even more difficult than me trying to type this posting with perfect posture. very difficult things for me. one thing i found very interesting was that my top 5 songs weren't necessarily by bands who i would call my top 5 bands... i mean... maybe.... but maybe not... weird that those two don't go hand in hand. while i was compiling the list of 5, it accidentally stretched to about 18 songs or so. so i had to really edit there and i attempted to break down those 18 into categories and not put in more than one from each cateegory - so some great tunes were left out. i must say though, with all this tom waits trashing going on, i was tempted to fill my list with his songs... which could almost be feasible, but i refrained. i would like to retort, however, that the beegees might go on my bottom 5 bands list... so perhaps me and chris/mike make a nice yin and yang here? but still, if i ever ran into a Bee or a Gee, they'd better be carrying cupcakes or be saying something real nice about my mom or something... otherwise i might do something mean like trip them - and i don't want to be a mean person

without further time awaisted: the top 5 (in alphabetical order by the artist name)


martha my dear - the beatles :



here we have 2 and a half minutes of musical perfection. the beatles were really faultless on this whole album... but this particular song just can't be more in the pocket. its a bit wonky, and real happy and i think gives some pretty good advice. at the 1 minute mark when the drums come in i really challenge anyone not to bob their head along. i actually didnt really learn to appreciate this particular song until later on in my beatles enjoyment. it perhaps was an acquired taste. i hope you enjoy... i suggest listening two times in a row. if you put your iTunes on repeat 1 it really does a nice job at swinging it back around.


one down, one up - john coltrane :



this one was too easy for me actually. john coltrane is my hero, and while people often say that live coltrane really outweighs any studio sessions... i sometimes disagree; in particularly with regards to this song. a note before you listen: this is a song that requires your attention. it needs to be loud and you need to actually LISTEN as opposed to just have it on and HEAR it. if you attempt the latter, i think you wont make it through the 15 or so necessary minutes to hear the whole crescendo, decrescendo and then reee-crescendo. the whole band is on point in this song and i used to listen to it over and over focussing on each instrument one time through... now thats a bit much... but if youre really bored and have 75 minutes on your hands its a great idea.


underground - kimya dawson :



kimya dawson recently got quite a bit more popular with the movie JUNO. but her recordings i find great across'd the board. this song, however, is my favorite of hers. she jumps between happy and sad songs, and sometimes straddles that fence with a great happy-sad song; which is the case here. the last verse in particular always gets me, when she talks about sinusitis and waking up in the middle of the night... it's really turns a tj mushy. there is not many musical artists who are more honest than kimya dawson and you really get it here i think


bed for the scraping - fugazi :



this one had to fight pretty hard for seat no. 5 on the list. i really like it a lot, but then again i really like fugazi a lot. this particular song i think nails this genre of music perfectly. these guys just exude the right sort of energy and do so flawlessly in this song. structurally there isn't a whole lot going on here... i think it is just a good reminder that its not necessarily what you say, but how you say it (when it comes to music... not really a love poem or a eulogy or anything)


don't know why i love you - stevie wonder :



speaking of creating the right kind of energy... stevie wonder could really bring it as good as anyone. this particular song starts so gently and just builds and builds until its brimming. there were a few stevie songs i was juggling for this spot, but this short, simple one came out on top. if you like this, i suggest you go watch some stevie wonder youtube clips after this - i just start feeling better when i watch this guy perform or banter with diana ross or something.

so that's my list... i don't know if "OF ALL TIME" is an appropriate ending to the "TOP 5" statement in my case... but these songs are certainly my current TOP 5.


for those songs that were left out - they are also real great and just barely missed the 5 seat, i will just list them here if anybody is interested (this doesn't count for my 5 right? riiiight guys?)

paloma negra - lila downs
persian march - johann strauss
prelude and fugue no. 7 in A Maj - Dmitri Shostakovich
i got a woman - elvis presley (live comeback version)
hummingbird - langhorne slim
come on up to the house - tom waits
shenandoah - keith jarrett from the melody at night with you album
carry stress in the jaw - mr. bungle

________ Sundays

This one is going to be a little bit of a recommends stretch for me. Since some of my fellow bloggers have gone a little bit outside of the box, I decided to do so for this Monday post because it is something that I feel strongly about.

This is the concept of _______ Sundays. It should be read like Richard Lewis' "The ______ from Hell." For the purpose of this post, ________ should just be read as "blank." The idea of ______ Sundays was suggested to me by our Thursday poster TJ Huff back when we were in our undergrad. However his ________ always takes the very specific format of Coltrane Sundays. There are no set rules for Coltrane Sundays, other than you try to make it a point to listen to some music by John Coltrane every Sunday. To me this is a great idea, and I try to do this religiously, like most people who go to church on Sundays. Sometimes I get way into this idea and listen to a whole lot of Coltrane, and some Sundays I just listen to a song or two. As I type this I realize that I haven't gotten my Sunday dose of any Coltrane today, but with a half hour remaining I can't think of a better way to close the weekend. Currently listening to "Chasin' the Trane (Live)" from Disc One of The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings. We'll see where we go from there. I hope TJ chimes in to enlighten us more as to his reasoning for the invention of Coltrane Sundays, and exactly when that happened. He is truly the biggest fan of John Coltrane's music that I know (and I know a lot of people who love him) and I suspect that he just wanted to make sure that he always makes time to appreciate his music.


So, my recommendation to you isn't necessarily to participate in Coltrane Sundays, because you might hate the music of John Coltrane. My recommendation is to find something that you love to do, or a musician that you love more than the rest and dedicate just a little bit of time one day a week (Sunday IS the perfect day) to make sure you appreciate that thing. You owe yourself. It is really easy to get caught up in the day-to-day of things we NEED to do, that sometimes we don't allow ourselves the luxery of listening to our favorite jazz saxophonist even for just one song that takes up five (or fifteen) minutes. That is a shame.
So, I urge you to find your own ______ and make sure you appreciate that thing at least one a week. Please let the Friends Recommends readers know if you have chosen a ______ for your ______ Sundays. It might catch on big like TJ's Coltrane Sundays.

My second pick was "Impressions (Live)" (Eric Dolphy!) from the same disc and album as "Chasin' the Trane" and my third will be "Everytime We Say Goodbye" from My Favorite Things.

A New Era of Friends Recommends

Perhaps this blog is still a little young to be entering a new era, but big changes happen starting today. Well, starting Monday. Actually technically starting Tuesday. Regardless, next week is the start of a whole new Friends Recommend. The reason for this change is that lately I've had a very hard time keeping up with blog posts, and have been unable to live up to my initial promise of posting every weekday with a new recommendation. So instead of giving up on the blog (the original plan) or posting less frequently (the second version of the plan) I will get by with a little help from my friends. I have enlisted three Friends Recommends superstars to assist with the posting duties, and bring you different angles and takes on each of these great lists. Each of these people have submitted a list already, and are no strangers to this blog. I am going to continue personally posting on Fridays, with new lists whenever we get them (now that I have other reviewers, I might do one of these myself). And I will also post on Mondays, with my typical one-sided reviews of things that you recommend to me. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday we will have guest bloggers taking over the duties and we can expect great things from them. Without further ado, I give you the new faces of Friends Recommend:

Tuesdays--The Christopher Myers


Wednesdays--Mike Ward


Thursdays--Timothy J. Huff



A little help...(when are they going to release this on DVD?)

Piero Manzoni--Artist Feces

This is an oldy but a goody, from our very first post by Timothy J. Huff. I revisit this for two reasons. 1) I am tired, and it is going to be short, and this is an easy one to sum up without being wordy. 2) I still need to further investigate this Myers list. 3) I feel like a lot of people missed this one in the first list. When I mention it to anyone they don't remember it being here. It is funny. I don't know if it is supposed to be funny, but it is. WARNING, this might gross you out slightly. But trust me, it is funny:

In 1961, Italian artist Piero Manzoni collected his own feces in 90 numbered cans, which contain 30 grams of feces each. Each can is labeled with "100% pure artist's sh*t" in English, German or French. Originally they were sold for their weight in gold, but they are currently valued to be worth between $25,000-35,000. In May of 2007 one of the cans sold for 124,000 euros(!) at Sotheby's. At the time 124,000 euros was the equivalent of $167,400. Search for it if you don't believe me. Pictured above is the English version, and below are the French and German. Discuss, please.

Cheap At Half the Price--Fred Frith

Fred Frith is a musician, composer, improviser, guitarist and more most commonly associated with the avant-garde side of jazz and improvised music. He is a musician that I haven't spent very much time familiarizing myself with, but one who I have always known I would enjoy and need to start listening to. I link to wikipedia a lot, but they have a pretty comprehensive description of him here if you are interested in learning more about the guy. Some of his work that I have checked out (not too in depth) and enjoyed is the band Skeleton Crew with Tom Cora, a duo album with Anthony Braxton, and some recordings with John Zorn. If you are looking for more stuff to check out perhaps Huff will chime in here and point you in the right direction.

The album we have today, and our last post from the TJ Huff list (our inaugural friends recommend list!) is Fred Frith's Cheap At Half the Price. TJ has been getting on me for a long time to listen to this one, even going as far as sneaking it on my ipod some months ago. It had been sitting there untouched until last week when I got TJ's recommend list and I figured it was probably time to give it a chance. I must admit, I am completely in love with this album now. It is eclectic beyond description with influences drawn from anywhere and everywhere. It is (supposedly) the first album Fred Frith sings on, which he does on about half the tracks, the other half of the album being instrumental. I would never call this a "pop" album but it is definitely pop-influenced (whatever that means) and much much more accessible that I expected from the first Fred Frith album I really checked out. If you consider yourself drawn to singers with weird and unconventional voices this is something for you. At first listen it reminded me of a mix between They Might Be Giants, Devo, and Servotron, but edgier and more interesting. A documentary about Frith titled Step Across the Border was released in 1990 and I definitely intend to check it out to learn more.

I wish I could post the whole album here so you could listen to how different each track is, but I can't. You can't even upload audio by itself to this site so I've set one of the tracks from Cheap At Half the Price to a couple of pictures of Frith in imovie. Don't mind the pictures...I just put them there so the screen wouldn't be black the whole time. This track is from the vocal half of the album and is called "The Welcome". It was very hard to choose just one, but I think this captures the mood and charm of what he does through the whole album and makes you feel happy in an off-center kind of way. Really, if you like slightly strange music you should have this album.




That might have been too short. Here is one more track off the album to give you more of an idea. Sorry, no pictures with this one just the audio. This is "Cap the Knife". I also really love "Some Clouds Don't," and "Some Clouds Do" and also how the track "Absent Friends" sounds like Riverdance meets the Shire. Enjoy!

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close--Jonathon Safron Foer

Not only does our most recent poster TJ Huff recommend this book, but I also strongly urge you to read it. If I were to submit one of these silly lists this would be in the top-5 of my must read picks. After a year or two of TJ telling me I had to read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close I finally broke down and bought it used off Amazon.com for $4.00. You can currently get it there at the amazingly low price of $3.05. Crazy!

It usually takes me a long time to read a book...like months. This isn't because I am stupid (it may be partially because I am stupid) or a slow reader. It just tends to take me a while to get involved in a book, and I end up reading most of them a few pages at a time over the course of a couple of months. This, however, is one of those books that as soon as I picked up I couldn't stop reading and ended up finishing it in two days. If you want a nice big-word explanation of the book you can check this summary out over at Wikipedia.

Basically it is the story of a boy named Oskar (I think he is 12, he might be 9, but I think 12, but maybe 9 now that I really think about it) dealing with the loss of his father who was killed in the Septemeber 11 attacks. He goes on a city-wide search (in NYC) looking for the owner of a key he found in his father's room. Now, the book has its share of very saddening moments as could be expected. As Oskar would say some of it makes you "wear heavy boots." But what I loved most about the book is how these sad parts are paired with funny...really funny, like some of the funniest things I have read in a book, like LOL funny, parts. The overall effect of this is what TJ calls happy-sad, or beautiful-sad...I'm sure everyone can think of an example of a happy-sad thing they love. Happy-sad is sort of the same as salty-sweet, which is why things like chocolate-covered pretzels are so good. It is also why life-long friend (and weirdo) Matthayes dips his french fries in his frosty when eating at Wendy's. A lot of songs are happy-sad, one of my favorites being Martha by Tom Waits, which you can check out here. Sad because what he's talking about is so depressing, but happy because the song is just so good. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is this same kind of thing. I urge fellow Friends Recommend readers to leave their favorite happy-sad things in comment form. I'm dying to know! I'll leave you with this excerpt from the second page of Extremely Loud:

My first jujitsu class was three and a half months ago. Self-defense was something that I was extremely curious about, for obvious reasons, and Mom thought it would be good for me to have a physical activity besides tambourining, so my first jujitsu class was three and a half months ago. There were fourteen kids in the class, and we all had on neat white robes. We practiced bowing, and then we were all sitting down Native American style, and then Sensei Mark asked me to go over to him. "Kick my privates," he told me. That made me feel self-conscious. "Excusez-moi?" I told him. He spread his legs and told me, "I want you to kick my privates as hard as you can." He put his hands at his sides, and took a breath in, and closed his eyes, and that's how I knew that he actually meant business. "Jose," I told him, and inside I was thinking, What the? He told me, "Go on, guy. Destroy my privates." "Destroy your privates?" With his eyes still closed he cracked up a lot and said, "You couldn't destroy my privates if you tried. That's what's going on here. This is a demonstration of the well-trained body's ability to absorb a direct blow. Now destroy my privates." I told him, "I'm a pacifist," and since most people my age don't know what that means, I turned around and told the others, "I don't think it's right to destroy people's privates. Ever." Sensei Mark said, "Can I ask you something?" I turned back around and told him "'Can I ask you something?' is asking me something." He said, "Do you have dreams of becoming a jujitsu master?" "No," I told him, even thought I don't have dreams of running the family jewelry business anymore. He said "Do you want to know how a jujitsu student becomes a jujitsu master?" "I want to know everything," I told him, but that isn't true anymore either. He told me "A jujitsu student becomes a jujitsu master by destroying his master's privates." I told him, "That's fascinating." My last jujitsu class was three and a half months ago.