I think I dreamed about him because last night I couldn’t sleep because it was so hot, so I got to thinking about I might go down to Bayside where Radiohead played last month and Spoon is opening for Death Cab for Cutie next month. I guess it’s an indication that I am not as in love with Britt Daniel as I was last summer, that I was possibly thinking of NOT going to next month’s show. The thing is, Spoon is opening, and the tickets are expensive, and what if they only play for half an hour or something? I have been trying, HARD, to get into Death Cab for Cutie but I am finding it difficult. Though maybe they are really awesome live. Anyway, last night I was like, OF COURSE I have to go and then I have to go out to the buses and see if I can find Britt Daniel. Like, screw Death Cab for Cutie, I am just going to do some stalking. But what would I do if I actually MET him? Uh, hey Britt, can you please sign my Poptarticus T-Shirt? Yes I am THAT Poptarticus, the one who writes about stalking you. Not the Poptarticus that is on that Reality TV Message Board or the one on the Marching Band Forum or the one who likes Soccer. THEY are imposters, while I pay $9.95 a month for my name. So can you sign it?
Anyway that is probably just the kind of fool I would make of myself. And this is probably why I had the dream.
In my dream, I was at the South by Southwest Music Conference, in a giant convention hall, and Spoon played a couple of songs. Then some other stuff happened but I can’t remember what, and then Britt played two songs, solo. He was right there and then Ladytron was going to play, so nobody cared about Britt anymore, they only wanted to see Ladytron. It was then I realized I wasn’t wearing a shirt. Oops. Some chick from the Ladytron group gave me a Ladytron sticker and I put it on my arm. But I was really bummed because I didn’t care about the sticker or Ladytron, I just wanted to see Britt.
So then I ended up in his room. Don’t you LOVE dreams? I was in his hotel room, and he had nailed his own pictures over the pictures that were in there. Not pictures of himself, but pictures of other stuff. Nailed them in! Then I was sitting on this long couch next to Celeste, my best friend from high school, and Britt’s parents. Thank god Britt’s parents showed up because without them inviting me, I would surely have been arrested as a stalker. We were all sitting on one long couch when Britt came in and sort of just looked at us. At that point I sort of wished the parents weren’t there, just to see what would happen, but then a very pretty blond girl in a sundress came in. The girlfriend, presumably. She sat down next to me. “Are you happy?” She asked. “Yes,” I said. But then I said, “no, I’m not that happy. Are you happy?” She said yes. “No you aren’t, we all think we are happy, but we really aren’t. We just think of things to make us forget we are unhappy.” She just looked at me.
So, I dreamed about him, but nothing will ever compare to the magic of that first dream, the one that I can still remember and that was almost one year ago. I went back to the conference after I left his room, and it was raining, and as I entered the hall I thought, I gotta start a label.
Novocaine for the soul
You’d better give me something
To fill the hole
Before I sputter out
ANYWAY. It’s been awhile, mostly it’s been kind of crazy around here. Not really crazy so much as HOT and just, well, SUMMER. It seems that summer sort of takes away from introspection. Summer and introspection don’t really go together, do they? Plus my apartment is a little sweatbox and I can’t hang out in it for too long. Though, it has sort of cooled down a little.
Summer. It seems as if time really accellerates when summer comes. There is, well, just so much going on, and it makes everything fly by. I highly recommend writing a blog, since you can actually go back to weeks or months or years prior and see what the hell you did. Did I spell accellarate right? Fuck.
Summer is sweat, the crack of the bat, the feel of something cold on your tongue when you are hot, sand in the bathtub, too much energy, not enough energy, not enough real sleep. Because sleeping in the heat is way hard, of course. Corn. Summer is also, corn.
I think I have been spending too much time at the Vine. But it is really fun down there.
And tomorrow I am going to see Muse at SOMA. I have mixed feelings about this show, but only because I truly hate SOMA. How about this: SOMA IS THE WORST LIVE VENUE IN SAN DIEGO. There, now I will get at least fifteen google hits a day. It is really an awful place to see a show, but I really want to see Muse, even though compared to The Eraser Muse’s new record Black Holes and Revelations sounds sort of superfluous and overambitious. ME: the new minimalist. All because of Thom Yorke!
Well, it can’t be anything but good since I am so scared of it. I do love that crazy Muse.
The other night I dreamed about a friend I lost about a year ago, because of a stupid misunderstanding and also, the cruel manipulations of someone else. I can’t believe it has been a year, and it is weird that I dreamed about him now. Mostly because I have had time to get over it, and with the shit that is going on in the world today, I just have to say: there is no room, or reason, in the world for this kind of meaningless bullshit. Seriously. We should all just concentrate as much as possible on the positive as we can right now. There is absolutely no room in the universe for any kind of negativity. Did I spell negatevity right? Fuck.
“We think the same things at the same time…”
Thom Yorke, Harrowdown Hill
Best. Hook. Ever.
I am pacing. It is fucking hot, the weekend has immense promise, and I cannot stop listening to The Eraser . There are those moments when you just want to drag your fingernails down the front of your throat, and draw blood. Is it the heat? Is it the waning moon? What the fuck is it, anyway? Those giant exhales you make when you are on drugs are normal in day to day life when it’s this hot.
Back to The Eraser. I AM DYING HERE, I AM SO OBSESSED. Picture a scary thought but sing it in a way that you can never, ever get that melody out of your mind. A lullaby for the apocalyspe. I was never one to want to have sex with the music on but damned if this isn’t the record that I could actually, uh, do something successfully to.
The whole package of last month, this day, is sort of putting me over the edge. I wish I could explain it better than this. Heat, obsession, and sex driven by a killer bass line is about all I can do. Oh. Did I say I was dying? “We think the same things at the same time.” God, I love that.
AWESOME.
You can listen to an MP3 of Harrowdown Hill here on the I Guess I’m Floating music blog.
I was really going to try to stop writing about Radiohead for a while. But today I find this impossible because today, Thom Yorke’s solo project The Eraser was released. Also, the new Muse record Black Holes and Revelations came out. So it was definitely one of those days where at exactly 4:30 P.M. I got into my car and headed to Tower Records where the sign on Sports Arena Boulevard said “New: Thom Yorke and Muse.” Holy cow, is the stuff I am listening to all of a sudden popular?
I can see why The Eraser is the sort of record many, many people want to run to the store on the day of release to buy. It’s been three years since Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief came out, and we are all hungry. Hungry for ANYTHING. Even if it turns out to be a bunch of electronic crap. But of course that did not happen; this is Thom Yorke we are talking about, after all. The Eraser is a beautiful record. It’s full of nuance, full of special moments. It’s one of those records that I will be listening to in my car for the fiftieth time and I will hear something new. There is a lot of the new Radiohead stuff I heard at the June shows here, in The Eraser. Not the actual songs, but certainly the sounds, and the feelings. Sweeping, lovely, sometimes funky, sometimes weird. Awesome.
I remember, oh how I remember, when Radiohead’s Kid A came out, how it totally blew the mind of so many people. How different it was, how groundbreaking. I think that record changed me. It changed my life, or maybe my life just happened to be changing at the same time. Whatever it was, it was earthshaking. And I remember the reviews: “where is the guitar?” The guitar was there the whole time, it was just a little more subtle.
The Eraser is like that. It’s different; it seems simple, but it’s very layered. I was almost as excited to buy the Eraser as I was to buy Kid A and Hail to the Thief, but I think in the end I willl listen to The Eraser way more than I do to Hail to the Thief. Kid A, of course, practically sleeps next to me.
Anyway. It’s an extraordinary achievement for Mr. Yorke. I love him more with each passing day, and I dreamed about him last night. He was the good guy in my dream, and Britt Daniel was the asshole. Britt Daniel was an asshole in my dream! It was awful. I want to have sex with Britt Daniel in my dreams, not hate him. Fucking dream. Dammit.
As for Muse’s new one. If Beethoven took fourteen hits of acid and decided to take up with Angus Young, it might be an indication of Muse’s sound. It’s not for everybody, but I love it. I have been listening too intently to The Eraser to give Black Holes and Revelations the time it deserves, but heck, it’s only been six hours. So I’ll start on that one tomorrow.
Yesterday, I went to a party in my hometown of Half Moon Bay, California. Going to parties where you don’t know anyone is hard. I know that I seem like an outgoing sort of person but really, I am not. I am super shy and like to hide in the shadows (near the bar) when I don’t know anyone. I did talk to people and there were lots of cool people there but it was a birthday party for a 27 year old and I just felt hella old (even though I was wearing my Radiohead shirt and my Sigur Ros hoodie and jeans and Pumas, which is sort of a younger persons outfit.) Also I have found that when you get a lot of women (or men) that have known each other forever together, it is really hard to infiltrate especially if you are a shy, in-the-shadows wallflower like me.
Yesterday’s experience just drove home the success of Saturday’s party. At Saturday’s party, I was one of the ones that has known everyone forever. Though I think it was probably easier for the newcomers to infiltrate. The party was for the 5th anniversary of slowtrav.com and it was a killer day – at a beautiful park in the Oakland hills, with redwoods and shade and a massive amount of really great food and more wine than we could drink, plus great company. I kind of miss Northern California on days like that. Those warm, sultry afternoons in redwood forests. Though I definitely DO NOT miss the fog in Half Moon Bay. It was friggen FREEZING there.
Other than that I hung out with Baby Ryan and Jay and Carrie, watched the World Cup (I am still trying to figure out that whole head-butting thing, why would someone do that? It was just weird.) And also, got a little freaked out about the Left Behind video game. I am hopelessly out of the loop, clearly, and just this weekend saw something on TV about this video game where Christians run around New York City killing non-believers. Um, that is freaky. In fact, TV is freaky, video games are freaky, I guess everything is freaky. But not slowtrav parties, those are not freaky. So maybe I had better concentrate on them.
I was very jealous of all the girls at the party yesterday who took over my duties as auntie of Ryan. I was JEALOUS! Later though, me and Jay had him run through a couple of Radiohead songs with us, specifically 2 + 2 = 5 and Morning Bell. Carrie was not amused, but me and Jay sure were.
This is a long one. Get yourself a drink. Before I get into Friday let’s go back to Monday.
OK. This ten-minute snippet of the Monday night show is kind of trippy because these dudes were standing right next to me for the first part of the show. If you watch it, when Radiohead come on and start playing There There, those two fat arms waving on the right belong to the mountainous one who sang every lyric to practically every song and sort of ruined the show for me and probably many others. If you make it to You and Who’s Army you can actually HEAR her lame-ass voice. It’s pretty bad. I love youtube just for the fact that somehow PROOF emerges from it. I mean how crazy is it that that bitch can be heard by thousands of people from coast to coast? I hope she hears it and never sings another note at another show EVER.
Heh heh. On to Friday night. CRAZY. The whole night, not just the show. I walked up to the Greek from my hotel two miles away and it was HOT. When I was walking up the hill I ran into Juan Carlos, who was looking for tickets. He and his friend Erica got in line at 11:00 A.M. to try to get some box office love, and here it was 7:00 P.M. and they still had forty people in front of them. Scalpers were asking $400 for seats in the back, and there were numerous skanky L.A. ho types trying to seduce tickets out of lonely Radiohead nerds. One of said chicklets (blond, pierced tongue, early-eighties punk-ho look) tried to get a ticket out of Juan Carlos and he didn’t even have one yet. In fact she was kind of stupid trying to look for tickets along a line of people who didn’t have any. “Why don’t you go down to the box office where people are actually PICKING UP tickets?” I asked her. I mean, DUH. Juan Carlos had already promised Mariella, a Chilean girl we met outside the box office, he would sell her one if he scored any, so he told the ho he had already promised any extras to someone else. Mariella was cool – and she is coming down for Muse at SOMA this month so we are going to get together and get spots on the wall and then protect them for each other in case we have to go to the bathroom. ANYWAY. Juan Carlos and his friend were finally first in line and then the tickets were gone. So they did not get in. Mariella FOUND a ticket on the ground. Interesting since I have been thinking about something like that happening to me all week, and have been playing with it in my head. Like, if you find a ticket on the ground, do you use it, or take it back to the box office? I mean, what if it belonged to someone who really loves Radiohead and you are like, destroying their life? But then, what if that ticket belonged to a scalper or someone who was just going to say they went to a Radiohead show? It’s a dilemma. Mariella used it. I’m not sure what I would have done. But then I had a ticket.
Once in, I got in line to buy a bottle of wine and I heard someone call my name. It was Elizabeth who has burned some shows for me. She knew me because of my Poptarticus T-Shirt. So that was kind of cool. It’s so funny how you make these random connections with people solely because of the music you love. Juan Carlos I knew from the Sigur Ros show in Austin, and Elizabeth and I both had our Sigur Ros hoodies. And now all three of us were in L.A. to see (or in Juan Carlos’s case, hear) Radiohead.
After two shows of standing on my tiptoes close to the stage, it was kind of cool to have a seat where the space around me was mine alone. It wasn’t the greatest seat, to be totally honest. I was in the farthest possible seat to the right of the stage up in the terrace. I couldn’t see Phil or Colin at all. On my right I looked down at beer stands and an ATM which ALWAYS had a line. What could people possibly need money for when Radiohead is playing? I was pretty close to the stage though, and could see, once again, Ed, Thom and Jonny well enough, and it looked like the pit was full of lame industry people. So I was happy where I was. I had a hard time taking my eyes off Jonny Greenwood this time – the guy is so enigmatic. And I absolutely love it when he spazzes out on his guitar. Thom had a ton of energy and was dancing all over the place. There was a point during Myxomatosis when he stood over the pit with his arm out over them and he was practically SPITTING the lyrics at them and it was OH SO INTENSE. That guy has POWER. Thom Yorke for PRIME MINISTER, he’ll get some shit done. Anyway.
The crowd around me was very cool and very into it. I think we all paid around $200 for our ebay-ticket-bought-from-a-record-company-employee-who-got-it-for-free so we were all there to actually see the band and not to see who was looking at us. There was one tool a couple rows down from me who talked during all the new songs and on all the others, did that white-boy hip-hop dance, you know the one, where they move one hand up and down and move their scrawny ass back and forth. He even did this during Like Spinning Plates which is not exactly a dance number. I wanted to flick a quarter at the back of his neck. But other than that the people around me were cool. And it was watching the rest of the crowd at the Greek was wonderful. All kinds of celebrities were there, but I didn’t see any, all I saw was a sea of heads and they all appeared to be loving it (key word – appeared. This WAS Los Angeles after all.)
Some highlights of the show: During Exit Music, a bunch of people start hooting (they do this every time, I don’t get it) and Thom said “SHUT UP” and they DID! They SHUT UP. Ha ha, that was classic. Being told to shut up by Thom Yorke. I wish he would have said that to the mountainous one. Then during Fake Plastic Trees, the entire audience seemed to be WHISPERING the lyrics. 7000 people whispering, “If I could be who you wanted… all the time…” that was so totally awesome. I have absolutely no problem with people whispering. There was another killer Down is the New Up, got Climbing up the Walls, Pyramid Song and Like Spinning Plates for the second time this week, My Iron Lung practically ripped my head off and you can see for yourself HERE. Then we got True Love Waits which morphed into Everything in it’s Right Place and I was sort of sad, because that meant it was all going to be over soon.
So then it was over. I waited until all the people were outside (from my vantage point I had a fine view of this) and then started my descent down the hill. Halfway down I realized that me and the same dude had been walking together for a while. This is how I met Scott, a tall, skinny 23 year old transplant from Queens who is a Radiohead freak like me. First we started talking, then we started partying, which went on pretty much all night. Well not all night but certainly very late. Once you get two Radiohead freaks going, it’s pretty hard to get them to stop. It was really, really fun and took the sting out of Radiohead week being over.
Now I can’t wait for the new record to come out so I can hear Videotape, House of Cards and Down is the New Up in their studio form. I think my neighbors are getting sick of hearing me play a gazillion different live versions on my computer.
Scott said he has a friend who will only sleep with Radiohead freaks. I think that I am going to, henceforth, make that my number one criteria as well. Or maybe, just people who LIKE Radiohead. Although the freak part is pretty awesome, let me tell you.
Back to real life. Which is: hanging out at The Vine and daydreaming about Britt Daniel. Summertime. It is hot.
There is an incredible recording of Friday night’s show here. Awesome…
