Of concertgoing journeys with yer bros... Gabe, Greg and I saw No Age not once, but TWICE yesterday, first at a free show at the South St. Seaport and then later that night at Death by Audio in Brooklyn.
The first and really only thing you need to know about No Age live: all of the ambient, floating guitar parts that break up the punk explosions on record... gone. Their two sets were nothing but loud--really fucking loud when you consider that there are only two of them--speedy punk rock.
These two shows brought me back to when I was 14 and seeing local punk shows for the first time. The constant stink of a moshpit, going crowdsurfing... experienced it all anew. I had forgotten what it was like to be thrown ten feet into another human being and get kicked in the head. Gabe bled; all I can claim is a bruise by my eyebrow.
All these photos are from the show at the Seaport. No Age's second set was at a much smaller space and it was one of the best shows I've ever been to, really just something special. Here's a good-quality video from the show with "Eraser" and "Everybody's Down." Greg and I are definitely somewhere in this video but it pans over us too quickly to see.
Vinni Puh (1969) is the Russian counterpart to everyone's favorite British Bear, Winnie the Pooh (face it Paddington, no one likes you. Marmalade is for elitists).
I'm not sure how many among us count themselves Winnie the Pooh devotees, but I, for one, spent the better part of my early childhood watching the original WtP shorts at least once every few days, and as such had no problem wasting 30 minutes on parsing out the differences between the two versions of the series.
The art direction is pretty awesome, and a lot of the physical humor made the transition intact, but man, I don't care how cute he is, Puh bugs me. The guy who put this translated version on YouTube claims that he "comes across as more real, more complex, and wiser than his Disney counterpart," and I can't disagree completely, but that doesn't mean I'm okay with the soviets turning Pooh into an irredeemable leech, Piglet into a lemming, and Rabbit into a pathetic nerd. Answer me this, Leonid Brezhnev: why you gotta be so down on Pooh? Fuck you. And where's Christopher Robin? Did you blacklist Christopher Robin? Is it too soon to make jokes about blacklisting? It could be waaaaaaay too soon, considering what's been happening to Russian television lately. Fuck you too, Putin.
Woman 1: (Walks out of the door and sits by her friend/coworker) Man, today has been rough. I've lost two patients.
Woman 2: That sucks.
Woman 1: Can I have a cigarette?
Woman 2: Yeah.
Goddammit. What the hell is wrong with this part of the hospital?
Cheer up dudes, it's Friday. Any fun weekend plans you guys? I'll just jump in with mine then. Erika and Eddie are coming down. Maybe I'll take some pix and turn it into a post.
Also, I changed the Blog template. I like it. I came to really dislike how the old one forced a certain thin column for the posts and limited picture size. Also, the simplicity of this one is refreshing and hip. Fewer colors to fuck with. Ya know? I like that. Oh, and I accidentally deleted the counter. We were at a couple dozen thousand. Good job all. Sorry to delete history. In its place, I got a flag counter so we can see all the countries that visit the blog. Neat, right?
And finally, I added the two new bond girls to the top of the "Small Pictures of Cute Celebrities" section. Do we even need to debate which one is hotter? Dan and I did for a while. I am confident that Olga Kurylenko is hotter. He thought Gemma Arterton was hotter. How about youuuuuu?
Trying to put the BRO back in brog, I took to the web in search of only the hottest Swedish babes. Eventually I came across www.Hel-Looks.com, which is like a Swedish version of The Sartorialist if dude had a taste for the flamboyant-verging-on-retarded-but-just-barely-keeping-it-together. Soon enough I became immersed in this bizarre world of cutting-edge Helsinski style, which would put most European cities I saw to shame in its boldness and color. However, like all trendy cities, there are a fair share of complete and utter flops in outfits. It makes you realize that even if American style is kind of weak compared to Europe, our being tame has its benefits, namely that nobody tries as hard and fails as badly as some of these fucking duds. Here are the highlights, both good and bad...
BABES This site has made me realize a lot of hyper-fashionable girls are really, well, kind of ugly. In fact, it might even be the hyper-fashion, the totally mis-matched thrift store outfits paired with $300 Dior jeans, the expensive avant-garde haircuts done by some spoiled cokehead, that make the girls look so distinctly terrible. What real bros like us want from a girl -- bros who are into boning chicks but aren't looking for some blonde monster with a silicon chest -- is an understated elegance at all times, even when you're going for hip. Sure, only the most extreme of circumstances can turn a girl's outfit into a strike against her and dissuade us from talking; see examples of the "Gothic Lolita" style on the site, which I will not poison this blog with. But the truth is this: when a good-looking girl owns it, the sun shines a little bit brighter and Zeus smiles down from the heavens all like, "Damn, lemme tap that, and then let's order Chinese and watch the repeat of the Mets game on SNY."
The nominees...
This girl is out of any of our league, so instead of imaging that she's looking at you like that because she wants to fuck you, just pretend she dropped a paper on the floor and you picked it up all, "Hey, excuse me, you dropped this," and she turns around like this and just says thanks. That's a little closer to reality.
This girl could be going to work, a party or a family gathering. Ideally, she is doing so after leaving your apartment.
What do you even talk to a girl like this about? The Beatles?
That dress is so rad.
The website said her jeans are glued somehow. Like, what does that mean, to her boots? Wouldn't that be really annoying to take off at the end of the day?
Swedish girls actually aren't that hard to get with, but your odds of getting with this girl are actually zero.
This girl has the hairstyle that was really popular in Spain when I studied there. On the right girl it looks incredible, and this girl totally pulls it off.
THE DUDS
One of things about trying to look cool is that some people really suck at it. When people say that your clothes should reflect your personality, what they really mean is that you have to wear something you're comfortable with; if you're a total dork and you're trying to look rock and roll, it's obvious to everyone that you're a poseur. Here are my votes for most flagrantly bad Swedish outfits. Dudes only.
This outfit is just whack. I don't know what this dude was going for, but he could have had a really cool time-traveler thing going on if he just got his act together. Commit, my friend, commit.
It's not often that I get the elementary school urge to call someone a freak, but here we are, I suppose.
It's like someone glued a fake bottom-half on this picture. Jorts, stocking and Chucks? No fucking way.
You can tell this guy has been waiting for years for www.Hel-Looks.com to take his picture. When they finally did he took a very deliberate puff of his cigarette and was like, "No, you can't mean me. Really? Me?"
You have to give a guy credit when he's ready to party so hard he wears a pair of PJ bottoms so he can pass out wherever the night takes him.
If this is the apotheosis of the Tim Burton/Hot Topic era, at least we can say that while it was harsh on the eyes, at least nobody died.
SKINNY JEANS
I have no problem with skinny jeans, but this is an optical illusion, right?
Let's hear what Ninjasonik has to say about this.
WINNERS AT LIFE
OK, I give up. This guy won. I quit. If you don't want to make this guy your best friend, take a few hits of acid with them and then write "Beatles-osque pahp melodies feathuh-ing Krautrock rhythms" for a few hours you have no idea what fun is.
The movies we've watched so far, in order, are: X1, X2, X3, Step Up, and Annie Hall. Guess who runs shit around here?
Last weekend, Kristin visited! It was so wonderful. We went tidepooling for the super-low 4th of July tide, went on walks, bought blueberries at the farmers' market and made cake with them! Last term I found a discounted marmot raincoat online and I sent her the link-- by FATE we bought the same color. TWINS!
So tomorrow I get more x-rays and find out whether my hand is ACTUALLY broken or not. I'm thinking not. It (a) doesn't hurt. at all. and (b) I've regained significant movement in the past 3 days. If it's NOT broken, I swear I will bicycle every day and NEVER ride on the sidewalk on the bridge again. I SWEAR. If it IS broken.. I'm getting a bright blue cast and Kristin mailed me puffy paint (including gold glitter!) to decorate it with.
Today I went out for my fieldwork but the weather was bad so I went to the beach. I took too much vicodin and fell asleep in the sand. Sunburn galore. The end.
Friday afternoon = Nick Brody (of Roman fame) is driving down, picking me up and taking me to PORTLAND. My city of dreams.
If last summer was my summer of Harry Potter, this summer is my summer of Lil Wayne. I remember Sherod showing me I'm Me like back in winter. It's so heavy. I like how everyone talks about Kanye being cocky, but no one really gets on Lil Wayne's case for constantly calling himself the best rapper alive because he can back it up.
Alex and I have been talking about the Lollipop remix today. If you haven't heard it you should (http://youtube.com/watch?v=AU0bp_-RQA4). Wayne name checks Hewlett Packard, and by the end he's talking about safe sex.
and speaking of rap and harry potter http://youtube.com/watch?v=9Dgtw53rDmY&feature=related
Also, for those of you slow enough to not have read my Facebook status, PROJECT RUNWAY SEASON 5 starts next Wednesday at 9 pm, only on Bravo! ... before Lifetime steals it... and sucks the life out of it... probably.
The song isn't even that good, it's the LYRICS. Some key excerpts:
"Niggas is bitches, bitches, I think they full of estrogen"
"Last year they had the Grammys and left me in Miami Sleeping on a nigga like I'm wrapping in my jammies I'm rapping when you sleep, I was rapping when you were in jammies Mel Gibson flow, Lethal Weapon, book 'em Danny"
"Let's go, niggas don't see me cause I'm better and bold The only time I will depend is when I'm seventy years old That's when I can't hold my shit within so I shit on myself Cause I'm so sick and tired of shitting on everybody else"
CLASSIC. Go listen and fall in love, just as I did.
Today, Women release their self titled album on Flemish Eye Records. Instead of putting in the effort to write a full review, here are some random sentences about it:
I like it, quite a bit actually.
I don't quite know why I like it as much as I do.
It's pretty lo-fi and sounds like it was self produced in a garage. Maybe it was. I'll look it up later.
It rocks, sometimes, but never really opens up to full chord strumming and consistent crash cymbal-ing, preferring instead to have multiple guitar riffs build over stick clicks or a kick drum, being both dynamic and minimalist.
The vocals and melodies are delivered with a we-only-sometimes-and-even-then-only-kind-of-give-a-fuck attitude. At times, their voices are pretty, with multiple reverbing harmonies, and sometimes they're almost talking the lyrics in fifths and barely sliding to each word with an almost No Age-esque effect... but I like these guys more.
Sometimes there are squeaky violins. And pretty bells. And noodley guitars. It's almost like the Ruby Suns took a left turn at the intersection of dream pop and math rock.
The guitar sometimes has a This is a Long Drive for Someone With Nothing to Think About tone but with riff more befitting of Pinback or Faraquet.
Woodbine is 3:39 of a single note with increasing scratchy textures. Wei-urd.
Group Transport Hall is a 1:11 simplistic acoustic pop piece that sounds like a homemade Sung Tongs track but would never have been written by Animal Collective.
Black Rice and Shaking Hands are fantastic songs.
I want to post a few tracks here but don't know how. I'll direct you to their Myspace so you can at least hear Group Transport Hall and Black Rice.
I was going to end my sentences here, but I just Googled these dudes. I probably just should've just quoted their website, posted the link above, and not said anything at all:
"The debut album by Women was recorded by label-mate Chad VanGaalen over 4 months on ghettoblasters and old tape machines in his basement, an outdoor culvert and a crawlspace. Sometimes light and spacious, at other times eerie and dense with an ominous weight, this self titled album touches upon Velvet Underground, The Zombies or This Heat while not really having any obvious precursors – a lo-fi masterpiece cloaked in layers of vibrato and guitar wash.
Noisy and claustrophobic songs smash through junkyard trash brawls while others lift and soar across the landscape of 50’s-informed pop; a contradiction and an enigma, the debut album by Women will find its way onto summer bike ride mixes and the turntables of record store devotees."
That sums it up. You can download the full thing at this blog's post. I recommend it if you have the time and hard drive capacity.
Recommended for fans of: Dan's music, Greg's music, Erinrose's music, Tom's music, usually not my music.
