The Bunge

By Alex Nordenson
Taken from The Heights, (Boston College’s student newspaper)

Ben Harper has always been for me an artist who is nearly impossible to categorize. His musical style portrays such an amazing eclecticism and versatility that, despite popular opinion attaching him by the hip to Jack Johnson, lends itself to no particular genre. This is, however, a statement regarding his catalog as a whole. From song to song, utilizing a wide variety of instruments, Harper encompasses soul, folk, funk, rock, acoustic balladry, world jazz, and others more discrete into his musical repertoire.
His latest and sixth studio release, Both Sides Of The Gun, which is a double disc set (hence, both sides of the gun), remains faithful to this versatile panache. The two discs are very different albums, however, each representing a distinct side of Harper’s musical personality.
The first CD is much softer in texture and focuses largely on emotional themes. Accordingly, Harper adorns nearly each of the nine tracks with lightweight, acoustic picking and classical strings, relying mainly on a cello instead of electric bass. Also, highlighting a major change from his previous albums, Harper shows off his talent at the piano on several songs. The disc kicks off with “Morning Yearning,” a pretty tune with a strong strings presence and a reminder of Harper’s infamous ability to keep it mellow.

Immediately following, Harper treats us to another one of his soothing, acoustic love songs with “Waiting For You.” Note that he is changed his “walking away” ways from a few years back in favor of persistence with the ladies. Perhaps a more mature Ben? Who knows…
After a couple respectable tunes that one might discard as being uninteresting, Harper unleashes his impeccable potency for folk once again. “Crying Wont Help You Now” features Harper’s old-timey jazz voice, which seems to be overflowing with wisdom and a grandfather’s life experience. His lyrics also continue to impress, simple as they often are, with their soulful power and conscience.
The other side of this two-faced album is no uglier than the first, but it is certainly entirely different. Here Harper throws love and sorrow to the birds in favor of spiritual unrest and political fervor. Beginning with the single “Better Way,” a transition into the realm of unrest is immediately apparent. With the bass ousting the cello once again and featuring a tambura (an Indian four-stringed lute), the tune has a distinct worldly feel to it. Lyrically, the song points less to a particular political issue than to a mindset of human dedication: “What good is a man who wont take a stand, what good is a cynic with no better plan.” The cause brings Harper to an unmusical, but powerful scream at the closing of the song. He unravels his agenda a bit more in the funk masterpiece, “Both Sides of the Gun.” The tune has the façade of a Saturday night head-bopper but with its anti-war/anti-Bush outcry, the lyrical depth is a bit of a buzz-kill.
With “Engraved Invitation,” Harper provides a gem with the steady beat and electric buzz of a classic rock anthem while unveiling his own spiritual angst. “Black Rain” holds up the mid-section of the disc with a bit more funk. By far the most literally political song on the album, here Harper encourages revolution and directly indicts President Bush regarding the devastation of hurricane Katrina.
Although I’m normally not a fan of heavy political drama in music these days, I cannot rebuke the honesty and musical intensity of Harper’s efforts. Whether sunny, Sunday afternoon folk tunes, simple-minded love songs, or revolutionary rock-outs, Ben Harper knows music very well. Here he delivers once again. Well done Ben.

Listen to Ben’s first single on my space. http://www.myspace.com/benharper

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By TJ Ryan

Veteran martial artists, stuntmen, and breakdancers make up the Team Ryouko “xtreme martial arts performance team.” All these different styles fused together makes for some amazing acrobatics. Here is one of a few videos that showcases their skills. The longer you watch the more intense it gets. Watch for the wall run near the end, it’s most excellent. However, I do apologize for the music, which does not quite qualify under “hot albums,” if you know what I mean.

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The site has now moved to it’s very own, easy to remember domain name….thebunge.com. Also, the masses that have graciously bookmarked the old site will still be redirected to the new one. Lastly, tell your friends about the site and then tell us that your reading. Its good to know who our audience is and we would love to hear your thoughts.

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By Alex Nordenson

A reflection on the short story “Blood” in Burnsville

Dreams have always perplexed me. They are perhaps at the forefront of those mental phenomena of which I have a thorough lack of understanding but with which I still maintain an utter fascination. Our mind essentially writes stories while we sleep and and then throws us headfirst into them as the lone protagonist. At this point of personal entry, however, it nearly ceases to be a story at all, for throughout the window of slumber during which this dream is occuring there is absolutely no doubt that such events are truly happening. I have literally jumped out of bed upon awakening from a lengthy dream, scurried across my bedroom, and anxiously flipped open a plastic, purple suitcase in my closet to see if its contents were a plethera of candy, as my dream had truly convinced me. Other dreams have left me desperately relieved that my parents were not in fact divorced due to the fact that my mother was having an affair with a distant relative, or that I actually have not been chased around my neighbor’s backyard by large scorpions.
Dreams amazingly produce true emotions. They have an aspect that is completely real, that is not fictionalized. As I read in the story “Blood,” written about a Minnesota suburb that I am all too familiar with, dreams can often transcend this category of mental phenomena and very much affect, or have a deep connection with, important matters in the physical world. In cases like these, it is almost as if your mind has a predictive ability that serves to prepare its host for a particular experience or trauma that will soon occur. How in our world of supposed logic does this occur? Supposing this story by our Burnsvillian here is indeed true, is there any legitimate explanation behind his all-too-coincidental dream sequence?
Perhaps part of the man’s subconcious consumed auditory imputs as he was sleeping, and he in fact heard the boy scream, “My Hand!” His slumber, however, rather than being disturbed, was thrown into “story mode” and decided to inflict the boy’s real pain imitatively on the dreaming adult. This could happen right? Ummm…I think it’s more interesting to assume there is indeed something supernatural, a metaphysical cause of sorts, going on here. Neurochemistry shouldn’t be able to lay it’s soul devoid hands on the meaningful dreams of spiritual, hopeful, or perhaps merely superstitious individuals. Should it? I’m not sure if I would put God at the helm of this operation in REM irony, but it almost seems more logical, in way, that there is some wave of experience that attacked this lawncare boy and then proceeded to shake his employer’s sleeping son. In writing that, I felt my “what the hell am I talking about sense” take flight, but I’m not gonna take back my enthused sci-fism just yet. It’s like ghosts. Would you rather try until your life is half over and you’re blue in the face to prove logically and scientifically that what you saw in your attic on the anniversary of your wife’s death was a illusory mental malfunction, or simply believe that the woman you love was trying to contact you in any form that would intrigue your physical senses? I’m not even sure if I believe in ghosts, but my point is the same. I kinda hope I do believe in them. And I really hope that my dreams in fact aren’t pointless and vestiges of extreme coincidences. This transcendent quality of dreams and life itself is an astounding mystery. I shall have to read a bit more Freud if I hope to ease my confusions, I guess. Right? Probably not.

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By James Sharpsteen
(Taken from the book I Thought My Father Was God)

In the summer of 1972, I went home to visit my parents in Burnsville, Minnesota, for a couple weeks. I slept downstairs in the basement. Every now and then, a fourteen-year-old boy named Matthew would come to mow the lawn. Early one morning, as I was sleeping in, I heard him outside cutting the grass. I paid no attention and went back to sleep.
I dreamt that I was in the upstairs bathroom, standing in front of the sink and looking at my face in the mirror. It looked like my face, but at the same time there was something odd about it. I could see my black hair, my blue eyes, my mustache, but the shape of my face was different. I looked down at the sink, where the water was running in a counterclockwise circle down the drain. I held my hands under the water and started scrubbing my hands with soap. Again, I looked at the face that wasn’t my face. There was something different about it, but it didn’t really trouble me. I went on scrubbing my hands, but my left thumb hurt. The pain was fairly intense, and I wondered what I had done to make it hurt so badly. It felt as though it were sprained.
Then I looked down at the sink again, and there was blood running into the water, going round and round in that counterclockwise circle. “What’s going on?” I said to myself. Blood was gushing from my thumb, pouring out from the fatty part just below the knuckle, then running down my arm and dripping of my elbow into the sink. I grabbed my throbbing hand and said to myself, “What did you do, Jim? What did you do, Jim?”
I heard a voice calling out to me. “Jim! Jim!” I woke up and realized that it was my mother calling me out to me from the top of the stairs. She told me to come quickly. I threw on some clothes and rushed up to her. Matthew had hurt himself cutting the grass, she said, and she wanted me to go to the bathroom to help him.
Still half asleep, I walked into the bathroom and was astonished to see Matthew standing in front of the mirror and holding his left hand over the sink. Blood was pouring out from a gash between his thumb and first finger. The blood was running down his arm and into the water, going round and round as it flowed down the drain.

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