11.06.11

101 in 1001 {II}: 080 see a show at joe's pub [completed 10.28.11]



how did it take me eight years to get to a show at joe's pub? i'm tempted to call it our local equivalent of bimbo's 365 club in san francisco (an easy walk from home, a genteel space, and a reasonably-priced night out), but it's actually much better than that; it's utterly un-grotty (i'm looking at you, village vanguard), every seat is a good one (you could work on that, bimbo's), and my front-row ticket to tanya donelly and friends - purchased four days before the show - was dirt cheap. it's been almost a decade since i last saw tanya, who's honey-throated and gorgeous as ever; her motley band (rick moody, the magnetic fields' claudia gonson and sam davol, one ring zero's michael hearst, the breeders' carrie bradley, and hannah marcus) was capable and amiable, the beer was reasonably-priced and just exotic enough, and the air on the walk home was crisp and smoky. rocktober took a deep, sweeping bow and left the stage.

10.06.11: culture blotter {portishead @ hammerstein}



rocktober rolled on yesterday evening with a portishead show at hammerstein ballroom, site of a memorable david bowie spotting at a pixies concert a few years ago.* i expected a fairly sexy show, as dummy was considered one of the greatest hookup albums of its day (but for "roads," a song which makes one want to cover one's genitals with duct tape). what i experienced was more of a violation: hammerstein's ultra-motivated security team took searches to a new level of weird (i saw the bag-searcher ahead of me checking a gal's prescription pill bottle against her driver's license), the woo!-drunk guy next to me kept lurching over and then clutching whichever part of me he'd just jostled as he turned to apologize, with 80-proof plosives, for doing so, and the audience decided en masse to numb themselves prior to "roads" by smoking all of the pot in the world (it is all gone now! all of it, smoked at hammerstein) during the encore. that said, beth gibbons is still an icicle in your ear: her voice was crystalline and wondrous for numbers like "wandering star" and "glory box," and it humanized newer, kerwhompity sternum-rattlers like "machine gun." rocktober's kinky secret: its violations aren't universally unpleasant.

*torn between staying for the encore and ducking out to follow bowie when he dematerialized from the mezzanine, i decided to stay put; i then ended up with tickets for another pixies show on a subsequent evening, and they played the same damn encore. takeaway: always follow bowie.

10.05.11: culture blotter {the psychedelic furs @ irving plaza}



you know you have the right husband when he relieves you of "pretty-in-pink"-recording duties so you can molly ringwald all over the concert hall in a manner you've been dreaming of since you were eight. richard butler sounds as amazing now as he did when i was in third grade; it's for the best that we didn't have the camera out when the band launched into "heartbreak beat," for i lost my shit. welcome back, rocktober.

10.28.10: canada, part II {the black and white}



















{phoenix @ madison square garden;* farine five roses on the lachine canal; habitat 67; crane, vieux port; HQ, société canadienne d'opérette, rue saint-denis; graffiti, vieux port}

*while madison square garden is hardly in canada, the phoenix show was mere hours before our train left penn station; i consider it part of the trip. also all francophones look alike.

09.21.10: culture blotter {pavement @ williamsburg waterfront}



joe chose excellence and joined me for the pavement show! a solid choice it was, i think; unlike the superfans who snagged and lost their tickets to the summerstage shows last year, he had to wait but a day to walk across the williamsburg bridge for malkmus & co's first new york show since 1999. it must be said that the venue is kind of awful; i was expecting something like the prospect park bandshell with a hot view of the east river and manhattan, but the stage faced away from the shore and backed against the mccondos that have mushroomed up there in the last few years...so the whole thing felt a bit like a secret rave thrown by realtors. also, no lawn! but pavement were in fine form; i enjoyed the show (and the pre-show burgers and beer and backgammon) so much that i actually traveled the hipster superhighway to get up to the stage and take pictures. well done, steve and the gang.

guy: YOU. what’s your go-to song tonight.
LMO: elevate me later.
guy: ooooh, off the beaten path. i’ll pump my fist in the air for you if i hear it. i bet they’ll play it, i’ve been checking the setlists.
LMO: ...though I’d give my right eye to hear jo jo's jacket.
guy: if you wanted to hear solo stuff, you should have gone to see him in march! i did.
LMO: well, then you win.
guy: no, it’s not a contest!
LMO: oh yes it is.
guy: okay, it is.

10.03.08: culture blotter {echo & the bunnymen @ radio city music hall}



the 'salute to dinosaurs' portion of rocktober continued apace with last night's radio city, orchestra-backed performance of echo & the bunnymen's ocean rain, an album released when i was six. goofy glowing drinks aside, radio city's not a bad place to take in a show, and i quite liked getting to kick back in a seat like the old woman i am. i wasn't as excited about being in the third mezzanine: sure, i bought the cheapest seats, but i bought them a twelfth of a second after they went on sale. at the other end of the spectrum, due to some infernal algorithm i don't want to know about, ticketmaster failed to release a bunch of the seats near the stage until yesterday morning - and they sat empty all night. the night's lessons: cough up the extra $10 or $20 per seat when possible (as rocktober comes but once a year), and ticketmaster is still the devil.

the show began (on time!) with glasvegas, a bunch of adorable scottish feedback enthusiasts who gave us post-punk via the brill building. we heard a grand total of two of their songs, but they were both catchy (particularly the doo-wop "daddy's gone"), and i'm a sucker for self-effacing weegies. seriously: when the second depression becomes official and the ladymag goes under, i'm going to scotland to be a roadie. or to apprentice with timorous beasties. i haven't worked out the details yet, but glasgow is in there somewhere.

the main event was all over the place, mostly in a good way. rumors of ian mcculloch's ferocious egotism (he's said to have called ocean rain the greatest album of all time shortly after it was released) appear to be true: he's quite the strutter, and his many comments about how much he was enjoying himself started to seem like straight-up cues for applause. rumors of how his voice has given out seemed exaggerated, at least for the first few songs of the "greatest hits" set (about a dozen songs, played before ocean rain): "lips like sugar" was fabulous, and "rescue" was pretty great. "bring on the dancing horses," on the other hand, was a hot mess: the vocals had clearly been tweaked for ian's abbreviated range, and he sounded rough anyway. he sounded a lot like lou reed when i saw him in 1997, actually, which became ironic when the band launched into an horrific medley of "people are strange," "walk on the wild side," and "in the midnight hour" (?!). i think they were going for sinister, and joe said he liked the effect with "walk on the wild side," but as simon cowell would say, mac was like some ghastly singer in a hotel lobby. the ocean rain set, in turn, was unequivocally wonderful: hearing "silver" with the orchestra was thrilling, and "the killing moon" is devastating in any setting. sung by muppets; performed in semaphore; doesn't matter. it was the last song on our wedding playlist: wildly inappropriate, sure, but too awesome to omit. hearing it live gave me chills: take that something, my bloody valentine!

imaginary reading group discussion questions

01 how goes your rocktober, internets? seen anyone zesty since last we spoke?

02 what's the worst cover you've ever heard?

03 what will you do when america collapses and we all have to wear barrels with suspenders? aside from wearing a barrel with suspenders, of course.