52 Weeks of Music - Week 9 - Nina Simone

There's a bit of an advisory note on this week's post. I normally like to focus on one of an artist's albums, but this is a sticky wicket, as they say.

Nina Simone burst into my consciousness through the movie Point of No Return starring Bridgette Fonda. The desperate tones of the lead character are accompanied by equally desperate and poignant Nina Simone songs. As much as anything else, I always got the feeling that this movie wanted you to go out and by a Nina Simone record. So I did.

I found a compilation CD, so I bought it (the cover image of the disc I have appears above). This compilation was an actual CD, but when I put it into my iTunes years ago, it came up as the album "Bad Habits." I usually trust Gracenote or CDDB or whatever gives iTunes its data, but something was definitely off about this

I learned later on that Nina Simone had an incredibly difficult life. Born in the US, she was a gifted musician, forced into subserviance and denied educational opportunities because of her skin color. Just before the breakthroughs of the 1960s Civil Rights movement, Nina packed off for Europe and lived much of her life as an outspoken Expatriate. Really, if anyone blames her, they should have their heads examined.

Because of the legal battles over her albums, there are many issues and reissues. Still, I wanted to talk about her music as soon as possible, because it's still Black History Month, and I've sort of largely ignored any black artists so far, much to my detriment.

I view Nina as more of an aggressive protest singer. She was popular in the US during her lifetime (died in 2003), but she shunned the music business and chose to use her music to spread the message instead of becoming a superstar she was so obviously born to be.

Her romantic tunes are almost overshadowed by her brash and plaintive songs like "Mississippi Goddamn," but the tenderness in "Love Me or Leave Me," and "My Baby Just Cares for Me" give a glimpse of just how amazingly powerful and deep she really was. She could have become rich and powerful and popular, but she took the high road and changed the world.

Another note: The song "Young Gifted and Black" does not appear on my album, but it's too good not to talk about, so I am including it blow, along with a couple other songs that make me love her all the more.







Nina Simone on Wikipedia

Nina Simone artist link in iTunes

Forces of Nature

So okay, I haven't written anything in a while. A long while. I have been so bogged down with work and other miscellany that I just haven't felt like it, but today, the world reminded me to slow the heck down and relax.

77,000 people in the area of Fort Wayne were and most still are without power. My office lost power and had to send everyone home. I spent the day catching up on my TiVo'd episodes of Rachel Maddow and trying to work on stuff for work. I watched the intensely absurdist, nihlistic Southland Tales. I normally run screaming from movies staring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, but come on, a dystopian black comedy mystery co-starring Sarah Michelle Gellar as a trendy porn star pop singer? How could you NOT want to see something that crazy. It's the best movie ever for any Whedon fans that are also Doctor Who and Donnie Darko fans.

It's all about the US terror police state in the wake of 9/11, in an alternate history in which Texas was nuked in 2005 by terrorists. I mentioned Darko because it's the same writer/director, so you know it's insanely messed up. Of course, there's no pedophile Patrick Swayze, but it's got Buffy the porn star. Still it's not as good as some movies, but as far as postapocolyptic dystopian thrillers go, it was very satisfying. The ensemble cast includes Nora Dunn, Amy Poehler, Cheri Oteri, Jon Lovitz, well, tons of people from SNL who actually are decent actors.

So I went trolling on Netflix for more random odd movies and came up empty-screened (as opposed to empty-handed). Then a BBC documentary about Petula Clark caught my eye. I love Petula Clark, and even have her greatest hits on a record, but I didn't know much about her life, other than that she's British. Now, I know everything I need to know and more. Of course there were tons of references to her contemporaries, which led me on a strange quest to YouTube and iTunes to find songs by Dusty Springfield, Lesley Gore, and Peggy Lee.

So now I must venture back to Netflix. I've chosen Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. I'm sure there are no ex vampire-slaying porn stars, but I seem to be drawn to Amy Adams in an inexplicable way.

A traitor's treatise

I did it. I bought a Windows laptop instead of a Mac. I am a Mac Traitor, but I am not a Mac hater.

I love Apple computers and their focus on sensible, elegant design, intuitive operating systems, and reliability, but I am not a fan of their market practices.

I have dozens of reasons for getting the PC over the MacBook Pro that I really salivated over, but the main concern was the most obvious: The Dollar Ballot.

I needed a new computer. My Dell Dimension 4550 is what I lovingly refer to as "pre-war." Though I actually bought it in May of 2003, right around the time that the mission was "accomplished," it's very old and very very slow. I've tried every home remedy that I can think of to speed it up, but to no avail. It now is sitting in the other room serving as my admin workstation for my home wireless network.

As I type this, Chad is using his Nintendo DS on WiFi, and I'm in the comfy pleather chair, pounding away on my Toshiba Satellite A215 S6804 laptop.

The original price range of the machine, according to CNet was arount 900. I got a killer special with a mail-in rebate and my final cost will be less than $650. I have 2 GB of memory and 200GB Hard drive with a 1600 MHz bus speed.

To get any similar kind of specification from a Mac, I would have paid four times the price. If you don't believe me, just check the Apple Store online, or walk into your local best buy.



I could have also waited until I had saved some more money, but as a writer, I really needed a machine that could work. I started looking for used. I tried Ebay, I tried all avenues until I finally settled on the Toshiba. There was no better machine out there for the same amount of money. I have firewire, a built-in webcam (iSight be darned), and I can burn dual layer DVDs and laser-encode my own labels.

My next agony will be trying to get rid of Vista, but that's a story for another time.