Wonder what I've been up to in my real life? This weekend, turns out I've done more than sit around and hate my job.
Last night, I decided to finally see a band. I checked with crazybob to see if he'd be free to see (the sounds of) Kaleidoscope again at the Black Cat. We saw them in August, opening for Luna. bob had to work, so I finally dropped in to see him at work. The Arctic air mass wasn't so bad last night, other than it was a bitch to find parking (everyone in those town houses must have stayed in), but I did get cocoa from bob.
I decided to go ahead and get a ticket for Suicide Girls Live. I know, I know, I'll dig it, but I just... I had strip-show fear. I always thought strip-shows were kinda lame...but this one will be better, I'm sure. I tried to get a Mates of State ticket; they weren't on sale yet.
(tso) Kaleidoscope were okay, but the new songs, eh, not as good. I liked about a 1/3 of their set. The opener, Hi-Soft, were actually better. They did Velvetsy groove-rock. It's taken me a while to realize what people mean when they compare bands to the VU; the hallmarks are hollow-body guitars and few chords per song, in a good, keep-it-simple way.
Today, I did a bunch of Valentine shopping, and had fun checking out areas of Arlington I hadn't been to... although, ultimately, Tower Records and Hot Topic are still the best places for fun goodies.
Tonight... it sleeted. A sleet/ice mix. I had no idea this crap would happen until, oh, I left my place tonight... to go see John Waters do a comedy-lecture with question-and-answer session. The "wintry mix" was actually very easy to drive through, although I felt colder than last night's "Arctic blast" (the again, I had to walk farther in it).
John was fun. They showed large chunks of Female Trouble and Desperate Living on a large screen until he came out. It's hard to summarize his lecture; he ran quickly through little elements about his films and things he liked growing up, some of it I already knew from either his DVD commentaries or his book, Shock Value... it was very fun, and even made for good stand-up, although I'm afraid I'm blanking on an anecdote I was hoping to write up here.
The anecdote he left with was about Edith Massey; someone asked where he found her (a hotel bar; this is one of those things that could be easily fround out about from his commentaries/ book), so John told him, then told a story about Edith's days as a thrift store manager. In slow business periods, she would take products or garbage from around the store, gift wrap it, then sell it under a "Grab Bag" sale. Said John, "Some kid would get an old aspirin bottle cap and go, 'What's this?' and Edie would say, 'Well, you don't get lucky every day...'"
Last night, I decided to finally see a band. I checked with crazybob to see if he'd be free to see (the sounds of) Kaleidoscope again at the Black Cat. We saw them in August, opening for Luna. bob had to work, so I finally dropped in to see him at work. The Arctic air mass wasn't so bad last night, other than it was a bitch to find parking (everyone in those town houses must have stayed in), but I did get cocoa from bob.
I decided to go ahead and get a ticket for Suicide Girls Live. I know, I know, I'll dig it, but I just... I had strip-show fear. I always thought strip-shows were kinda lame...but this one will be better, I'm sure. I tried to get a Mates of State ticket; they weren't on sale yet.
(tso) Kaleidoscope were okay, but the new songs, eh, not as good. I liked about a 1/3 of their set. The opener, Hi-Soft, were actually better. They did Velvetsy groove-rock. It's taken me a while to realize what people mean when they compare bands to the VU; the hallmarks are hollow-body guitars and few chords per song, in a good, keep-it-simple way.
Today, I did a bunch of Valentine shopping, and had fun checking out areas of Arlington I hadn't been to... although, ultimately, Tower Records and Hot Topic are still the best places for fun goodies.
Tonight... it sleeted. A sleet/ice mix. I had no idea this crap would happen until, oh, I left my place tonight... to go see John Waters do a comedy-lecture with question-and-answer session. The "wintry mix" was actually very easy to drive through, although I felt colder than last night's "Arctic blast" (the again, I had to walk farther in it).
John was fun. They showed large chunks of Female Trouble and Desperate Living on a large screen until he came out. It's hard to summarize his lecture; he ran quickly through little elements about his films and things he liked growing up, some of it I already knew from either his DVD commentaries or his book, Shock Value... it was very fun, and even made for good stand-up, although I'm afraid I'm blanking on an anecdote I was hoping to write up here.
The anecdote he left with was about Edith Massey; someone asked where he found her (a hotel bar; this is one of those things that could be easily fround out about from his commentaries/ book), so John told him, then told a story about Edith's days as a thrift store manager. In slow business periods, she would take products or garbage from around the store, gift wrap it, then sell it under a "Grab Bag" sale. Said John, "Some kid would get an old aspirin bottle cap and go, 'What's this?' and Edie would say, 'Well, you don't get lucky every day...'"
VIEW 9 of 9 COMMENTS
At the time, the distinguishing characteristic of that music seemed to be that it was tonal, as opposed to atonal. Over the course of time, since then I think another important characteristic has emerged. It was very clear in the first major piece of Terry Reilly called In C. Most of you probably know of this piece or some of you probably know it, and many of you may have played it. It's a very famous piece of music. It consists of 52 bars of music written in the key of C. And the instructions to the musicians are "proceed through those bars at any speed you choose". So you can begin on bar one, play that for as many times as you want, 20 or 30 times, then move to bar 2, if you don't like that much just play it once, go on to bar three.
The important thing is each musician move through it at his or her own speed. The effect of that ofcourse is to create a very complicated work of quite unpredictable combinations. If this is performed with a lot of musicians you get a very dense and fascinating web of sound as a result. It's actually a beautiful piece and having listened to it again recently I think it's stood the test of time very well.
The funny thing is that Bang on a Can, of which my friend mrs. medway had purchased their rendition of Eno's generative, yet very planned chatoic pieces for Music For Airport. The funny thing is now they are doing a rendition of one of his major musical influences in his early generative stage.
[/music nerd over]
[Edited on Jan 19, 2004 11:03AM]