A post of WTF-ness. Kylie and Baroness: Not Together

So this entire week has been about two things. Super glamorous dance music and prog-stoner metal. I think there may be more of an overlap between those two fan bases than many people would be comfortable with acknowledging. Or maybe that's just me.

I saw Kylie Minogue last night at UIC Pavilion, and she was awesome. But I didn't expect her not to be. I don't think anyone expects Kylie to be this mind-blowing singer/dancer like on Broadway or whatever. But she knows how to put on a show. She's got charisma to burn, lots of sparkly lights, multiple costume changes and dancing boys in Speedos. And she takes impromptu fan requests!



She did a good job on this song too, BTW. And I want that outfit. So go Kylie. You can't hate her. It's like hating picnics and rainbows. Very glamorous picnics and rainbows. With headdresses.

Secondly, I am loving the latest Baroness album. If you have talked to me about this band in the past two years, you have probably heard some variation of my "why-doesn't-Baroness-get-the-acclaim-that-Mastodon-does-when-they-have-the-same-schtick-but-with-more-melody-and-better-song-structure"

So anyway, now that the album has been posted in its entirety on MySpace, I feel much more comfortable with actually sharing it. It is always exciting to see a band that you've followed for awhile grow up and do their first great album. Blue Record is this album. I hope it breaks them into the big time, or at the very least over the 750 fan mark on Twitter. Decibel goes as far to call Blue Record album of the year. I dunno; I thought this year was ass on a platter for music, but I am listening to Blue Record non-stop.

I think Baroness has had the problem in the past for being a bit too self-indulgent: the guitar solos a bit too long and florid, and songs that sometimes just don't have a point, or a satisfying end. Blue Record is tight. Tight as hell. The songs are heavy, but melodic and focused and most importantly accessible. I have not heard a metal record this accessible in awhile, with the best parts of prog-metal and doom and even some southern rock. I will play this for my non-metal friends, and my annoying orc-rock loving compatriots. Like, I will do it next week. ("Put down Dragonforce and listen to this shit, you fucker!")

Also, the production of this album is sick. I don't even know who this John Congleton dude is but he did an excellent job, I thought it was Matt Wallace, actually. So yeah, buy this album, it is The Shit.

edited to add: I just read this article that explains another reason why this album is so good. The new guitarist, Peter Adams, brings this wonderful symmetry to the band that it did not have before. Now there are two voices on a lot of the songs, the guitar parts mesh so well together. It's a great new addition.

What's Your Favorite Colour, Baby? Living Colour: Double Door 10.04.09

I want to start out this blog post by saying yes, the Twisted Midnight show went very well, and thank you, friends, for your kind words and support!

Ok, onto the real post.

I can't remember the last time I saw Living Colour live, but I remember the first. It was 1989 and it was my first real rock concert, and my sister took me. Vivid was out, Living Colour was at the peak of their popularity and my burgeoning metal chickness was starting to blossom, thanks to them and Faith No More.

I remember the show being great, but time and nostalgia have a way of clouding one's judgement so I was not sure what to expect after so many years. I can say now, without any qualms LIVING COLOUR KICKS ASS, SEE THEM ASAP.

I think as rock fans, many of us have gotten used to seeing bands with more attitude than skill, so that when you see a hard-working band like Living Colour play a 2 -hour plus set, and blog BLOW the roof off - and ENJOY it - one is taken aback. Not only that, but they take the time, at nearly 1 a.m. to sign merch after the show - and a good number of fans stick around! That's dedication, on both ends.

The band stuffed the set with fan favorites at the beginning of the show - and trust me, there were a lot of fans, the show was sold out and a good number of the audience knew many of the words to songs on the first three albums. They did a weird version of "Type" that can only be described as "speed metal meets reggae." I still don't know how I feel about it, but it was interesting ... no one seemed to mind it. They did blow the roof off with "Open Letter to a Landlord" and "Desperate People" and a cover of "Papa Was a Rolling Stone." They played on and on till after midnight, even after a 15 minute long drum solo and a 10 minute delay after Vernon Reid broke a string and apparently his guitar tech was not doing his job. They still seemed to have a ton of energy after midnight, even when all I wanted to do was go home, get in my jammies and breed Sims Cats. But that's why they are RAWK and I am not.

The show was fantastic, but I have to say the comedy highlight of the show was the opening act. I don't even remember the name, they were some Disturbed - like band, where the lead singer left his shades on the entire time, like a douche. Then they busted out into a cover of "Land Down Under" and the astounded look on C's face was like, the most awesome thing I've seen in months. I lol'ed. Heartily.

Creativity + Introversion = Neurosis

I was walking down the street to get a coffee, and a former co-worker stopped me.

"I hear you have a band, and you are playing out soon." he said. I did my whole stare at the floor, nervous thing.

"We'll you're having fun with this, right?" he asked.

"Oh yes! I am having ridiculous fun playing and creating music. It's really the best. But... I'm an introvert. So me and performance are not well acquainted with each other." I answered.

He laughed. As a fellow geek-introvert type, he understood.

I don't know if I will ever get used to playing out. I really, really want to. Like I mentioned, I love music, I love live music. I want to do it, and get better, but I don't know if I will ever feel comfortable with it. I wanted to be a writer growing up so I wouldn't have to talk to people. Even now, I get into periods (like now) where all I want to do is crawl into a hidey hole and not talk to anyone for a full day. Remember two million years ago when I did that Bitch magazine reading? I am JUST AS SCARED NOW AS I WAS THEN. And I've had a couple of years worth of doing readings and other public speaking stuff.

So putting myself, my creativity out there for evaluation just scares this shit out of me. Still. Luckily for me, fear tends to operate as a good motivator. When I get scared I tend to want to either decimate my own fear or run away from it completely in some hardcore avoidance tactic. I've been trying to do the former more often, we'll see if it works.

"It seems like, outside of pop music, most musicians tend to be introverts anyway," my friend said. The musicians I know are mostly pretty shy. So why do it? Why play out.

I dunno, I guess it's kind of like with writing. You're gonna do it anyway, you might as well share it.

Wish us luck tomorrow!

Happy 10th anniversary to the album that changed my life

So, I didn't think this would be a hard post to write, and it wasn't - it's been in my head for awhile. I find those "this album changed my life" essays at once really revealing and really annoying and chock full of hyperbole. I am not guaranteeing that this blog post will not be more of the same, but it's really from my heart, if that helps matters.

On September 21, 1999, I was depressed. I also bought The Fragile by Nine Inch Nails.

Now, I had always been a sensitive, emotional kid and I had a sickly stage, so I guess you could argue that "depressed" was my default for the first 20 something years of my life, but 1999 was a rough year. I was struggling to find paying work and trying to make do with paying rent with a part time, minimum wage salary (this was a job that decided to "reward" me for my hard work with a raise - $5.50 an hour. I was just experimenting with contract work, and had no clue what I was doing. I had rent/credit card/student loan shit due and the non-profit I was working at owed me money and they were months behind, so I was living off of Creamettes and Prego for weeks. I was taking a Ph.D level class I honestly was not at all ready for and trying to figure out what my future was going to be - and if it was worth it, so I was kind of a crossroads on that level and too proud to really admit to needing help.

But most importantly, my grandmother had died that summer and I was still gutted from that.

Many of my friends reading this blog never got to meet my grandmother. We were very close, and very similar so we were at once affectionate and contentious with each other. I fought with my grandmother in ways I never fought with my mom - maybe because my grandmother held onto me a little longer, being the youngest - and it stung more when I started to assert myself. But, being the other introvert in family that was a 50/50 split, I could articulate my feelings to her differently. She was one of the few people that I could be completely honest about my shyness, my melancholy - stuff that I felt, well ... judged, or at least evaluated, for when I talked about it in public.

So when she died, it was ... I can't really describe how it felt. I just felt alone in a way I had never felt before, and I had no clue what to do. That entire summer just kind of got swallowed in a void. It was a bad year. I put on a good face in front of friends and family - or at least tried to, but I really felt this big pit in my soul that was just the worst feeling ever. I couldn't name it, I couldn't make it go away, I was ashamed of it because I thought it made me weak. And the person I felt I could explain this to was gone. I was just unbearably lonely.

So I bought The Fragile on midnight of September 21, 1999. I stayed at my job until midnight, walked to the record store, went back to my job and listened to it three times then went home at 3 a.m. I bought it at midnight because well, it's a Nine Inch Nails album, and when you are a NIN fan that's just what you do. And like most people I was a fan of The Downward Spiral, Broken, etc. I had always loved NIN, but ...

I freaked out the first time I heard this album because I swear it was like someone put a microscope into my brain. It was at the time, and probably still, the truest, most honest musical expression of someone's grief and depression I had ever heard and it just shocked me at the time - because I didn't feel like that was allowed.

I think a lot of NIN fans connect with The Downward Spiral because it's about release. That album is just anger, lust, catharsis exploding right in your face. The Fragile has no such release; it's world-weary and reflective - from the beginning tinny guitar strums of "Somewhat Damaged" to the last atonal chords of "Ripe (with Decay)" that album is just emotionally stagnant.

It's uncomfortable and tense and it never offers any moment of relief, really. And damn I really needed that at the time. I couldn't articulate how I felt at time. Words escaped me, it was a suffocating feeling. So to hear an album that was able to give a shape and voice to what I couldn't provided with me more solace than you can imagine. And course, to find that this album was reportedly inspired by Trent Reznor grieving the death of his own grandmother made me relate to it even more.

Now, at the time, those critics who were not lauding The Fragile as NIN's most musically mature work were calling it NIN's most self-indulgent album to date. There is a certain self - indulgence that comes with depressive feelings, I'll admit. And now, as someone who is no longer depressed, I can say that some of the lyrics on that album are like DRAMATASTIC. But I think after a decade of listening to it objectively (and obsessively) a lot of its flaws, at least to me, make the album what it is: not perfect, but very honest. It was clearly not made to hit the top 40 charts but because Trent had to get it out. It features about five instrumental tracks, and these almost orchestral arrangements and repeating musical lines and motifs, at the time, the least commercially accessible of his discography. (Ghosts I -IV has probably replaced The Fragile for that distinction.)

I'm glad I've had 10 years to listen and to reevaluate this masterpiece. Yeah, fuck you I said it. It is.

It's been a long time; my life has gotten a lot better. The job/money stuff, yeah. But even more importantly feeling at peace enough with myself and my feelings - my depression - to be able to define and express it.

In the past 10 years, I've found that my grandmother was not the only one who would/could hear these things, I just needed to feel comfortable and confident enough to share myself and to find a way out of that dark hole. And when I do feel like those feelings may take hold again, I will throw on The Fragile as a reminder of how it used to be, and rejoice in the fact that it's in the past.

Did The Fragile change my life directly? Maybe. It does make me believe in the power of music - all types of music - to provide solace and support in an intangible way. I think maybe it did give me a boost of courage to express myself more, that I was not alone.

So today, it's the 10th anniversary of this album, and I was so stoked to see all these folks on Twitter mentioning what this album meant for them personally. Or just that they loved it. So while I would love to one day tell Trent Reznor this in person, in case I never do:

Thanks, Trent. Thanks for sharing what was a such a difficult time in your life with your fans. You may not have known (or cared) at the time, but I think you may have helped a lot of people heal from whatever they were going through with this album. I know it helped me. I'm glad you're not in that world anymore, and neither am I.

Random

Ever heard an album so awesome that makes you want to cry because by the time you've heard it, the band no longer exists?

That is how I feel whenever I hear "We Are The Romans" by Botch. Goddamn. that is just 45 minutes of crazy-ass brutality. I am a girl, but I understand when guys call albums "boner-inducing."

I want to marry you, band that no longer exists. All of you. I will make you pie.

Oh Amsterdam ...

Cities, like people, can sometimes be saddled with stereotypes that may be based somewhat in fact, but may not reveal the true spirit of a person - or a place. New York City, for example, is not made up entirely of surly Bronx cab drivers or flighty teen socialites. Tokyo is more than colorful Harajuku teens and repressed salarymen. But yes,all of those people make up the patchwork of their respective cities.

I had actually had an impression of Amsterdam that gave me a hint of what to expect. Yes, I've seen "Eurotrip" and "Harold and Kumar" like others, but I also had the advice of my mother, who visited a few years ago and told me of it's winding canals and cozy bars. "You will LOVE it." she enthused, and I wondered what she thought of me.

Amsterdam has a reputation of 24/7 vice and free wheeling sexuality; a 24-hour party city like Las Vegas, or NOLA's French Quarter. Truth is, the bars mostly shut down at 1 am. The bars, like Gollem in Jordaan, are dark and cozy, more like Cheers than a night club.

The Red Light District is sexy, if you define "sexy" as a bored looking sex worker adjusting her uncomfortable bra and checking her nails for chips in a flourescent window. The bars/clubs in the area play crap dance/pop music from the 80's and 90's, and the ones the hotels will tell you about are teeming with boorish, bloated tourists from the U.S. and Britain. (No, leering British businessman, I am not for sale.)

But if you look outside of that area, you'll find a homey neighborhood bar like Sound Garden, where no one speaks English but everyone loves beer and rock and big ass pictures of Henry Rollins and Iggy Pop plaster the walls.

You could easily spend several days doing nothing but going to museums, between the Van Gogh museum, the Rijksmuseum and the Rembrandt house, that's a full day right there, and there are dozens - and I mean dozens, more. You can see and feel the kind of atmosphere that would make it such a great place to be an artist. Amsterdam toes the line between being charmingly salacious, unendingly mellow and unbearably cheesy, but its essence, at least for me was hard to initially put a finger on.

It's not a party city, its vibe is almost southern in its placidity. There's an actual Dutch word for this: gezellig, which apparently is nearly impossible to translate in english, but can roughly be described to mean friendly, comfy, welcoming. You can feel it for sure. It's what makes one sit at a restaurant or bar in Amsterdam for six hours to chat, people watch, read or just be.

I wish I could bottle up gezellig and bring it home to Chicago, as we are a city that surely needs it. It's hard to get used to, you order a meal and wonder why it takes 45 minutes to get a check. They are not being rude, that's gezellig! You don't have shit to do, sit back for an hour or six and enjoy yourself.

For the sex and drug tourists, Amsterdam is one kind of city, but there's a hell of a lot more: great food, melting pot diversity, art and culture (except for the crap music) and a wonderful urban beauty. It's strange, corny, gorgeous, naughty city that embraces all that it is without apology.

Finally, a few more thoughts:

1.) The jetlag to Europe JACKED ME UP. way more than Tokyo. Dunno why.
2.) Danish dudes > Swedish dudes. Just thought you should know.
3.) Swedish hot dogs are fucked up, but so tasty. I will never have the desire to eat mashed potatoes, crab salad, and encased meats in one bite ever again, though. On the other hand, I could eat herring sandwiches every day,
4.) DENMARK DOES NOT LIKE THE EURO!
5.) I now understand why metal/hardcore fans in Holland/Belgium/etc. lose their shit whenever U.S. bands come to town. The live music scene is crap. I am sorry, brothers and sisters.

Maisy, Maisy. Maisy Maisy Mouse *wah guitar*

I've been fixated on a TV show this entire summer. And it's not Burn Notice or Mad Men or True Blood or any of that shit. It's a show with nearly no dialogue. It's a show for small children and/or people on drugs. That show is Maisy.

Maisy comes on a digital TV channel for kids called Qubo, that I discovered earlier in the summer when i was having some gnarly insomnia issues. Qubo doesn't play the usual crap cartoons that you see on Nick or whatever channels show crap cartoons these days. These are cartoons from Canada and the UK, which I guess makes them quality. At about 11pm, though, things get interesting - and a little weird.

One show on Qubo, Theodore Tugboat, is a simple, slow moving show that involves model tugboats with eyeballs. I was briefly fixated with it because they often have to deal with heavy shit like work/life balance and gender discrimination on the job.

Or maybe I was projecting. Look, I was trying to work some things out.



Maisy, on the other hand is based on a children's book series I have never read but I hope the books are not as surreal, as they would freak a kid out.

Maisy is a human sized mouse, who is approximately three years old and lives in a house without adult mouse supervision.

She has several friends, a chicken named Tallulah, a squirrel named Cyril, an alligator named Charlie and occassionally an elephant named Eddie. They do normal preschool shit like play at the park and eat peanut butter sandwiches,though inexplicably they will also ride on a train to the North Pole and the jungle on the same day. Maisy has several jobs: farmer, train conductor, pilot.

All the while bouncy reggae-style music plays and a disembodied voice talks to her very slowly and deliberately from the ether serving as both narrator and advisor to the characters, who can apparently hear him.

Example:
Disembodied Voice: MAISY, ARE YOU RIDING A TRACTOR?
Maisy: incoherent squealing
Disembodied Voice: THAT'S GREAT, MAISY!!!!

A point of contention among some adult viewers of the show seems to be Maisy's alligator friend, Charlie, who seems to be intellectually delayed:



I think Charlie is awesome. He doesn't think the way the other characters do: he's totally driven by whatever is on his mind at the time. We should all roll like Charlie does.

This show is ostensibly for children, but I am not sure what life lessons it's teaching. The whole preschoolers without parents thing is suspect, and while I love Charlie, dude is clearly going to burn someone's house down someday, and yet, Maisy indulges him. Ah well.

I am sure when/if I settle back into a normal sleep schedule I'll forget all about Maisy, the way I forgot all about watching reruns of The Nanny when I left grad school. But I am enjoying the surreal ride now. And believe me, if I ever become a parent, I am buying myself a DVD box set of Maisy so I will finally have a legitimate excuse to watch this show on a nightly basis.