This sounds more manic than I intended.

One night last week (I believe it was on Thursday, but i could be wrong) The Boy and I were watching The Tonight Show and Jay Leno had on George Carlin and Mother-Fucking Ann Coulter. (The two had to sit next to each other which was sort of ironic, but Carlin actually didn't say anything while she was speaking. That's classy. No one would be surprised if he stood up and bludgeoned her with a coffee cup.) It made me a little nauseous to listen to her. The woman has written another obnoxious book that says that Democrats play the victim and that women who have lost their husbands in combat or on 9/11 are assholes or something equally as un-called for and repulsive. Coulter is a very well-respected conservative beast who is quite unfortunately, very intelligent and well-spoken. It just makes my stomach churn. And also, she's not as hard to look at as some other TV pundits. Though she is starting to look a little like Skeletor as she gets older...*

Whatever. After the Coulter interview i went outside to wrangle some dogs and clean up the kitchen (because i needed to make it clean, clean after Coulter, must clean...) while The Boy stayed inside. As i came into the bedroom, he was all 'did you see the musical guest?' and i was, 'no, i had to make it clean again'.

I had missed a performance of Kt Tunstall.** She's some new singer/songwriter from Scotland who seems to be running the show circuits in New York because she's just released her first album. I have heard her name on the radio but never heard her stuff. Or if i had, i hadn't paid any attention. You know.

Boy was telling me how interesting her performance was and that she did this weird thing with the thing and it was all like, WOW. I had missed something, apparently, because the next day he went on the internets and found a video of the performance from Leno, as well as one on Letterman, Carson Daly (what a crock that show is, right?) and Regis & Whatshername. She really was very interesting to watch. On Leno's show, she came on right after the Evil Coulter and the opening shot was a close frame on her guitar, where Tunstall had taken some masking tape and written in black ink: "This Machine Kills Fascists". Awesome, i thought. More so, when i saw that the sign wasn't on her guitar in the other shows - she did it specifically for Ann.

Does Scotland know about Ann Coulter? Is she that universally Evil? More research may tell.

Tunstall's solo performance was just so interesting in the way that she basically built her song, "Black Horse and The Cherry Trees" for the show. She started out by banging a rhythm on her acoustic guitar with her fist (on the Fascist sign - haha) and recorded it so that it looped. And then she did a scratchy riff and looped it, banged a tambourine and looped it, sang a "woooh, ooh" and so on, so that she built the rhythm to play behind her while she played the tune on her guitar and sang the verses. It was really cool. I am finding it hard to explain, but it was really cool. Amazing what the technology can do, eh? All you need is a little pedal, and you can do anything.

So after watching all of those performances, we picked up the album. And you know, its not the same? I mean, it's still good, but not the same as live. It was really interesting to watch her put it all together. And then you think that she has to piece this thing together like that and what if she screws up something. She has to live with it for the rest of the song, because the recorded loops are all played back for the rest of the song. Layers, you know? I am so obviously not a musician.



If you get a chance to see her live somehow, i would really recommend it. That's all i'm trying to say...





*Funnily enough, i did a search on 'Ann Coulter, Skeletor' and got quite a few hits. I guess i'm not as original as i though. Hmmph.

**For some reason the application on her site is not working for me, but maybe you're better with technology. Here's the Amazon link for the rest of us.