patton
Peeping Tom
Last night
![[info]](https://i0.wp.com/stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?resize=17%2C17){kind=small}
and I met up with
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 the Fuck?
A discussion of Mike Patton on the Soap Opera “All My Children”???
http://www.youtube.com/v/inQlkhZr0ec
Return of the Roommate
After a quick stage flush, Gnarls Barkley’s 14 piece touring outfit took the stage. Another band with only one (relatively short) album under their belt, but they put on a great show. I was impressed as to how an album recorded by a producer/laptop weenie and a vocalist/lyricist was translated to stage. They did a faithful rendition of most (if not all) of the songs on the album, but with an album that’s only 35 minutes long their set was really short. Whatever, I mean, I’d rather have one tight set than one padded with crap, but a few well-selected covers might have been nice. But whatever, the show as great, even if it ended before 10pm. This is the real reason the show started so promptly, because the bloodless motherfuckers at Avalon didn’t want to interfere with their lame dance club night. Hey, I’d be happy if shows always started on time, but I think a 15 minute delay is appropriate if half the audience is waiting online outside.
Saturday, we had brunch at Moogy’s before heading to Harvard Square and MIT for some tourism. We caught the Fogg Museum at Harvard which was great, as well as the new Stata Center, hideously designed by Frank Gehry. After tourism, we had some delicious Imperial Pizza, and Jon and I headed to NH to have a shower at his parents’ house (our bathroom is still not done) and to meet up with Garrett at “Boston” Billiard Club in Nashua, NH. It was a great time, Jon and I quickly reverting to our old “Garrett Music Quiz” selves… It’s amazing how much he DOESN’T know about music. I mean, even if you can’t remember the title “Penny Lane” you should be able to figure out it’s The Beatles…
Sunday, Corinna and I caught Beowulf & Grendel with the film club. It was a really good adaptation of the poem (as I remember from reading it 15 years ago). It focused on Beowulf hunting Grendel, but none of what came after that. I guess that should have been obvious from the film’s title, but I was oblivious. Anyway, it was really enjoyable (besides Sarah Polley, who’s delivery was dead as a board and who didn’t even try to fake an accent).
Music Update
Here’s some music-related updates:
- The first CD from Mike Patton’s new project, Peeping Tom, his the streets this Tuesday. I got my hands on the CD a little early and it is awesome… The first really accessible-by-the-masses album from him in a long time. It’s probably about as close as you’ll see him get to pop… Anyway, the band (featuring Dan The Automator, Rahzel, Dub Trio, Rob Swift (X-Ecutioners), and Imani Coppola) were on Conan O’Brien on Friday… Check it out. Also, an interview over at Suicide Girls
- In other Patton news, Rhino finally released the two classic Faith No More videos, “You Fat Bastards: Live at the Brixton Academy” and “Who Cares a Lot: The Greatest Videos” (a.k.a. “Video Croissant”) on DVD last week.
- Brainwashed is celebrating it’s 10th anniversary with a weekend festival in November. Brainwaves is going to be held at the Regent Theatre in Arlington, MA. The lineup so far is pretty out of control, you should totally check it out!
Oh my god that was a fantastic show!!
But boy did the travel suck… I picked up Corinna at her work around 11:15a and we got on 90 and started cruising towards NYC. I decided to drop the car off in Hoboken so it would be a bit easier for me when leaving…. So we hit the Henry Hudson pretty much on time about 3.5ish hours later (which isn’t bad given we stopped for lunch) and I followed the signs to the Lincoln Tunnel… Unfortunately for me, those signs disappeared after awhile and I got a little mixed up…. Double unfortunately for me, that left me away from the Tunnel right around the start of rush hour (if I didn’t get mixed up I would have snuck into the tunnel just before rush hour). We got into Hoboken around 6:10, and we got on the PATH… Corinna went to visit her friends on the lower east side and I continued on to 14th St. I met up with Carol and then James, running only 5 or so minutes late (I was ‘sposed to meet them at 6:30p)… So we got on the will call line and stood around catching up for like an hour or so in the rain… I also started chatting with the bouncer at the door who was a pretty freaking cool guy. When he opened the doors, I walked in first, got swiped for metal, and waited in the front for the other two members of my party… James came thru, then Carol, and when she did she had 3 VIP passes that the bouncer gave us cuz we were so damn cool….
There is something to be said about watching a show from the pit, but there is also something to be said about watching it from the VIP balcony with members of the bands and other people like Merzbow floating around. It was freaking awesome… I got an amazing view of all the bands and I didn’t have to worry about fighting my way back to where I wanted to be if I went to the bathroom… Even the VIP area got a little crowded, but nothing compared to other parts of the club. I stood up on my chair and got an awesome, unobstructed view of everything. And there was a waitress, so I didn’t have to get up for drinks. :)
Trevor Dunn’s Trio Convulsant started things off with a 30 or so minute set… I love Trevor Dunn (Bassist for Mr. Bungle and Fantomas), and it was great to see him on Upright bass with a drummer and a guitarist… There stuff was abstract at times, but it was definately enjoyable (and as Carol said, there is something very sexy about an upright bass). After that was Isis, a Boston band, who was good, although not entirely my thing… Kinda plodding with growly vocals, at first I was turned off, but by the end of their set I was digging them a bit. The first highlight of the evening was a surprise appearance by Melt Banana, a Japanese punk band with female vocals… It was awesome…
I sat down at my table for most of the Melvins set… None of the 3 of us really got the Melvins, so it made me feel a bit better that I didn’t get anything out of them… But when Tomahawk hit the stage the crowd went nuts… It was amazing watching the floor and the pits that formed from the balcony… Tomahawk played a fantastic set, way outdoing their performance on Tuesday night… Mike had some equipment troubles, but was still able to make do… The band played a Sinatra cover “Angel Eyes” (which was written and performed by some other guy, but I always remember the Sinatra version), as well as an encore, which leads me to believe that they weren’t that into the Boston crowd or something… Anyway, it was a stellar freaking time.