we just won't be defeated

death trap for cutie

this very well might go without saying, but the 930 club is a much better venue for a rock concert than an ice skating rink.

if, upon first sight of the venue in which he would be expected to perform, ted leo's first words weren't "you have got to be fucking kidding me," i would have been highly surprised.  the marquee on the sleepy county road at the entrance to the rostraver ice garden proudly advertised the venerable "murph's pub" and "glass blowers' convention."  no mention was made of the two giants of the indie-rock scene that were slated to perform that very evening.  the following week, i can only assume, would feature a puppet show.

after no small difficulty in simply entering the vast and vastly disorganized muddy acres devoted to the parking of automobiles, our party (vanna, vrabel, josh, and yours truly) found our way through the drizzling rain to the unassuming entrance to the modest concrete block structure that is the ice garden.  josh had to pick up his ticket at will call, but, as we could hear that the pharmacists had already taken the stage, vrabel and i opted to wait for he and vanna inside the venue proper.  so we traversed the smoke-filled sea of hazy and vaguely blue teenagers and ventured through the only door into the arena itself to find ourselves... backstage.

there, just a few feet to our left, ted leo and the pharmacists defiantly competed against the echo from the far wall of the garden - nearly a quarter of a mile away.  to our right, a roped off section of the bleachers behind piles of empty equipment crates loosely defined the backstage area.  ahead lay a treacherously narrow path lined on both sides with seemingly infinite more teenagers along the "glass" to the distant end of the arena, where we could at last step onto the astroturf clad ice.  with some reservation, we forged bravely and stupidly ahead.

Rostraver plan

at long last, we were able to cool our aching feet on the soothing ice.  and it was soothing for all of three minutes before the insufficiently insulating astroturf carpet forced us two-thirds of the way again back in the other direction toward the sound booth, where there was a plywood platform on which to stand.  along the way we passed the bar, which consisted of a couple of card tables equipped with a table lamp and a keg of miller lite.  but at least the show sounded great.

oh, wait - it didn't.  virtually every surface in the ice garden is engineered specifically to reflect sound.  as i turned perpendicular to the stage, i could hear echoing in one ear what i had just heard live in the other.  fortunately, the venue was filled to only a fraction of its capacity.  very few of the bulk of the crowd extended as far back on the ice as the sound booth.  if i'd been forced to deal with a bunch of people around me, it's entirely probable i would be writing now from the most beautiful jail in the land.

naturally, given the comedy of errors that had attended this particular concert-going experience, we opted to forgo the encore and made our way toward the exit as the headliner - death cab for cutie - dragged their closing song out to the verge of a dirge.  now, the astute reader will note that we entered the venue through the backstage area and will therefore be unsurprised to learn that our path to the one and only exit had been blocked as the security guard strained to keep a path clear for death cab's imminent departure of the stage.  we, however, were not so smart.

Rostraver detail

we immediately found ourselves in a logjam from which we could neither advance nor, at this point, recede.  we, as one would expect, tried to force ourselves forward.  our comical attempts were rendered less comical as others much later insisted that they, finally, would be the heroic one to break through - only to fail spectacularly.  after ten minutes or so of droning from ben gibbard and company, the growing crowd had finally reached its tipping point.  we scaled the large equipment boxes which had heretofore penned us in and made our way hastily for the emergency exits.  i've never, in all my years of concert-going, seen a crowd so anxious (near panic, really) to leave any one show.  so congratulations, death cab - you're definitely the best at something.

this was last november.  memories came flooding back last night as i enjoyed a remarkable ted leo show yesterday in my own town.  to which i ventured comfortably by urban public transportation.  and which i could actually hear.

not guilty: sinead o'connor

okay, i've got to make this quick.  i'm already running way late to meet up with emma and nikki for the ted leo show.

you'll remember stylus magazine from late last week.  a link (and subsequent commentary) on these pages to their semi-regular "versus" feature stirred up a shitstorm in which i proved indisputably that british post-punk is a waste of your time and that the vast majority of professional music critics are hopelessly incorrect about the smiths' place in the annuls of rock history.  it was quite a productive weekend.

i don't want to belabor that point.  we've all moved on - particularly stylus, who is now featuring a piece that dovetails nicely with our current sub-theme.  this is not the time to delve into a thorough deconstruction of their list of the best one-hit-wonders, however.  as is always the case in these matters, there are sure to be glaring oversights and even more glaringly unapt inclusions.  and to be frank, there aren't really that many songs of which the self-respecting indie rocker might feel undeservedly guilty for liking.  but since i already admitted to phoning this one in, i don't care.  in the absence of an appropriate song i'm going with the best song, and the song featured below is not only best on the list but among the best ever.  there aren't many who can outshine prince with his own tune.

Sinead O'Connor - Nothing Compares 2 U

mr. rogers' neighborhood

i am merely a humble marine biologist, but i always wanted to pretend to be an architect.  i even went so far as to take a few architectural history electives in college so i could speak more eloquently on the subject.  so it probably won't surprise you that news of the field's highest honor - the pritzker prize - would pique my interest.  i know yinz have been waiting anxiously for a whole year now, so i won't keep you in suspense.  this year's winner is: lord richard rogers.

lord richard ('dickie,' to close friends) rogers rose to fame - as it were - in the late seventies with a couple of high-profile hyper-modern buildings in paris and london.  the professor of one of my survey classes infamously declared that rogers' lloyd's of london building was the one that most "made his pants tight," but i prefer the centre pompidou.  lloyd's is too much; it's over the top.  pompidou uses the same mechanical and structural vocabulary yet is still somehow more restrained, more confident.  lloyd's just seems like a building where the architect just couldn't bear to throw away any ideas.  but then, what the hell do i know?

it is somewhat telling, however, that pompidou was a collaboration.  in fact, both of rogers' former partners - renzo piano and lord norman foster - have already won the pritzker.  they won almost a decade ago, at that, and presumably because they knew when to tell dickie to cut it out.  incidentally, other former pritzker winners include the unfortunately named gordon bunshaft.  you know you've got some real problems when "gordon" is the least funny part of your name.

laser rocket arm

"barney's film had heart, but 'football in the groin' had a football in the groin."
- homer j. simpson.

if there's one thing funnier than grown men getting hit in the nuts with a football, it's kids getting hit in the nuts with a football.  the clip below is all over the internets today mainly because nobody really believed until now that peyton manning wasn't a mindless automaton.  it's no secret we were bears' fans about six weeks ago in part for that very reason.  but a little light-hearted tweaking of one's public image goes a long way in these parts, and we're willing to concede that we're okay with peyton breaking his long habit of choking in the big games if this is the result.

this video, believe it or not - and we are still not sure we do, first appeared on 'saturday night live.'  apparently they're doing comedy now.  when did that happen?

SNL - United Way

[UPDATE:  we've watched this a good half-dozen dozen times now, and we'd just like to add that our favorite moment is peyton's oh-so-creepy delivery of the line "it's gonna be there forever" as one of his young charges is tattooed.  also, peyton's voice has always reminded us of our good friend (and tennessee native) jeff cooper.]

heaven knows i'm miserable now

i can admit when i have made a mistake.  i really can.  i know there are those humorless few who take everything posted here at face value, but i believe most rational people can tell the difference between my harmless bluster and sincere ad hominem attacks.  i like having opinions on things; i said so in my very first post.  i especially like having opinions about those entirely subjective topics - the arts in general and music in particular.  that my opinions are frequently challenged invigorates me and invites me to examine the roots of those beliefs i know to be true.  and i am similarly inspired by the passion of my opponents.  their enthusiasm encourages me to explore their points of view far more thoroughly than would a mere suggestion.  which brings me, at long last, to my point.

there has been much discussion on this forum over the past couple of days about british post-punk and the smiths' place in music history.  i have reiterated my distaste for the smiths, once again to great derision.  those whose musical opinions i respect unconditionally have informed me i am in error.  other, more dubious but generally sound, voices have expressed the same. these things, in and of themselves, are not new.  what is new (for this particular topic) is that i listened to them.

so with a free evening i have spent some time on youtube, giving the smiths a second chance.  and i can say without a shadow of doubt that they did not disappoint.  under no circumstance could i make it through an entire clip.  in some cases (namely those live ones which had a good two minutes of crowd introduction) i made it almost one hundred and fifty seconds into the song.  usually i was bored within just a few measures and in every case i had to kill the video almost immediately after the vocals began.  the smiths aren't just terrible, they're powerfully terrible - almost impossibly terrible.  my reaction to their music was so visceral - so physical - that it could only be described as pain.  i have seen the enemy and they are the smiths.  in all seriousness, this is one instance in the arts for which there is a clearly defined right or wrong answer.  i've never been more pleased to have been right.

i can admit when i have made a mistake.  this time, i haven't.

not guilty: siouxsie and the banshees

in a discussion earlier today of the assorted and numerous crimes against music committed by the cure and depeche mode (and also, though tangentially, the smiths), akaijen attempted to besmirch the good name of siouxsie sioux by lumping her in with the aforementioned lot.  it's true that a few similiarites exist between siouxsie and these purveyors of dissonance (she and robert smith and whoever was in depeche mode all used the same brand eyeliner, for example), but their differences are far greater.  that the cure and depeche mode were terrible understates the case against them, for not only were they terrible but they were interchangeably terrible.  siouxsie and her banshees, on the other hand, not only had their own distinct sound, but were, what's the word....  ah: good.

in 1991, siouxsie released 'superstition' and its first single brought the artist her only top forty hit.  "kiss them for me" isn't her best song but its still far, far superior to anything her contemporaries ever had to offer.

Siouxsie and the Banshees - Kiss Them For Me

violagration

in other news.... a while back i mentioned the poor man's pitchfork and its attempt to settle once and for all the great and greatly irrelevant unasked question of: which is better U2 or REM?  the correct answer - obviously - is neither.  and the same applies this time 'round when they tackle two-thirds of the holy trinity of vastly overrated eighties pseudo-indie bands.  (the third, for those playing at home, is the smiths.  duh.)  come on, people.  as useless as the U2 versus REM discussion was, at least there was some fodder for debate.  but depeche mode and the cure - they're the same fucking band.  surely there must have been something else to write about today.

natural born killers

Harrelson

that above is charles harrelson.  he's the father of C-list actor woody harrelson.  he - charles - died a few days ago.  in prison.  because he was a hitman.  who killed a federal judge.  wow.  that's some effed-up childhood woody had - with dad having been shipped off to prison for being a professional killer when he - woody - was only seven years old.  it's a wonder woody turned out okay.

thwarted

i had a fully-formed rant composed in my head by the time i got to work today.  i'd planned to share my wisdom on the idiocy of wasting one's spring break in the mid-atlantic in general and why those idiots should stay off my subway in particular.  it was good to go; all i had to do was type it up.  alas, it was not to be.  i was pummelled with questions from moron co-workers immediately upon my arrival and by the time i had dismissed them, the moment was irretrievably lost.  you can blame them for depriving you of yet another gem of comedic misanthropy.

 

i'm still in a spectacularly foul mood, though.  these new CD's better be good.

(noun) a feeling of evil to come

the poster for "premonition" - in theaters today - is one of the coolest i have seen in a while.  it's a pity it was wasted on a movie that looks so freakin' terrible.  i'm one hundred percent confident "premonition" is going to suck.  call it a hunch.

premonition poster