Tuesday, May 10, 2005
I am very pleased that Spooky cajoled and reminded and poked and prodded to the point that I actually went to see The Decemberists last night. It was definitely one of the two or three best shows I've ever seen. Wow. No, something that means more than "wow." Anyway, there was a great turnout at the Variety Playhouse. The place was frelling packed, which I really hadn't expected. Fortunately, I could hide up on the balcony. I'm no good at reviewing shows, so I'll just say that The Decemberists are even better live than recorded (I love it when that happens). The most astounding part of the show was probably violinist/backing vocalist Petra Hayden's solo cover of Kate Bush's "Wuthering Heights." Astounding. I've heard a lot of Kate Bush covers, most of them bad, almost all of the bad (Faith and the Muses' "Running Up That Hill" is a notable exception), but Hayden nailed it dead-on. I was very glad to hear a lot of my favorite songs included in the night's set — "Apology Song," "The Legionnaire's Lament," "We Both Go Down Together," "The Engine Driver," etc. — as well as a few that were new to me. The finalé was a rousing, theatrical performance of "The Mariner's Revenge Song" during which we were all instructed to scream, on cue, as though we "were being swallowed by a whale." If you have not yet heard this band, you must. If you have the chance to see them play live, you must do that as well. This is sweet, literate, grimly funny, absurdist, pop-punk vaudeville at its best. Thursday night, they'll be playing (urk) Birmingham (AL) at WorkPlay. Oh, a couple of pics:
The Decemberists (Atlanta, 5/9/05)
The Variety Playhouse marquee after the show.
I've been so flustered lately I haven't mentioned that Farscape: The Peackeeper Wars won three Saturn awards, for Best Television Presentation, Best Actor for Ben Browder, and Best Actress for Claudia Black. Drad, indeed.
And, just because it's on my mind now and won't be later, let me mention how much I frelling detest all talk radio...
After I posted the lyrics to "The Hand That Feeds" yesterday, I started thinking about all my previous "angry songs." There are a lot of them. Here's a very partial list from the last few years:
NIN, "The Hand That Feeds"
VNV Nation, "Dark Angel"
The Dresden Dolls, "Bad Habit"
The Dresden Dolls, "Truce"
NIN, "The Wretched"
Concrete Blonde, "God is a Bullet"
Tears for Fears, "Shout"
Poe, "Haunted"
Pearl Jam, "Black"
Sisters of Mercy, "When You Can't See Me"
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, "O'Malley's Bar"
Nirvana, "Rape Me"
I could go on forever. Like I said, I've always had "angry songs." The wild, tooth-clenched spitting of a good angry song is worth at least five hours of therapy. Short of actually breaking things, dollar for dollar, it's your best means of release.
The offer of FULL-COLOUR MONSTER DOODLES is now history. I'll draw and COLOUR the monsters tonight and tomorrow night, and then Spooky will get everything the mail. Thank you all. The auctions continue, however, and for the next five days we will be offering Silk at the absurdly low price of only $5 a copy!
Er...anything else? Yeah, actually. I'll give a wonderful gift to the first person who sends me a somewhat animated Nebari.net ad banner that includes both Chiana and Kermit the Frog together and bears the slogan, "It's Not Easy Being Grey." Thank you. By the way, I'm not sure who I snurched the Kermit icon from, but thank you, even though you had no say in the matter.
11:04 AM
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