(Miss Murder, by AFI) 

Con: I have had this damn Madonna/Abba song playing over and over again, and yet I still can’t get it out of my head. Damn you, 15-minute club remix!

I was lucky in that I happened to be sitting by the door that Kristin and BillyO walked in, and I chatted with her a bit while he was introducing her and explaining why, due to their recent move to Portland, they didn’t have their usual stock of t-shirts and other stuff, so instead they had some awesome handmade gift bags.

I admit that I totally geeked out and turned into a slobbering fanboy talking to Kristin. We talked about her move to Portland, my move to Tucson, and the different states that I had seen her play in.

Then she was on, and did her pretty standard acoustic set. Setlist was as follows:

White Bikini Sand
Two new tracks off the forthcoming album
Gazebo Tree
Hook in Her Head
Another new song
William’s Cut
Your Dirty Answer
Trouble
Sundrops
Your Ghost
Clay Feet
Sno Cat
(encore, this time with the electric guitar)
Cottonmouth
Serene
Listerine

Her voice was a little scratchy, due to her losing it about a week prior, so she stayed away from the high notes, but she gets a pass from me. She told great stories in between, from dead/crazy people on buses to blueberry bagels looking like necrotic tissue, to being in Throwing Muses and playing an impromptu gig at a bar in Scotland filled with very drunk Scottish folks.

After her set we once again chatted a little bit. She talked at length about her new album which should be out in January. The songs that she played live had sounded darker than the last few albums, but she said with arrangements were lush, orchestral and “happy”, and she was really, really pleased with how it had turned out. I managed to completely humiliate myself and ask for a picture with her, so today in the light of day I’m happy that I did.

• Bauhaus
• New Order
• Coldplay
• The homefries at a Palm Springs breakfast place

• Winning $50 very quickly at a super-loose California cardroom Saturday

  Lowlights:

• The fucker from craigslist who never got back in touch about camping tickets
• Selling one too many extra Sunday tickets on Saturday, and having to buy another one Sunday
• Forgetting my ticket at the condo Saturday and having to go back for it
• Chemical Brothers
• Losing $150 not as quickly at a super-loose California cardroom Sunday
• The 5 hour drive back last night, and getting in at 3 a.m.

• The realization that I am now officially old and un-hip

It’s a lot of bands, and there’s quite a few that I would like to see, but it sounds like it’s going to be a really, REALLY big crowd, which always makes me a little nervous. I wish there was going to be WiFi there, but there ain’t… so all my pictures will have to wait until I get home to get uploaded.

Update: Well, I didn’t win the auction for the tickets, but only because some fucking asshole bid me out of them, thinking they were tickets to the event! Um, $100 to get 4 tickets that cost $175 each? “If it seems to good to be true…” Fucker. Now the original seller is trying to sell them to me for a Buy It Now of $100. No way, not when individual camping passes are going for less than $20 each.

The FBS album is not as good, at least for the first few spins I’ve given it. “Don’t let the man” is fun and recognizeable, both from the 5 Man Electrical Band hook “and the sign said long-haired freaky people need not apply” and the fact that it was remixed on the last SSX game I bought. The other songs are not as catchy, proving to me that Norman Cook is a better remixer/house DJ than an original composition writer. Bonus points for getting Bootsy Collins (awww, shizzle!) to help him cover Steve Miller’s “The Joker”, tho.

The show was awesome… it was like listening to a greatest hits album live.

Update: If you want a rough approximation of what they sounded like, go here for links to the mp3 and flac versions of an earlier show from the same tour.

Setlist follows:

Is She Wierd
Subbacultcha
Something Against You
Tame
Cactus
River Euphrates
Monkey Gone to Heaven
No. 13 Baby
Mr. Grieves
Ed is Dead
Planet of Sound
Caribou
My Velouria
Gouge Away
Isla de encanta
Broken Face
Wave of Mutilation
Debaser
U-Mass
I Bleed
Hey
Gigantic
Winterlong
Here Comes Your Man
Nimrod’s Son
Holiday Song
Vamos
(Encore)
In Heaven
Where is My Mind

They sounded fantastic, and good ol’ Black Francis didn’t even look as fat as he was a few years back. I guess they’re doing a lot of touring, so that’s a lot of good exercise right there.

Mesa itself is a strange place. It’s a suburb of Phoenix, really… so it’s all sprawl. Plus, they have a very high concentration of Mormons there, so it lends to the overall creepy atmosphere.

I just love that the ‘net has enabled artists to be able to keep so close to their fanbase through their own personal sites. Bravo.

I certainly felt old last night. I went to the original Lollapalooza (yes, I’m that old), and now whenever I go to an outdoor concert I get this weird twinge that’s a mixture of nostalgia, disdain and anger. These little punk kids, they’re probably in high school! And what’s that cheerleader-looking girl doing with a pierced eyebrow?!! She’s so not cool enough. And these little punk-skater wannabes? They probably all work at the mall, blow their money on video games, and have their parents buy them their ironic t-shirts and thrift store-worn jeans! Auugh!

On another note, it was nice to see The Dude at the show. I guess he’s finally given up on the Creedence.

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<img src="http://feralboy.com/images/lebowski_sonicyouth.jpg" border="0" alt="Jeff Lebowski at Sonic Youth" />
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<a href="http://www.thedudeshouse.com/"><img src="http://feralboy.com/images/lebowski_store.jpg" border="0" alt="Jeff Lebowski at the store" /></a>
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Of course, there’s nothing more pathetic than someone clinging to barely retro music.

Anyway, it’s back up again now, and just in time for me to order 2 tickets for the Throwing Muses show at Irving Plaza next weekend! I have to make sure I can work out all the logistics of getting out there, places to stay, etc., but it shouldn’t be that much of a problem. Let me just state for the record just how much I loathe TicketBastard. There were no more tickets available through Virtuous, so I had to go through TM. $13.60 in “Convienience” charges and $3.90 in “Order Processing” fees later, and I’m coughing up $54.50 for two tickets! This is not Lollapalooza! It’s just a show! Gah!

I’m gonna try and get in nice and close and take some cool pictures.

“Where’d the muthafuckin’ cheese go at? I don’t know.”

First is that I now have an Audioscrobbler account set up, which means that anyone can go take a peek at my listening statistics. This is very cool, because the more I listen to stuff, I’ll get recommendations about which other users listen to similar stuff, and then I can find other music to listen to that way.

The other neat thing is the info gathering that I’m doing myself. I’m using Do Something to post artist and song title to a .nizzle page on my site, which is stuffing it into a local database. I then put some ASP-Classic (ick!) code into my Blogger template, which does a query on the db to pull back the last 5 songs I’ve listened to. I’ll work on an archive feature over the weekend, so you can pull back what I’ve listened to on any particular day. The idea for this part of the new hotness was shamelessly stolen from Andre Torrez.

anyway, i was pretty happy with the weather this a.m.; after the last few weeks, 30 degrees and light snow feels like a balmy summer day.

in other news, a friend of the slf who happens to be a music distributor sent along pre-release copies of the new kristin hersh and throwing muses cds. i know that all the people on the throwing music messageboard are all geeked out because of the new muses record (titled “throwing muses”, appropriately enough), which is their first since they went into semi-retirement in the late 90s, but i’ve really only been able to give that one spin so far. i’ve been completely entranced by kristin’s solo album, “the grotto”. i’ve been listening to it pretty much non-stop at work since monday. the album is a collection of raw nerves, bundled together for your listening enjoyment. the music on some borders on downright “rollicking”, but most are classic solo kristin. perfect example is track #1, “sno cat”. stripped-down arrangement; just kristin’s quavering-yet-strong voice, her guitar, and a tinkling piano in the closing seconds. pure bliss.

From: Derek DePrator
To: webmaster@feralboy.com
Subject: kudos on yr review of the j mascis show, please read on:)

hi im derek deprator and i formerly played guitar for cobra verde. i laughed my fucking ass off to your review, it’s so fucking accurate of the kind of show those fucking pussies put on it’s not even funny. john petkovic is a fucking backstabbing asshole that deserves every negative word that’s printed about him timed infinity, cuz god knows he writes for the newspaper here in cleveland so he knows all these press folks so there aren’t damn near ENOUGH negative things written about him… but anyway if you’re interested…this is me www.geocities.com/eleettapes/derekdeprator/ and here www.tellersrock.com though that url will probably change soon because we’re going to change the name of the band…john blamed our lead singer on ‘influencing me’ to quit the band and screamed at her…me and her are 22 years old and he’s this 37 year old 6 and a half foot tall guy it’s like shit, pick on someone yr own size fuckface. anyway i just wanted to let u know the site was brought to my attention and i’m glad other people feel the same way i do. feel free to throw stuff at them next time they come to town…cuz god knows j and watt are the only two people in rock and roll stupid enough to hire them repeatedly (we’d opened for mudhoney, breeders, makers, matthew sweet, none of whom ever asked us back, gee wonder why)

hope to talk to ya soon bro, u run a good site.

derek

i have to admit that i was pretty freakin’ happy that there are actually people outside my small circle of friends who actually read my page.

-update-
ooh, the plot thickens.
now i’m getting bashed in c.v.’s yahoo group.

-update 2-
the whole thread has been yanked. while i support the board moderator’s editorial control, i think that the discussion was light-hearted enough that it could have remained. i said my peace, and someone replied jokingly, and everyone was happy. there was no hatred flowing around, so i still find it a little odd that the thread was pulled. probably because i linked to this entry with the email from the former band member. hm… now that i think about it, it probably was a good idea.

friday night, the SLF and i went to pi for dinner, and then to dave and casey’s for a little bit of the grape. it was a very nice time, although there was one odd moment. paul and his girl came a little bit later on in the evening, and the conversation between the SLF and another woman there turned to how small and cute paul’s girlie was. the other woman (whom the SLF had only met one time before) said something to the effect of “they never have clothes for us big, ugly ho’s”... my head snapped around at that one, and i waited to see the SLF to cut her open to show her the black stuff inside her, but it didn’t happen.

saturday morning was brunch at the SLF’s friend’s house. there was lots of tasty treats… crepes and this fantastic baked potato and veggie thing, and a kickass apple crisp thing for dinner with like double-thick crust. here’s a few pictures from that:

after brunch we ran back to the SLF’s house for her to get changed, and then we were off to the bob mould show.

the opening act was this guy jason from a chicago-area band called verbow. he was very good… fantastic voice, lovely songs… a nice opener.

bob was really good. his voice is so strong, and he has such a stage presence. i do have to say that i didn’t enjoy this show as much as when he opened for the first gut pagaent show. his acoustic stuff was more amplified this time… not as clean and pure. he did some really good stuff, tho… opened with “wishing well”, and did some old stuff, and then some stuff off of his upcoming album. one thing he talked about between songs was this incident, which i had read about before the show, and was telling all my friends gleefully about it. bob basically retold the events as they happened, and then also mentioned that the woman in question had posted like 9 times to his message board to explain herself. it was all quite amusing.

then bob switched it up. he put down the 12-string, and picked up his electric and started doing songs from “modulate”, which is his “electronica” record. he put on a cd of the backing music, and played and sang along. it totally didn’t work for me; sounded like he was playing/singing at half the speed as the backing track. he did a few encores, and in general i thought the show was very good. full review thread here. below are the only 3 pictures that came out halfway decent (i try to not use a flash at these sort of things):

along with the SLF, ryan and his new boyfriend friend were there. after the show we wanted to go out and have a little fun, so we decided to go to brewers. this is a “hotel bar”; in addition to the bar on the ground floor, it’s also a halfway house for semi-homeless gay men. it’s also a nice hangout for a good assortment of crack whores, as well as a healthy helping of black transgendered prostitutes, all of which are named “mahogany”, for some reason. you just have to understand what a scary place this is. i had never been there before, but ryan had been there several times before. one time he went he had his briefcase stolen, and another time he was at the bar, talking to a semi-cute, well-dressed boy, when he started to smell something. the bartender comes running over and throws the guy out; turns out he had shit himself while ryan was talking to him. i just want the scene to be set.

ryan’s boyfriend friend drove all of us in his new xterra, and i wouldn’t say that he’s the best driver. he sort of darted from the main road onto the sidestreet where brewers is, and almost nailed some guy in a black pickup truck. we parked, and as we were just about to get out of the truck, the guy we nearly killed came back down the street, honking and shaking his fist at us.

ryan: maybe we should turn the car off, wait for him to drive away, and then park somewhere else.
ryan’s boyfriend friend: nah.. it’ll be fine.

into the bar we go, and it’s scary. women who used to be men, most people looking like they hadn’t had a bath in several days… it was quite.. um… “earthy”. everyone (besides me) was doing shots of blueberry pucker (ick!), and we were all having a good time. awhile after we got there, a new group of people came in, including a female impersonator. i managed to get a few pictures of us with some of them:

we finally leave and head back to the truck, and of course the windshield is all smashed in. fucking hick motherfucker had come back with a baseball bat and smashed most of the driver’s side of the windshield, and knocked the sideview mirror mostly off. ryan’s boyfriend friend got a glass splinter in his finger sweeping some chunks off of his seat, but mostly everyone was unscathed. it was still a little freaky tho.

“take karate and learn how to kick ass”, you say?
well, i wouldn’t actually want to hurt anyone… just would want to look menacing enough that nobody would fuck with me. a good friend of mine from my old hometown has been taking all sorts of street fighting classes, and he’s stopped just shy of a brown belt, because apparently when you hit brown belt, you are legally a deadly weapon, which would have much graver implications if you were to get into a fight, which my friend does occasionally.

anyway, get in, get a good table (the SLF was going to be meeting me there), and wait.

the opening act was cobra verde, and they were pretty friggin’ awful. it’s kinda hard to tell from pictures on their site, or from the ones i took, but half the guys looked like someone famous….
....’s brother.
the lead singer looked like a fat eddie vedder.
the one guitar player looked like a cross between charles manson and the unabomber, but was so skinny that his face looked like beaker from the muppet show.
and the other guitarist looked like that greasy irish dude dominic from the real world.

so, they start, and the singer is jumping around like an idiot… holding his arms in all tight to his body, and in general flopping around like a prissy idiot. he was acting like robert plant at the end of a 3-hour zep show, but they had just started. he also did this thing where he would wave his full beer bottle around like a crazy tamborine or something, but he was smart enough to put his thumb into the neck of the bottle… a “real” rock star would have just sort of let the beer fly, you know? i think he just did it to build up the carbonation, so when he took his thumb out it would make an impressive spray.

thankfully they were done after an hour, and j mascis came on.
first of all, he is looking old. his hair is quite gray, and he looked a lot like smokey from the big lebowski.

his performance was fantastic, however. his voice is as good as it’s always been… as good as on “martin + me”, and that’s going back 6 years or so. he played a lot of cool older stuff; “thumb”, “so what else is new”, “repulsion”, as well as some things off of his newer albums. he was playing with an acoustic guitar, but would occasionally turn on some distortion to rawk out a bit more. he actually had some sort of cool digital real-time looping stomp box, which he would use to record himself playing a rhythm part, and then kick on the fuzz and throw down a solo over his own accompanyment.

when he finished his solo set, he had the drummer and singer (now playing bass) from cobra verde come out and help him do some heavier songs… “ammaring”, “freak scene”, etc. at one point, someone yelled out from the crowd for him to play “keeblin”, at which point he said “i already played keeblin”... nice of that guy to be paying attention, right?

all in all, a very good show. have some pictures:
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BillyO was setting up the schwag table, so i ambled over to say hi and give him the little shirt thing. he was as warm and friendly as always; recognized me from previous shows, and talked about how great kristin’s pregnancy is going. her due date is early december, but he thinks that it’ll actually probably happen around thanksgiving.

john doe was up first, and came out and played a really good set. i hadn’t heard his music before, but lots of melancholy songs, with funny lyrics about fluffy tigers trying to kill him. he played maybe 5-6 songs, and then invited kristin up on stage to join him. they only did two songs before he left:
white girl (one of his)
trouble (one of cat stevens)

kristin and john chatted a little bit back and forth… he commented on the trippy stage set (see pictures below), and he said he must be high or something.

kristin: unless you smell burnt toast.
john: why? what does that mean?
kristin: it means you’re schizophrenic...unless you’re actually burning toast.

then kristin was left solo. she looks great for being 6-ish months pregnant. the Special Lady Friend commented that she’s carrying very high and round, and looks fantastic.
she sat down and got ready to start, but couldn’t find her setlist. crisis! oh, wait… it was on the floor in front of the stage (i had already copied everything off of it). matt to the rescue! here you go! setlist (or “security blanket”, as she called it) in hand, she started playing.
here is her setlist:
your dirty answer
37 hours
gazebo tree
tar kissers
spain
cuckoo
hook in her head (?)

a few songs into her set, this total cock-knob (who came in too late to get a seat, so he just sat on the floor right in front of the stage and kristin) lights up a cigarette. i was actually sort of suprised that they hadn’t made an announcement about it being a non-smoking show, as kristin has done in the past when she was pregnant. the ashtrays were out on the tables and everything… maybe it was the club’s refusal. anyway, i caught the fucknugget’s attention and motioned for him to put it out. blank stare. i moved my hands over my stomach like i was pregnant, pointed to kristin, and made a “grinding-out-in-the-ashtray” motion, figuring he couldn’t possibly be that stupid. oh, but he was. i didn’t want to disturb the people around us during the song any more than i already had, so i just sat back. at the end of her song, kristin asked him as nicely as she could if he would mind not smoking right in front of her! it was her baby, not her, that was the prima donna, she said. ha!

at the end of her solo set, she called out grant lee phillips. they did a few songs together:
panic pure
your ghost
heavenly (jeff buckley!!!)

after “your ghost”, grant commented that he was worried about screwing up and putting plurals where there shouldn’t be, or leaving them off where they should.. “you were driving circle around me”. kristin then commented that people on her website were getting on grant’s case for screwing that up at an earlier show. but he was really good! we’re not lunatics, i swear!

i couldn’t quite make it through the jeff buckley song; i had to pee so bad that i got up and ran to the bathroom and peed for a good minute and a half, solid.

grant did his solo set, and he was fantastic! really strong, great voice, and completely hilarious! he called john doe back out, and then only did one song before they started calling for “little sister” to come back on stage and join them.

the chemistry between the three of them was amazing. they were picking on kristin because this tour was supposed to be only for tv stars. then john commented that this tour was getting like “hee-haw”, complete with “two guys in denim shirts and a pregnant white girl”.

they started out with a verse or two from a merle haggard song… they were going to have a “hagg-off”; trade verses back and forth, but only really did one.
all 3 again remarked about the psychadelic background, and john was lamenting that he had left this amazing record of johnny cash reciting the intro to star trek. grant then busted out a perfect johnny cash impression, complete with musical background… “space, the final frontier…. i fell into a burning ring of saturn..”, etc. i think i actually soiled myself.
here’s a setlist from all 3:
the merle haggard song
the funny-as-fuck johnny cash song
see how we are
sugar mountain
when the levee breaks

afterwords, the SLF and i got a chance to chat with grant a little bit; he was a very nice and funny guy, very low key. we each bought his two cds, and he asked if he could sign them. i found that funny for some reason. hope he’ll come back to pgh next time he’s on tour. also saw BillyO again; he said that everyone loved the “onesie”.

here’s some pictures:

full list of pictures here.
thanks again to kristin and BillyO for visting us once again!

Discuss pittsburgh exile follies show

right before i left work yesterday, i got a little package, delivered by messenger. it was another 5 or 6 winning pepsi caps! i was a bit puzzled about it until dave revealed that it was him (i should have guessed). here’s how our email exchange went after that:

me: please don’t tell me you had your company pay to messenger them over to me.

dave: the “company” doesn’t pay for anything. they bill it all back to the client (in this case, [client name withheld]). [different client name withheld] has paid to fed-ex a 14” cock to about 34 different states. ahhh. corporate america.

in other news, i’m really starting to get the hang of biking into work. it’s been feeling easier on my legs (and my lungs), and i’m less convinced that i’m going to get splattered all over someone’s hood. but the best part is that it has served to expand my heretofore thought limitless disdain for all humanity, and especially the kind that drives cars.

their songs were campy and fun; very much like cartoon hero theme music. they also did this fun thing were anytime anyone in the audience yelled out “The Flam!”, the band had to sing The Flam’s theme song, which was a short little ditty that sounded like the batman theme: (descending tone) “nah-nah-nah-nah-nahn-nah-nah-nah-nah…. THE FLAM!”

the other really fun part of the night was for their last song (besides an a capella rendition of “The Flam” since they had unplugged their guitars), when they grabbed someone out of the audience, had him don a wrestling/gimp-style mask, and play on the band’s theramin, and dubbed this individual “The Thera-man”. they did a whole song with this guy wailing away on the theramin… it was good stuff. i’ll have to check them out again in the near future.