My interest in Prussia goes back to the European history class I took senior year in high school, when I was first confronted by an unfamiliar territory splayed across the map of central Europe, a phantom country whose capital – Berlin – was familiar, but whose national territory circa 1870 represented an odd amalgam of lands now belonging to Germany, Poland, Denmark, and the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad (formerly Königsberg). As I learned, prior to German unification in 1871, Prussia was one of a myriad of kingdoms and smaller sovereignties laying claim to bits and pieces of what would eventually become the unified German state. Surprisingly to me, it was Austria – often thought of these days as a sort of quaint southeastern afterthought to Germany proper – that for centuries represented the most important player in the game of German and Central European power politics, with Austria’s Habsburg monarch by tradition retaining the (increasingly ceremonial title) of Holy Roman Emperor. Though as I would learn, Austrian hegemony or quasi-hegemony in a disunited Germany would become increasingly tenuous as the eighteenth century bled into the nineteenth, and as Prussia expanded outward from its traditional power base in Brandenburg (now in northeastern Germany) and Ducal Prussia (now on Poland’s Baltic coast).
Roaringshark West Coast had an outing to San Francisco last night to check out a Japandroids concert. The night got off to a rather inauspicious start as Rob and I got told off by a woman in Davis for walking in the middle of a road closed to vehicle traffic. Then we got honked at for trying to enter a line at the toll plaza, then we got chided at the club itself for “blocking the sidewalk.” Anyway, after the harrowing trip down, we managed to score some decent burgers and talk about Chris Nolan Batman (rob for zach against) and get to the club just as opening act Pepper Rabbit were starting their set.
The music was pretty consistent in quality in my opinion. I’m sure Mark would have felt bitter and uncomfortable during the whole indiestravaganza but I dug it. Pepper Rabbit started things off as a very solid opening act. Nothing I would go out and buy – and it seemed like every song required a new trick from the instrument repetoire (time for the clarinet, now time for the mini-guitar, now time for the…) – but overall surprisingly decent for an opening act. I’m not sure who I’d compare them to, maybe wannabe Grizzly Bear or Fleet Foxes. Key songs are “Harvest Moon” and “Snowalker.” BTW, check out their Myspace pic, totally biting off the whole MGMT urban mystic thing.
Next up was Avi Buffalo. Rob and I were of split opinion about them. I was up and down on them, while Rob was mostly down. The cool thing about them is that they were really straightforward and even had some solos. The guy had a super high voice, though, which was a kind of love-it-or-hate-it thing. Rob thought they were a little too precious, but on the plus side they had a bangin’ girl drummer. Key songs are “Jessica” and “What’s In it For?”
Japandroids finished things up delivering a pretty frenetic set. Melt Banana levels of energy, mixed with these chugging guitar lines and punky vocals. Live they reminded me of like…Melt Banana + the Ramones + Atom and his Package (a favorite of Jun’s, if any of you recall). From what I can tell from listening to their myspace after the fact, their live sets are sped up about 50% from the album material, but that could just be me being kind of snowed by how fast-paced the guys were on stage. Key songs are “The Boys are Leaving Town” and “Darkness on the Edge of Gastown.”
9: Do Make Say Think: It’s no secret that I used to like these bozos. In fact, I actually own two of their albums and have praised them here in the past. Life is very interesting. Especially in the ways that your persona changes. When I was still digging indie music, I would wonder from time to time, if I’d be 38 years old and still shop at used record stores searching for the latest kranky release. Obviously that’s a pretty horrifying thought but at the time I couldn’t really see my taste changing anytime soon. I used to wonder why more people weren’t “interested” in music and if they were just missing out on all these great and exciting bands. I’m certainly not in that predicament anymore. All it took was a swift, cruel encounter with something called reality.
Now I think, “hot new indie label…avoid like the plague.” Give me Naxos, give me anime music, give me screamo and hair metal but I’m not going back to what I was.
The first thing you notice about any given do make release is that it comes in some goofy cardboard sleeve instead of a jewel case. On a humid day these sleeves will really soak up the moisture and when you go to play it you’ll feel kinda gross or like you’re living in the tropics. God help me, I actually liked this band so much that I researched them enough to find out that this non-traditional packaging was in fact a deliberate effort on the part of the band. It really mattered to them that, from start to finish, their output was produced according to strict guidelines which also meant I assumed relying on “local growers” for the pulp from the trees that was used to make their cd cases. Anyway, let us just say that you couldn’t get crappier music without increasing your carbon footprint.
Damn, that sounds cynical. T_T
Another point of contention for this band is that they were instrumental in opening a rift in my friendship with zach. It was totally my fault, but I’d say that this incident was probably the canary in the coalmine as it were which signaled what was to come later for me in terms shifting taste in music. Basically, a while back I had committed to going to a do make show. Anyway, the appointed day rolls around, zach’s car is in the shop and he’s like “let’s go” while I’m sitting in my darkened room at my desk and I’m like “I don’t wanna.” If it had been a manga, in that panel I would’ve been drawn in close up with my hair covering my eyes with a long shadow over the rest of my face. There were three issues at play. 1) At the time I had a dread fear of lots of stuff, especially driving. 2) I sort of felt like hanging out with zach and chu would really drive home how much I was missing milestones in my own life and that wasn’t something I really wanted to think about. I think those reasons are understandable, however they arguably don’t have anything to do with dmst, I mean, it could’ve been any band. However, the third reason is at least somewhat specific to the band and that’s basically that it wasn’t going to do anything for me personally. I suppose in my mind I’d come up with any reason to justify avoiding going out. But, at least based upon my experience, all that was going to happen was that we’d go there stand around for a few hours and go back. If you’re socially awkward, you’re going to be so at a show too and it’s not like shows are particularly friendly or conducive to interacting with other people, especially with a band like dmst belting out their funereal dirges. And I’m not the type of person who can sort of psych himself into believing that I’m having a conversion experience witnessing a performance. I guess that’s part of what draws me to shred. I can watch somebody playing a technically difficult guitar part and think “yeah, it’ll take a lot of work, but it’s something I could reasonably learn how to do myself” but with bands like dmst I could never put myself in their shoes or learn to do that because their art is all about who they are as people and who they know. I can’t learn to be somebody else. That kind of idol worship is just hollow.
Just wanted to post this video I came across on the anime news network. I may have to to check serial experiments lain again. Although what I really want is to watch Haibane Renmei but it’s out of print. Maybe I can pick up a copy at toracon.
Anyway, this is for the artists.
As I was out getting a meatball sub for lunch I decided that I should countdown the worst bands of the past two decades. I guess it’s kind of influenced by David Rees as Zach’s linked there a few times recently. I’m not trying to bite his style just trying to get some catharsis working through my frustrations with music. Hopefully, I’ll be able to keep up with it if people find it entertaining. First up is Godspeed naturally.
10: Godspeed You Black Emperor: The absolute nadir of the “adding strings to woosy indie bands” movement. “Godspeed” to fans. I confess, I don’t know a whole lot about their music. My exposure was mostly due to hearing my friends in the dorms play it. As such, I was just checking out their wikipedia entry which is a veritable goldmine of embarrassing and moronic info, and which I feel dumber as I read it. The entire article in fact is clearly written by a fan and has a condescending tone matched only by the subject. For example, the frequent Shakespearian asides which explain things for the average wikipedia reader.
Because the band is taper-friendly—that is, they allow audience members to record their live performances—fans often release new material before the band makes an official recording.
As if I would’ve assumed that the band went out of its way to be accepting of all things that start out big and gradually get smaller. But, I mean, this is indicative of a much sadder problem that, in my opinion, plagues all of indie music. Like, honestly, am I supposed to care about this crap. If I go to a show, I don’t want to have to endure some half-hour lecture or read up on it beforehand of how the people in the band are really just like you and me. But I guess that sort of posturing goes a long way. Seriously, get up there and fucking shred or don’t. Please, have some other reason for this band than the Peace corps photo-op.
But really, where it all comes together is in the liner notes for the 70s Yes era massive rock opera Yanqui UXO. The sleeve contained a withering diagram which exposed the deep collusion of the recording industry with the military-industrial complex. This certainly would’ve been an “oh noes” moment had we had the term at the time and definitely provided a cornerstone for the “truther” movement that would follow. Those were heady days, and I’m sure that a lot of GYBE fans probably imported copies of Dominique de Villepin’s collected poetry to feel some sense of participation of a democracy of true statesmen. However it’s been around eight years since the album was released and I’ve taken it upon myself to update the chart to reflect the even more dire state of the world today.
Since it auto-suggests websites as you type into the search/address bar, you start typing your name (or anyone’s name) with no spaces. At a certain point chrome will stop suggesting sites because there aren’t any that share that many letters in common with your name (unless someone has a popular site that shares your name somehow). So you take the top result for the site that has the most letters in common with your name and see what site it is. So, for me, if I were to start typing in zachsmith into the address bar, it stops suggesting websites at “zachsm,” so I back up to “zachs” where it still suggests sites. In this case, “zacks.com” wins. Here’s the results for the RS contributors:
I realize it’s been a while since I really posted anything more substantial than a few youtube clips on RS. Chu and I are still embroiled in our house hunt. It’s not clear what we should do, exactly. The market is in this huge state of flux ATM because the first-time homebuyer credit is expiring in a few days, so I think people are rushing to get into contract to get the $8000 dollars. We might be better off waiting until after the credit is over and the pool of buyers dries up. Or maybe at that point there won’t be any properties left. In any case, if we can get a deal on the house, then we could be spending significantly less than what we are shelling out currently for our monthly rent. With the added benefit that we could get at least some small portion of the money we throw into a mortgage back when the house goes up for sale.
Some catblogging, gobie fetching one of his foam balls:
Note: this post engages in a series of blatant and hopefully amusing stereotypes.
My brief daily commute between Sacramento and Davis gives me some time to think about advertising – this is usually prompted by the many billboards posted along the side of I-80, which lately have included one from Heineken, a watery Dutch lager widely consumed by frat boys and which tastes about the same as Bud Light. Heineken’s current ad campaign, centered on the rather enigmatic tagline “Give Yourself a Good Name,” has been getting me thinking of late. I say “enigmatic” in reference to the tagline because of its odd juxtaposition of the notion of winning or maintaining one’s “good name” – suggestive of a system of values rooted in the landed aristocracy – and the numerous hipster cultural cues embedded in the campaign’s print and TV advertisements. Stepping back from this problem for a minute and looking at the (assumed) marketing motive behind the campaign, it seems like the idea is to associate Heineken with a certain type of hip, New York-centric, twenty-something bar culture, in which the idea of “giv[ing] yourself a good name” might mean something along the lines of burning a copy of the latest Animal Collective album for a friend, introducing your roommate to that hot girl from the artists’ collective, or hopefully from the perspective of the advertiser, buying your mustachioed, fixie-riding compatriots some Heineken! In other words, Heineken is trying to trade up, at least at the level of appearance, from the frat boys who have reliably consumed Heineken since time immemorial, to the NYC post-college crowd.
