Mi casa al amanecer

O la casa del vecino y el muro de mi garaje.

Browsing

An Amazon review of A New Kind of Science by Stephen Wolfram:

Coming home, 7 pm

Shot while commuting back from work.



The street outside my workplace.


Beetle at El Labrador.

Nostalgia

This is a review I wrote back in June 2001 in some site. It's a little histrionic in tone, and although my musical horizons have diversified since, it does reflect the honest enthusiasm this recording instilled in me. And no, a link won't do.



In every musical genre there’s an album that’s so unique, emotional and sincere, that no context can possibly make it justice. That kind of album that comes out of nowhere and that, as soon as you get it, makes you want to fall down to your knees and thank the heavens. The kind of album that makes you cry with joy, laugh in despair, and shake your head in disbelief. The kind of album that makes you write praises like these.

There’s only four albums that have had this effect on me: The Cure’s Disintegration, Cowboy Junkies’ The Trinity Session, Faith No More Angel Dust and Streets by Savatage. Four very different bands whose previous releases, albeit solid, never hinted the kind of potential that was furiously unleashed in the aforementioned recordings. And yet, out of the four, Streets is the one to take with you to the desert island.

I won't take time detailing the concept of Streets (the rise and fall of a musician), not only because it seems so mundane, but also because it is absolutely secondary to what makes this album what it is. The musicianship also, if well above average, can't be the reason to buy it. The sheer force of the compositions, the ridiculous beauty of the lyrics, and above all, the crude, heartbreaking emotion that runs through it its what will tear you down.

The album begins in a rather solid, calculated manner, with the opening track, Streets, setting the context of the story. From then on, the album moves back and forth from a controlled third person narrative (Strange Reality, Ghost in the Ruins), to a much more personal approach (Tonight He Grins Again, A Little Too Far, St. Patrick), where the story ceases to matter. Is as if watching a man on the edge, trying harder and harder not to break down, until he just lets go. The tracks that close Streets are to be listened, not explained.

Many have said that this is the perfect introduction to the music of Savatage, and I can't agree with that, since it will then generate expectations that are impossible to be met. Savatage is a fantastic band, maybe the best in its genre, but Streets is such a vital, visceral experience, that there can't possibly be a second part to it.

Browsing

For the past 6 or 7 years I've been a big fan of Tom Fontana, especially of his work on Homicide: Life on the Street. Today, I was browsing through some of his original scripts for the series, and came across this lovely exchange that never made it to the air:

BOLANDER: My bet, the skeleton's at least a hundred years old.
LEWIS: Why's that, Big Man?
BOLANDER: Every year or so someone digs up bones in a basement in Fell's Point. It usually turns out to be some poor sailor who got a night's leave off some nineteenth century schooner docked in the harbor. The sailor came into town for a drink or some poker, got rolled for his pay, got stuffed in the basement. Meanwhile, up in Maine or England or even China, some young bride walked the shore, peering out into the sea, waiting her whole life for him to return.
MUNCH: Jeez, Stanley, more and more I see the poet in you.
BOLANDER: That ain't poetry, Munch. Them's the hard, cold facts.
HOWARD: Life was simpler a hundred years ago.
BOLANDER: Death was simpler.