The over-hyped blizzard of February 2013 has come and gone. 3000cu. ft. shoveled by two of us in 2.5 hours. The lowest point in the driveway measured 22", more drifty parts measured 28", between the cars, 40". But still, who's panicking? It's snow. In February. In New England. Why the travel bans? Why the storm-namery? You suck it up, you shovel, it's clean.
Here are some photos, the Nemo thing might work since everyone's car looked like a nautilus shell under all this snow
I've been running IMAP services on my mailserver for many years, previously using Courier. I always had a pretty basic but solid-running system. Postfix, doing a Spam Assassin check, then delivers to the user folders, and Courier running IMAP.
A change of pace tonight. A few months ago, we saw Salman Rushdie speak and do an interview as part of the Writers on a New England Stage series presented by NH Public Radio. He gave a brief reading from his recent memoir, Joseph Anton, followed by an interview.
Or: Why you don't need that AR-15 to save your TV.
I've had some conversation with friends who are very vocally talking about upping their gun count since Sandy Hook, all in the name of "more protection". Discussions of AR-15s and such.
This week we've had a massive tragedy. Dozens of innocents killed in the most callous way possible. Everyone, everywhere very, very sad.
Except for those devoutly religious enough to bring their unique view to the whole event. I've been reading statements to the effect that God did not intervene because he is polite enough not to go where he isn't welcome. That the answer to this is that our children should pray before every school day, also, More Guns.
A very happy confluence of events led me to lie to Chris Portugal at The Coup / People Under the Stairs show. The first thing that had to happen was that the original venue for People Under the Stairs had to be unprepared to open. That venue is the Sinclair in Cambridge. It's apparently still not open as they're shuffling shows to TT's and the Royale.
30 Helens (and two Jesuses) agree, nice password policy.
My wife bought this day calendar to store in her purse and found these two horrifically disturbing pages toward the front. It's extra convenient, because if you get mugged, now the thieves can go home and log into your online banking, and clear the rest of it out too while you're all groggy talking to a policeman after waking up laying next to a brick with no purse. Wonderful.
This blistering set was all of the album Hyphenated-man, which we do not yet own, but will tomorrow. It was pretty much beat poety, jazzy, hardcore rolled up in 2 minute songs.
Watt was looking a little worse for wear from his 2010 knee injury. I'm not surprised, because when we saw him with Iggy Pop (and The Neighborhoods!), just a few weeks after he hurt it, he was in a full immobilizer, and had to get on stage with crutches. Once on stage with a bass in his hands, he proceeded to run around and jump all over the place as if it hadn't happened. He looks like he's feeling it more now, which I know from experience really sucks.
One of the best bits was this cover of Machine Gun by Jimi Hendrix during the encore. This version has better vocal audio than we heard, if I find video of tonight's show, I'll replace this Iowa footage:
Here are the photos, they're not great, because the Brighton Music Hall isn't the brightest lit place in the world, but got some good ones:
Here are some of my favorite photos from Public Image Ltd. PiL played a long set, with no opener, and a good mix of old to new music. John's voice was a bit worse for wear, but he actually became better over the course of the night, I feel, probably due in no small part to generous application of Courvoisier VS.
We spent most of the night being systematically mesmerized by Lu Edmonds and his Buzuq. Natalie was convinced going in that Warren Ellis was touring with them, because she saw multiple sources mis-identifying him from previous shows. That's really a shame. They're similarly masterful, equally anachronistic visions of a late 1940's bearded man thrashing some poor instrument to death, but not the same person. I did get a sense last night for what it would have looked like if Wm. S. Burroughs were a guitar player.
The crowd was strongly in favor of this show, but artists need to keep in mind that Boston Does Not Dance. It just seems to not be what we do. Sorry. We were dancing in spirit, John. We get that a lot here.
I have been waiting for half a decade to see Unwoman and finally got the perfect opportunity in Cambridge. Unwoman is Steampunk / "Corsetronica" music, a tag which I really wish would have stuck, but which it appears she and I are the only ones to have ever used.
Over the years, her music has gone from more electronica towards a more natural cello sound coupled with her powerful voice. Using loops, she'll lay down several cello tracks for a rich sound with lots of depth. The technique is not unlike Zoe Keating, however their results are very different. I may be completely wrong, and her normal live set might include laptops and drum machines, but we got the perfect show for the venue, an intimate and engaging cello and piano based set.
The show was at Outpost 186, to a capacity crowd of about 30 or so. This is why I didn't want to conspicuously take any photos, however there is good-quality video here and here. I have no idea what happened to the full video shot by the house, but if I find it, I'll update here.
Hopefully it's not another several year wait for the next show. Now that she has a good Boston foothold, we hope to see her back.
