I drive a lot. Sometimes for hours, days, sometimes for weeks. Sometimes I spend more time in my car than I do in my apartment.
Thankfully, I have a lot of CDs and a 6 CD changer. Before you freak out, let me assure you – there are benefits to the old way, of That Time Before the IPod. You know what? IPods are lame when it comes to Driving Music. Long hours of driving require one thing: listening to the same six records over and over. Maybe even the same record, over and over. Maybe, even, the same SONG over and over.
There are certain things that sound better in the car. Somehow the sound of cracking a beer open sounds better in a car, to me, even though I don’t drink beer. Maybe it’s a recollected memory thing. Like that memory of being in a car, like a 1970 Nova or what have you, but in like 1982, and the sun is going down and leaving crystals on the windshield (or maybe, it is foggy) and there is that sound of metal hitting metal and that tiny hiss of the can opening. It’s a kind of music. Driving music.
But getting back to music. For some reason, I love Sonic Youth in my car better than at home. I could listen to Rather Ripped over and over in my car, but at home it bores me. Sonic Youth is so awesome in the car. The perfect Driving Music.
I’ve been wanting to elaborate on the whole driving music thing for some time. And I will, eventually, with greater detail. In the meantime, I could not stop listening, driving from San Diego to Anaheim to Palm Springs and back, to PJ Harvey’s Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea. For hours and hours I totally got into myself, and her, and the year 2000, all over again. I was in love, she was in love. My thing turned ugly, hers ended. But listening to her account of it brings it all back – what it was like to be in love – for a moment, or an hour. Or six hours, or a couple of days. However long the CD is in my changer.
Yeah. Still I came home and had to watch the video. Yo, people who ask why I’m not “with someone?” Because… if it is not like this, it is not worth it.
Sometimes, when I feel sad, I cure my heavy heart with a dose of Clinic. Their just so wacky and awesome that I forget everything that went wrong in the day and concentrate on how fabulous they are.
So tonight, really and truly trying to escape this gaping hole that my legs are currently dangling through, I went searching on youtube for Clinic videos and what did I find? THIS!
Not only is it one of my favorite Clinic songs, but I am actually IN THIS VIDEO. Yes, it is true, one of those heads on the left is mine. I was there on the rail that night. I don’t remember the light show being so awesome, but I think I was kind of drunk.
Anyway. Next time Clinic come I might just have to stand back a little, in order to see that light show from afar. And they might be coming soon because they have a new record coming out (yeah) but I am not seeing it for sale in the States (fuck) so thank god for amazon.com.uk ($$$$$$$).
Something is missing. Can’t put my finger on it… live show? CD Drive? Sanity? All’s I can say is, Saturday I am not looking back.
Here is some new Clinic. I love them and miss them and wish I could put all their stuff on my Ipod for Spain but I can’t because my friggen CD drive is broken. Bummed.
Interesting thing, love. What else could have possessed me to get in my car, drive downtown, pay $10 for parking, and enter a venue full of fourteen year olds, for an eleven song set? Oh yeah, Britt Daniel.
It was fun. Basically, I was the oldest and tallest person in my area, which is sort of a bonus. I actually let the pygmy girls that were standing next to me go in front of me, I felt so bad. I mean, they were teensy. I guess this is why I don’t like Death Cab for Cutie – all the nine year olds are into them.
Whatever. I got me forty-five minutes or so of some prime Spoon. I was on the rail in the same spot (well almost – I was actually quite a bit closer) that I procured at Radiohead, but at this show, I didn’t have to fight for it. I was so sober that I wrote down the set list:
The Beast and Dragon, Adored
Don’t Make me a Target (new song – Target? Whatever. I love it.)
My Mathematical Mind (FUCKKKKKKKK)
The Way We Get By
Rhythm & Soul? Another new song…
Paper Tiger
Stay Don’t Go
They Never Got You
I Turned my Camera On
I Summon You
Fitted Shirt
Let me just say right here that the band was totally into it and happy and Britt was fucking drop dead awesome. The man is a superstar just waiting to happen, but I kind of hope it doesn’t because that would ruin everything. I have to say the highlight was They Never Got You. They just go on and on in that song, it is orgasmic. I am serious. Brett got down on his knees so many times I thought I would die. It was short, but oh-so-sweet.
Death Cab for Cutie came out and played Fitted Shirt with the band. The crowd went ballistic. I left right after Spoon, and as I was leaving a security guard said, “if you leave, you can’t come back.” I said “I don’t care!” To which he replied “ya’all came for SPOON, didn’t you?” So I guess I wasn’t the only one.
I sometimes have a hard time justifying my obsessions, but THIS ONE IS WORTH IT. Believe me.
The good news: in a couple of hours I’ll be seeing THIS.
The bad news. I’ve got a rippen’ cold. I don’t even feel like partying. I am even going to DRIVE to the venue. Me, drive to a SHOW!
Doubt I’ll be staying for Death Cab for Cutie – even when I had the energy it didn’t sound that appealing.
I am bringing my camera in hopes of getting some shots of Britt. I don’t think they are anti at that Bayside place, at least they weren’t when Radiohead was there.
I wish I could be more excited but I just feel too yucky. But, there is the chance that the exhilaration will cure me. The Britt Daniel cure. Bring it on.
Actually, I am starting to get excited. Really really excited. But I am not going to wear my Poptarticus T-shirt because I am just too scared. And I am too sick to stalk. Maybe this is a good thing.
To all my San Diego readers – this is going to be an awesome show. Well, we hope it will be. It certainly has the potential. Tickets just went on sale and they won’t be around for long – GO! GO!
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.
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…
Baby Ryan is eight months old. Soon we can buy him his first drum set.
In Other Than Radiohead news, My brother’s band the Mississippi Mudsharks have just released their new CD Train Rolls On and it just got reviewed in the San Diego Union Tribune here. I am having my first listen right now and this CD ROCKS. And I’m NOT just saying that because it’s my brother playing drums on there. Nobody plays the blues like Tom, Scottie and Mike do.
In celebration of this release the Mudsharks are playing at Winstons here in OB from 6 – 9 this Sunday. Hmm… could be kind of crazy. Good thing I have Monday off. All my local readers should come to the show and visit me at the CD table where I will be selling CDs for the band and drinking wine. Or you can just buy the CD from Double Barrel Records by clicking the Mudsharks link above. As you can see, coming to the show and hanging out with me is a much better option, because then you’ll see them LIVE which of course is always the best possible way.
The band will be touring Europe in late summer … and the schedule (so far) is HERE. You have to scroll down to find the dates. I just know all my European readers want to fly to Belgium to see the Mudsharks AND the Blasters at the Gevarenwinkel Blues Fest! No one parties like the Belgians do. (Joke. I think.)
