David Byrne

So it's been a while... again. Yet I will be brief. Because I have too much to do. But last Wednesday, Brian convinced me that we should go see David Byrne at Oven's Auditorium. (It didn't take much convincing) We were decently close enough but way the hell off to the side, which sucked. Especially since the guy selling the tickets sold them as "DEAD CENTER." And more especially b/c it made it hard as hell for the camera to pick up anything on stage w/o being blinded by the reflected light. But whatever. Shit happens. And it was still an awesome awesome show, regardless.
I don't think I ever got around to posting, but I went to see Of Montreal in Asheville a few weeks ago. It was... fine. Although the production was awesome in that it obviously took a lot of work and a lot of skill to pull off, I found it distracting. From the music. Which is the reason I went to the show. Way too much going on on stage, and the music suffered. It wasn't culturally shocking or anything either. Just a bunch of clever look-at-me-I'm-artsy kind of stuff. The point is that there were dancers at this show too, but I thought it was pulled off in a much much better way. Everything that the dancers did on stage added to the song, and I didn't find it distracting at all. Even though I found myself not focusing on the song sometimes, my focus on the dancers increased my enjoyment of the song since it became something that I felt more than something that I heard. It was a really great fusion of aural and visual stimulation.
As for the music... The only reason I didn't jump on this is b/c I'm rarely a fan of any complete Talking Heads record. Although I liked Byrne's Uh-Oh for its clever goofiness, I never really got into his solo career either. Before we went, I checked out the new record (with Brian Eno). As with most TH records, there were a few songs I dug, and the rest was completely mediocre. I'm sure the structure of the songs was fantastic and the vocal something or other was brilliant, but I don't really care. I just want to listen to something that, when I listen to it, I think, "I like this." To hell with thinking too hard. None of the songs that I liked off the new record got played, but almost (if not fully) half of the set were Talking Heads staples. Being the casual and uneducated fan that I am, that was awesome. His voice is still spot-on, and the musicians he assembled were absolutely phenomenal. For the most part, the crowd was pretty great too. Even tho it was in Oven's (a fully seated theater), I got to stand up the whole time. I hate sitting at good shows. Much to the chagrin of the people behind me. But fuck them. Lots of people were standing up including most of the people in front of me. Everyone stood up during a few songs, and I was happy to hear the everyone go really nuts at, you know, the appropriate times. Maybe Charlotte isn't so bad after all... We ran into Don and Lori too. Talked to Don and saw Lori, but I don't think she ever saw us. I kind of expected to run into more people there that I knew, but we didn't. Then again, we got there not long before the show started... downed four beers in the car and then went straight to our seats. That worked.

Young and Foolish Then...

Old and Foolish Now... trying to clean up my life means trying to clean up all of my digital media. In doing so, I ran across these few pictures that I'd forgotten about... I think they're so shitty b/c they are screen-caps. But they are now where they are supposed to be and, if pictures are where they are supposed to be, they also require a blog entry. So. Here's this. And then some God-awful thing we did... the kind of thing you should do in middle school or, maybe, high school. Probably not what you are supposed to do as a college graduate. *sigh*

Summit Coffee - 15 January 2005 Full Video (80 MB - WMV) Cover Art 01 Intro 02 Dirty Blvd. 03 Lullaby 04 Bliss 05 Guilt 06 Talking 07 Buffet Gruel

Jew(s) and Catholic(s), The Airborne Toxic Event, Dustin Edge, Toadies...

You know that song, "Time in a Bottle?" Well I want to smash that girl in the face every time that commercial comes on when she says that. Other than that, I would totally buy some time. Couldn't care less if it comes in a bottle. So, anyway, here's a bunch of music crap mashed all into one post b/c I'm too lazy to actually keep up with anything anymore.

First, I suppose, is this album. It's been a long long time since I've actually purchased a new CD from a store. I went to Best Buy the other day for some blanks to burn off the zillions of (mostly Radiohead) bootlegs I've been getting lately and decided I'd take the long shot and see if they had TATE's new (and only) record. Much much to my surprise, nestled b/t Air Supply and Akon was a lone copy of "The Airborne Toxic Event." There was no price on it, and I was fully prepared to pay $15+ for it. $11.99? Yes, please. Despite paying less than I would have, it was actually still a pretty annoying purchase given that I'd been purchasing their singles off of iTunes as they came out. And since the first 3 came out as an "EP," you'd think that they'd not include those songs on the "album." But they did and so I had 40% of the record already. Sadly, those songs are the best songs, but the rest of the record is still pretty damn good to me. There's some Franz Ferdinand sound in there every now and then, ("This Is Nowhere") and there was one song I just didn't really care for at all. ("Something New") The lyrics throughout are, however, fantastic. It's strange to open the booklet and see just how much ink is spilled across the page. And it's not wasted words. Words that make me happy and words that make me sad. But very few words that make me feel nothing. And I guess it turns out I actually have very little to say about this. But I like it. Not like I liked them when it was just the four songs out, but I like it. And I'm afraid I'm going to regret this later with all of the MTV talk for Sometime Around Midnight. But for now, I'm happy with this record, and I think it's worth a listen. Or at least worth watching the videos for free on youtube...

When it rains it pours, I guess. After staying out of music stores for a long time, I ended up with 2 new records in a week. Which may or may not have anything to do with having a new job that pays much better than the old one. Regardless, the Toadies actually finally released a new album after... what, like 10 years? I followed Vaden over to the Burden Brothers, but wasn't overly impressed. But No Deliverance (Click to listen for free) is classic Toadies. Even with the lineup change. It's under 40 minutes long, so I was a bit miffed at paying as much as I did, (pre-order from Newbury Comics) but I did get it on the release date... and I did get an extra CD booklet thing signed by the band. Which is kind of neat since I geek out about crap like that. There's nothing really groundbreaking here that I can tell. And if you didn't like Toadies before, I can't imagine you'll like this. But I did and I do. And it's cool that they're touring again. Maybe they'll even come to Charlotte! (that was a joke)

The first time I saw Jew(s) and Catholic(s) was at Snug Harbor as they opened for Silent Weapons. I thought they were freaking amazing. The next time I saw them was right after the Inside EP was released at SKNet again with Silent Weapons. They were great, but it's really too bad that it was at SKNet. b/c that place sucks for shows. This time was at The Milestone, and The Milestone kicks much ass.
So. When I'm left to my own devices I'm rather punctual. Doors at 8:00, show at 9:30-ish. I'm there at 7:45. The bands aren't even there yet. LOSER. But I wanted to film it, and I knew where I wanted to stand. So... whatever. I was definitely the only person there when I went in. Sat at the bar for a minute where Neil (the soundguy) said he'd get me a drink. Double tall Captain and Sprite, please. He pulls out these enormous "shot" glasses. Fills one up and into my cup... fills it up again and there's maybe an inch left for some Sprite. (turns out that the shot glasses were 3 ounces each) So I get my spray of Sprite, hand over SEVEN DOLLARS, (wow! :)) and go sit around and wait. Eventually people started coming in and I saw Eddie and Alanna and caught Eddie long enough to make sure it was cool if I recorded. So for everything that happened from this point on, I blame myself. He was cool about it, so I got my stuff setup and then saw him frantically running around with the drum machine... the AC adapter was fucked. I guess he had a spare, which was good, but that was a rather foreboding sign. The first band that played (The Have and Have Nots) were... fine. Energetic and pretty interesting. But I was tired of it after 2 songs. So, you know, I was pretty happy when Jew(s) and Catholic(s) were second. Everything started off well enough but quickly went downhill as my evil camera eye cursed every guitar that Eddie picked up. Alanna sounded great, and she was right there on time the whole time. But those damn guitars... I guess you can just watch and see if you want to. It was frustrating (and I'm sure FAR more frustrating to them), but I still liked what I heard and it was a fun and entertaining show for certain. Obviously "New Song" is not the name of #5... Hopefully they'll myspace me back with the proper title, and I can fix that. And I need a new camera. I don't know why mine makes movies that are so grainy. I'm pretty sure it used to not do that. I played with the settings a LOT before the show, but I couldn't figure it out. I almost bought a new camera, but Allison needed a camera too, and her birthday was on Tuesday, so I got her one instead. Pretty sure I'm still happier about that. But it doesn't make me less annoyed with the shitty quality of my videos. And I don't feel bad about the quality of the snapshots... I was, after all, videotaping at the same time..............
Jew(s) and Catholic(s) - 16 August 2008 The Milestone Club - Charlotte, NC CD Cover 01 Mirrors 02 Bandits 03 *Shit Goes South* 04 Casino Lights 05 *New Song* 06 Make yr' Mark
The band to play after Jew(s) and Catholic(s) was Red Collar out of Durham. Never heard of them before, and I was a little worried when I saw one of the guys with cowboy boots and spurs. But they were actually a lot of fun. Having a girl bass player also never hurts anything. They reminded me of a slightly softer version of Throw Rag. I bought their EP, which is good... but, as with most bands, nowhere near the live show. I wouldn't necessarily make a special trip out to see them again, but I'd be happy to hear if they were going to be playing with some other band that I already knew I liked. They might be able to win me over just due to the awesome energy on stage. They are going to be at Snug Harbor on Oct. 3, sooo... We shall see, perhaps. The song I recorded is called "Fade Into the Night" (thank you, Jonathan!) It was totally random that I ended up getting this particular song on film, but I was listening to the EP on the way home, and this is definitely better than a lot of the record. Except for, of course, the shitty sound quality...
I also got to see The Lights, Fluorescent for the 2nd time. I'd heard their name around town, but I only ended up seeing them because they played the "Celebrate Women in Music Awards" or something like that. Very poorly run award show that happened at The Milestone a few months ago. I was only there, again, b/c of Silent Weapons. And there were some crappy bands there, for sure. But I really liked this one. So when I saw that they were playing with Jew(s) and Catholic(s), I was pretty damn happy. I'm not plugged in enough to get to go to too many local shows where I actually am familiar with more than one band. So that was nice. They played last and played well. I'm assuming that most people were there for this band as opposed to the others... or everyone was drunk. But definitely everyone was bouncier when they started. And the band absolutely fed off of it too. They played for about an hour, which was nice. But after the set, I got in a "Two More Songs!" scream, and then everyone said it, and the band happily obliged. I reckon I'll be heading out to The Milestone to see them again in a few weeks. Good times. Oh yeah... I bought their CD the last time I saw them... shortly thereafter I got a new CD player for my car, but I left my copy of their disc in the old CD player. So it's still in there. Which sucks. But thank goodness for iTunes. The first song below is, *I think*, called "Cubicle" The second one is "So Sweet (Without a Care)"

And, lastly, Dustin Edge swung back through town a month ago and played a solo acoustic show up at Summit Coffee. I've had these mp3's up for a while, so I imagine that, if you want them, you already got them... but it deserved to be on the front page too. I really had no idea what to expect at all. I knew Cast Iron Filter, and I'd listened to Forest Through the Trees more than most people in the world. But it was beyond me to even hazard a guess as to what this stuff would sound like alone and with nothing but a guitar and a harmonica. Certainly most of the songs bore little resemblance to the multi-layered Forest Through the Trees... at least to an untrained ear such as mine. But it game them all a new life, and it made it doubly fun to hear all the songs stripped back down like that. The handful of CIF songs that were played were definitely recognizable, but definitely also quite different. Harlan County was excellent. oh! And I guess this makes me way out of order, but I can't believe Hot Hot Hot was the opener. One of my favorite Cure songs, and one that I was stoked to get to see at the Cure show a couple of months ago. I guess there were a rather large number of covers, come to think of it. I don't really know anything about "folk" music, so "Long Black Veil" wasn't any sort of touchstone or anything, but it was awesome. "Too Late To Die Young" was not, I believe, in the plan of things to be played... nor was the Untitled song. (Hurray for Encores!) Both of them worked well, and I hope the Untitled one continues to find its life. Bryan took about 9 million pictures... the light is bad out there, so he used the extended shutter thing. Which, I think, made a lot of these come out looking really really cool. Here are a few more... And I'm jealous of all you people in New York. Can't wait to see where all this stuff goes when/if Dustin actually starts getting a band together. I know what I'm gonna do, by God. Oh no, Dustin, don't... I'm callin' 'em up.
GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!	Loyal fan base...	This is what The Flash would look like if you took a picture of him playing guitar.
Listen as I pontificate as to why this is good...	Even the moon was rocking out...	But, eventually, it's goodnight, Moon.
Dustin Edge - 12 July 2008 Summit Coffee - Davidson, NC CD Cover 01 Hot Hot Hot (the Cure) 02 Yay Rick Spreitzer (talking...) 03 Apartment (tentatively titled...) 04 Mooncursers 05 Hawkeye John 06 The Flat Baritone (The Gourds) 07 Redemption 08 Harlan County, USA 09 Psychoacoustic 10 No One Will 11 Lieutenant Spins 12 Stupid Preoccupations (Vic Chestnut) 13 Buy My Stuff (capitalist propaganda talking) 14 Video Motion 15 Luminosity 16 Intermezzo 17 An Alien Communique 18 The Ideal Citizen 19 Looking for a UFO (Adrian Belew) 20 Men Who Die Young 21 Long Black Veil (traditional) 22 Too Late To Die Young (Dan Bern) 23 Untitled
And lastly lastly, Dustin came back through town again and stooped down to come do open mic night at Jeff's Bucket Shop. I have no photos b/c I just sat my camera over near the stage and let it record the audio. So the sound quality on this is a town worse than the other one, but I actually thought the performance was better. But that may not mean anything other than that I had more to drink. Or maybe that Dustin had more to drink. The phrasing on "Aeroplane Over the Sea..." good lord. Awesome. Except for the bookend covers, these songs were all played at Summit. "No One Will" is a very cool song, I think. Oh. After this was over, I bought a couple of carbombs. Dustin tried to cheat. But he lost anyway. Slut.
Dustin Edge - 05 August 2008 Jeff's Bucket Shop - Charlotte, NC 01 Needle in the Camel's Eye (Brian Eno) 02 Apartment 03 Mooncursers 04 Luminosity 05 Intermezzo 06 An Alien Communique 07 The Ideal Citizen 08 No One Will 09 Men Who Die Young 10 Aeroplane Over the Sea (Neutral Milk Hotel)

The Cure

Yep. Went to see The Cure last night at Bobcats Arena (fuck Time Warner) for the first time ever. I managed to get tickets in row 3 just slightly stage right, and I was really really excited about getting to see them live. The reschedule really fucked up my plans since I bought the tickets like a year ago for Allison's birthday and she's now in China... But it definitely raised my anticipation level. I didn't buy a Cure album until 1995; (or... actually I think it was 1996) I've liked them ever since, but I wasn't ever really totally ga-ga or anything. I like some Cure albums, I like more singles than albums, and "Pictures of You" is one of those songs with, you know, meaning. Now they, like any good band, have raised my opinion of them exponentially following their live show. I'm not usually a fan of slow moody concerts, and I wasn't really sure what to expect. The one thing I definitely did not expect was to be surrounded by so much frantic energy at a Cure concert. The opening band, 65 Days of Static hit hard and loud... they only played for about a half hour (no vocals)... they were a really good choice for the opening act. I totally forgot what I was going to say. So I'll say, again, how much it sucked that Pearl Jam scheduled their closest date to me since 2003 on the same day as the Cure show. Honestly, if I didn't already have the tickets, I might have gone to see them again instead. But I'm really really glad I didn't. Wow. I really can't think or type at all right now. I think I'm going to stop trying and just say that I was truly truly amazed by what happened on stage last night. I really did not think I was going to just absolutely love this show as much as I did.
They were filming the show for potential inclusion on a DVD, so the security was being slightly more strict about cameras than most security usually are. I still managed to get mine in and record all of the last encore. I'm not sure why I started doing all this black and white stuff, but I think it's kind of cool. Hopefully these vids won't get ripped down by youtube... but here's what I got: Boys Don't Cry 10:15 Saturday Night Killing an Arab (wow... crazy!)
Oh! I will say that, although I wasn't really holding any particular I-Want-To-Hear-X songs in my head, I was secretly hoping to hear Hot Hot Hot. There was a quote from that song on a Jyhad card from back in the day... I think it was "I left that basement burning and I never went back." Plus it was on the cassette version of Mixed Up, which I listened to until it broke. That game also had a quote from Ministry's Stigmata on one of the cards... "My favorite weapon is the look in your eyes." (I think) What the hell am I talking about? Pictures...
I also actually wanted to hear Lullaby since we had the audacity to try and play that live once. Or... good lord... maybe more than once. I'm sorry, Robert. But I got to hear that too. And, if I was really honest, Pictures of You was on the list too. See? I like the songs that everyone knows...
During one of the (I think the first) encore break I saw this guy waving around this little puppet. I thought it was cute... Speaking of people around me tho... wow. I met and talked to several people; everyone was totally awesome and really nice. The guy who was sitting next to me actually did his residency with Allison's old boss...
*whew*... and that's only like half of the photos that I took and didn't actually delete at the show. Even though I ended up spending a lot of money for a single ticket, I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Very well worth it. I can't believe Robert still has his voice... he and Porl were looking old, but they were amazing performers. Fantastic fantastic concert. :)