Category: rock

August 27, 2008

Telstar

what do you know-- they're making a movie about crazy Joe Meek.

Posted by spacegrrl at 09:31 PM | Comments (0)

Category: rock

June 13, 2008

b2 has killed me dead.

oh man (she says in whiney voice)...

No Wave: Post-Punk. Underground. New York 1976-1980.

"The opening party is tomorrow, Friday, June 13, from 6 to 8pm. Teenage Jesus and the Jerks and Information will perform at the Knitting Factory across the street."

Play "stairs to nowhere" for me, guys...

Posted by spacegrrl at 12:16 AM | Comments (0)

Category: rock

April 18, 2008

I just fainted.

"David Byrne and Brian Eno have completed a new album (of "electric gospel") for released before 2009 and have booked a North American tour on which they're planning to play at least 40 percent old Talking Heads material. Holy moly, this is as good as life gets!"

From b2

Posted by spacegrrl at 12:18 PM | Comments (1)

Category: rock

November 27, 2007

OLD skool

i hesitate to say much about how i came by my old broadcast turntable.

In the context of the desk

suffice to say, it was a very kind gift. i don't want the person who gave it to me to get in trouble with his boss.

finally it is mounted in my desk, so i can actually use it. J and I did this this weekend. it's part of my grand plan for the back bedroom.

QRK broadcast turntable

the grand plan involves obtaining an ART USB Phono Plus v2 USB Phono Preamp that will translate the glorious analog of the turntable into zeros and ones that can be fed into my computer.

Top view, no turntable

sweet, ain't it? i don't have any pictures with the turntable mounted in it, which is too bad. the turntable itself is a big solid piece of what looks to be cast aluminum.

i'll be so very pleased when it's all set up and working.

Posted by spacegrrl at 07:55 PM | Comments (0)

Category: rock

November 12, 2007

pondering while driving

bart's real deal post had me pondering old shows i'd seen, while driving home tonight, and somewhere along memory lane i got started thinking of artists i've seen perform who are now dead. I could only come up with four:

d. boon
jerry garcia
sun ra
pavarotti

i really wish i had records of all the shows i've seen over the years; i once found a ticket stub to a royal crescent mob show that i have absolutely no memory of attending. it makes me wonder who i've forgotten who might belong on the above list. or just, who i've forgotten.

anyway, who would go on your list?

Posted by spacegrrl at 12:15 AM | Comments (1)

Category: rock

September 10, 2007

piecing together the past

i put this question to the internets: does anyone remember the name of the opening band when beck played the duke coffeehouse (which, as it turns out, was in march of 1994)?

i think it was a band from the northeast and i think the guitarist had a meltdown onstage and destroyed a valuable vintage guitar.

actually, what i really want is a list of all the shows that jeremy steckler booked at the coffeehouse, so i can remember all the ones i went to. mainly i remember harry pussy and beck, although apparently he also booked the ruins, and i'm sure i would have gone to that.

i really wish i'd kept records of that stuff.

Posted by spacegrrl at 01:27 AM | Comments (1)

Category: rock

September 07, 2007

so that noise would be...

the bull durham blues festival.

i can hear every note. all my doors and windows are closed.

it's better than the beeping.

Posted by spacegrrl at 11:52 PM | Comments (2)

Category: rock

July 18, 2007

want vinyl?

i just culled my 12" collection and have about a yard of records that i need to get rid of.

if anyone who reads this is interested acquiring any more vinyl, let me know, and i'll compile a list of what i've culled. far fetched, i know, but you never know.

Posted by spacegrrl at 08:25 PM | Comments (0)

Category: rock

June 04, 2007

more 'old is good'

i had this crazy impulse yesterday to work on the back bedroom, aka, where clutter goes to die in my house. randomly, i attacked the cassettes. yes, magnetic media. analog. no random access permitted. fragile, erasable artifacts from my youth. like everyone else, i have a lot of them and don't quite know what to do with them.

but you know, my car has a cassette player. this was a dated piece of equipment seven years ago when i bought the car, though i used it to listen to my ipod for quite a while.

so yes. this afternoon on the way home, i listened to led zeppelin on cassette in my volkswagen beetle.

Posted by spacegrrl at 10:02 PM | Comments (0)

Category: rock

May 20, 2007

let the record show

i went to a rock show tonight (the rosebuds, my first time ever seeing them) and stayed to the very end and everything.

my first rock show in a year and a half or two years or something like that.

it was fun.

Posted by spacegrrl at 01:38 AM | Comments (0)

Category: rock

February 08, 2007

XTC not so much, anymore

Interview with Andy Partridge in The A.V. Club

that's ok. we've got thirty-odd years worth of their music to play with.

ETA: the comments are a total snorkfest. my favorite: "XTC: Bollocks." and, of course, "i'd like another order of barbed wire salad with fetus, please."

andy cracks me the fuck up, and as one commenter says, he's no more depressed and reclusive than he ever is. that's just all the magic of andy.

i hope he writes that cross-dressing cowboy musical. i'd fly to england to see that.

Posted by spacegrrl at 11:32 PM | Comments (0)

Category: rock

April 11, 2006

shake body!

i'll admit that i'm not a huge fan of amercian hip-hop these days. african hip-hop is a different story.

Naija Jams blog highlights 'Shake Body' video by ChiiDo.

there's no doubt that this is african music, after the intro. and the dancers are fantastic. i don't watch a lot of videos, so this isn't saying much, but definitely one of the best videos (or bits of film) i've seen in a while.

Posted by spacegrrl at 10:55 PM | Comments (0)

Category: rock

March 27, 2006

iggy pop recommendation

i think at least one or two of my readers still remember "rock and roll" type music.

iggy pop songs that i like:

"The Passenger" (even though it has been used in like 90 commercials now)

"The Horse Song". This song came up during the drive home last night while the iPod was on random shuffle. Awesome. I want more!

Based on those two songs, can anyone recommend an Iggy Pop album that I should check out?

Posted by spacegrrl at 09:11 AM | Comments (2)

Category: rock

December 15, 2005

The reason I wish I was eighteen in 1978

via "BoingBoing":

london punk photos on flickr

and another little bonus via b2, Other Music Year End Recap (Just in case you don't listen to XDU and already know all of this stuff, anyway.)

Posted by spacegrrl at 11:29 AM | Comments (4)

Category: rock

November 15, 2005

cassette nerd

i find this page of photos of cassette tapes strangely affecting.

Posted by spacegrrl at 11:37 PM | Comments (1)

Category: rock

September 30, 2005

the hottest song i have heard in a long time

offa "studio one scorcher", "shockers rock" by an all-star cast of: Tommy McCook, Richard Ace, The Skatalites And Disco Height.

this makes me think of a room full of hot, sweaty people getting down so hard that the floor is bending underneath you, like that party at rick!'s old house.

it has this crazy break in the middle where it seems like the song ends, then immediately picks up into a new song that then becomes the old one. might be jarring to people who are seriously getting their groove on (as they should be), but nevertheless: hot, hot hot.

p.s., the thing about being drunk is that it may not get me to bed any earlier, but i just don't care anymore how tired and sleep-deprived my sorry ass am.

Posted by spacegrrl at 12:33 AM | Comments (3)

Category: rock

July 22, 2005

all glass, all the time

i love philip glass. well-- his music. his early music. i've seen him perform live twice, i went to that terrible 3-d film that he scored, i even met him (sort of) when he brought powaqqatsi to duke. i've got a pristine first press of 'Einstein on the Beach' on vinyl that i scored at Ameoba in Berkely. there's a part in EotB where i swear they're saying my name over and over again. i'm a fan, although i don't listen to his stuff so much these days.

so today...

1. dj BC (the same fellow, i believe, who brought us the Beastles) hit boingboing with a set of Philip Glass / hip-hop mashups. yeah, ok, boingboing earned its keep today. and it was even xeni who posted the link.

2. the new Battlestar Galactica ep that aired tonight featured a Glass piece quite prominently. i knew it was glass; had no idea which piece or even which album. happily, the BG message boards not only had an ID on the song, but a link to a free d/l. thank god.

those songs get in your head like a virus.

Posted by spacegrrl at 11:41 PM | Comments (3)

Category: rock

April 17, 2005

kraftwerk @ the 9:30 club

is anyone interested in travelling to DC or NYC to see kraftwerk?

they are playing may 30 & 31 @ the 9:30 in DC; jun 1 in NYC. sadly none of these dates are on a weekend.

i missed them when they had their "comeback" tour a few years ago and i was pretty bummed about it. it's one of those things where i don't necessarily expect it to be that astounding of a show, but they are one of Those Bands... like Neubauten, or Throbbing Gristle, that are so important to the development of the music i like that seeing them gives me a shudder.

and hey, if i come home with an air compressor, all the better.

Posted by spacegrrl at 01:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Category: rock

February 15, 2005

memesville

1. Total amount of music files on your computer? 3616 songs/10.2 days/16.03gb

2. The last CD you bought was... on iTunes, The Specials/The Specials. In a physical music store, I bought a batch of four: Trojan Lovers Box Set, 600% Dynamite, Chicks Rock comp and Durham Rocks comp.

3. What was the last song you listened to before reading this message? "I wanna be adored" by the Stone Roses.

4. Write down five songs you often listen to or that mean a lot to you.

1) Roadrunner/Modern Lovers
2) Harvest Festival/XTC
3) Cinnabar/Pram
4) Interpol. It's hard to pick just one.
5) Hot Potato/Freestyle Fellowship

5. What 3 people are you going to pass this baton to and why?
christa, jason! and d.
d. claims to have a blog, let's see him put his money where his mouth is. besides, he's a huge music geek.

Posted by spacegrrl at 07:15 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

Category: rock

January 14, 2005

interpol @ disco rodeo

courtesy of my rock buddy extraordinaire, mary:

INTERPOL w/ BLONDE REDHEAD
FEB. 27 @ Disco Rodeo** ($18/ $20)
Tickets go on sale JAN. 15 thru usual outlets

Posted by spacegrrl at 03:49 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Category: rock

December 22, 2004

ooh! we have one-fifty on the little one!

i've now got a recording of the neubauten show i saw in april. i'm stunned at how damn great it is, and not just because i was there.

it's divided into one-minute tracks. i need to find an app for osx that will allow me to merge/split some tracks so i don't have to hear gaps when i listen to it on the ipod.

Posted by spacegrrl at 05:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Category: rock

December 05, 2004

part two

GCup kind of bit tonight and by the second band i was well and truly exhausted and unsteady on my feet. i toughed it out through pat benetar, cracker (rossi had to explain to me who cracker were. the xplanation didn't make me like them any better), and part of the flaming lips.

partway thru fl i realized everyone i'd been standing with was gone and that i could barely stand up. pushed through the crowd stumbled around and finally georg spotted me from the doorway where he was taking a breath of unsmokified air and gestured me over. he said he was totally cool with leaving right then and there so we did.

somehow got us on to hillsborough street (navigating kings is always a problem) and then lo and behold before us was the chargrill. and i said to georg, dude i totally want to go to the char grill right now, is that cool? and georg being the easy going person that he is wasn't about to stop me when i clearly needed a hamburger and a bunch of crispy, piping hot fries right then and there. he had some fries too and daaaaamn it was good and just what i needed to get us back to durham in one piece.

of course now i am seated and taking my sweet time about showering and getting to bed and all.

Posted by spacegrrl at 01:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Category: rock

December 04, 2004

covermewithkissesbaby,covermewithlove

fortunately, i don't have to write about what i did last night, because jason has done it for me, and all of us. so has leesh.

the bass thing didn't bother me and the Heads freaking kicked ass. so did blondie.

minor local celeb sighting: brian walsby (i'm pretty sure). also, explained blogging to my old friend rob k.

:|:

today after what qualified more as a disco nap than as a night's sleep, i was in the chapel hill christmas parade with sarah, georg, and a couple of folks from newbugcarolinas. it was totally fun as usual and damn they love me in carrboro! the streets were ringing with people yelling "BIODIESEL!!!" as i passed by. every year there are more and more people who dig the biodiesel stuff, and there's always a markedly larger number of them in Carrboro.

a few phone cam photos were taken and i'll get them online after, you know, some sleep and stuff.

Posted by spacegrrl at 12:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)

Category: rock

November 12, 2004

one of the few situations in which i might actually enjoy death metal

so yesterday my buddy ariel writes and says, come see this crazy shit with me. he had correctly gauged that the robot factor would get me out of the house-- i agreed.

when the robots had been fullly revealed on stage, i commented that it reminded me fondly of the old wifflefist negativland days.

it really was quite the thing, especially given that its apparently the efforts of one man. well, one man and a large robotic band that hurls insults at him throughout the show. kind of like if you took the torch marauder and put him on speed most of the time. he might come up with something like this.

i have to admit that although he really did rock out, after a few songs the schtick was played out and i was a little bored. add in being kinda tired from my crazy rock-n-roll lifestyle this week, and the astoundingly poor air quality inside kings, and i was ready to roll long before the show was over. still, the final tune, which was done in dancehall style, was kinda worth sticking around fer.

time for the first meeting of the day. probably the first of many.

Posted by spacegrrl at 09:59 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

Category: rock

November 06, 2004

we're gonna trek this shit around

i'm dimly aware of a band playing on stage.

i buy a tour t-shirt, something i have never done before in my life, that i can recall.

we've each got half a bottle of red wine and half a bottle of cold, unfiltered sake (recommended by the astoundingly foxy waiter) in us. i'm as drunk as i have been in a while and i'm having one of those drunken clarity moments, when my inhibitions are down, but i'm still quite lucid, and there's some kind of stimulus-- in this case a very loud band and a warehouse packed full of hipsters-- and my brain goes into overdrive.

unpacking those thoughts now, they actually are as lucid as i thought they were, but of course now i've lost the boldness that accompanied them. that's not a problem; i can still make use of what i learned then.

the bass player looks like crispin glover as a member of kraftwerk, yet is the most adorable man on stage. his bass is low slung in the extreme and he steers it around the stage like the prow of a ship.

this morning we ate at the early girl, which lives up to its reputation, then found exotic chocolates and beautiful clothes which were too small for even the smallest of us.

i'm to go eat a great deal of brazilian meat right now.

Posted by spacegrrl at 05:52 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

Category: rock

October 01, 2004

song for a dying ipod

so i've had my ipod now for... a year and a half? it seems like longer. i guess because i use it every freakin' day. i've replaced the hard drive once, after i'd had it a year. now the battery is clearly in its death throes. i can't load it with the latest ipod software; i lost the a/c adapter, and the d/c adapter for my car is dicey. i can't get a an iTalk, because they don't make them for old-school ipods like mine (i'm thinking it would be a cool way to do some aud-blogging).

But.... last night i spent a lot of money on the spacepod, money that i don't currently have... and the van is going in to have the clutch repaired (hopefully not replaced), and the cooling system completely refurbished, before i try to venture into the mountains of Va with it in late October.

so the timing sucks. i could a) live with the ipod the way it is, maybe seek a used a/c adapter on ebay. or b) i could send it back off to the amazing guys at ipodmods.com to replace the battery for $40 + shipping. but c) is the most likely option, buy a pink mini and worry about paying everything off over the course of the next few months. cause that's the way i usually work. and i went through all of this six months ago when the hard drive died, and now i kind of wish i'd just bought a new ipod then.

so, given the likeliness of c); i) does anyone want to go to the mall with me this weekend? and ii) does anyone have suggestions for uses of a 10gb ipod with a mostly dead battery? anyone want to buy it fer cheap?

oh, and tangentially, in looking for the iTalk link, i discovered that Griffin is finally shipping the radioSHARK!!!

Posted by spacegrrl at 02:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Category: rock

September 20, 2004

byrnaerobics

saturday was kind of a sucky day; i mostly worked on the starlite site and kind of moped around and stuff.

i had a lot of mixed feelings about sunday; sometimes, when i have a lot of plans, instead of looking forward to them, i see them as obligations and dread them instead. that's at least partially how i was feeling about my grandmother's 95th birthday party and the whole byrne-stravaganza.

but, as always, when i'm actually doing the things, i have a good time and my mood improved a hundredfold by the end of the day. just call me little ms. mood swing!

gran's birthday party went really well. i have photos that i won't have time to process until later. mom put out a great spread, and gran was surrounded by tons and tons of people. we had residents from the retirement home, old friends of hers from the neighborhood, younger members of the neighborhood, and all of her grandchildren were there. we haven't all been together for probably fifteen years. my stepbrother keith even came; we got to meet his girlfriend june, who i liked.

it's probably not obvious from the way i speak about her, but gran is actually not a blood relation of mine. she's my first stepfather's mother. however, she's been like a grandmother to me since i was a little kid, and we have found it simplest just to refer to each other as "grandmother" and "granddaughter".

so one of the most amusing moments of the day came when my mom's friend deborah was standing next to me and inspecting some beautiful old photos of gran that mom had done up on a piece of posterboard. gran was a redhead and has fair skin, like me. deborah said to me, "I can see the resemblance!" and then when we all started laughing at this, she said, "OH! wait, you're not related!"

at the end of the party, i relented and had a very small piece of cake, and a glass of punch to wash it down.

big mistake.

i'd had a sandwich earlier, but apparently that wasn't nearly enough; i went into full-on hypoglycemic shock, which hasn't happened to me in quite some time. nausea, the shakes, etc. i took my folks up on their offer of dinner at cracker barrell. my favorite meal there is actually pretty sensible-- grilled chicken tenderloin sandwich and a salad, and by the end of the meal i was feeling much, much better.

after dinner, i went over to christa's for the pre-byrne cookout, which was lots of fun. corn-dog was there and he was all over me! odd, i think that little dog likes me or something. as he was clambering into my lap i said, "don't you know that i'm a cat person?" apparently these distinctions are lost on him. cutie.

the byrne show was great! we occupied basically the entire first row and part of the second, and the first row was thisclose to the stage-- i was literally holding on to the stage for balance and leaning up against it at times.

at the first rockin' song he played, christa stood up, the rest of us in the front stood up, and then a little ways into the song i looked back and the rest of the house had gotten up too! we ran into our old pal dave t. after the show; he said he was up in the front of the first balcony, and he could recognize us from there. i think he said we basically looked like crazy people. HAH! we are crazy people! it was a total blast. i was actually airborne through parts of the show-- lots of jumping up and down.

when we were talking to dave, we decided that it would be great if we could get a big room with a video monitor and do byrne-aerobics, because that stuff is just great to dance to!

after the show, a few of us decided to stick around. we went back and hung by the tour buses, and sure enough we eventually got to meet the band and david.

see, i can call him david now, because for a few moments he and i stood next to each other in companionable silence. i successfully resisted all stupid fangirl impulses to babble, because it was pretty obvious that he was tired and kind of down and not up for a lot of fan crap.

we also got to meet the folks from the string group, the bass player, and the rest of the band.

we waited for a while to see if david would come back, but it was getting late, cold, and my body was starting to feel the ill effects of eating badly all day-- i was feeling kind of sick. so we took off around 1am.

Posted by spacegrrl at 07:56 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (1)

Category: rock

August 31, 2004

making plans for a really huge xtc collection on disc

since i didn't buy any xtc cd's during the month of august, i decided to do a double-buy today. two for august; two for september.

sadly, 'english settlement' was "temporarily out of stock". i hopehopehope it's really just a temporary condition. 'english settlement' was the first xtc record i ever owned and i am quite attached to it.

MORE...

Posted by spacegrrl at 06:03 PM | Comments (12) | TrackBack (0)

Category: rock

August 26, 2004

halloween music

every year around this time, we get something across the playlist that i add to my personal collection of music that is both great to listen to, and has a spooky quality that will make me especially want to listen to it around the end of october.

music that has qualified in the past has included pram, disque 9, and the third eye foundation. you really can't go wrong with third eye foundation for this kind of thing.

so i'm happy to announce that i've found this year's addition: karny sutra by luther and toby. they do the organ thing with a sound similar to quintron, but slowed waaayyy down and spooky-like, and no crazed vocals. no vocals at all, actually. which is fine-- because pram has the best spooky lyrics of all time and i'd just like to see someone try to top "uncomfortable insects scuttling from path to path... leading our maggot lives, dreaming of becoming flies" sung in a creepy childlike female voice, backed by toy instruments.

Posted by spacegrrl at 12:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Category: rock

July 20, 2004

andy touched this!

what many-- but not all-- of you know about me is that i'm a huge XTC geek.

i hesitate to say "huge fan". i used to be a huge fan. now i'm less of a fan, but the impulse to collect XTC materials remains like a vestigal tail. i don't often indulge it, however.

one thing i've been considering doing for years is re-buying their albums on CD. i've got tons of stuff on vinyl-- much more than is available on CD, actually-- but virtually nothing on CD, which makes it quite difficult to fulfull mary and christa's long-standing request for an XTC mix.

starting this month, I decided to proceed with this in an orderly fashion. the CD's are now available pretty much directly from the band-- via a very small label in England-- over the web. the big up side to getting them this way is that they're autographed! and of course, i suspect (hope!) that a lot more of my money is going directly to andy and colin (who could definitely use it, after many years under a contract that bled them dry, which they're now out from under).

my first two cd's arrived yesterday-- skylarking (widely considered their best) and go2 (my long-time favorite from back in their punk/post-punk days).

i plan to order two cd's a month directly from them. ideally, i'll also digitize some of the vinyl i've got that's not available on cd-- but we'll see. at the very least, i need to try and preserve some of the rarer cover art by scanning it.

Posted by spacegrrl at 11:20 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0)

Category: rock

July 01, 2004

bands you've seen and own

i saw this over on spicyleesh and found the idea irresistible.

i'll shove it down into a "more" though, since it's kinda long.

Go through your CD collection, and list every band/artists you've seen out of that collection.

MORE...

Posted by spacegrrl at 09:52 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Category: rock

May 27, 2004

MIX ME UP!!

ok, i need y'all's help!!

special note! i need to stock up on fun, accessible music mixes for my trip to roswell. my co-pilot dan is not a jaded indie rocker and i can't confront him with my crazy music collection. unfortunately, fun and accessible isn't really my specialty... but i know a bunch of you are quite good at that!!

i've got sarah's "dance party in bed" which i think will be great. sarah, do you have any more like that? georg? christa, maybe a good divaville mix, heavy on the betty hutton? charo? rick, hook me up with donovan and abba and t-rex!! alicia, o queen of pop music? jason, an 80's mix up your sleeve somewhere? anyone else??

any format! well, cd's and mp3's are probably best. or just a playlist that i can try to reproduce from stuff at the station.

Posted by spacegrrl at 11:32 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack (0)

Category: rock

May 18, 2004

disconnecting bad music associations

tonight i was flipping through my itunes library because i'd been seeing some stuff that needed to be deleted, and i wanted to find it all.

i was kind of surprised at the stuff i found when i really started looking. i've got close to 9gb of music stored so it's not surprising that i'd lose track of some of it.

there's a lot of stuff given to me by Evil Chris that i never listened to because he became Evil soon after giving me that music and then i didn't want to hear it.

he also kind of ruined certain things for me, like this one nick cave record, and i feel a little weird listening to angels of light.

i need some way to disassociate him from the remaining stuff that i haven't listened to yet. it's been almost year since i last saw him. i never had much in common musically with the guys i'd dated before him. the experience was surprisingly intense. of course, everything about chris was intense, in that horrible, depressing kind of way.

like i said to one of my co-workers today, i need to date less lame guys. Evil Chris is one of the people who had helped ruin asheville for me, actually.

Posted by spacegrrl at 11:45 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack (0)

Category: rock

May 17, 2004

i bought an air compressor from blixa bargeld.

the subject says it all, but i'll tell the story, since i imagine you'll insist, and besides, i want to.

i had mixed feelings about this trip to asheville to see einsturzende neubauten. i've had several bad experiences in asheville in the last few years, i always get really lost there, and the trustafarians really bug me. the timing was bad too-- it's only a month before i go to roswell. but i knew i'd want to see neubauten.

i met up with jason and laurie at the hotel (which jason had found, and it was fabulous!) we headed out for an early dinner and wound up at a sushi restaurant with the nicest and most adorable sushi chef ever. i don't eat sushi; i think it's something i need to give more of a chance to, but that didn't seem like the time. he kept trying to get me to eat his sushi but i refused. however, laurie was vocally appreciative of his work and that made him really happy, so it was all ok.

we moved on to a couple of bars, had some beers, met up with some people, and all in all my feelings about asheville were experiencing a turnaround. hanging out with cool people makes all the difference. as we were walking up to the orange peel, i spotted an old van-- a mercedes, as it turned out-- and we all went to have a look. it was amazingly cool. old, but extremely well cared for, with a nifty two-tone paint job and industrial looking billet aluminum fuel filler cap. i pronounced my positive feelings about asheville to be rising.. rising...

the orange peel, as you may have heard, is probably the nicest venue in north carolina. it's smoke free, with an old warehouse feel, and it's just super clean and swanky. the women's room was hands down the nicest club bathroom laurie or i had ever seen, and the bar is like something out of a movie about jet-setting scandinavians. with many many many good beers on draught.

after perusing the bar, i wandered up to jason who was talking to a couple i didn't recognize, a man with no hair and a tall, pretty japanese woman. jason turned to me and said, "lisa, do you know jeff?" and the bald guy turned to me and said, "ohhhh yes, lisa and i have known each other for a very long time." it was jeff jung, who was my best friend's boyfriend in high school! golly. i realized at some point during the show that it was jeff who turned us all on to neubauten back then, so it made me extra happy to see him there.

steve burnett came up around that point and started telling us that, since this was the last show of the tour, they'd be selling off their air compressors at the end of the show. jason turned to me and said, "you know, if you want to work on that van, you're going to want an air compressor". the wisdom of this was immediately apparent-- not only would it help for, say, removing the wheels and other mechanical things, but it would be essential for the custom paint work i want to do. we talked about the practicality of it-- how big they are, how much they cost new. i decided that it was totally doable.

early in the first set, blixa announced that they'd lost something like $10k on this tour and that they'd be selling things off-- including the air compressors. i decided to go for it. i went up to the merch counter and gave them an offer of $150, which the tour manager accepted.

now-- lest we forget the music, i should say that this was a phenomenal show. it was being recorded and cd's of the show were being instantly produced on site to be sold at the end of the show in a very limited edition. they played essentially two sets, with blixa announcing the end of CD one in between. i recognized a few things from the new cd, and very little else. georg, i can tell you with fair confidence that they did not play anything off of halber mensch, including yu gung-- i've got that one good and memorized and i know i would have recognized anything off of it.

there was one song which blixa said was from 1982. he said that while they were in london recording recently, they bought a fetal heart monitor from a medical supply store so they could get the real sound of his heart to use as the beat of the song. "zis is vhy ve are still a very poor band," he said, smiling. it was a really fantastic song, the heartbeat was both horrifying and exciting and totally amazing to use as the beat of the song.

shortly after my offer went in on the compressor, blixa announced on stage, "ooh, ve haff 150 for ze little one!" for that reason alone, i'd love to get a recording of the show :)

scary_blixa.jpg i was struck by how immensely charismatic he is. keep in mind that for a long time he was a scary, scary looking guy. this is a picture of what he used to look like, when i first started listening to the band.

blixa_thumb.jpg now he looks like this. exactly like this, suit and everything.

in the absence of mufti (fm einheit), i have to say that he's pretty damned hot. but einheit was always my favorite and i'm very sad that i never saw the band with him. here's my favorite picture of mufti with two rocks.

it was also very enjoyable to watch alexander hacke n.u.unruh at work. he's the one who really has all the fun toys, like a spinning cylinder of large, open-ended bottles which he "played" with the air compressor. it made a great sound. and a large group of empty metal cans, on long ropes, which he swung around and banged on the stage.

i think their music has matured in a really wonderful way. some bands seem to get tired and lack ideas as they age; neubauten instead seem to just become better and more sophisticated song writers; funnier lyricists (when you can understand them); and to produce more beautiful sounds although they are still using industrial materials for much of the percussion and punctuation.

they played one song which blixa called "a hex"; a "floor piece", in which they all get on the floor and play little homemade instruments. the original intent of the piece was to put a hex on a man who holds the rights to some of their early music and will not give them royalties which they are due. not to make him die or anything drastic, just to make him pay the money or give up the rights.

after the second set was finished, they left the stage. the crowd began clapping and we quickly went into synch with each other, most people clapping and stomping single time, but with a decent minority clapping double time, and people yelling and crying out over the rhythm. it was quite exciting. they let this go on for a good while and then came back out on stage and blixa told us that we were a wonderful audience. which we were! NC kicks ass!!

after the first encore we thought it was over, but their stage manager immediately carried out a large black device of some kind and was obviously setting the stage for more music. they came back out, and blixa was carrying a box. he said that the cd recording was over, but they would play a little more, which would not be recorded. he explained the box contained cards with instructions for music-making. i looked at jason excitedly, because this was an idea we'd used a couple of times back when we did an audio collage show on xdu. i think it may originally come from brian eno, or possibly john zorn, or both of them. i'd never seen it used live by anyone but us.

each band member took three cards which they did not show the others. then blixa pulled one card which he said would be the "general attitude" of the piece. when he pulled it, he began laughing and showed it to the others who laughed too.

then they tore into it and-- they were using our beat, from when we were stomping! it was fantastic, one of the best and most exciting songs of the night, and i would so love to hear it again. it ended with the trademark blixa screech, then he had each band member explain which cards they had and how they used them. "i had the card 'chain', so fortunately we carry a chain with us and i used the chain against the mic." then he told us what the "general attitude" card had said-- STOMPING! of course!!

at some point between the encores, he said that they'd be selling a lot of stuff but could not take credit cards. d'oh! i didn't have $150 on me in cash-- but steve burnett, jason, and laurie totally came through. i wouldn't have been able to pull it off without them. between the four of us we came up with all the cash.

the merch counter guy had me follow a fast moving man up on to the stage-- i think he was the poor tour manager. i remember hearing a few people yell out my name when i got up on stage. i wasn't sure what to do with myself once up there-- so i walked up to one of the compressors, and dazedly realized that the man hunched over it, signing it, then smiling up at me, was blixa. "are you the one buying this?" he asked me, and i told him i was. he gave me a huge smile and shook my hand vigorously, and asked me what i'd use it for. i think i said something about restoring a van. he seemed very pleased that it would be put to good use and gave me a little speech about how "this little compressor started it's life off on the stage playing music and it is a very cool air compressor". it's kind of a blur. i told him the show was amazing and he thanked me and i thanked him, but he was off shouting that not everyone had signed, and where was alex?? alex needs to sign. i was very thankful because i particuarly wanted alexander hacke to sign. i wanted to meet him, too, but he signed and was on his way very quickly and i could never catch his eye. (wait-- now i realize that was unruh that i couldn't catch.)

i turned around and n.u.unruh (i believe) alexander hacke was standing right behind me. he looked like he had no idea what to say to me, and i didn't know what to say to him either, but i think i said something and i remember we shook hands.

i did meet the guy who was buying the other, larger compressor, and he looked even more dazed than i did.

i got jason and laurie up on stage because it's quite large and heavy (fortunately, it's on wheels) and they helped me wrestle it down after i paid the stage manager who joked about my offer being $250, not $150. i guess they are really hard up for money. but then, i guess i did what i could to help with that situation!

we stood around with the thing for a while, sort of enjoying our moment of notoriety. most folks assumed that one of my male companions had bought it and had to be corrected. it was somewhat understandable since jason is a striking figure and he'd been up on stage wrestling with the thing. jeff jung walked up to me with this huge grin on his face (HE knew it was me who'd bought it), he asked me if i had a use for it and i said, OH yes, and he said, yeah, i figured you would. he looked very happy.

then jason and laurie were totally wonderful and helped me walk the thing many blocks back to the hotel. jason spotted a guy videotaping laurie and i wheeling the thing out of the club, i am hoping i can get on a message board and get in touch with him to get a copy of the tape.

by that point, it was quite late on a sunday night and the only people out in downtown were random packs of neubauten fans. we had a few beautiful moments as we'd walk by a group and they'd realize what we were carrying with us. one guy saw us coming, pointed right at ME, and said, "DUDE! you SO BOUGHT THAT THING!!!"

while jason and i were waiting around outside the hotel with it, while the front desk person brought the spacepod up from the parking area, a car drove past us, parked nearby, and a guy in a faded EN shirt got out of the car and kind of meandered up the street past us. he'd gotten almost all the way past us before he realized what he was seeing and he pointed at us and said something like, "THAT THING! YOU GOT THAT NEUBAUTEN THING!!!"

we wrestled it into the spacepod, where it fit perfectly. then we were tired and footsore, and decided to call it a night. i took a bath in the jacuzzi tub in my room. awww yeah.

as i said to laurie and jason as we were walking back to the hotel-- this completely makes up for every bad asheville experience i've ever had.

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Category: rock

April 25, 2004

prince

well, christa has covered the subject pretty well already.

i have to say that as stadium shows go, this was one of the most pleasant experiences i've ever had. getting there early and tailgating was really nice, and my personal visit to the box office paid off with much better seats than we'd have otherwise had. i liked the huge, clear video monitors; there was some loss of immediacy, but at the same time it was great to really see the expressions on his face, especially during the acoustic set-- he's such a ham.

there were these three women in front of us who just killed me-- they were in perfect sync the entire time! it was like his backup singers from a previous tour had been relegated to the nosebleed seats, or like they'd been practicing at home. they were in a sub-balcony, sort of below us, so they were perfectly silhouetted in front of us, without obstructing our view.

conceptually, i think one of the highlights of the show was hearing maceo parker work the flintstones theme song into... hm, was it 'let's go crazy' maybe? i can't quite recall. but the finale was definitely the highlight, with an all-out version of 'nothing compares 2 U'.

the after-party, i have to admit, left a bad taste in my mouth. i was crashing pretty hard by the time we got there, and the combination of exhaustion, wooziness (not sure what was up with that-- but i felt unsteady on my feet. i wasn't drunk though..), the loud music, lights flashing, lots of smoke both chemical and cigarette, and the frustration of standing around, hoping he'd make an appearance, was too much. around 2 or so i plowed through the crowd and found mary and said, "i really don't think he's going to play." i felt bad being the one to ask everyone to leave, but it obviously was just not going to happen.

i guess i got to bed around 3:30 and woke up five hours later feeling intensely nauseated. i guess tons of carbs + exhaustion + whatever else = sick lisa. it didn't pass until 11, right before sean arrived. i was relieved that i could go see the westy and feel ok, but i didn't eat anything until about 3 that afternoon.

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Category: rock

April 23, 2004

your random prince quote of the day

"colorful people whose hair on one side is swept back."

- paisley park, around the world in a day, 1985

in honor of rob's haircut.

today's the day!!!!

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Category: rock

April 20, 2004

your random prince quote of the day

"i wanna be your lover... i wanna be your mother and your sister, too."

- i wanna be your lover, prince, 1979

scandalous, eh? one of the things i love about prince is, taboos have no meaning for him. i love the way this line combines a vague hint of incest with a vague hint of transsexualism. and i like how specific it is, much better than something vague (and oppressive) like, "i wanna be your everything". i mean, it's claustrophobic, but in a really interesting way.

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Category: rock

April 19, 2004

your random prince quote of the day

"I said now overcast days never turned me on, but something about the clouds and her mixed. She wasn't too bright, but i could tell when she kissed me, she knew how to get her kicks."

- Raspberry Beret, Around the world in a day, 1985

see, i don't get that. i think overcast days are great. oh well. this has always been one of my great disappointments with prince-- he finds everything sexy; surely overcast days and thunderstorms should be included in that?

(i totally missed a day! oops! maybe i'll do two today.)

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Category: rock

April 17, 2004

your random prince quote of the day

"i don't want to hurt you. i only want you to have some fun."

- 1999, 1999, 1983

i'd simply like to point out that prince realized the new millenium was going to be a big deal before all the computer geeks did. or rather, before all the managers of all the computer geeks started listening to all the computer geeks about what a big deal it might be.

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Category: rock

April 16, 2004

your random prince quote of the day

"if 'the elevator' tries to bring you down, go crazy".

- "let's go crazy", Purple Rain, 1984

in this song, i believe 'the elevator' is a metaphor for hell (as it often is in movies), since the spoken intro to the song is devoted to describing a paradise-like afterlife. in prince's theology, apparently, there is no hell after death; hell is found on earth, during life. "going crazy" is his suggested coping mechanism for dealing with hell on earth.

(Note: this will be a daily series for the next week, in preparation for the advent of The Purple One.)

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Category: rock

April 13, 2004

barracuda

rasputina is a three-piece: two women in corsets playing heavily amped cellos and singing; one stringy man back in the shadows, wailing on a massive drumset.

the front-woman is fond of the witty banter between songs:

"zoey and i like to get back to our classical roots when we have a spare moment, which is seldom. of course, we trained classically. anyway, we recently discovered some composers that we like, an obscure pair of sisters, sort of like the bronte sisters but composers. we like to play their music when we get the chance. so here's one of their pieces."

i have heard heart play "barracuda" live in dorton arena.

i have heard rasputina play heart's "barracuda" live at the cat's cradle.

the rasputina version is a lot better.

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Category: rock

April 08, 2004

XDU @ the Coffeehouse

Could we be seeing the return of the Golden Era of XDU @ the Coffeehouse? Only time will tell, but we're definitely all over the place this month:

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Category: rock

March 31, 2004

papa say he no fi foolish like he never been to school at all

lemme see if i can get the chronology straight.

early high school, i get bored with commercial radio and go digging around at the left end of the dial. i hear, through static, the strains of an exotic sounding beat. i think to myself, "i think this might be reggae." i mark the place on the dial with a red china marker. it later turns out to be wxyc.

the summer after sophomore year of high school, i attend the young writer's camp at UVA. one night, they take us to see a reggae band playing on campus. i think this was my first live show at a small venue. it was definitely one of the most intense musical experiences of my young life.

somewhere around this time, madness had their big american hit, "our house". (that would have been 1983.) i was totally hooked on the bouncy brit ska sound; i remember buying the record at record bar in cameron village, and immediately crushing on the band member i thought the cutest.

senior year of high school. i think. we hung out on hillsborough street after school all the time. mike connell from the connells was manning schoolkids records most afternoons (though we had no idea til later that we were buying all our wax from a big rock star!) in the cutout bin i found a most intriguing looking record... it looked to be ska, but ska from jamaica! from the 60's! who ever heard of such a thing? i could just tell from the cover that it was gonna be cool and i bought it. it was called intensified and that about described it. it was one of the coolest things i'd ever heard, lo-fi and dripping with exotic authenticity.

off to college and i meet my pal martha. she'd spent a year living in the virgin islands with her lover, a man named ishmael who was born and lived his whole life on the island. she had real mighty sparrow tapes-- you know, the versions with the really dirty lyrics that they don't sell to americans. she turned me on to that, and african music, "river deep, mountain high" by ike and tina turner (amazing song-- if you've never heard it, ask me to play it the next time you're visiting), and al green. around this time i found a copy of the soundtrack to the harder they come and played the crap out of it.

so tonight, some 16 or 17 years later, i got a chance to see that i still know by heart all the lyrics to the songs on that soundtrack. i noticed that screen/society was showing "the harder they come" over at griffith, and at the last minute decided to go on over. hank, the guy who runs these screenings, got up in front of the room and said, "i've been waiting a long time to see this movie..." and i thought, yeah, me too.

jimmy cliff's character isn't the most endearing in the world; in fact, i think even "anti-hero" is a slightly glossy term for this guy. for me, the recording sessions were definitely the highlight, especially seeing (presumably) the maytals doing "sweet and dandy". it was probably good that i went alone, because i found myself singing along to that one :)

i was hoping for more music, but still it was good to finally see it after all these years.

time between hearing those first strains of a reggae beat through the static til the day i finally saw 'the harder they come': approximately 22 years.

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Category: rock

March 30, 2004

so glenda is actually kinda dead

from what i can tell, there's a bad sector on the hard drive. i'm just guessing here, but that's what it seems like. the net effect is, the ipod isn't currently usable.

i believe the 1 year warranty has just expired.

i did read about a guy who had the same problem and was able to hide the bad sector using a disk utility, but the disk utility that comes with osx doesn't seem to offer this level of specificity. so, option one is to hunt for better software.

option two is to replace it. i'm finding that i really do not want to live without it.

while i'd love to have a little pink ipod, i even more don't want to be squished and constantly trying to delete music or deselect things i don't want on the ipod. so the "repair" is the best deal, or else i'll upgrade to a new, larger one.

Posted by spacegrrl at 09:40 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Category: rock

March 25, 2004

glenda lives!

glenda is the name of my ipod, and she's happy and healthy again. repair then erase with the apple disk utility did the trick. i probably didn't need to do both, but decided to be thorough.

yay! while having an excuse to buy a pink ipod mini would be fun, in a way, my internal budget miser is allowing no such purchases since the acquisition of this here newfangled powerbook, and really a mini isn't big enough anyway.

so i'm glad glenda is back in the game.

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Category: rock

March 14, 2004

pavarotti

pavarotti is retiring.

in one of the most infamously bad dates i ever had with my ex (which involved me walking half a mile in driving rain, losing craig, and sobbing uncontrollably when i finally found him), i actually saw pavarotti perform. i'm not a huge opera fan, but nevertheless i'm pleased to have seen him.

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Category: rock

March 11, 2004

byrne-ing fever of rock

it appears that i will be down with quite a few rock shows in the coming months; the mind boggles, given that i'm such a lameass stay-at-home in general, especially when it comes to rock shows.

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Category: rock

March 05, 2004

my first club - closed now

Storied Brewery club closes quietly.

i grew up in raleigh, and the brewery was very important to me once upon a time. i saw my first show there. i think it was probably a reggae show. i remember a very cute guy with baby dreads asking me to dance, but i was too young and stupid to even know how to dance with a cute guy and he gave up. (unlike christa i was a bit of a late bloomer.)

i saw a lot of all-ages hardcore punk shows there as well. it's where i met kevin lane, at a circle jerks show. he became my pen-pal for many years (he lived in south carolina). he later left home and landed in greensboro at the time i was at guilford college. i guess he came to see me, and just kind of stayed. we wound up making out one night in my dorm room but it turned out we didn't get along that well in person and we didn't hang out much after that.

there was a friend of my mother's who was a lot younger than my mom, but several years older than me. her name was frances. when i was in high school and my folks went out of town without me, my mom would have frances come hang out with me so i'd have something to do. frances once took me to the brewery to see a band-- heck if i can remember the name of it. anyway, the opener was snatches of pink, one of their first shows i think. frances and all her friends hated snatches, but i really liked them.

i also saw crash worship there for the first time. it was like suddenly, accidentally finding that one band you've been looking for since forever. it was a wildly dangerous show, with fireworks inside the building-- in the crowd-- and a fire in an oil barrel.

like most folks i had completely given up on the brewery in the last several years. there were no shows worth seeing there. it never occured to me that it would close, but that's probably because i just never thought about the status of the brewery one way or another. it's a pity, really.

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Category: rock

January 27, 2004

ok, we're all going to california in may.

via joy

the Coachella festival

featuring...

( official site )

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Category: rock

December 20, 2003

these days

earlier this week i downloaded nico's "chelsea girl" from the iTunes music store. I finally got around to giving it a good listen today, and found that the opening riff on one of the songs sounded undescribably familiar, but i was sure it wasn't from hearing the nico song.

thank goodness for google; it helped me find the full story on that song.

unfortunately, i think it was the k-mart commercial that i was remembering.

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Category: rock

December 02, 2003

on air tonight

i'm on the air tonight from 8-10pm eastern.

live playlist will be here

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Category: rock

guilty pleasures

i recently had a conversation about musical guilty pleasures, in which the other person in the convo pressed me for my guilty pleasures and wasn't satisfied with my answers.

well, i'll tell ya what my guilty pleasures are these days-- songs used in tv commercials which i download from the apple music store.

ween - ocean man - used in a honda ad
hey mama - black eyed peas - used in an ipod ad
chanty - son volt - used in a vw ad

the black eyed peas song was cleaned up a bit for the ad :)

Posted by spacegrrl at 01:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Category: rock

November 05, 2003

80's lyrics test

ok, everyone i know is taking the 80's lyrics test.

the highest score i've seen so far is jason, with 120.5.

me? i suck at it. 30.5. maybe i'm just a little too old? maybe i didn't go to 80's dance night at... uh, that place in raleigh... often enough?

whatever.

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Category: rock

March 09, 2003

ringside rocks

this shouldn't be news to me or anyone else in durham, but i'm sad to say it was. ringside rocks. i went there saturday night to see piedmont charisma, gerty, and jett rink.

jett rink seriously rocked the house, and viva's performance was the most out of control thing i've seen in rock since pine state. but the main act, for me, was the club itself.

four floors in a very old, very narrow downtown building. sort of like four clubs, all terribly intimate and dripping with comfortable swank. bored? switch floors. go to the dance club, or the comfortable lounge replete with sofas and a projection video system, or get right on the floor with the rock band, or look down upon them from above.

if you're not a member, the cover is a little more and you're a "guest". this little song-and-dance means that they can serve mixed drinks without having to have food.

get thee to ringside.

oh, and jett rink are REALLY good.

Posted by spacegrrl at 11:34 PM | Comments (0)