Now thinking about poetry will have me thinking about the album, which I intend to buy soon after its release. That is not a PLA endorsement, just some fanboy talk.

The album is considered literary enough that she was asked to present on her album to TED 2010. Many of the TED talks are available online, but Ms Merchant’s wasn’t among them. I did find a listing of lyrics from some of her songs on the TED blog at http://blog.ted.com/2010/02/the_sleepy_gian.php. If you visit her website, you can watch and listen to some of the album’s songs at http://www.nataliemerchant.com/p/leave-your-sleep.Her performance at PLA included some songs not available in video from her web site.

I have been a Natalie Merchant fan since my grad school days back in the mid 1990s, but I’ve never seen her in concert before. I think she was just amazing. You get the feeling that she deeply loves her music and her every move just flows and adds to the music. She also poked fun at herself at times and got good laughs. Before each song she’d talk about the poet whose work she adapted. She took note of when poet photos came from a library collection.

After her last song she got a much deserved standing ovation. After a minute or so she surprised us with an encore prefaced with stories about her love for libraries. She told the audience that she spent her childhood at the library. So much so that “If you wanted to find me, you came to the library.” She also said her local library was where she discovered folk music. With that, she said she wanted to thank us all and broke into a rendition of Kind and Generous. During her rendition, she left the stage and shook hands with what seemed to me about four or five dozen librarians. I wasn’t in that number, but I was awed by such a display of gratitude.

Thank YOU Natalie!

If you attended the performance, I’d love for you to leave a comment!

In bands.

Perhaps we should listen to them, right?

Here are three bands that I happen to like, all of which have librarypeoples in them.

Are you a librarian with a band?
If you are the type to be cool and drop a comment on this post I just might feature you in a future post. Then you’d be totally famous (in case librarianship has not brought you that already)…

1) Dum Dum Girls

listen on myspace

I have no idea who this woman is, but when you poke around on the webs you find out that she is a librarian named Dee Dee out in Los Angeles. I think her songs are awesome. Listen to them. I also think it’d be hilarious if she isn’t actually a librarian- if someone thought that it’d be a good marketing scheme to say that she is.

2) Knight School

listen on myspace

Lisa Goldstein, the drummer, works at Brooklyn Public Library. I went and checked out their show in the back room at a steakhouse in Long Island City last night and they rocked. There need to be more shows in steakhouses, don’t you think?

3) Skatey-Eight

listen on myspace

Anne Heathen, the singer for sk88 has written some posts for the PLA blog. She does YA library stuff in Michigan, but more importantly her punk band is pretty great. Check out Zombie Song if you are into the undead and whatnot.