Tameca Coleman, our current blogista, provides the second installment in this "Meet the Editors" series, which she conceived.
Tameca is a woman of many talents—writing, creating music, coming up with interesting plans for all of us. She's a student at Metro State, coming soon to a graduate school near you.
Your 57-minute mix?
1) Roar and the Wolf "Leave Me Out." -- I just think this is a heartbreakingly pretty song by a little duo you probably have never heard before.
2) Lhasa de Sela's "Anywhere on this Road" -- I love folk songs. I love the way lyrics work in music, tell stories, and take the listener away. This song feels a lot like a folk song, and yet it has a new feel. Many of Lhasa's songs, especially the ones on the album The Living Road, hit home for me.
3) John Coltrane "Stellar Regions" -- I highly recommend the album Stellar Regions to anyone who loves jazz, loves horns, beautiful music and/or Coltrane. Coltrane's sound is an explorative force on the whole album.
4) Bjork, "It's Not Up to You." -- I often feel this way. It really isn't up to me, or so it seems. I fit in where I fit in when I am not being stubborn about it. As Bjork suggests, on my "broken" days I "just lean into the crack."
5) PJ Harvey, "Reeling." -- PJ Harvey is a long time favorite. I love how raw she is, and how I have never grown out of her since Junior High. She doesn't take the feeling out of what she does, and she doesn't do what anyone else does, either. I love that. Here's a track from her 4-track demos. You can't get much more raw than this. I love rocking out to this at home and touting that "even Aphrodite...'ll have nothin' on me."
6) Sonic Youth, "Side2Side" -- I have included this track because of what Sonic Youth has done with Kim Gordon's voice. It is rhythmic, earthy, overlapped and spare. Despite the spareness, the track still tells a story.
7) Múm, "K/Half Noise." -- For awhile I kept finding all of these neat bands from Iceland like Amiina, The Apparat Organ Orchestra, Emiliana Torrini, and these guys. The first time I heard the band was on one of the many online radio sites. I knew I wanted to hear more of their stuff right away, so I bought just about everything of theirs I could find. Best effect I have ever received from Múm's music was while reading Sharon Old's book The Wellspring on a long bus ride to band practice.
8) James Brown, "Make It Funky." -- When I am blue, I put on my dancing shoes and make-pretend I can boogaloo.
9) Steve Reich's "The Desert Music III: Part 2 - Moderate." -- I love Steve Reich's work because it is meditative, cyclic and it completely engages my senses. I can't get enough of his work.This particular track uses lines from William Carlos Williams' poem "The Orchestra," which is an added bonus.
10) The Lounge Lizards, "Yak." -- More people should be screaming, and writing yaks into songs.
11) Charles Mingus, "Strollin'" -- Featured here are two of my all time favorite instruments, bass and voice. I don't know if you can tell yet, but my favorite music has a bit of earthiness to it. It's deep, dark, gritty and full of experience.
12. Cassandra Wilson, "Throw it All Away" -- This is wise counsel I have been trying to implement into my mindset for a long time, now. Cassandra Wilson carries this song forward after Abbey Lincoln, but in her own way. Both versions of the tune are fantastic.
13. Meridith Monk, "Panda Chant II." -- I recently found out about this artist in the last few months. Meridith Monk is a performance artist and musician who has been creating work for a long, long time now. What she does is often disturbing, but utterly captivating. She often uses no words, but sounds to portray information. She also utilizes movement on stage and in short films. Her work cracks my brain open and makes me still.
What book do you wish you had written?
Kissing the Witch by Emma Donoghue (Harper, 1999). A slew of other novels come to mind, but I don't think I could have written them. Peter Suskind's Perfume, for example, or Gita Mehta's A River Sutra, are two books that I absolutely love, but I don't have the proper background or knowledge to be able to build something like that. Kissing the Witch was written using stories I know. What I liked most about Donoghue's book was the revision of traditional fairy tales which were told from a women's point of view. I also enjoyed the way Donoghue linked what are, traditionally, separate tales into stories of a single community.
What sort of shoes are you wearing & why?
I am wearing a black slip-on shoe. I'm not really sure what the shoe is called, and the brand name has worn off the heel. The shoes are a little worn, but still useful. They are easy, which is just what I needed this morning when I ran out the door to my appointment at Copper Nickel.
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