I've been listening to Love is for Suckers -- the ill-fated Twisted Sister swansong -- a lot these days. I've never quite understood why it's taken such a beating over the years. Is it a good metal album? No. Is it a metal album at all? No. Is it a good pop album? Yes. Is it a great pop album? Yes! Considering that it was originally intended to be a Dee Snider solo album, recorded with studio musicians, it's really unfair to judge it as a Sister record. The style/sound is unlike anything they had released before, but that's because it was an entirely different band who recorded it. Supposedly the record company wanted it to be released as a Twisted Sister record, so the other band member's names and faces were placed in the liner notes and that was that. There was one single released that went nowhere. A decent video made. A brief tour to support it. And that was it.
Well, until all the various reunions here and there, leading to the full-scale reunion a few years back. But that's another beast all together.
So much wrapped up in the past two days, it's ridiculous:
~~ Chris Onstad in quasi~Victorian garb and Tony Millionaire as God at Powell's Books: sipping on Budweiser, yelling at fans, and making everyone in their vicinity enjoy themselves and the experience. Regardless of what you might think of their individual work, they are incredibly nice, grounded, approachable guys with personality and wit for days.
Tony Millionaire is God
~~ Met/talked to Wally Lamb, of all people. He was in town as part of the Portland Arts & Lectures series and came in the store in the afternoon to sign some books. He's also an incredibly nice man.
~~ Last Thursday on Alberta with Mike, and a brief cameo from Mark. Crowds, electronica DJ with a Spinner for a face, an incredible slice and a decent beer (coming from someone who doesn't really like beer) at Al Forno Ferruzza, PB&J thumbprint cookies from a couple of cigarette girls from the 1920s, this thing, untrained fire juggler losing control of his flaming nunchuks and hitting a girl in the crowd, etc.
Wednesday night was fun, but kind of a bust. It was my night to take care of the volunteer duties (I may very well have been the only volunteer that night...I was definitely the only one working the door. But there may have been some volunteer stagehands and whatnot); so at least I was able to get those out of the way up front, leaving me with the rest of the festival free and open in front of me.
Everyone I worked next to/around ~~ from both Wilamette Week and Berbati's (where the show was) ~~ was super cool. Some of the people coming through the door were a bit dickish, but nothing out of hand. All in all, it was an easy, breezy night.
I got to listen to the show in the background, but was usually having to focus on what was going on in front of me to pay much attention to the bands. I don't remember anything about Fences, so I guess they didn't impress me much. The Portland Cello Project sounded nice and interesting, and had the biggest draw of the night. I may check them out sometime, but no rush. Damian Jurado sounded lovely, as could be expected. And Will Sheff sounded alright, though a bit too country~fried for my taste at the time.
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Day Two
Thursday night was truly the first day of the Musicfest ~~ an incredible number of incredible bands spread throughout some incredible venues in an incredible city.
Some bands I missed: Helio Sequence Girltalk Explosions in the Sky Frightened Rabbit the Dirty Three Cymbals Eat Guitars
Bands I caught:
Ah Holly Fam'ly I caught the last 1.5 songs of their set. They sounded fun, but a bit too hillbilly for me.
Tu Fawning Husband and wife team Joe Haege and Corrina Repp (he of 31 Knots; she, a "maker of quiet music" according to wikipedia) make a rather astounding team. His musical and songwriting chops combined with her heartstopping voice are a perfect match. Add two more musicians to help beef up the sound and flesh out the corners, and you have the juggernaut that is Tu Fawning. I'm glad I was finally able to catch these folks' live show. I've been coveting their E.P. for months now. Hopefully those outside of Portland will catch the fire soon because I seriously believe these people can go places I've never dreamed of. However, that's bound to take Haege away from 31 Knots, if only temporarily, which I wouldn't be too happy to see happen.
The Depreciation Guild I got to the Doug Fir a bit earlier than expected, so ended up catching a set by these guys. It was a nice surprise, and encapsulated everything I love about something like Musicfest NW ~~ there's enough of a mix of "big" established acts and more obscure, up and coming bands. By going to check out the former, you're usually exposed to the latter. And occasionally, that can be wonderful. The Depreciation Guild's sound harkens back to mid~career Cure (think "Friday I'm in Love" and such; or, more recently, something along the lines of Black Kids' Wizard of Aahhhhs EP), with a bit of My Bloody Valentine thrown in for good measure. There's also a number of bleeps and bloops programmed throughout to add some nice depth and variety to what could easily become a generic hipster throwoff.
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart Taking the blueprint laid down by Belle & Sebastian, and not so much reinventing it but simply remodeling it, the Pains of Being Pure at Heart are quickly making Twee "cool" again. And seeing as how Twee is one of my (many?) musical guilty pleasures, I'm certainly not complaining. As a live band, they're solid. Very solid. So solid that they sound nearly identical to their studio output. However, in this case, that's quite alright.
I ended up having to cut this last set a bit short so I could catch the 12:45am bus back home, rather than running across the bridge after the show to try and catch the final bus out of downtown at 1:30am. Missing that one would have meant that I was royally screwed, so I didn't press my luck.
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Day Three
After the previous two days of concerts, usually mixed with work or other engagements, I was bit worn down by Friday evening. And so, I decided to sit out on the Arctic Monkeys show, rest up a bit, and head into town a little later than originally planned.
First up, I had planned on catching Karl Blau at Backspace. But unbeknownst to me, he decided to switch places with the other bands and went on at 8pm rather than the 10pm that was listed on the schedule. Which meant I had to suffer through No Kids set, the whole time wondering (yet again) why I go to shows at Backspace. It's not a live music venue, and the crowd that it normally pulls are mostly the borderline-Aspie kids who go out to one social function a year, and as such, have no idea how to properly function in such a setting. Case in point: last night, the first 50 ft. or so in front of the stage was completely wasted by people sitting on the floor, which caused everyone else to be crammed into the back of the club or crowded near the front, which made movement from one end to the other nearly impossible.
So, since I didn't get to catch Karl Blau, I headed over (for the third night in a row) to Berbati's where I caught most of Rocky Votolato's set. He's enjoyable and somewhat folky. He'd make a nice touring compliment to Steve Poltz.
After his set, I settled in for Viva Voce -- one of the bands I was most excited to see this weekend. It'd been quite some time since I'd last seen them, and this would be the first time seeing them perform after adding the two other members to the fold. Despite horrible sound (something kept causing horrible feedback throughout the set), they put on a great show. I've been a bit trepidatious about picking up their latest album, mostly due to the additions to the band. As a duo, they were capabale of making some absolutely fantastic music (The Heat Can Melt Your Brain continues to hold its ground as one of my favorite albums of the decade, if not of all time), so I was weary of what the "full band version" would sound like. If last night's set was any indication, I had nothing to worry about.
After their set was over, I had planned on sticking around for the Long Winters. But I was exhausted and my feet and back were aching, so I called it an early night and came home.
Some bands I missed on Friday night: Mount Eerie Sunny Day Real Estate the Zeros Mudhoney Pink Moutaintops the Prids Bad Brains Strength
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Day Four
It's a good thing I didn't have plans to go out on Sunday night, because Saturday took nearly everything I had left.
Mariachi el Bronx Meh. If there could ever be such a thing as a vanity project for a hardcore band, Mariachi el Bronx is such a thing. Hitting the stage 35 minutes after the scheduled start time with a frontman who seemed visibly fucked up, Mariachi el Bronx played a decent, if underwhelming, set...of a bunch of SoCal white boys (and one Hispanic gal ~~ to add authenticity, I suppose) playing fairly traditional mariachi music. Only with English lyrics.
The Bronx The regular day jobs of Mariachi el Bronx, minus the lady. Loud, fast, crazy, volatile insanity. Everything one could expect from such a band as the Bronx. Though, it was a bit too loud. The Wonder Ballroom is a great venue with wonderful acoustics ~~ which means that a band doesn't need to play very loud to be heard. However, with a band such as the Bronx, the acoustics only increase the already amped up volume: making it loud enough to be indecipherable. Add to that a soundman who increases the already~too~loud volume and you're left with an experience that, while fun, is incredibly painful.
Fucked Up Much like with the Bronx, Fucked Up's set was fun and insane and too damn loud to really process. Randy made it up from visiting family in Salem, but forgot his wristband at home, so he was a bit late. He kept asking me if I wanted to get further up in the crowd (like most homos, he was obviously wanting a piece of Pink Eyes ~~ who, in wonderful form, spent quite a bit of time baiting the bear~friendly audience), but I was fine to stand in the back of the room, far from the maddening speakers. Like last year's performance at Satyricon, Fucked Up put on a wonderful show. It's always nice to see a band who appreciates its fans as much as Fucked Up seems to. However, given the size of the Wonder Ballroom, and the fact that for a free all~ages show in the middle of the day the place wasn't even half~full, the level of energy and magic wasn't nearly as high as it was last time they were in town. But nonetheless, it was well worth it.
"Rub yourselves together 'til the magic comes out!"
Jealous Butcher Records showcase Randy and I headed over to Slabtown after the Fucked Up show. We were present for sets by both Jeff London and Arch Cape, but between games of pinball and plates of bar food, I don't think either of us were paying much attention. Both bands sounded good, but I can't really make a judgement call one way or the other. Since he had to wake up far too early the next morning to take his sister to the airport, Randy decided to call it a night just as I settled in for a rollicking set by The Valiant Arms. Over the past year or so, the guys (and girl) have quickly become one of my favorite Portland bands. Not only because bass player Diane Rios is one of the sweetest people I know, but also because the band has a spirit that's contagious, and incredibly sound and solid songwriting chops. They fired through a great, short and sweet set that was definitely a highlight of the weekend.
I had planned on closing out the weekend with a performance by Portland metallers Red Fang, but between a severe headache, ears that were still ringing from the time at the Wonder Ballroom, and a steadily approaching 9am start time for work the next morning, I threw in the towel and called it a night, and a weekend.
Some other bands I missed: Panther John Vanderslice Beach House Black Francis Riverboat Gamblers Dillinger Four Team Dresch Trash Talk
Also, I've made a rough draft of my MFNW itinerary, in case anyone else is heading out that weekend.
Wednesday Fences Portland Cello Project Damian Jurado Will Sheff (of Okkervil River) [I'm actually helping out at the door for this one, so I'll probably just be listening in from the front, but there is the slim possibility that I will be relieved during the night and just might be able to actually see Jurado's set.]
Thursday Tu Fawning the Pains of Being Pure at Heart
Saturday Mariachi el Bronx the Bronx Fucked Up (I'm so excited about seeing these guys [and girl] again) the Valiant Arms John Vanderslice Red Fang
and Sunday night is just the Glacial Pace Records showcase/ Modest Mouse show, and I'm not really interested in that.
Again, this is just a draft. Some bands will probably get added to the list, and depending on crowds/locations, some of the above may get missed altogether. If'n you're interested, the full schedule is here.
I think I could have managed a ticket for this show (I think it was $12 or so), but I knew if I went I'd easily blow my financial wad on merch at the show. And seeing as how I'm in the infancy of getting my finances wrangled up and in line, spending the money-that-I-need-to-stretch-through-the-week all in one place wouldn't have been the best decision.
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Cry Baby at the Laurelhurst
This one's towards the bottom of the John Waters list for me, so I'm not too bummed about missing it. Still, it would have been fun. Maybe.
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Stone at the Bagdad
Australian biker-sploitation film from the 70s. I'd never heard of this one until I saw the poster for it outside the Bagdad a few days ago. Sounds interesting, but probably more interesting to those more interested in biker culture than I am. Though, I guess it could have served as a great appetizer to this upcoming main course.
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What I did:
Dead Snow at the Hollywood Theatre
An ode to Evil Dead (with a bit of Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, Friday the 13th, April Fool's Day, Halloween, Leprechaun....seriously, half of this film is for horror geeks to play 'Spot the Influence"), only replacing the demonic woodland spirits with a horde of Nazi Zombies. It's fun and silly and ridiculously gory. It's not gold by any means, but much like Black Sheep, it's a perfect way to shut your brain off for a few hours and watch people getting their intestines pulled out (usually for comedic effect).
Growing up in the culturally-void wasteland of Mobile, AL (which seems to be slowly changing, from what my mom tells me), I spent a good deal of the last ten years of my time there trying to seek out new and interesting things, and glean some sort of self curated education of culture. Music seems to have come first: heading out to as much live, local music as I could; reading musician interviews and articles to find out about old bands that were then unheard of to me; trading music with people; taking more chance on unknown bands. Then Literature: college mostly oversaw that one, though I did occasionally try to lose myself among the shelves at the local city library (which is how I chanced to stumble upon Murakami). Then Film: working in multiple video stores; scouring all the Criterion editions from the library's DVD collection; heading out to every indie/artsy movie I was able to, no matter how tedious.
And now, it seems as if my brain has finally made it's way around to an interest in Art. First, there was this book. And then this one.* And tonight, I picked up this one. I don't know why I got a bug up my ass about Impressionism all of a sudden, it just happened. We'll see what comes next. Probably Theater.
*This is not accounting for my Mick Rock, Nicholas Zinner, or David Horovitz photography books. I file those under Music.
Next on the list for the Graphic Novel Book Club is:
Transmetropolitan, vol 1 -- from Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson. As far as I know, I've yet to read anything from Ellis, but Robertson is artist for The Boys which I've been reading pretty steadily in the trade collections.
The King -- Rich Koslowski. I don't know much about this one, either; other than it's about an Elvis impersonater in Las Vegas.
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In other such news, I recently picked up a copy of Yoshihiro Tatsumi's A Drifting Life. I'm really anxious to start this one, but I have a few novels and other comics that have been sitting around waiting for attention, so it will probably be a few weeks before I can dig in to this tome.
[Though...I'm still trying to figure out this picture...]
via Holy Taco: Recently we here at the Taco were talking about anal sex (shocking, I know) and we realized that the way women feel about anal sex is almost identical to the way they feel about eating at the restaurant Chili's. Here's how we broke it down.
Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009 -- Chris Onstad, he of Achewood, will be at Powell's to promote his second Achewood collection. Sharing the floor with him that night will be Tony Millionaire, creative genius behind Maakies. Though, I'm not too sure why he'll be there.
Posting that clip of Mishima made me want to hunt this one down again to post here. It features the only known surviving recording of Virginia Woolf. It is an essay she wrote/read for a BBC radio broadcast in 1937.
Mouseketeer roll call: Vadim Kevin Jay Petersen Mike Mark Rose Annette! and me
Last night, the above listed went out on the town for Portland's First Thursday gallery walk. Meeting up at Powell's for Jay Fiorenza's 'Disappearing Landscapes' photography exhibit -- a collection of small beautiful, haunting black & white photos, each mounted on a 5-6" block of wood. It'll be up throughout the month, so if you missed it last night, be sure to stop by some time. And at $75/piece, they're very affordable for local art supporters. From there, we headed out across the Pearl and into Old Town, stopping by a high-end gallery with some incredibly ridiculous pieces, but also some lovely dry point prints by Dali -- but those were far more expensive than $75/piece. After that, we wandered in and out some small modern/"contemporary" galleries showcasing more collectives, rather than individual artists. Some of it was interesting, but most of it was little more than the caliber of a teenager doodling in his notebook during math class; the highlight of such being the photo collage in which the Photobucket.com watermark was visible in nearly every photo. After gallery-hopping for a bit, Mike, Mark, and Rose headed off towards NW 21st for a friend's exhibit, and Vadim, Kevin, Jay Petersen and I went out for some Hot Lips pizza. Then it was back to bus for me, and the MAX for the others.
Most of the art was silly and ridiculous (not because my eye for art is untrainted [which it kinda is], but because it truly was silly and ridiculous), and most of the crowd was exactly the kind of people you would expect to show up for such a thing. But, regardless, it was a fun night. Hopefully we can do it again sometime. Or all meet up for Last Thursday some time.
Were it possible, I would give anything I possibly could to sit down with Mishima and discuss art and culture and life. While I can respect a lot of his political stances, he was a bit too militaristic for me to ever want to broach that subject with him.
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I recently finished Confessions of a Mask -- Mishima's debut novel about a gay man trying to come to terms with his desires, as well as the sense of displacement and false identity when trying to interact with the outside world of "normality." A book hasn't had quite the same effect on me as Confessions... since I read Edmund White's The Beautiful Room is Empty for the first time in college. Though, thinking about that now -- I wonder who I would have become had these experiences been reversed and I had discovered Mishima before White, and during a time when I was in much the same headspace, going through a lot of the same emotions, as the unnamed character/narratoe in Mishima's novel. (Oddly enough, the main character/narrator in White's novel also goes unnamed.)
As the title implies, you'll find a bit of everything here -- thoughts, expressions, opinions, likes, dislikes, current points of interest, random bits of my everyday life, etc.
You'll also find some of my photogrpahy here as well.
