Media Nugget

Work Song

Nat Adderley
Work Song
1960

Despite playing in the shadow of big brother Cannonball, Nat Adderley managed to carve out a sizeable jazz niche for himself, blending his cornet into a variety of intriguing line-ups for the Riverside label. On this 1960 date, Adderley is joined up front by Sam Jones on cello and Wes Montgomery on guitar. Add a topnotch rhythm section and the result is a session that swings with a relaxed confidence. On the title track and Cannonball Adderley's propulsive "Sack of Woe," the group sounds like they'd played together for years. It's a shame they didn't.

Fat City

Leonard Gardner
Fat City
1969

Gardner paints an unromantic picture of the lives of two working-class boxers in Stockton, California. With echoes of Steinbeck and glimpses of Raymond Carver, the clean, spare prose beautifully reveals the bleak struggles of an entire class--trainers, wives, fieldhands, barflies. The result is a panorama that is multifaceted and vibrant.

Butch

The Geraldine Fibbers
Butch
1997

Carla Bozulich writes songs that are dark, uncomfortable, and filled with raw sexual imagery. The band she fronts takes those songs all over the musical map. And though they are often placed in the alt-country camp, the Geraldine Fibbers don't fit neatly into any category. The music contains varied and elusive ingredients from lullaby to punk. Still, identifying and labeling the parts is irrelevant -- the whole is greater than the sum.

Too Far to Care

Old 97's
Too Far to Care
1997

Upbeat country honk, sure, but there's something more here. Rhett Miller's vocals remind me more of Aztec Camera than Hank Williams. It's sweet stuff, with viciously infectious melodies, singalong lyrics, and a doubletime shuffle beat. Check out "Timebomb," "Streets of Where I'm From," and "Niteclub."

The Watch

Rick Bass
The Watch
1989

  As you know, there are no more Coca-Colas in Mississippi. There aren't any cokes anywhere. They changed them, they did away with them, the fuckers. Except at my farmhouse. I have approximately two thousand seven hundred and forty-four of them in those little wooden flats that they used to ship them around in, faded, red and historic.
   When I have a bad day at work I will go home and throw three or four of them against the rocks in the back pasture.

--- from "Mississippi"

Aguirre, the Wrath of God

Klaus Kinski
Aguirre, the Wrath of God
1972

Here's all you need to know:

• Subject: Lope de Aguirre
  
• Actor: Klaus Kinski
  
• Director: Werner Herzog
  
• Ancestor: Heart of Darkness
  
• Descendant: Apocalypse Now
  

Now discuss.

If You're Feeling Sinister

Belle and Sebastian
If You're Feeling Sinister
1997

This album made almost everyone's top-ten list last year, ending up at #8 on the Village Voice's Pazz & Jop Poll. I'm not going to buck the trend: With Sinister, the enigmatic Scottish band (with no Belle or Sebastian in the lineup) has produced ten shimmering, melancholy pop lozenges that melt in your mind, not in your headphones. You'd be hard-pressed to find a sweeter batch of sad songs this side of The Smiths' Hatful of Hollow. Naming breakout tracks would be silly, since the collection is stellar top to bottom, but if my arm is twisted, I'll admit that my favorite is "The Fox in the Snow."

Resident Evil 2

Capcom
Resident Evil 2
PlayStation

When it was released, the original was widely regarded as the best game ever created for the Sony PlayStation, and Resident Evil 2 more than exceeds the original. This time around, players explore a police station and sewer system, tackling new creatures and scavenger hunts. If you've played the original, much of the interface is the same, making the learning curve a little less steep. If you've never played Resident Evil, get ready for the kind of layered, complicated game that your PlayStation was made for.

Too Much Coffee Man

Shannon Wheeler
Too Much Coffee Man

Too Much Coffee Man is both an everyman and a superhero. Likewise, artist Shannon Wheeler possesses special powers that most of us don't have. He is the creator of a work that is rife with existentialism and issues of self-image. And, oh yeah, it's funny! So join our hero on his adventures with Too Much Espresso Guy and Too Much German White Chocolate Woman With Almonds. Revel in the joys of caffeine addiction: the euphoria, the paranoia, the nausea. As advertised, it's "good to the last panel."

Charles Wright

Charles Wright
1935-

Earlier this week, Chuck won the Pulitzer Prize for Black Zodiac. Here's a poem from his 1981 book, The Southern Cross:

Gate City Breakdown

Like a vein of hard coal, it was the strike
We fantasized, the pocket of sure reward we sidestepped
      the roadblocks for
In Southwest Virginia, seamed in its hillside
Above the north fork of the Holstun River.

One afternoon before Christmas
In 1953, we crossed the bridge from Tennessee on a
      whiskey run,
Churchill and Bevo Hammond and Philbeck and I,
All home for the holidays,
On the back road where they chased us, we left the
      Sheriff's Patrol in their own dust,
And washed ours down with Schlitz on the way home.

Jesus, it's so ridiculous, and full of self-love,
The way we remember ourselves,
                  &nbs p;        and the dust we leave . . .

Remember me as you will, but remember me once
Slide-wheeling around the curves,
               letting it out on the other side of the line.