A LITTLE CUNNING

It’s amazing what a couple of toffee nut lattes, a laptop, and an MP3 player can inspire a boy to do. Faced with the task of somehow working my last-minute assignment on Man of Many Faces around the other things I have going on this week, I went down to Starbucks last night and just hunkered down. I think I got about ¾ of the book done before they closed, and finished up the rest before going to bed. I don’t think I could have done it on a more complicated book, but the main characters are aged nine and six. They speak with a wisdom beyond their years, but also with a directness and naivete that made it a bit easier to adopt their voices. It’s a cute story. And it’s kind of nice to see that I can still focus and really go to town when it’s required of me.

The Faye Wong dominoes are beginning to fall. Andy’s connection in Japan bounced me to a person in Hong Kong, and now I am waiting. Could be quite cool. I picked up a couple of CDs at Amoeba in San Francisco over the weekend, and Rebecca apparently sent a pretty healthy package of stuff from Beijing. I should actually be able to interview her with some authority if this comes off. I recommend the Scenic Tour album as a good introduction. It’s what I have in right now. It also has a great package, some of which reminds me a little bit of Bjork’s Post (I would guess Bjork has some influence on Faye, at least from an image standpoint and the desire to try many things).

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I also managed to catch the Johnny Marr & The Healers show at Bimbo’s in SF. It was fairly what I expected. Some of it was quite good, the rest was relatively mediocre. There seemed to be a shyness that was holding him back—which is maybe to be expected in the vocals, but not so much in the guitar. He never really let loose, and so it just came off as standard bar band stuff (even with the awesome Zak Starkey pounding drums). The highlight was certainly his cover of Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright,” which he recorded and released on an Uncut magazine compilation this past summer. It had the right amount of gentleness, and his vulnerability ended up being a strength.

Current Soundtrack: Faye Wong, Scenic Tour -- also, it seems, known as Chang You, according to Amazon, but I have see it as both; I'm finding getting the right names of her songs requires a littel effort

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