Concert Review: The Surfrajettes and The McCharmlys at the Turf Club

The Surfrajettes on stage at the Turf Club, March 10, 2024. From left to right, Nicole Damoff on guitar, Annie Lillis on drums, Shermy Freeman on guitar, and Sarah Butler on bass. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

Me and Annie, with special photobomb by Sarah.

Set list for the Surfrajettes, held by Annie Lillis (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

My signed photo of the Surfrajettes.

In March, I saw the rock group the Surfrajettes at the Turf Club. Devoted readers of “Mark My Words” will recall that I previously saw the Surfrajettes at the Turf Club last October, when they opened for the Electric Six. This time the McCharmlys opened for the Surfrajettes. The McCharmlys have an awesome retro-60's vibe, so their sound worked really well with the Surfrajettes. The lead vocalist Angie has a really great voice, and I enjoyed their songs. 

The Surfrajettes put on an awesome show, and it’s a treat to see their surf rock songs live. It’s fun to see the guitar interplay between Shermy Freeman and Nicole Damoff, as they trade between lead and rhythm. Their guitar work is always seamless and flows so well. This time the Surfrajettes had their usual lineup of Shermy and Nicole on guitar, Sarah Butler on bass, and Annie Lillis on drums. Sarah and Annie both did a fantastic job. Annie absolutely crushed the drum breaks on “Roller Fink,” and “El Condor Pasa,” one of my favorite Surfrajette songs. It was immediately evident what a fantastic chemistry Shermy, Nicole, Sarah, and Annie have together on stage. 

The set list featured some different songs from October’s show, although favorites like “Heart of Glass” and their version of Britney Spears’ “Toxic” still made appearances. After playing “She Loves You,” Nicole said, “That’s one we wrote,” which was very funny. The band played most of the songs from their debut album Roller Fink, rocking tunes like “Warm Up,” “Roxy Roller,” “Couch Surfing,” “Surfer’s Slide,” and “Snowball.”  

The Surfrajettes are such a fun band to see live, I’m hoping they keep coming back to the Twin Cities every six months. After the show, I was able to get my 8x10 photo signed by all 4 Surfrajettes, and I got selfies with Annie and Shermy, plus a photobomb from Sarah. If you like rock and roll, surf guitars, and awesome instrumentals, go see the Surfrajettes.  

Book Review: Sacred Muse: A Preface to Christian Art & Music, by Charles Scribner III (2023)

The cover of Sacred Muse: A Preface to Christian Art & Music, by Charles Scribner III, 2023. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

Charles Scribner III published two books in 2023, and they both reflect his different passions. One book is Scribners Five Generations in Publishing, which details the history of his family’s publishing company, Charles Scribner’s Sons. The other book is Sacred Muse: A Preface to Christian Art & Music, which explores Scribner’s passion for Baroque art and music. Scribner has a PhD in art history and has written monographs on Bernini and Rubens.  

Sacred Muse is a slim volume, meant as an introduction and overview rather than a definitive compendium. The book focuses on Scribner’s favorite artists, like Rubens, Bernini, and Caravaggio. One can hardly quibble with Scribner’s choices when he picks such masterful artists as these.  

I minored in Art History in college, and the class I took on the Baroque period was one of my favorites, so I enjoyed returning to Caravaggio, Rubens, and Bernini’s artworks in the pages of Sacred Muse. Scribner proves a more than able guide through these artworks, as he describes the Biblical scenes they depict, and examines the context in which these artworks were created. 

Scribner reminds us that because the Calvinist Reformed Church forbade paintings of religious subjects, “ecclesiastical commissions that engaged Rubens were unavailable to the Protestant Rembrandt.” (p.69) This fact tells us that Rembrandt’s many paintings with Biblical themes came not out of commissions, but of his own personal interest in depicting these scenes. This was something I hadn’t thought of before.  

Scribner devotes a good amount of time to Verdi’s Requiem, and he uses a wonderful quote from the music author George Marek: “The Requiem is one of those rare religious compositions which are loved by both the faithful and the agnostic. It is also one of those pieces of music which appeal both to the musically literate and the musical beginner. Its beauty lies deep and on the surface.” (p.105) I loved the last sentence of that quote, and it made me think of Miles Davis's album Kind of Blue, which is regularly acclaimed as the “Best Jazz Album” and is also a best-seller and often listeners’ entry point to the jazz genre. There are those rare works of art that are immediately accessible and reward repeated attention.  

Sacred Muse is an interesting reflection on art and faith, and it’s a pleasure to read a book that is so well-illustrated with full color reproductions of many of the masterpieces that Scribner describes in the text.  

Book Review: After Dark, by Haruki Murakami (2004, English translation 2007)

My paperback copy of After Dark, by Haruki Murakami, 2004, English translation 2007. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

Night. It can be scary, romantic, sexy, all sorts of things. Darkness can reveal strong emotions and passions, and novelist Haruki Murakami knows this well. Murakami’s 2004 novel After Dark takes place between midnight and dawn on a single evening.  

The main character of After Dark is 19-year-old Mari Asai, who is reading a book at a Denny’s when the novel begins. This Denny’s plays a lot of 1960’s easy listening music, which I found unlikely, but hey, it’s Murakami’s Denny’s, so they can play whatever he wants them to. Mari is eventually approached by Tetsuya Takahashi, an awkward college student a little older than Mari who plays jazz trombone. Tetsuya tells Mari that he knows her older sister, Eri. From my limited knowledge of Murakami, Tetsuya seems to fit the pattern of other male Murakami protagonists: nice, awkward, a little goofy, with lots of pop culture knowledge.  

To reveal more about the plot seems, as usual with Murakami, superfluous. It’s less about the specifics of what is revealed and more about the journey Mari goes on over the course of this evening. There were things I didn’t quite understand in After Dark, but that’s sort of par for the course with Murakami, isn’t it?  

I like art that compresses the time frame, as it generally heightens tension and moves the plot along. After Dark is a bit of an exception to this rule, as the time frame is very compressed, but for me there wasn’t much tension in the plot. That’s not really meant as a criticism, as I don’t think After Dark is trying to be a page-turning thriller. I read After Dark very quickly, but I wasn’t breathlessly wondering what came next. I know, that sounds like a contradiction, doesn’t it? Hopefully Murakami would appreciate the contradiction.  

There are some great quotes throughout After Dark. One of my favorites is from a bartender who tells Mari, “Time moves in its own special way in the middle of the night.” (p.78) That’s so true, as time can speed up or slow down at will after night falls. One of my other favorite quotes was this: “In this world, there are things you can only do alone, and things you can only do with somebody else. It’s important to combine the two in just the right amount.” (p.204)  

If you’re a night owl like me, go ahead and add After Dark to your nighttime reading list.  

Book Review: Scribners Five Generations in Publishing, by Charles Scribner III (2023)

The lovely cover of Scribners Five Generations in Publishing, by Charles Scribner III, 2023. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

The inscription from Charles Scribner III inside my copy. We connected over F. Scott Fitzgerald's play The Vegetable, surprisingly enough! (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

The distinguished publisher Charles Scribner’s Sons was founded in 1846. For fans of Jazz Age literature, Scribners is probably best known as being the publishing home of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe. In 2023, Charles Scribner III published Scribners Five Generations of Publishing, a history of the company. Charles Scribner III is the fifth Charles Scribner to work for the family firm, and he and his father oversaw the merger of Scribner’s with Macmillan in 1984. (The Scribner imprint is now a division of Simon & Schuster.) 

Scribners Five Generations of Publishing is a fascinating look at the challenges and rewards of book publishing. Scribners has had more than its fair share of famous authors, from Robert Louis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling, Winston Churchill, J.M. Barrie, Henry James, Edith Wharton, George Santayana, the aforementioned triumvirate of Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Wolfe, to Charles Lindbergh and P.D. James. Scribner shares personal stories about many of these authors, passed down from his father and grandfather.  

I knew I would enjoy reading this book when I read Charles’ description of Henry James: “James is a difficult author to read—beyond my patience—but of towering importance to the history of literature.” (p.29) My sentiments exactly.  

Charles Scribner III is a great admirer of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s writing, as am I, and I found his paragraph about Fitzgerald to be an excellent summary of Fitzgerald’s brilliance: 

“There is something magical about Fitzgerald...the real magic lies embedded in the prose, and reveals itself in his amazing range and versatility. Each novel or story partakes of its creator’s poetic imagination, his dramatic vision, his painstaking (if virtuoso and seemingly effortless) craftsmanship. Each bears Fitzgerald’s hallmark: the indelible stamp of grace. He is my literary candidate to stand beside the demigods Bernini, Rubens, and Mozart as artists of divine transfigurations.” (p.45)  

Needless to say, I concur with Scribner’s assessment of Fitzgerald. There is indeed a magic that surrounds his sparkling prose. Scribner also aptly describes Fitzgerald’s duality: “Just as his life bridged two centuries, so does his work have a Janus-like aspect, looking back to the Romantic lyricism and epic dreams of nineteenth-century America and forward to the syncopated jazz of the twentieth.” (p.43)  

Thanks to his family connections, Scribner provides us with a portrait of Ernest Hemingway that allows us a glimpse at another side of this literary legend. Scribner quotes from the moving letter that Hemingway wrote to his father after his grandfather’s death. Hemingway called Charles’s grandfather “the best and closest friend that I had.” Shortly before Hemingway’s own death, he entrusted Charles’s father with his last will and testament, a tribute that speaks volumes about the close relationship between the author and his publisher.  

There are other fascinating tidbits as well: Charles’s father considered Charles Lindbergh “the fussiest author he ever had to deal with.” (p.97) Lindbergh was so controlling that he measured the space around punctuation marks! Although I guess that isn’t too surprising, given Lindbergh’s notorious attention to detail. When he was preparing for his historic solo flight across the Atlantic, Lindbergh trimmed all of the white space off of his maps and papers, in an effort to save as much weight as possible.  

Throughout the book, one feels something of the sense of obligation and duty that the Scribner family did to keep the publishing house going. There’s an admirable lack of ego that runs through all 5 of the Charles Scribner’s, and the other Scribners who led the firm. Charles Scribner II had a deep disdain for “the vertical pronoun,” as he called it, once circling all the capital I’s on a memo. (p.31)  

Charles’s father is an excellent example of putting family duty over personal glory. A brilliant academic, he had to turn away from academia when the family business needed him after World War II. Ultimately, he turned his commitment to scholarly work into editing many of the reference works that Scribner’s published during his leadership.  

Charles’s father is also the source of two of my own favorite quotations from the book: “You can always tell a moral question because it makes you feel so rotten.” (p.100) And his bon mot when author James Jones left Scribners for another publisher: “My disappointment is under control.” (p.117) 

We also learn from Charles that his piano playing skills might have contributed to Scottie Fitzgerald’s decision to keep Scribner’s as the publisher of her father’s works. In the late 1970’s, thanks to changes in copyright laws, Scottie and her adviser, Fitzgerald scholar Matthew J. Bruccoli, were looking at the possibility of changing publishers. When Scottie arrived at the Scribner’s office for a meeting with Charles and his father, she saw the piano in Charles’s office and asked him to play her something. He played his favorite Chopin waltz. “Halfway through it, I had the chilling thought that Fitzgerald’s future at Scribners might depend on this waltz.” After Charles finished playing, Scottie sighed and said, “It’s all so romantic.” (p.153) And so the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald remained with Scribners, his only publisher in the United States.  

Scribners Five Generations in Publishing is a lovely testament to books and literature, and it is a reminder of a bygone era, when a book publisher made decisions based not just on how many units they could sell, but on the talent of young, unproven authors. If you love the world of books, you’ll enjoy Scribners Five Generations in Publishing.