February 11, 2008

Name-dropped in the New Yorker

Our Sarah Lawrence College roommate, co-founder of the electronic Rock Group Radiohead, & single-string guitarist for A. Forke's Monday Night House Face, Sam Amidon, now downtown folk emo legend, was NAME-DROPPED in the February 11th The New Yorker. The article, "Eerily Composer" by Rebecca Mead, was about lovely composer Nico Muhly, & unfortunately is not transcribed online (Quick! Go buy a copy! Gobias some coffee!) I was jealous earlier that Muhly was name-dropped in Alex Ross's new book (Muhly is my age & has similar influences, including sacred music & the English Renaissance...) & now this:


"The Only Tune," also on "Mothertongue," is another Muhly collage - a dismantled traditional English song about a violent sororicide, delivered with affecting flatness by an American folk singer named Sam Amidon, to the accompaniment, variously, of a sampled Farfisa organ similar to the used by Philip Glass in "Music in Twelve Parts," a pair of butcher's knives scraping against each other, a recording of whistling Icelandic wind, & the sound of raw whale flesh slopping around in a bowl.

-Rebecca Mead, "Eerily Composed", The New Yorker, February 11th & 18th, pg. 75-76

I suppose if you are going to make a New Yorker article, you want it to be in the same sentence as Philip Glass & the words "sororicide" & "raw whale flesh".

Links: Buy Sam Amidon's new All is Well, from Bedroom Community, from Amazon. "Saro" on youtube.
& Nico Muhly's Speaks Volumes. Mothertongue will be out in May. Audio samples for the New Yorker article.

_________________________________________________________
Date: Sat, 9 Feb 2008 12:46:34 -0500
From:"Samuel Tear Amidon" <______@gmail.com>
To:"James Henry Welsch" <_@itwaslost.org>
Subject: Re: Boom!


On Feb 9, 2008 12:44 PM, James Welsch <_@itwaslost.org> wrote:
Hey man,
I just turned the page, & BAM, there you were, name-dropped in The New Yorker.
Congrats,
James
P.S. Remember our sophomore year, we bet who could get mentioned in the New Yorker first...

did we really?

now I owe you a lifetime subscription to penthouse.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your sentence reads like Sam is a founder of Radiohead. This isn't true, is it? Radiohead is very famous, and I think you would have told me if Sam was involved. Please inform me. Love, MOM

Brains said...

Maybe you actually bet Dan Piper who'd be name-dropped first in Mother Jones?