Music

[music | Jim Carroll - People Who Died

Whee I got to see David Johansen and I got the photos to prove it. What an awesome show. The audience didn't move around much at all, and those that did were dragged out by their throats, so that sucked, but it was good to get out, hang with my friend, drink some beers and see the Dolls. Highlights were obviously singles (Trash, Personality Crisis, Looking for a Kiss, Frankenstein - in that order). They also did a cover of Piece of My Heart, which rocked. Here are some of the not-that-shitty pics I took, more are at the Flickr set. I wish I hadn't been buried in the crowd, but the Dise was packed, I didn't want to ditch my friend and assert myself to the front, and the balcony was pretty much out of the question. 90% of the pics I took sucked, but some survived, unfortunately, none of the rest of the band survived (as in reality pretty much). I was supposed to meet one of my work friends, but that wasn't happening. Hopefully she got in since the show was sold out by the time I showed up, which thanks to my sucky weekend karma and our general slowness, meant I missed Opening Band.

UPDATE: Oh yeah, and as I was telling Sean. Scrooged is provably full of shit. No way is anyone getting in a cab driven by that guy.

Pics Inside

[music | Combichrist - Get Your Body Beat (Sergio Mesa Remix)]

In the half dozen or so Dresden Dolls shows we've seen in the last few years, I've never been to a bad show. Often, Amanda's voice is fucked (like last night), once they opened for a band we didn't care about, but their shows are always excellent. Even as an "old timer", it's still easy to be impressed by the stage presence of just two people, and how much music comes out of those two instruments. I think that's because I count Brian as three people, and up to four instruments.

I've seen faster drummers, but no one can show me a more entertaining drummer. Drummers are usually second only to bassists in polls of "who is the most emotionless suckass on any stage". It's his treatment of the drums as an instrument capable of melody as much as his playfulness that makes him so important. That and he's really cute and hilarious to watch. I've never seen him go quite so far back during Coin Operated Boy. One day he's going to try that and discover he's 30, right there in the middle of the show. He'll say "Fuck, I'm 30", and just stay down. I know. And it's only 18 short months away. Get ready man.

I've also never seen Amanda get through an entire performance of Missed Me without cracking up at him at least once.

Her performance was nothing short of stunning. Her voice was as screwed as I've ever heard it from the get go, she couldn't even talk. I was worried we were going to have another Morrissey on our hands, but Amanda proved she could suck it up and not annoy everyone and have to reschedule.

For the love of god watch the video

I get asked a lot why I hate iTunes and what's so much better about Amarok. This is about Amarok 1.4.7, since there is no good way to run Amarok 2 yet. When I can get any copy of Amarok 2 to load a track and play it, either via the KDE4 Live CDs or from RangerRick's KDE on OSX native project, I'll give it a spin.

Here's a quick list of beefs with iTunes:

[music | Sandra Lee's insane boozahol'ing]

Here are some of the good photos from the Reverend's 11/17/2007 Boston show.

Nashville Pussy and Hank Williams III/Assjack opened, and the crowd was really wound up and active an hour before the Reverend came out, which is the highest praise I can give an opener, so let's stop there. If you're unfamiliar with Hank III / Assjack, he does basically two sets, a psychobilly set and a thrash/hardcore set. So we basically got 4 bands for the price of 3, and it was awesome. I'm still trying to figure out the roots of the gg allin & Murder Junkies connection, since he remains a local legend and heroic hardcore pioneer. It was good to see props in a big way. I know they've got allin & MJ family on board, playing with Merle Allin et al, which is great. Here is a good interview on NHPR with G.G. Allin & the Jabbers members, since I'm on the subject.

[music | The Bruisers]

You will find a long-winded post on The Cult show at Hampton Beach Casino