Lost in GroVont : a blog

And I see things out of the corner of my eye...

Here's what's on my plate this week (other than work):

Two (two!) Tegan & Sara shows. Wednesday and Thursday. At Great American Music Hall, my second favorite SF venue. The sound leaves something to be desired, but it's a beautiful space. Plus, the floor is large and entirely flat, so if you don't stand at the base of the stage or hang over the edge of the balcony, you are only going to see the back of some tall, skinny indie boy's head.

I probably won't review these shows simply because I know a kid who will be far more detailed than I so I'll post the link(s) on Friday, or, probably Saturday.

Having seen Tegan & Sara several times (thrice in the past 10 months), I'm more excited about seeing Every Move A Picture at Cafe du Nord on Friday. A local SF band, they're starting to get noticed. (If noticed means songs played in the background on WB shows, noticed.) Their Morning Becomes Eclectic set is available as a podcast from KCRW.org. Their sound reminds me of so many bands that I can't narrow it down to one (or even two). It's synth heavy, hook-y pop-rock. Obviously, I'll know more on Saturday.

Pinch me if I don't post anything by Sunday.

The Current Atmosphere Is Moody

Not known for its current events.

After 15 years of non-stop touring, often performing over 100 gigs per year, Ani DiFranco will take a hiatus from live performance, after the current July tour ends, until summer 2006.

Old news, I know, but sad none the less. After 15 years of touring, the tendinitis can't be too much of a surprise. I'm a shitty guitarist on a good day and I've tried to play some Ani songs. After five minutes, my wrists and hands start to cramp. I can't even imagine the pain of fifteen years of finger-picking...

(If I keep number crunching the way I am, though, I'm going to have to learn to do 10-key left handed or stop blogging before I really get started. I think I should take a break too.)

I secured a ticket to the Arcade Fire/Wolf Parade show on Sunday. I can not contain my excitement. (I'm tempted to insert an emoticon here. I hate emoticons. I can't even spell it correctly. But I'm so excited about this show that I'm thinking about it.)

[I looked it up. Turns out I can spell emoticons correctly.]

Buster is excited too! Not really. But when your parents send you cute pictures of the dog, you are required to share them. He's sitting on top of the couch looking out the picture window of my parent's Kansas house. Occasionally, he falls off. We laugh.

 

 

Our Grampa bought us a new VCR

(Note: I should force myself to write these things the night of, or at least the night after. Stupid two jobs.)

Here's what I remember...

Waiting on the floor of Great American Music Hall and seeing two other people reading books, so I pulled out my copy of Harry Potter 6. It was that kind of audience. It was also the type of crowd that sat in a circle on the floor a played a chanting, hand-slapping game. "...down by the banks of the hanky-pank where the bullfrogs jump from bank to bank..." (You know the words, admit it.)

The guy standing next to me singing along with Romulus, and normally I would be annoyed, but he seemed so moved by the song, I found it endearing.

Thinking Sufjan Stevens is boyishly handsome.

 

A note to opening acts...you can be aloof but at least know what you're doing. (Or make the audience think you know what you're doing.) Granted, I don't think I would have been too interested in Liz Janes anyway, but her live performance destroyed any chance I might have listened more intently because Sufjan produced her first album.

Her accompanist, Bridgette, was great though. She played various instruments with both Liz and Sufjan.

I'm a casual Sufjan Stevens fan. Meaning I don't know the names of the songs (and only occasionally the lyrics). Until Monday night, I didn't feel comfortable pronouncing his name. I like going to shows like this though. It gives me a better sense of the artist in his space.

Sufjan's live show is amazing. Man of Metropolis through to the end of the encore blew me away.

Positive points for the horn section. Negative points for the cheer leading costumes.

 

A couple of other more detailed interpretations of the night here and here.

 

 

 

The Round UP (or, now my wallet is empty)

I wasn't going to buy the new Sufjan Stevens' disc, Come on feel the Illinoise (or, Illinois). I wasn't. Honest. At least not until it wound up in the used section at Amoeba. But there it was with Superman on the cover and everything.

Oh, how I love a collector's item! (Not really.) But the release date had been pushed back to August because permission had not been granted for the use of the Superman image. Yet, Amoeba had the disc properly located in the "S" section last Saturday.

It's a beautiful album. Choirs. Extravagant song titles. Mary Todd Lincoln.

And you have to like an album where one of the subtitles (subtitles) is: "Round of Applause for Your Stepmother!"

Sidenote: Evil, or not, I don't have a stepmother. (I think.)

I also picked up the reissue of the Arcade Fire EP from Merge Records.

From the 7" section, my love for all things Teenbeat led to two Eggs and one Romania. (Yes, it sounds like a breakfast order at Denny's.) Also, the Nine Black Alps "Cosmopolitan." These guys are fairly new. And I like them very much. I also like The Delays and their Faded Seaside Glamour album. I purchased the "Last in a Melody" single.

The mailbox received two disappointing EPs. Disappointing only because my expectations were too high.

I will say this for the Wolf Parade disc: "Lousy Pictures" is a brilliant studio track.

I've written before about Heidi Phillips and Frogpond and Abileen. The Abileen s/t EP is still excellent but the two standout tracks, the tracks I want to put on repeat for hours, are both available on the band's site. The other tracks were more '70s rock than alt-country, and one glance at the few pieces of vinyl I own will prove that I prefer the latter.

Track One: Pop Music Of The Future

She sold her Warlock and bought a drum machine
Fired her whole band because they hated 909 beats
She's got a loft space, takes the L train to Bedford
Runs with some cool kids that are actors but dress like nerds
And plays pop music of the future

Did Eric Elbogen know what was coming when he titled the opening track?

Say Hi To Your Mom's 2003 release Numbers & Mumbles sounds a lot like The Postal Service (and the bands that followed) with quirkier lyrics. (Yes, you can make the lyrics even quirkier. Ben Gibbard didn't sell a Warlock.) Or maybe this album was part of the trend--drum machines, retro sound with emo lyrics--since it was released the same year as Give Up.

Is quirky the correct word? Or should it be nerdy?

Check the Bio and FAQs on the website (along with the mp3s).

What are your influences?
 Chocolate and self-destructiveness.

Hey. Me too.

"Let's Talk About Spaceships" is fueled by a simple drum beat and bass line but when the guitar kicks in on the chorus it turns into a moody pop song Rob Fleming might enjoy. And, "But She Beat My High Score" is a nerd's love song.

"submerged in a pool with scuba gear on"

It's nearly becoming a trend for me to go to weekly readings at ACWLP. On Monday, we (Lisa and I) went to hear Beth Lisick read from her recently released autobiography Everybody into the Pool. I've read some of Lisick's short stories (not impressed), but I heard her name tossed around enough in the San Francisco lit scene that I was willing to give her another shot. (Remember: It's free! And books! And, what else is there to do on Monday night?)

Thankfully, not as packed as the Hornby reading, we were able to get a seat in the back.

She read from Chapter 10: Circling The Wagons. "I am visiting New York City, and it is the season of the Peasant Look. I walk the streets of my brother Chris's SoHo neighborhood, trying not to get smothered by a billowing sleeve or garroted by a stray leather choker..."

It's funny.

Really.

Married with a kid and a station wagon, Lisick is energetic and self-effacing. When, during the as always bland Q & A, she was asked about some of the oddities of her life (Drag king babysitter! Her husband's mother's girlfriend!), she calmly responded as I would have: "We live in San Francisco." I expect a reaction like that from my mother not a women in the front row of what I would call a "queer lit event" in downtown San Francisco only a couple of weeks after Pride.

I bought the book. I'm reading it. From the introduction:

A few months ago, I was at my parents' house having dinner, and my mom was talking about someone she recently met. "I felt just awful for him," she said, dipping her knife into the I Can't Believe It's Not Butter. "He's the first person I've ever met in my life who was actually emotionally scarred by his childhood." I tried really hard not to laugh, but did anyway because I can be a jerk sometimes. "What's so funny?" she said, looking around the table at everybody, slightly bewildered. There was no reaction from my dad who, still in Phase I of the South Beach Diet, was busy searching underneath his skinless chicken breast for a carb. When my mom saw how older brother Chris fake-coughed and grinned into his lap, she knew something was up.

A trip to the museum

Included in the highlights from my recent trip to SFMOMA was a small gallery dedicated to Paul Klee. Blossoms in the night attracted my attention with its depth of blue. I stared at it so long my mind was creating shapes behind the foreground images.

Due to a brevity of the visit, I was only able to take a peak at the Richard Tuttle exhibit. Being sans headphones, I was forced to listen to the conversation circling around me (the horror!) about the art, which was most annoying in the Tuttle gallery. Words like, childish and silly, were being tossed around. The exhibit is called: The Presence Of Simple Things. These are the same people who think Andy Warhol and Pop Art are "cool!" and "rad!" I want to spend more time in the Tuttle exhibit, maybe with some Morrissey on the headphones.

One of my favorite artists featured at SFMOMA (besides the ever present Sol Le Witt), is Robert Rauschenberg. Not being an art critique (I didn't even take art history at uni), I have no clever words to expound on my interest. Untitled (Glossy Black Painting) is my favorite simply for the way the texture of the paper reflects the light.

Atrabiliarios is Doris Salcedo's instillation to remember the victims of political violence in her native Columbia. The exhibit consists of a room with small niches cut into the wall containing shoes (mostly women's) and covered with vellum stitched on with black thread. The empty space. The blank white walls. The vellum boxes in a corner on the floor. I could stand in that room (with John Coltrane or Elliot Smith in my ears) for hours.

Relatedly, I walk past the Chagall gallery frequently these days. I want to spend a few hours in there.