more more shows recently attended

[Andrew_TSKS]

last night my friend michael had a show in his apartment. it was fucking crazy--at least 75 people there, our friend j.k. showing ridiculous slides on a wall while the bands were playing, everyone drunk and falling all over the place and dancing to notorious b.i.g. inbetween bands. i was kind of overwhelmed and spent most of the night sitting on couches taking it all in. the bands themselves were really good--gull is nate from the ultra dolphins/snack truck doing one-man band action. he plays guitar and sings in ultra dolphins, and played drums and sang in the original incarnation of snack truck; now he plays guitar, drums, and sings, in gull. he wore a mask with a microphone inside it, a la lightning bolt, and started the set by using a shitload of effects he was running his vocal through (into the same amp he was playing guitar through, by the way) to get a weird delay/repeat groove going, then playing an insane yet very rhythmic drum solo over it. after that, he played about 10 songs in which he played drums with his feet and right hand while playing guitar with his left hand by hammering onto the fretboard. the songs sounded sorta like ultra dolphins and snack truck, which makes sense, but also had a rhythmic sense i haven't heard in either of those bands, which translated into a lot of parts that were almost moshy. it was a really good set, especially since it involved watching this guy play guitar and drums at the same time. at the end of the set he actually got an encore and started freestyling some weird rap thing that involved him spelling out his name and the crowd yelling it back at him. only, for the purposes of the rap, his name was "freddy". bizarre and awesome.

ponytail, from baltimore, headlined, and they're what, having never heard deerhoof, i've always expected that band to sound like. their songs were very rhythmic also, but instead of seeming like mosh songs the way gull's songs sometimes did, ponytail's were based around disco/techno rhythms. they had no bassist, so over the drummer's constant uniform pounding, the two guitarists played crazy interlocking note-heavy riffs, and a little tiny girl who looked like ellen page in "hard candy" (i.e. like an effeminate 13 year old boy) sang high-pitched goofy lyrics while bouncing constantly up and down like she was playing ddr or something. they were awesome and got the whole crowd dancing. where i was standing, i could feel the floor of michael's third-storey apartment flexing. it was making me a little nervous, but on the other hand, i found it pretty much impossible to stop bouncing up and down myself. i don't know if i can possibly do ponytail the justice they deserve, but damn--they were incredible. this show was the first of their tour, so if they hit your town anytime soon, make sure you go. the tour dates are on their myspace.

[davy]

the husband/wife duo in my band--blake & sara--hold a monthly potluck/houseshow at their place. the series is called "the cozy cozy cocoa show" and it's always a great time. it's the sort of gathering that restores your faith in humanity and reminds you of the importance of community. good people, good food, good music. there's a wonderful give and take, the performances are intimate and interactive...and most importantly, no one seems to mind when my son finds the toy xylophone and starts wailing away in the middle of an acoustic sing-a-long.

tonight was another one. a pasta party which we brought brownies to. it was a wonderful surprise to meet our very own mr. tops_wobbling. he introduced himself and we talked about old times. later, during the second act of the night, he tried to teach my son how to blind the musician on stage by shining a gigantic flashlight into his face. fun, fun.

[Little Sixes Little Nines]

w00t, I got mountain goats tickets!

[Andrew_TSKS]

davy, that's a great story.

[Maaik]

My sister and a bunch of her friends were going to see They Might Be Giants and they had some extra tickets, so I got to go too!  They played actually two shows on Saturday--a 3pm Kids show and a 6:30 14+ show w/ no opening act.  We went to the second one.

This was my second time seeing them live and I was just thrilled as hell all the while for many reasons.  One was that I've been a TMBG fan since the 6th grade.  Another is that this was the first real concert that I've been to with my sister, and getting to pogo to "Birdhouse In Your Soul" with her was something really special to me.  Also: fuckin Conga-line.  Dorky as they are, they've been doing this for 25 years and they flat out put on a rocking, entertaining show.  When was the last damn time you looked around at a concert crowd and seen everyone in the damn house jumping up and down?  Between the new material, they did a bunch of their standards and even broke out stuff they don't play very often--they freaking played "Letterbox"!

It was a good time.

[davy]

i saw them a couple months back at the georgia theatre. so much fun.

[hannah]

The Magnetic Fields were awesome last night! Although I did sometimes feel like I was sitting in at the dinner just before the mom and dad tell the kids they're divorcing! But the new album sounded great, as did the cello and guitar! Last night's show is up there with the Maxwell's show I went to in 1999!

[Killdozersnakeboy]

Dirtbombs last night at Whammy bar with about a hundred n fifty people. I felt pretty lucky going into this. I much prefer small venue shows. I saw Dirtbombs play last week with a crowd of around 400-500 between The Bellrays & the Datsuns. The DB's set was only about 40 odd minutes as Datusns headlined.

We get to the show last night and the Situations are opening. They're pretty good but the big surprise was that Ray fucking Columbus did vocals for the second half of the set! Most here will have no idea who Ray Columbus is but I'm pretty sure the Kiwis here will be saying WTF! He was a kiwi rock star in the early 60's having several massive hits with songs like She's A Mod. Both the DB's & promoter Jon Baker are known for their fondness for 60's garage so I assume that's how this came about. They performed a bunch of early Invaders tunes, including some rarely heard fuzzed out b-sides from the era. Weird and really cool. Between song banter was a bit embarrassing at times though. The term Rock N Roll means relates to sex apparently.

The Dirtbombs took to the "stage" next. The stage is about the height of a beer crate here which helps as with two drummers there was no room on the stage for the foldback speakers. They were on beer crates in front of the stage. I stood in front with a couple of friends and proceeded dance like a dork for close to two hours. DB's played lots of classics including a bunch of new stuff. Motor City Baby was an obvious highlight but it was pretty much all a-grade rockin. My two friends (the Emma's) got pulled up on stage with a couple of other girls to dance during the encore. Perfect end to a close to perfect show. Third time I've seen them and this was the best by a country mile.

[Andrew_TSKS]

The term Rock N Roll means relates to sex apparently.

you didn't know that?

In 1951, Cleveland, Ohio disc jockey Alan Freed began playing rhythm and blues music for a multi-racial audience. Freed is credited with first using the phrase "rock and roll" to describe the music. However, the term had already been introduced to US audiences, particularly in the lyrics of many rhythm and blues records. Three different songs with the title "Rock And Roll" were recorded in the late 1940s; one by Paul Bascomb in 1947, another by Wild Bill Moore in 1948, and yet another by Doles Dickens in 1949, and the phrase was in constant use in the lyrics of R&B songs of the time. One such record where the phrase was repeated throughout the song was "Rock And Roll Blues," recorded in 1949 by Erline "Rock And Roll" Harris. The phrase was also included in advertisements for the film Wabash Avenue, starring Betty Grable and Victor Mature. An ad for the movie that ran April 12, 1950 billed Ms. Grable as "...the first lady of rock and roll" and Wabash Avenue as "...the roaring street she rocked to fame".

Before then, the phrase "rocking and rolling", as secular black slang for dancing or sex, appeared on record for the first time in 1922 on Trixie Smith's "My Man Rocks Me With One Steady Roll". Even earlier, in 1916, the term "rocking and rolling" was used with a religious connotation, on the phonograph record "The Camp Meeting Jubilee" by an unnamed male "quartette".[2] The word "rock" had a long history in the English language as a metaphor for "to shake up, to disturb or to incite". "Rocking" was a term used by black gospel singers in the American South to mean something akin to spiritual rapture. By the 1940s, however, the term was used as a double entendre, ostensibly referring to dancing, but with the subtextual meaning of sex, as in Roy Brown's "Good Rocking Tonight." The verb "roll" was a medieval metaphor which meant "having sex". Writers for hundreds of years have used the phrases "They had a roll in the hay" or "I rolled her in the clover"[3]. The terms were often used together ("rocking and rolling") to describe the motion of a ship at sea, for example as used in 1934 by the Boswell Sisters in their song "Rock and Roll"[4] and in Buddy Jones' "Rockin' Rollin' Mama" (1939). Country singer Tommy Scott was referring to the motion of a railroad train in the 1951 "Rockin and Rollin'".

[Good Intentions]

He was being sarcastic.

[Andrew_TSKS]

go figure.

[diesel_powered]

Dirtbombs last night at Whammy bar with about a hundred n fifty people. I felt pretty lucky going into this. I much prefer small venue shows. I saw Dirtbombs play last week with a crowd of around 400-500 between The Bellrays & the Datsuns. The DB's set was only about 40 odd minutes as Datusns headlined.

Woo hoo! Detroit represent!

[Maaik]

We played last night with Humbolt and Auditioning Alice.  Humbolt are amazing and mathy instrumental stuff--kinda reminds me of the Common Cold.  Watching their drummer was the highlight.  Auditioning Alice are sort of a muddle of '80s-early '90s indie and the singer definitely has a Mark E. Smith vibe about him.  Apparently, they also pull out the odd Primus cover now and then--didn't happen last night.

We played the new song and didn't fuck it up.  I have a pink/red scrapes across my wrist and thumb, bassist has similar injuries.  My shirt from last night was still soaked with sweat when I picked it up this morning.  I am disgusting.  It was a good show.

[Andrew_TSKS]

oh, that reminds me, i'm gonna post about the show i went to the night before last. it was at the house where i was staying in wilmington delaware, and it was just three local bands from that area playing a free show for st. patrick's day. ape played first, and i really liked them. they were just a stoner rock band, of the more driving rather than totally sludgy school of stoner rock, but they were really good at what they were doing and it was a lot of fun to watch. i ended up getting both a t-shirt and a demo from them for free. awesome dudes. count von count were next, and although i suppose they also have a reputation as a stoner rock band, they've always seemed more to me like a heavy, midtempo hardcore band. i still felt that way after seeing them monday night. i must say, though, they really killed it live. justin, their guitarist, was rocking out a lot, and sometimes was too into it to even sing into the mic--but you could still hear him over the music. i love it when that kind of thing happens, it's intense. the last band was called the headies, and everyone had told me they were ramones-style pop-punk. i could see a little of that, but honestly, i think they were at least as inspired, if not more so, by the early 90s garage-punk revival, bands like the mummies and stuff. they covered "psycho" by the sonics and one other garage rock chestnut i knew the words to (i've since forgotten what it was), and their original songs were more rock n' roll than pop-punk. they were really sloppy, and while that made the set fun, it didn't give the best representation of their music. however, i think i'd really like them on record, and i liked them live too, just because they were a lot of fun to watch.

[Killdozersnakeboy]

Immortal last night. umm.. yeah, what can I say. It was fucking amazing, jaw dropping shit. I wasn't expecting them to be such showmen. They really went out of their way to engage the crowd. People went batshit.
The venue was pretty much a concrete bunker several floors below ground. It was an oven down there. They were selling ice lollies at the bar and seeing black metal people walking around licking brightly coloured lollies was priceless.
Ddilla & GI were also in attendance. LPTJ represent!

[jebreject]

SM & the Jicks. They played, if not all of Real Emotional Trash, goddamn near all of it. Two songs off Pig Lib, I don't think anything from the s/t, and definitely nothing from Face the Truth

It was fucking awesome, although I was surrounded on three sides by the most annoying people I've ever encountered at a show. To my right, a dude who kept arguing with his girlfriend throughout all of the Jicks set, loudly, and at one point yelled for Malkmus to "Play a song you fucking homo!" Behind me and to my right, a group of jagoffs who were occasionally funny but mostly annoying, heckling the band with nonsense and gibberish (literally--I think perhaps they were playing a game where they would try to get Malkmus to repeat the nonsense phrases they were shouting out. He did twice.) They talked throughout the entire show, drunk and very loud, and I wanted to punch them in the nuts. But man, Malkmus's solos were ridiculous, Weiss's drumming un-fucking-stoppable. Anyway, it was awesome, SM was obviously stoned out of his mind for the encore.

The John Vanderslice set was pretty terrible, which is a shame. I've seen him two or three times before and he was good each of those times. Just really fell flat, though he did a song in the crowd with an acoustic guitar, which was pretty fucking cool.

[Maaik]

They're coming through town next week and I'm probably not gonna be able to go cos of money and shit.  But they're playing the Variety Playhouse, which--compared to the venues I've seen Vanderslice play (and Pavement, for that matter)--is fucking huge.  It'll probably sound great and I think Crissee's going, but eh.  No breasts for the love god.

[davy]

They're coming through town next week and I'm probably not gonna be able to go cos of money and shit.  But they're playing the Variety Playhouse, which--compared to the venues I've seen Vanderslice play (and Pavement, for that matter)--is fucking huge.  It'll probably sound great and I think Crissee's going, but eh.  No breasts for the love god.

man, i'm in the same boat. no money, too late to plan to get to atlanta, etc etc.

[difficult]

Knife fight at the Adelaide again tonight! Thats like 3 weekends in a row or something! And I can possibly afford a jug or two!

[El_Josharino]

If anyone is curious about what I got up to at SXSW besides drinking too much, I typed up a rundown for my buddies' blog: http://www.omahype.com/index.php?entry=entry080321-225135

[Trousers and Pat]

Hey! I was there too. Our paths may have even crossed a couple times. I was at that bowerbirds show for a bit at least.

[mountmccabe]

I forgot to write about Boredoms.  I saw them at 'Canes in San Diego on Saturday (the 15th.)

They had their three drum kit circle going and Eye played synthesizers/noise machines and a guitar tree.  He had 7 guitars fused together, each tuned to different open chords.  Four necks on one side, three the other.  He'd play them with various percussion playing things like drum sticks, a 3' long stick and such.

They played two mostly improvised songs over 70 minutes then after a two or three minute encore break came back for another 20 minute song.  The overall sound is something along the lines of their latest studio albums but they've certainly progressed since then. This is all new shit.

I have never seen anything like it.  Watching three drummers trade beats back and forth, feeling the ebb and flow of their longform songs... yeah.

The San Diego show I saw was the first of their current tour; and from what I can tell this was only the warm up.  They've really been getting going as the tour has progressed.  So yeah, wholly recommended.

[died_trying]

They had their three drum kit circle going and Eye played synthesizers/noise machines and a guitar tree.  He had 7 guitars fused together, each tuned to different open chords.  Four necks on one side, three the other.  He'd play them with various percussion playing things like drum sticks, a 3' long stick and such.

that sounds just unspeakably awesome

[diesel_powered]

I am shedding a single tear that they're playing Chicago in a couple days and not right now, when I could conceivably see them.

Also, they're apparently playing a show in NY with Jim O'Rourke. I imagine much of the crowd will be legally insane after that show.

[died_trying]

yeah as soon as i read that description i checked the tour dates and am now shedding a tear that they played seattle last night but didn't come to van.

i might've even made the trip had i known.