Posts filed under 'Music'
- For the first time, a significant evolution has been caught in the act in a lab setting: an E. Coli bacteria acquired the ability to metabolise citrate, something it normall can’t do.
- The New Journal of Physics reports a new “meta-material made up of array of small cylinders” can create a substance that is essentially impervious to sound, with lots of potential applications. Noiseless courdoroy!
- Great news from the upcoming iPhone/iTouch app store: a new version of iTunes and free software will allow remote control of iTunes from anywhere in the house (presumably anywhere on the network). This is a feature I’m definitely going to use a lot.
- Hall & Oates reunited for a show in L.A.
- The last period on earth with so few sunspots resulted in a little ice age in the late 17th century, and some geophysicists think that within 500 years the Earth’s magnetic field may be gone entirely– or at least enough to severely screw things up– but don’t panic! It may be that our universe was just a “bubble pinched off from a previously existing universe.”
June 27th, 2008
In the end, it wasn’t so very secret.
Ostensibly, you would find out about it via MySpace, by having the band listed as a friend and having the fortune of logging with the right window of time. Or you could have read the blurb in The Mercury and tried to guess at their oblique reference to the venue (and having never before been to The Satyricon, would have failed that).
I got lucky and happened to be going to Matador’s site to purchase the album– Real Emotional Trash– when I saw the blurb about the show off of the main page. You could go and pick up a wristband at specified Music Millenium to get in to the show, or you could just go to the door close to when the show might open and hope to get in, which is what we did.
I expected a crowd to have already massed, but we were lucky. Space was at a premium, but the secret seemed to be well-kept enough to keep us from being crushed to death.
After spending the first hour outside and the second hour in the bar next door, thoughts of playing Arkanoid crushed under the overwhelming mass of people in the bar, the show finally got rolling.
“Welcome to the free show,” SM said when at last they took the stage, “would that they could all be.”
After sorting out Joanna’s battery problems, they opened as the album does, “Dragonfly Pie” leading in to “Hopscotch Willie”, from there tracking through “Gardenia”, “Real Emotional Trash”, and a handful of other tracks, all from the new album. Despite some minor lyrical missteps, they were on their game, with Janet as always pulling everything together with her impeccable timing even in the face of the daunting SM, who likes to toy with his composition and delivery at every turn. But that what makes a live show worth it, isn’t it?
I was standing right in front of the speaker on stage left and had to improvise an earplug. That wasn’t an ideal situation, but it was good to be up so close in such an intimate venue. Spencer guessed that there were maybe 200 people which, in The Satyricon, means it’s basically packed. And, Oregon being Oregon, it wasn’t long before the cheeba smoke filled the room. (At one point, Joanna joking, “We’re allergic to weed.” SM quips about not smoking the reefer, Janet replies, “Obviously, you’re not from Oregon.”)
They wound the set down, again, as per the album, with “Wicked Wanda”, before being urged back on for the nigh-inevitable encore number. “We don’t really know internet etiquette,” said SM as he returned to the stage, questioning whether or not an encore was “appropriate” for an internet secret show, but they obliged anyway with, if I recall the name correctly, “Church on White”.
As they left the stage a second time, the crowd was still hungry for more: a chant from the center section came up, “MALK-A-MUS! MALK-A-MUS!” In true call-and-response fashion, a second contingent began their own shout: “JICKS!” “MALK-A-MUS!” “JICKS!”
Apologetically, Steve returned to the stage and told us that they would like to play more but they didn’t have anything else prepared. To the sound booth: “Don’t you guys have some house music to play about now? I know the Satyricon has fallen on some hard times…” Cue: house lights, music, and the small crowd quickly disperses, getting a bonus as we head out the door: a numbered show poster. Very cool, and certainly the best damn free show that I’ve ever seen. I look forward to catching them again at the Wonder in May.
March 7th, 2008
Rather than discuss any of these at length… here were my favorite things from this past year.
Video Games
7. Guitar Hero 3
6. Puzzle Quest
5. Assassin’s Creed
4. Super Mario Galaxy
3. Skate
2. Mass Effect
1. Rock Band
Albums
7. Sondre Lerche - Phantom Punch
6. Apostle of Hustle - The National Anthem of Nowhere
5. Pseudosix - Pseudosix
4. Radiohead - In Rainbows
3. Nine Inch Nails - Year Zero
2. The New Pornographers - Challengers
1. Of Montreal - Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?
Top Films
7. 28 Weeks Later
6. Grindhouse
5. Day Watch (Dnevnoi Dozor)
4. 300
3. Zodiac
2. Sunshine
1. The Darjeeling Limited
December 11th, 2007
A minor tragedy. All of the music is replaceable, but not all of the CDs are. I hardly ever forget to lock my car, but I guess the threat level has been upgraded to orange, now. The silver lining here is that they didn’t take anything else, half of the CDs were just burned copies, and I had just burned a couple of other things to listen to so I wasn’t music-less on the way in to work. Still, of the 23 wayward discs I can recall being in there, I will miss these ones the most:
- 5. Pseudosix - Pseudosix
- 4. The New Pornographers - Twin Cinema
- 3. Quasi - Field Studies
- 2. 20 Minute Loop - Yawn + House = Explosion
- 1. Pavement - Wowee Zowee
Godspeed, may I recover some of you in a used record store someday.
December 5th, 2007
With my love for games that, in particular, happen to fall into a realm of “simulation”– namely, Guitar Hero and skate, of late– I’ve been stumbling across the ever-present detractors who, for whatever reason, apparently can’t fathom the reason why such games might be entertaining.
“Go out and buy a real guitar,” they whine. “Get a real skateboard and get outside, noobs,” come the plainitive wails.
Well, I have a real skateboard, and I pretty well suck at it, but I especially suck at it during the times I want to play video games the most: late at night, in shitty weather in the winter in Oregon, while I’m drunk. Getting hit by virtual cars is much less costly. And I have a real guitar, too. I’m a much better guitarist than I am a skater, but I don’t have four band members sitting around to rock out with me like, ever.
A lot of other good counter-arguments have been made to the effect that no one jumps into a Call of Duty thread and tells people to join a real army, or in a Madden thread to say “go play real football you pansies”, or into a Zack & Wiki thread to say “go find a real golden space monkey to help you find real pirate treasure you inadequate douchebags”. To the extent that many games are simulations, it seems to be those that the closer they get to the real activity, the more you hear this response. (Except, for some reason, the flight simulator community seems immune to this.)
So why do is there such a strong response from people bothered by these simulators? My first thought was simply that they saw unfulfilled potential, people wasting their lives away when they may be able to derive more real-life experience doing these things. But is dicking around on a guitar or skating in the Safeway parking lot in the middle of the night going to do any more to improve my value as a person? And if that really were the point, wouldn’t these advocates of the outdoors do better to argue their case with WoW players, who probably spend much more time ensconced in Azeroth than I do skating San Vanelona?
However, it is a strong posture to adopt. I have a feeling we might just be dealing with the “real life” guitar heroes whose lives are being threatened. Such as from the South Park production blog, where they talk about making the Guitar Hero spoof episode:
“More often than not, a dude who pulls out a guitar looks and behaves like a total douche. We’ve all seen it before: some jerk trying to impress the ladies with his badass skills banging out Coldplay as hard as he can. Ugh.”
Okay, I’ll admit: I’ve probably been that guy at some point in my college career. Well, except for the Coldplay part. So I can relate: it appears to be a cheapening of something authentic that takes some actual talent/skill, and turns it into a damn party game that (gasp!) anyone can play! Now who’s going to be impressed by my rendition of “Everlong”?
I guess I was never threatened by it because I’m a gamer first and a musician second (and a skater a dark, distant third). And so the circle of douchebaggery continues.
November 30th, 2007
Via Pitchfork, Georgie James (which, confusingly, is the name of a band, not of a person like Georgie Fruit, Kevin Barnes’ alter ego) has canceled a slate of upcoming shows due to illness, including next Saturday (11/3) at the Holocene. I was looking forward to it, but at least there are a lot of good shows hitting town between now and the end of the year, starting with Apostle of Hustle @ Doug Fir Lounge next week.
October 26th, 2007
This is ginchy: one of my favorite musicians teaming up with the always entertaining Zooey Deschanel. Not much else to say on that that hasn’t been said, other than I adore the “You Really Got A Hold On Me” cover, because I’ve always loved that song. This is from a live performance on KEXP in late June 2007 (the two also are both involved in the eventually-hopefully-being-released film “The Go-Getter”).
- Magic Trick
- Change Is Hard
- Bring It On Home To Me
- You Really Got A Hold On Me
Enjoy!
Edit: Here’s You Really Got A Hold On Me in AIFF form; it’s 16.7MB, but it might work better if the mp3 causes you issues.
July 18th, 2007
The year was 1995, and the Wal-Mart was a recent addition to the sleepy town of North Bend, Oregon, and was not quite the woeful beacon of the underclass that it is today. I was finishing up my junior year in high school, and I had convinced my parents of my need to get new music.
“One album,” was apparently the official decree, and after spending many minutes of searching, I narrowed it down to the horns of the following dilemma:
The one good radio station in town was the “Good Times, Great Oldies” station, and MTV was already well into it’s “Real World” phase of not playing any new music, so journeys like this were my only chance to learn that something more existed beyond the veil.
On the one hand, there stood the first Foo Fighters album. I’d been a pretty big Nirvana fan, like everyone else of my time and place, and this was the first Foo Fighters effort, so I was naturally quite curious. On the other hand, there stood this newly-minted album called, charmingly, “Wowee Zowee”…
I’d certainly heard of Pavement. From my brother, of course, for whom they’d outstayed their welcome after “Slanted and Enchanted”, but I’d never really heard them at all.
By whatever stroke of fate, “Wowee Zowee” made the cut, and although it would be another three months of spinning this record before I cracked the code that made it one of my definitively Favorite Albums of All Time, and Pavement a member of my personal rock pantheon, I took the road that offered more resistance, and that has made all the difference.
In hindsight, although I’ve never disliked a Foo Fighters song, I’ve still never picked up that album, nor any others. I may not know what I’m missing, but should my stylus’ needle wear tired of this world, there are certainly more to tread.
July 9th, 2007
The only Beck album curiously absent from my mp3 library– not counting Sea Change, which I never picked up– is well worth adding: The Information. I remember picking it up at a Fred Meyer as Amy and I were headed out of town to Hoodoo a few months back; I figured I had just left the disc in the car and never got the chance to add it to the MP3s of Alexandria.
And then I put the CD in today, and the true reason for its exclusion came writhing from the depths of robot hell. The act of simply inserting the disc freezes up iTunes, if it’s open. If it’s not open, and I try to drag the AIFFs to iTunes to import them, I get the same effect: an application permanently suspended in a loop of self-uncertainty.
Does my Powerbook have something against Beck? Did it read some erroneously scathing review on the wide wide web? You win this battle, robots! But not the war.
June 5th, 2007
ser•en•dip•i•ty: the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way
One of the benefits of living in Portland, aside from escaping Allergy Valley, is the great variety of music that is either from or comes through here. I just found out late last week that Andrew Bird is playing at the Crystal Ballroom this upcoming Friday. I’ve just started listening to him not altogether too long ago, but I’ve really been digging it. Apparently, he’s also a classically trained violinist and stuff, and I bet he puts on a hell of a show.
This has been a hell of a year for fantastic albums so far. Hissing Fauna (Of Montreal), Phantom Punch (Sondre Lerche), and Year Zero (NIN) have all been in heavy rotation, along with another gem, The National Anthem of Nowhere by Apostle of Hustle. I stumbled across this mostly on chance. I liked the description, but that doesn’t always translate into liking the music. In fact, not too often, but one has to take some chances to ever expand their horizons.
So I’ve had Apostle of Hustle on the brain a lot lately. And eventually, as with a lot of bands, I get to a point where I’ve listened to the album thirty times, I’ve got new, undiscovered favorite tunes floating to the top of my playlist more and more often, and I stop and wonder, “Who the hell are these guys?”
Turns out it’s a project by the lead guitarist for The Broken Social Scene– whom I’ve only ever heard one song by at this point– then I saw something about a tour in lo my many hyperlinks. And behold! Apostle of Hustle at the Crystal… On Friday! Opening for Andrew Bird!
Serendipity!
May 2nd, 2007
Previous Posts
