I've decided to turn back off the bad slacker path I've been on and do 10 posts in the next 10 days. I asked Jay-V on how long she thought I could keep it together and she said 4 days before I just forgot to post again. My guess was 1 day, but dammit, I'm gonna focus and do it for you kids!
The week's highlight was seeing Death From Above '79 in Greenpoint at this Polish nightclub turned into a rock venue for the night. Like I said before, I missed them at the NIN show (pesky on-time starting show!), so for $10, I figured it'd be worth it to finally check them out. True to me, I missed the first opener because my attitude is unless I know of them and have a bit of curiosity, who the hell cares? I'm kinda feeling blah about rock in general, so nowadays I'm pretty much only interested in who I consciously paid to see. That night it was DFA79 and Japanther because I'd heard the names and wanted to see what was up. I saw the band before them and wished I didn't. They sucked. The girl couldn't sing. They couldn't keep their equipment together. Waste.
This two man band thing kinda amuses me. I look at it and think, "geez, that's just a lot of work. Is it really that hard to get one more person?" But I think it's admirable when it sounds good and/or makes a lot of noise. Then again, I like basses and guitars, so only one is like "aww...some poor guitarist can't catch a break because of you guys. Maybe they'll start their own 2 person band. Or pull a Braxton and go solo with his pedals." Japanther were fun and noisy and they sang in mics rigged in old school telephone receivers. The drummer had his back to the audience. I was pretty much "okay...but I like this!" DFA79 are a perfect fit for that NIN tour. Probably better than Queens to tell you the truth. They've got some serious volume for 2 dudes and good songs, even if the singer is on Styx-style shit with all the trilling and yelping. But, they should never open up their stupid mouths.
Here's an idea of some of their stage banter: ""Let's talk about Tom Hanks. He's such a good actor. Like in Splash, he was trying to get rid of Daryl Hannah was splashing around in his tub and in Philadelphia, he was trying to get rid of AIDS splashing around in his body. Or like in Big, he was wishing that he could go back to being a kid. And in Philadelphia, he was wishing he didn't have AIDS. Oh you want us to just shut up and play, okay?" Or "I think we're gonna do a cover. Like that Kanye West song" *dude sings the video/radio version of the "Gold Digger" chorus* "Sing along, guys. Broke broke...oh you guys, you didn't say the word! You're all scared to say the word nigger. Well, we're not, cause we're Canadian! We don't have any African-Americans in Canada, just Canadians...oh...and Jamaicans and Haitians and stuff like that." *plays a bit of "Wait"* "Oh, I love that 'beat the pussy up' song!" Ugh. Can you believe I almost forgot they were signed with Vice? Well, they couldn't have that! I think it's general rule that the bands on that label have to be more than a little douche-like.
Winning the best friend of the week award is Farmer, who got off a plane from Houston and came straight to the show to hang out with me. And gave me hugs and tough love. (And everyone thought I was crazy when I called him my NYC-version of Tino!) According to the super wise Farmer, the general blah going on right now has about less than 5% to do with the boy and more to do with an overarching sense of "where the hell is my life going right now?" I'm going to be 25 in 3 days shy of 4 months and I'm finding it pretty hard to process. The road leading up to that birthday hopefully won't lead to another quarter-life crisis type deal as 24, but it'd be really good to wake up 25 and think that I have most things exactly where I want them to be. Right now, it's not there at really on a professional level, but I am happy overall about getting over most of the personal "real adult" speed bumps in not too bad shape. The one thing I hated was always feeling so removed in my own life, always making sure I recorded everything. The good part is I can just go out and do things, but the downside is in general I write a lot less about anything which is of course, Very Bad. The suggestion he gave me was to just refocus my energies on me: making a real nest out of that senior year looking minimalist joint Ant and I call home and actually doing something about the fixable stuff I complain about. He's completely right, so I'm doing it. I've gone to the gym three times this week and I've never felt better. Ant said he's already seeing results and I do love it when people blow smoke up my ass, so yay! I can get all strong and beat the snot out of all the assholes who say rude things to me on the street. That would be very satisfying.
Posted by Candicissima at November 11, 2005 11:46 AM