From the Bloc Party blog:
bq. Also, stay tuned for details of a forthcoming U.S. tour, which will include shows with support from Mew and Secret Machines. Lovely!
Dammit, I only like Mew! Gimme the Mew! Giiiive! [grabs at the air…damn, it’s just air, not Danish musicians]
[via “no snow”:http://overnite17.exblog.jp/1955731/]
I’ve listened to Japanese music before, but nothing ever really caught my ear. Also, J-Pop is scary. I wish I were more aware of music from Japan (or anything from Asia for that matter), as there must be a crapload of good stuff coming out of there, little of what trickles over to this side of the earth. (For lots of great random music stuff, a lot of it focused on Japan since that’s where its based right now, check out Nik’s blog, BiBaBiDi.)
On that note, “Supercar”:http://nippop.com/artist/artist_id-47/artist_name-supercar/ is pretty awesome, so awesome in my mind that I’m totally giving up writing this crappy anthropology essay so that I can update my blog (honestly, I have to really like the hell out of something to take the time to blog it…admittedly, I also really don’t want to write this essay). Unfortunately, I just heard of this band today and found out they broke up last year. Damn. First, check out this awesome music video for “Wonderword”:
I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t care. The beginning (of the song, not the video) automatically made me think of “Drawing Restraint 9″:http://unit.bjork.com/specials/dr9/ (the song “Shimenawa”), but then it goes into happy boppy whatnot. Which is good.
They have a lot of awesome music videos. Too many to link. But here’s another one for their song “Strobolights”, which you can download in mp3 form [via TrulyObscure]:
Yeaaah I love watching freaky animal puppets play instruments to blip-tastic…blippyness. DON’T YOU? Good. [pat pat]
Thanks to metafilter for sucking up my life with the power of the Internet.
HE POOS CLOUDS
I’m infantile. And that is my favorite album name of the year. Or longer. Anyone who has seen me in person more than a few times might notice that my favorite piece of clothing is a brown shirt that declares, “FOOD IN, POO OUT”. Why do I think that is so funny? Because! I have no brain. Anyway, the idea of pooing clouds amuses me greatly. What do clouds poo? Hail? Snow? Snow seems more like shaking out dandruff. Hail is like…painful. Okay, end thought.
Listen to clips from Final Fantasy’s album HE POOS CLOUDS (he poos clouds he poos clouds…okay I’ll stop) at dotshop and tomlab and probably other places.
To be honest, I’m not getting reallllly into his music. It’s his voice. I’m just. Not. Feeling it. However, I like everything besides the singing. (sigh) There’s nothing wrong with his voice, it’s just…voices are a crutch for me, which is why I sometimes prefer listening to instrumental music. When I love someone’s singing voice (Karen Peris, Even Johansen, other less important people), I know instantly, unlike how to split a bill, which no one should ever let me do. Something in my brain is paralyzed, but I still retain control of my bodily functions. Yeah. Know what I’m talking about?…
…Yeah, okay.
Still, I like the album title. …What’s that, you want me to repeat it? Okay.
HE POOS CLOUDS
I’m done.
Mister Resistor is product of a circuit bending class at Parsons School of Design. Is that the most awesome class ever? MAYBE. They’re playing this Saturday at 8pm at Flux Factory for free. Check out Ranjit’s rehearsal photos.
I saw “Franz Ferdinand”:http://www.franzferdinand.co.uk/ and “Death Cab for Cutie”:http://www.deathcabforcutie.com/ … [looks at watch] four days ago. For some reason it feels like it has been much longer. “Honey”:http://slapchar.blogspot.com/ and “Yetta”:http://yetta1.blogspot.com/ can tell you that I was extremely out of it to the point that I almost fell asleep, which shouldn’t be easy to do when you’re being blasted by a gajillion decibels of rock. I guess it didn’t help that we had mezzanine seats and got to sit for most of the concert, which isn’t something I’d usually choose, but in my case of head flumping it was much nicer than having to stand on the floor.
These are “The Cribs”:http://www.thecribs.com, even if their banner looks like it says The Crabs. They sounded alright to me. Their pants may have been a smidge too tight.
DCFC had a cute tree + random ghostly looking shacks stage setup. I liked them, but I couldn’t get very into it because of the head flumping problem and other random crap swimming in the brainmeats. It’s really hard for me to like something if I’m not familiar with the music beforehand unless the act is especially odd or funny (the only artist I can recall becoming a big fan of after seeing live for the first time is CocoRosie), categories that I wouldn’t say DCFC falls into. But ye know…good times.
Strangely, I’ve listened to Transatlanticism a gajillion times in the past 24 hours. I’ve owned the album for 3 years, but never gave it a good run through until yesterday. Maybe I should’ve done that…three years ago.
Franz Ferdinand was who I really wanted to see. This was my third show and it may have been the best (at least that’s what one of my friend’s said, and he’s probably seen them a gajillion times), but it was also the one where I was most sleepy and bogged down with junk and farthest away (also, this was the most cavernous venue I’ve seen em at), so the magic was a bit lost on me. This is when I got to stand. Which was dandy. What was really different during this concert compared to others I’ve been to was that either people were talking a lot more than usually, or I was somehow more attune to people’s chatter. Perhaps I’m too picky? I don’t need to feel like I’m intruding on someone’s house party.
While I was standing there in a daze, I realized that what I love more than anything else are small shows. Or the Flaming Lips. Seriously, nothing beats the Flaming Lips, which makes me sad because…well, there’s a lot out there besides the Flaming Lips and even though I haven’t seen it all, I can’t imagine what could be much better. Radiohead is the only band I can think of that I thoroughly enjoy even if I’m seeing them from a mile away because…well, they’re Radiohead, and if you’re one of those people who hates it when the audience sings (I overheard some guy carping about that once), when hundreds of people are doing it, you just have to deal. And on top of all that, Magnet is still my favorite, although I still haven’t had the chance to see him in a small, packed venue.
I took two crappy videos: Lindsey Wells, Outsiders. Hoorah.
Okay, read Yetta’s review and Honey’s review instead. They’re about 10000000010 more interesting than this entry (epic storytelling; I ain’t kidding). For one thing, she and Honey stayed out until 3-frickin’ AM (I left right after the show) and met the entire band, among other things. They’re such passionate music fans; it makes me look horrible. WHY DO I HAVE THIS BLOG?
…Really, I wonder. I haven’t been listening to much lately. I only know a handful of people who read this blog, but I get random music related emails, so that’s kind of odd. Maybe you should stop.
I have no more concerts planned for the semester or summer as of now, and I may not even go to anything next semester. Holy crap, was this my last concert of the year? (scratches head) If Mew comes in the summer, that’s all I predict I’ll go to. Magnet may come back next fall also.
“moving patterns 2006, electronic music and beyond”:http://www.acfny.org/s151.aspx?CSIT=2 is taking place this year from April 26-29 at the “Austrian Cultural Forum”:http://www.acfny.org. “The four-evening program is packed with concerts and DJ parties and will present artists from various disciplines - electronic music, avant-garde, rock, and pop.” More info:
This year, Austria is celebrating important birthdays of two personalities who had a major impact on history. While Wolfgang Amadeus is being remembered at full volume around the globe, the commemoration of Sigmund Freud, one of Vienna’s greatest contributors to the world’s intellectual history, is rather restrained.
moving patterns builds a bridge, or several bridges, to Mozart and Freud. Taking place in two parts, one in April and one in November, the festival’s slogan is ‘It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.’ On some level, it refers to an element swept under the rug in all the jubilation over Mozart’s genius: the torment of the wunderkind driven by an overambitious father and the emotional musical moments it engendered. The title of Part 1 of the festival, Lost in Transference, points to the theoretical analysis that took place perhaps a hundred years later of the underlying mechanism that may have been at play here.
Poised somewhere between bitter seriousness and lighthearted irony, the program will bring electronica from Austria, and above all from Vienna, to New York.
Uh huh! I’m sure it’s cool. Full schedule is at acfny.org. The event is totally free and the building is pretty cool if you like minimal architecture…stuff. I only went once in 2002 to see B. Fleischmann, but since I actually live in NYC now I have less reason to sit on my butt forever when there’s possibly some hott Austrian music in my midst. (When I went before, my mum had to come with me and it was probably awkward. Not many teenagers. Lots and lots of people speaking German. Dudes playing music on laptops. My mum didn’t complain…what a trooper.)
My phone rings. Odd…
Me: Heeelllo?
CJ: DID YOU HEAR THE BAD NEWS?!
Me: Huh?
CJ: …MEW’S BASSIST LEFT!
Me: Wait, that’s why you called me?
CJ: …
Oh, I love CJ. If not for him though, I would’ve found it through no snow. Johan is leaving to tend to his family, which is a perfectly good reason. There are letters from the band and Johan at mewsite.com. Aw. We shall miss him. And CJ will cry in a corner.
I have to admit, I wonder about musicians who tour all the time and have families…about how much they see their families. Then again, that’s not just musician-specific. I can speak from experience, hahaha, hahaha, HA HA HA…too much info.
For something happy, the end of the news bit says “Mew continue their touring and album promotion in Europe and will go to USA to promote the album in the summer. ” Emphasis mine. I think Mew is the only band right now that I reallllly want to see. After that, I can die a happy camper. Kinda.
I’ve seen Sondre three times before, but each performance was solo. Seeing him play with a band was very different. And awesome. And louder.
But before all that, Leona Naess opened. I’m rarely captivated by openers (the only other one I can think of right now is CocoRosie), but I immediately liked her. She didn’t change my life (um…few things do), but I really enjoyed her set and wouldn’t had minded if it were longer. I think it has to do with her lilting voice. I like things that lilt, apparently…
…such as the sounds of a pedal steel guitar, which was used during Sondre’s set. EVERY SONG SHOULD HAVE A PEDAL STEEL GUITAR! YESSS!
Sondre informed us in the beginning that it would be a long night since he planned on playing his new material for the upcoming album he and his band are going to record in LA. Overly humble as usual, he thanked us over and over again for 1) staying the whole time and 2) being so receptive to the new songs. He said we could go outside and take a breather every now and then if it got too long. At the end of the show while explaining that he had CDs for sale, he said there were also t-shirts for anyone who didn’t want a CD. (And if you didn’t want a CD or shirt…well, you’re just screwed.)
The new album was quite rock-filled. Different from anything else he’s done, basically (well, not INSANELY different; if he made an electronic album, that would be more “wuh?” worthy). The highlight of the evening for me was when he played a short Norwegian folksong called Lulu. He enticed us to stay by saying he’d have a conversation in Norwegian with his bandmades at the end of the show, but that didn’t happen. 
I guess the song replaced that.
The crowd was very enthusiastic. There was this one guy who was a bit of a heckler…but maybe he just really liked Sondre. A running joke through the night was that Sondre would sing a bit from “You’re Beautiful” by James Blunt. I also think he misheard someone say “Sleep on Needles” as “Sweet Anita”, so he referred to it by its butchered name.
I’d rate the concert as “very awesome”. I would’ve enjoyed it more if I had been less tired, if I hadn’t been standing being a 6-foot tall guy, and if I didn’t keep spacing out from thinking about stupid unrelated crap, but despite all those distractions I was still blown away by how well Sondre performs (perfectly, it seems) and …
…Okay, I don’t remember much else because the concert was a few nights ago and I have the memory of a fish. A stupid fish.
Other reviews:
* “The Modern Age”:http://www.themodernage.org/2006/04/06/the-night-of-unexpected-crooning/
* “The Music Slut”:http://musicslut.blogspot.com/2006/04/sondre-lerche-bowery-150-minutes-of.html
bq. In order to pursue a distinct musical flavor outside Funcoms own composing talents, Funcom shared visions with Warner music in order to release a soundtrack EP fitted for a modern adventure game. Trying to bring forth an emotional impact delivering more than the regular one dimensional adrenaline-factor so often found in games, Funcom found a perfect match in the Norwegian artist Magnet. Featured as the artist of the week on iTunes, and with songs in TV series like ‘The OC ‘and ‘Six feet under’, the critically acclaimed Magnet delivers four tracks to ‘Dreamfall‘, and all of these are available on the EP.
[more in this “Funcom press release”:http://www.funcom.no/wsp/funcom/frontend.cgi?session=bd9hathq20ipbm3pd625mfqtcsqlnc&func=publish.show&func_id=1115&table=CONTENT]
Okay, this is one of the weirdest things I’ve heard of. I’m not big on videogames. Not that I hate them. All my hobbies (like playing games, reading books, breathing fresh air,etc) were replaced by the Internet around 1998. I grew up in a household with seemingly every game console, as bought by my obsessive older brother, who should now have thumbs of steel (with the downside of being half-blind).
Um. Yeah. I think if I saw this game and hear Magnet in it, that would mess up the nice images I’ve already made to go with his music. Kinda like a not-so-good music video. Or a not-so-good movie adaptation of a book.
Actually, I have no images. MY MIND IS EMPTY. But I want to keep it that way.
HA HA HA HA.
Um. You can fast forward through the first half, but then you should watch the part where the guy is running around and acting like a douche. [thanks Mark]
DAMN NORWEGIANS.
I mean, I love em. Professor Pez is quite lovable. Happy poppy tunes that go perfect with the sunny weather we’ve been having in NYC lately. I don’t know if the weather is like that in Norway or if making this happy poppy stuff makes it easier to cope with gloomy weather, but…whatever, it’s nice. So here’s what they have going for them:
# They’re Norwegian, from BERGEN, of course
# They’re music is cute, kinda B&S-ish, except I’m not a huge B&S fan for some reason…but I mention them for comparison’s sake
# They have an amusing biography
# They’re ninja friendly
You can download a bunch of things from their official page or listen to stuff on myspace. “Stuff” and “things”…yes, my vocabulary is growing larger every day.
I found out about this band through Echo, which has about a gazillion other things you should listen to. Really. I dunno the last time I spent so long listening to everything on one blog.
[There are other random bits and bobs I want to talk about, but I’m pretty damn lazy. If you sent me an email saying I should listen to something, I did listen to it. I don’t get to write about everything I want to. Mrah.]
As soon as the concert started, I thought, “I want to experience this every night. Foreverrrrr.”
…Okay, maybe not. I’m still half deaf, althought the feeling that cicadas are mating in my brain have died down. But is it worth it? Of course! I mean, not having cicadas literally mate in your brain, but the brain fuzz of going a little deaf. The Flaming Lips are worth a bit of bodily harm. You won’t endure much else during their concerts unless you get hit on the head by gigantic balloons too many times.
I’ve only been into The Flaming Lips since “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots”, but I’ve been lucky enough to have seen them three times by now. (Sure, if I were more obsessed I guess I’d see them more, but I’m not at the level where I need an intravenous Flaming Lips IV drip attached to my brain. I think.) When they played with Beck, I felt kind of bad for liking their set more than his. When I saw them properly at Roseland, I could hardly believe how awesome they were, unlike anything I had ever experienced before. I wanted everyone in the world to have the same experience. And I wanted to throw confetti at everyone’s faces like a madman.
The Flaming Lips set up their own equipment onstage. I’ll use that as a reason to like them more. It takes down a barrier between the audience and the artist. Also, it looks like they’regenuinely doing stuff while setting up the stage, as opposed to making us wait pointlessly while our legs turn to Jell-O. There’s no mysticism; “Yeah, we’re the Flaming Lips…I just need to tune this guitar. And blow smoke at you.”
But then the show begins. Crazy huge pink and yellow words blow up on the screen:
THE WORLD BEGINS AGAIN / AND IT WILL BE / GLORIOUS
It builds up. Excitement. Anticipation. For crazy glorious things. Like the stage might explode in blinding awesomeness. Or if not the stage, than the audience. Gonna ’splode. Not our corporeal bodies, but the other part. You know…that one…the part that feels floaty and full of joy. If you didn’t know you had that part, you would if you saw the Flaming Lips.
After the introduction doodad they played “Race for the Prize” and all hell broke loose. And by “hell” I mean bouncing balloons attacked the audience; they were like gigantic hyperactive puppies that wanted to play with us, except they only way they knew how to play was by running into our heads. A lot.
It was awesome. And of course, the performance doesn’t suffer at all while the madness is going on. Not a beat is missed. Scary.
Wayne utlized his sack of confetti, ecstatically throwing handfuls of it at the audience at the most confetti-worthy times. He also threw handfuls straight at Kilph (drummer). Really, straight at him. I thought it was funny. Hopefully Kilph didn’t end up with mouthfuls of confetti. I did notice at some point that he had a ridiculous amount of streamer-age tangled up in his drum sticks. There were probably a few points where roadies (dressed up as Jesus) had to gather up piles of streamers to clear the stage a smidgen…
Unlike previous tours where there were people dressed up as bunnies, fish, owls, and god knows what else, this time people were dressed as Jesus, aliens, Santa, and…god knows what else. I prefer the animals, but these costumes must be less deathly in the “how likely is this going to suffocate me?” department. (To clarify, a few lucky people at each show get to boogie on-stage while waving around lights and whatnot. I think many times enthusiastic fans get to do this, although it’s harder in NYC since…well, there’s a lot of people and the band doesn’t have to pick up as many random people to be on-stage. If you went to a concert in a smaller city, you’d have a better chance at being Jesus. It’s my new life goal.)
[video by andrewvdill]
The second song they played was Bohemian Rhapsody. SING-ALONG MADNESS TIME!! Sadly, I didn’t memorize all the words, but they splodged them on the screen large enough so that blind people could read it. Another sad thing is that I only know the song because my school band performed it in high school. That’s sad, right? Right.
If I comment on every song they played, I will never ever finish this entry. Favorites: “The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song”, “She Don’t Use Jelly”, “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. 1″, and “Do You Realize?” After Yoshimi, Wayne broke out the nun puppet and asked us to sing along with more feeling. Oh, the things you can do with a nun puppet.
“Cow Jam” consisted of Wayne playing a little children’s keyboard (which I swear I’ve almost bought on eBay before) while everyone else…jammed. I think he made a mistake at first, causing Steven to incredulously say, “Two buttons.” Wayne only had to push the cow and duck buttons. YOU CAN DO IT, WAAAYNE. YES. QUACK LIKE NEVER BEFOOOORE.
As for other cool instruments, they had a double necked guitar with a parasitically attached iPod and Wayne had an modified acoustic guitar with a…thingy in the sound hole. Thingy? Theremin-ish? I DO NOT KNOW. But it’s a hell of a lot cooler than my acoustic guitar.
“Do You Realize?” is one of those songs that kills me. In a positive way, I mean. It seems like a good song to accompany the passage from life to death. Of course, it’s great to listen to while you’re alive, but something about it makes me feel like it would be a good soundtrack to watching my life flash before my eyes, as long as the flash lasts 3 minutes and 32 seconds. I’m the kind of person that tends to gloss over lyrics (eh, I’m ignorant), but when I hear, “Do you realize that everyone you know some day will die”, I think, “…No, but maybe I should think about that more often. YES. DEATHY!!!” I don’t know how to describe the feeling of singing it loudly with a gajillion other people. You’re fixated on…something. Or nothing. There’s so much stimuli, your eyes kinda just glaze over and look at everything. What’s going on? WHO CARES! AHRAH! MRAH! BLUGUHR! KEYBOARD MASH!
[I forget which song it was, but one of the background movies they played was a Chinese cartoon involving a monkey and a dragon fighting each other…underwater. I’m almost positive that this is the same story (although not the same animation) I watched 500000 times when I was a little kid. Almost positive. The only problem is that I can’t remember what the story was called (I watched it 500000 times in Chinese, which never quite embedded itself in my head). I think it begins with a boy being born out of a flower and then avenging his mentor’s death and eventually committing suicide before coming back to life and slaying the evil dragon, etc. If anyone has any idea what i’m talking about, let me know. It’s possible it wasn’t even the same story, but it looked similar and kinda freaked me out for the nostalgia factor.]
Wayne blew up this huge-ass balloon until it exploded. Awesome.
Wayne chatted with the audience every now and then. He told us how great it was that we would do these silly things we wouldn’t normally get to do, like play with giant balloons, sing along to the songs and wave our hands in the air. It meant a lot that the concerts made people happy, especially people who needed a little escape from reality for a few hours. He also said that while tolerance was a great thing, perhaps America was too tolerant (of the government); what we need to do is legalize marijuana. Well, he said other things, but that was the last message. And…[pokes self in brain]…
This entry is too long. My head is still fuzzy. Nothing compares to the kind of happiness and joy you get out of a Flaming Lips concert; it’s not on par with anything else. Scott says it well: “It wasn’t a concert. It was a celebration.”
Other reviews:
* “Stereogum”:http://www.stereogum.com/archives/002451.html
* “Chris”:http://musicsnob.blogs.friendster.com/chris_music_snobbery/2006/04/flaming_lips_we.html
* “Who’s Driving the Bus?”:http://whosdrivingthebus.blogspot.com/2006/04/flaming-lips-webster-hall-night-1.html
Update: You can download the show at dimeadozen.org (thanks Honey!)
Dude. DUDE.
I’m half deaf. But that’s okay. The Flaming Lips are worth a few frizzled, delicate ear hair…things.
Despite not having seen every band in the world, I can’t imagine how anyone can be better than the Flaming Lips. Who else exudes such genuine happiness and silliness and enthusiasm and other things I can’t come up with right now? Who else makes something inside you explode, something that isn’t a normal human organ, but…a new organ…yes, a new organ that doesn’t cause pain when it explodes, but bursts with the emotional equivalents of rainbows and confetti? This feeling isn’t connected with anything else except the moment. You’re there. You’re happy. God knows what else is going on in the outside world. You just glow and you feel like something magical–but at the same time completely real–is happening.
I don’t know how to explain it. Like the last time I saw them, I got the same feeling the whole time…
“SO FUCKING AWESOME, ARGHARHAHRHGA RHGARH HAGRHAGRHGAR”
Yup. I’ll probably have more to say later, but that’s my initial reaction.
