Hope you'll come and see me in the movies

Well it looks like I'm never going to get to see Buck Owens at his Crystal Palace in Bakersfield.

Maybe that's not such a bad thing.


FMFM: The Books, an oddball duo from NYC and elsewhere. It's usually acoustic music (guitar, cello, banjo, violin, other) at the core, with a little singing and a lot of samples on top. Sometimes it's the other way around: loops and samples, with splashes of non-electronic color.

There are some good ideas here, but rarely are there enough per minute to sustain my hungry mind. From what I've heard so far, the Books are best when they allow the samples to reach a head of steam, or when they juxtapose ideas to create meaning. There are some good harmonic ideas there too, but the band tends to rely on repeating them while the samples do the work, and that's not quite enough to keep me from zoning out. They're more collage artists than songwriters anyway, and their collages aren't terribly dense. If you're going to be this cerebral, don't be so slow, OK?

The Books' upcoming Great American Music Hall show is currently the third-most popular event on people's SonicLiving calendars in the Bay Area. I'm trying to imagine why I would enjoy watching them do their thing in person. I can't. I bet everyone is really quiet during their set, though.