music

Peeping Tom

Posted on by grahams

Last night

[info]coco_b

and I met up with

[info]roryk

and Chloe at the Sunset Cantina for dinner and drinks, and to go see Peeping Tom at the Paradise Rock Club.  It was a sold-out show, and doors were at 7, but we decided to grab some grub as opposed to waiting outside in the cold..   After dinner, Corinna decided she was pretty tired and was going to bail on the show, so we sold her ticket and went inside..

The first opening act, Pigeon John, was real fun hip-hop, kinda no consequences fun “let me hear you say ‘Yeah!'” kinda stuff…  Everyone seemed to have a good time, especially for an opening act.  Second up was Miho Hatori, which I didn’t really enjoy at all…  Remember how in Alien: Insurrection they failed at several attempts at cloning Ripley, and ended up with a bunch of goobed out mutants?   Well, imagine if you replaced Ripley with Bjork, you’d have Miho Hatori.  She wasn’t physically goobed, but holy christ was her music awful..  It was as if someone making a commercial WANTED Bjork, but she wouldn’t sign off on the rights, so they hired someone to make a soundalike song..  Fortunately, this middle act gave me the opportunity to vote for Sanjaya 68 times. 

Finally, around 10:45pm, Peeping Tom took the stage…  I was disappointed to find out that Rahzel was missing from the line-up this time around.  Fortunately, we were introduced to Butterscotch, who you’d never expect to be a master Beatboxer, but boy does she have chops..  It was fascinating to watch this tiny little woman blow the fucking doors off the venue.  Also, this time around, Dan “The Automator” was able to make the tour (when Corinna and I saw Peeping Tom open for Gnarls Barkley last year, I believe Kid Koala was filling in on decks).  Anyway, the show was fantastic, and Chloe, who Rory kinda dragged to the show even really seemed to enjoy it.  It was crowded, but I think that the Paradise is my favorite area venue..  It’s shallow but wide, so you feel really close to the stage…

When we were leaving, I almost got into my first fistfight in years!  Some drunk douchebag behind me apparently decided that our egress rate was insufficient and shoved me forward.  I informed him that this was uncool (with my elbow into his ribs), and things got quite tense.  We screamed at each other for a few minutes and at some point Rory and someone who apparently knew this douche stepped in and separated us..   This ass kept screaming at me “all I was trying to do was pass you;  I’ll kick your faggotty purple-shirt wearing ass; yadda yadda”.  I kept trying to explain to him that he didn’t try and “pass” me, he shoved me forward and into the wall…  If you can’t handle your liquor, don’t drink in public…

What a Birthday!

Posted on by grahams

On Saturday, I turned 30, and thanks to my lovely girlfriend, my family, and my friends, it was a great weekend!  On Friday we hung out out with friends at

[info]adamfletcher

‘s place…  We played all kinds of board games and snacked on delicious food prepared by Adam..  As board games can be, it was tense at times, but I hope everyone had a good time.. :P 

[info]coco_b

bought me a Cake Batter flavored ice cream cake from J.P. Lick’s which everyone enjoyed, especially me!

Saturday morning, Corinna woke up early and made me brunch!  I usually wake up several hours before her on Saturday’s, and I sure as hell don’t usually get treated to awesome bacon and french toast!  It was really awesome being able to just kick back and relax while someone else did the cooking for a change!   I also opened some gifts and cards I received in the mail..  My parents got me the Talking Heads Brick, which is badass!  I also got another season of South Park from

[info]tatyana

 which rules…  Then, for dinner, Corinna had another ace up her sleeve, taking me to the wonderful Grill 23 for dinner, which was fantastic…  What is better than the gift of meat?  Nothing.    After we got home we enjoyed the first episode of the new season of Doctor Who, and all was right in the world…

Sunday we just hung out and caught Les Ordres with the film club, which was pretty good…  Thanks to everyone for such a great birthday!

EMI to sell DRM-free music via iTunes?

Posted on by grahams

In a major reversal of the music industry’s longstanding antipiracy strategy, EMI Group PLC is set to announce Monday that it plans to sell significant amounts of its catalog without anticopying software, according to people familiar with the matter.

The London-based music company is to make its announcement in a press conference that will feature Apple Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs. EMI is to sell songs without the software — known as digital rights management, or DRM — through Apple’s iTunes Store and possibly through other online outlets, too.

via The Wall Street Journal

Secret Chiefs 3 (live)

Posted on by grahams

Last night I was finally able to see Secret Chiefs 3 live..  SC3 is a band with a rotating cast of players, but is the brainchild of Mr. Bungle founding member and guitarist Trey Spruance (He also played guitar on the Faith No More album “King for a Day….  Fool for a Lifetime).  Where as other members of Mr. Bungle, such as Mike Patton and Trevor Dunn are fantastically prolific, Trey has been somewhat reclusive, occasionally releasing an SC3 album and often doing limited touring behind it.  Anyway, I’ve long been fascinated by SC3’s records and have been itching to seem the live for some time now.  I was absolutely not disappointed..

Considering how infrequently the band plays out, it was amazing how tight they were..  Especially given the unusual time signatures and tunings they employ..  SC3’s music is a bit difficult to describe, and you can hear some samples over at their label, Web of Mimicry, who describes their sound as follows:

What does this all end up sounding like? You will hear a kick-ass surf band playing in Arabic/Persian tunings, and then switch over to a wall of Penderecki-style orchestral chord clusters accompanied by AC/DC. Then, perhaps the traditional sounding, pseudo-folk Turk/Central Asian imaginal band will hit center stage with Dhol, Saz, Rabab, Esraj and rock drums and start whacking out to the original, catchy songs that no one knows or cares are in 19/16 time. This might be followed by a totally pummeling, nightmarish, not-kidding one bit blast-beat Death Metal band that employs Boulez-ish atonal serialism, played in dastgah tunings, which of course will naturally segue into a band that specializes in Hindi Film Music from the second Golden Era… you get the picture. We’re scratching the surface here, not exaggerating.  And again, it’s no joke.

Anyway, the band played a song or two as a trio, and then expanded into a 7 piece group for the remainder of the show.  My view was partially obstructed, but I was very close to the stage..  They played for about an hour, switching instruments and roles throughout…  And even though they were the opening act, they even had an encore (perhaps that makes them more of a ‘special guest’ than an opening act)..  Afterwards, Trey was manning the merch booth, and I thanked him for the great set and bought a t-shirt.  He seemed like a very pleasant man and was very gracious. 

Unfortunately, I was too exhausted to stick around for the main act, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, who I hear is wonderful..  Fortunately, they tour all the time, so I hope to catch them in the near future.  But I went to the show to see Secret Chiefs 3, and I wasn’t disappointed;  It was one of the best shows I’ve ever been to.

Multi-Track “Survivalism”

Posted on by grahams

Continuing to be very forward-looking, Nine Inch Nails has released the GarageBand multi-track files for their new single Survivalism.  The best part is the little tidbit at the end of the post over at the NIN site:

No strings attached.  Similar to what we did with “The Hand that Feeds” and
“Only”, you now have the ability to completely reconstruct/deconstruct
“Survivalism” any way you choose.  We will soon present details on where you
can upload your own mixes so get to work and have fun with this!

[We plan to release every track on the album this way over the next few
months…  Keep checking back]

Strontium 90

Posted on by grahams

I got pretty nice tickets to see The Police at Fenway Park (Right Field Box, Section 9-2, Row G).  I normally don’t like big shows, and I normally don’t like paying so much ($100 per) for tickets, but I doubt the band is going to be playing the The Middle East any time soon, and I was so young when they split up that I never had a chance to see them.  After seeing them on the Grammys last Sunday, I was sold…

Beside You in Time

Posted on by grahams

Went out to the Middle East last night to see a screening of the new Nine Inch Nails video release Beside You In Time.  It was gorgeous, but I ended up leaving after just a handful of songs…  The problem was that the Middle East’s downstairs has a really low ceiling, therefore, the screen wasn’t placed that high, therefore, I spent most of my time looking at the backs of heads as opposed to the screen.   The video quality was really good, especially considering they were using a Dell projector, which probably wasn’t tuned as well for video as a nice HDTV set would be.  The sound was amazing, the one big plus for doing the screening at a club as opposed to a theatre.

There was a deal where if you preordered the DVD, you got a lithograph, but I passed on it..  Their preorder prices were way too high ($18 for the DVD, vs. $14 on Amazon), and since I’ll be getting an HDTV in the near future, I’d rather buy one of the HD formats.  Unfortunately, I have no idea which HD format (HD-DVD or Bluray) to support, so I think I’ll just hold off on buying this one until I actually have the gear available.  But once all those questions are answered, there’s no doubt that I’ll be buying this release, it is simply gorgeous.

Roland Lives

Posted on by grahams

Apparently I didn’t get the memo (or i forgot), but there was a Touch & Go Records 25th Anniversary Celebration in Chicago a few months ago.

Big Black played.  For the first time in like 20 years (afaik).

Fortunately, I just discovered this guy who, in addition to running a great boston music almanac, has pretty great mp3s covering the entire T&G block party…    Enjoy.