Posts tagged with "music"

The Dwarves Come To Town

Before head­ing over to Babylon for the Dwarves con­cert, Iain and I stopped into Record Runner to see if there were any albums worth buy­ing. I found the Dreamtheater con­cert DVD for $26 and was about to pur­chase it before real­iz­ing that I’d have no place to put it dur­ing the con­cert. I also found out that The Dears have a new album out which I must con­sid­er pur­chas­ing. I lat­er dis­cov­ered that they will be per­form­ing in two days at the same place, anoth­er thing need­ing con­sid­er­a­tion.

The con­cert was great. I did­n’t know any of the open­ing acts (Sack Lunch, Maximum R&R, and the Riptides), but they weren’t very good any­way. I nev­er knew how tiny Babylon is and was sur­prised to find air­plane seats and couch­es scat­tered around the large room. The size made for an inti­mate atmos­phere and com­fort­able view­ing, even for ver­ti­cal­ly chal­lenged peo­ple such as myself.

While Iain and I wait­ed for things to get set up, we pon­dered the things that would look odd at a punk show. Being Asian was the first thing that we came up with, although I did see one Asian girl and one per­son of African decent there in a crush of Caucasian faces. We agreed that some­one with an iPod or record­able MiniDisc play­er would stand out from super­fluity alone. One thing we could­n’t fig­ure out was the poplu­ta­tion of gay punks com­pared to gay non-punks. I joked about whether the more dom­i­nant male punk would make fun of his effem­i­nate, emo lis­ten­ing boyfriend.

There were some Dwarves shirts and CDs avail­able for pur­chase, but noth­ing I would con­sid­er wear­ing. Two thongs with the skull and cross bon­ers logo were spread out on the table in a rather embar­rass­ing way. Even a Blood Guts & Pussy shirt was there, and we were sur­prised to find that it lacked a sin­gle shirt pock­et.

When the Dwarves came on, there was no sign of HEWHOCANNOTBENAMED, much to our dis­ap­point­ment, although I sup­pose it was bet­ter for the crowd of all-ages. The drum­mer and two gui­tarists we did­n’t rec­og­nize, although one of them came on with sun­glass­es and a stock­ing over his head while the oth­er went skins. Blag entered with a sleeve­less “Slut.” shirt sans gloves or wig (come to think of it, I haven’t seen him ever wear­ing a shirt with sleeves).

Then there was Tazzie.

She came on wear­ing a dark pur­ple-blue dress shirt with a sequined nurs­es mask. Her dark brown hair cov­ered her entire face and at times she seemed like Cousin It play­ing bass. Partially through the set she took off her mask, unbut­toned her shirt half-way to reveal a lacy black demi, and flood­ed her hair behind her right ear when she got too hot.

It’s obvi­ous that every mem­ber of the band has a good time on stage. Blag body surfs and is gen­er­al­ly charged enough to keep the pit ener­gized, just as the leg­ends go. The gui­tarists all scream at the top of their lungs while hit­ting out the fast paced Dwarves tunes. Even the drum­mer is lost in a furi­ous fren­zy of adren­a­line. But Tazzy rocks the fuck out. She gets so into the music that she rarely looks up from her gui­tar, her eyes half-closed most of the time. She spas­mod­i­cal­ly bangs her head at each beat and each aggres­sive bass line. It’s almost as if she’s expe­ri­enc­ing an implo­sive surge of ener­gy while she has a look of qui­et con­cen­tra­tion on her face as the rest of the band wax­es chaot­ic around her. I’ve nev­er seen a more attrac­tive instru­men­tal­ist.

Plenty of great hair­styles were in the crowd, although some were rather shab­bi­ly done. The best one was some­one sport­ing a pink mohawk with a razor thin cen­ter strip extend­ing more than a foot out­wards.

The entire set last­ed more than thir­ty min­utes, which must be a Dwarves record, and sur­prised us since we were expect­ing any­thing from three to fif­teen min­utes. Now I’ll be look­ing for­ward to the upcom­ing AFI con­cert, and pos­si­ble Dears con­cert. Walking home on the bare city streets was nice and peace­ful, away from the con­stant stream of noise and peo­ple. It was a good way to end off a tir­ing evening.

Allergies, And The Music Of Joe Hisaishi

My aller­gies hit me like a ton of bricks this morn­ing. Thankfully, last years pre­scrip­tion of Flonase has­n’t run out yet, so I’ll be using it to try to get through the sum­mer. Hopefully, I won’t need to see my doc­tor to renew the pre­scrip­tion.

I found a few more vari­a­tions of the Castle in the Sky music theme and have decid­ed to keep them all. There’s some­thing about the motif which is untir­ing, much like how I find Autumn Leaves.

Getting Dark, AFI, Etc.

It’s get­ting dark here, but the light has­n’t com­plete­ly left the day yet. The sky wax­es grey with the set­ting of the sun, and a gen­tle rain is mak­ing the pave­ment shine with the yel­low glow of the street lamps. The smell con­sumes me, and I’m back walk­ing the streets on an unrec­ol­lect­ed gloomy day.

I final­ly fin­ished off my hon­ours project, so I can rest a bit eas­i­er now. The one report is worth two cours­es itself. It end­ed up being around 22 pages, which isn’t too bad. The only thing that remains is my geo essay, and I only have about a half page left to write. I went to lunch with Aaron and Wheaties to cel­e­brate a com­plet­ed course at the Elephant and Castle. A great wait­ress served us, and offered a vari­a­tion on the Strongbow I was hav­ing, which was the addi­tion of some lime cor­dial, or some black cur­rant juice. We all got to try both with the Strongbow, and it was decid­ed that the lime was the bet­ter of the two. The remain­ing black cur­rant juice went into the beer, and Aaron told me that it was tasty.

200 more wins to an arch­mage icon.

I’ve been lis­ten­ing to the lat­est AFI album late­ly, and even though I did­n’t much care for it at first, I’m com­plete­ly addict­ed now. There’s some­thing about the har­monies in the vocals that make their sound so unique. I’m not quite used to Davey Havok’s voice though, as he sounds like a child to me. Quite uncon­ven­tion­al Currently, my favorite song is This Celluloid Dream.

A trip to the Dominican Republic may be work­ing out for the first week­end of May. Since it’s the begin­ning of the off-sea­son, the cost of the entire trip, drinks and meals includ­ed along with res­i­dence at a four-star hotel, will be around $900 for a week. Apparently this includes scu­ba div­ing, horse­back rid­ing, jet ski­ing, and a beach-side view. Currently, only Aaron, Cristina and I are com­plete­ly com­mit­ted to going, but we need an even num­ber of peo­ple so we’re try­ing to find one more per­son.

Artfag is cur­rent­ly a red­head. Ummmm…yah.

Jonathan tells me that the full-time job seems promis­ing, but he’s not mak­ing any guar­an­tees. It would main­ly con­sist of going around the city to var­i­ous com­mer­cial cus­tomers and trou­bleshoot­ing com­put­er prob­lems. The pay will start at around $15 which is not too bad, but not great for a grad­u­ate. He says that I’ll also need a car to be able to get to the loca­tions that need ser­vice, some­thing that I’ll con­sid­er more if I’m actu­al­ly able to get the job. He tells me that it’s a good foot-in-the-door for web pro­gram­ming posi­tions in the future. I am very grate­ful, and I’m not get­ting hopes up.

The Sex Lounger, CHUO FM, E.S. Posthumus

The weath­er has been beau­ti­ful late­ly. I’ve always found the brisk­ness of ear­ly spring to be inde­fin­ably nos­tal­gic. The grey pave­ment seems to be fresh­ly laid, from the absent snow which so recent­ly cov­ered it. The yel­low grass, the cloud­less skies, it all seems to be such a poignant sign of the change in sea­son.

I was sit­ting on Trolley’s sex lounger yes­ter­day in his hot apart­ment, and I felt a slight draft com­ing from his win­dow. Trolley’s apart­ment always seems toasty to me, so it was refresh­ing to feel a breeze from the out­side. It remind­ed me of this great quote from Moby Dick:

Nothing exists in itself. If you flat­ter your­self that you are all over com­fort­able, and have been so a long time, then you can­not be said to be com­fort­able any more. But if, like Queequeg and me in the bed, the tip of your nose or the crown of your head be slight­ly chilled, why then, indeed in the gen­er­al con­scious­ness you feel most delight­ful­ly and unmis­tak­ably warm. For this rea­son a sleep­ing apart­ment should nev­er be fur­nished with a fire, which is one of the lux­u­ri­ous dis­com­forts of the rich. For the height of this sort of deli­cious­ness is to have noth­ing but the blan­ket between you and your snug­ness and the cold of the out­er air.

I hap­pened to tune into CHUO FM on Sunday at around 11:30 pm when I was test­ing my alarm clock, and I was fas­ci­nat­ed at what I heard. I gen­er­al­ly don’t like the radio at all, but this pro­gramme had me hooked. A male voice, appar­ent­ly a co-host, whose host had not showed up, had the show to him­self for the hour. The pro­gramme was ter­ri­ble. This per­son had a decent radio voice, but the things he was talk­ing about, the tricks he used to avoid dead air, every­thing he did made the show inter­est­ing­ly bad. I had to lis­ten until the end, because of how rarely I expe­ri­ence some­thing so poor­ly done, yet so pub­lic at the same time.

I was lucky enough to dis­cov­er a group called E.S. Posthumus, and there does­n’t seem to be an offi­cial web­site, or any web­site for that mat­ter, in which I can find out more infor­ma­tion. They seem to be doing well, with songs on sound­tracks like Spiderman, Minority Report, and Unfaithful. One of my cur­rent favourites is Tikal. I rec­om­mend­ed them to Jeff and Nick, since I remem­ber how Jeff was get­ting into the instru­men­tal stuff right now. He told me that he had a four tier sys­tem of know­ing whether to keep a song. I should prob­a­bly try doing that, since I cur­rent­ly have over a gig of songs I haven’t decid­ed whether to keep or not.

Lonely Thoughts, Cryptography Presentation, Etc.

I feel…alone. I wish I could speak to some­one who could under­stand. I wish I could express my feel­ings the way I wish. What a per­fect time to write.

I’ve been work­ing on my graph­ics project all day. I have almost every­thing done now, with the cells co-ordi­nat­ing their move­ments in a 3D Game of Life dance. They grow and shrink as the rules dic­tate, and although I have some bugs to iron out, and some bells and whis­tles to add, it should­n’t take too long.

My cryp­tog­ra­phy pre­sen­ta­tion went alright. We did­n’t quite for­mal­ly rehearse, so I spoke for 15 out of the 20 min­utes allo­cat­ed to us, when three of us had speak­ing to do. We were fair­ly rushed at the end, but I think that we got our points through well. I felt that I did a great job at open­ing the pre­sen­ta­tions, and at explain­ing my part. Mike, Pat, Iain, and I went to get loaded before the pre­sen­ta­tion, but unfor­tu­nate­ly, the shock of the sit­u­a­tion sobered me up rather effi­cient­ly. After all, it was the first pre­sen­ta­tion I’ve had to do through all of uni­ver­si­ty.

I feel bet­ter after play­ing a few games with Darren. Somehow we made it under the 300th mark, with a 55–7 record at lev­el 14. I believe the height of my addic­tion was most evi­dent when I was watch­ing a movie where a man gets trapped in a bath­room by some tri­ad mem­bers, and the first thing that I thought of was the item box, and town por­tal­ing to a safe loca­tion.

I might going to the Dominican Republic when school ends.

I’ve lis­tened to some of the Tool songs off of the strings trib­ute album, and they’re not very good. The strings are great­ly lack­ing in ener­gy, and some­times bare lit­tle resem­blance to the songs they’re pay­ing homage to. One can tell that the com­pos­er is inspired by Tool com­pos­ings, but the instru­men­tal­ists are insipid in their per­for­mance.

The Honest Lawyer yes­ter­day was relax­ing and frus­trat­ing at the same time. I nev­er I had a chance to real­ly savour the fries this time though, since I felt so guilty about munch­ing on Wheaties’ last time. All in all though, I think I’d rather not have gone.

I’ve always thought that Beth Gibbons had an amaz­ing­ly attrac­tive qual­i­ty to her, not only from the dis­tinc­tive tim­bre of her voice, but also from the grace and gen­tle­ness of her fig­ure cap­tured in her pho­tographs. I’m try­ing out some of her lat­est side-project work with Rustin Man, and so far the sound has been amus­ing­ly unique, a mix of acoustic gui­tar with bit­ter­sweet melodies.