Charlie just put up his insanely long rock concert journal about the three Sleater-Kinney shows we went to last week. He goes into all the sordid details that I decided to leave out. This means that brevity was sacrificed, but what the hell. After reading something so detailed (about something that I was actually there for, the entire three nights), I’ve decided to totally wreck the blog format and provide the first entry ever with extended Han Commentary. This is about as self-indulgent and inside jokey-joke as I’ve ever done, so I’d recommend not reading it. Yeah, that’s right. I’m actually telling you NOT TO READ IT (unless you have some really weird Sleater-Kinney fixation).

All text is Charlie’s except for things in [Brackets and Bold], which will indicate my genius witticisms and mindless blathering (I promise a little of both). This will be a lot like watching a video in my living room. The original entry is here. My re-edited version follows:
Read the rest of this entry »

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Today is the birthday for both Carrie Brownstein AND Google. Carrie turns 28, Google turns 4. Shouldn’t this be some kind of Riot Nrrd National Holiday? Yes, I know I’m stretching, but I want as many days off as possible. I’m currently contemplating conversion to Judaism for the bonus holidays. That and I wanted to use Riot Nrrrd in a sentence.

At least it’s the weekend. Wheeeeeeeeeee!

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I’ve had these two Sleater-Kinney posters up for a little bit now (and yeah, the second one’s autographed by the entire band) When I got them, I knew they were folded, and it didn’t really bother me. I honestly didn’t think it was a big deal. Now the folds bother me. Why does KRS tease me so by selling posters folded into quarters? I mean, I’ll pay the extra shipping for the tube, man. It’s like the Yellow Wallpaper. I can see the creases and they taunt me. It’s only a matter of time before I start seeing the creases move and make other creases.

So… how long do I last before I tear them down? Is that before or after the dudes in the white suits come?

GAAAAAAAAAAAH. I’m going to sit in the dark now.

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MK12, Kansas City designhouse ultra, has just come out with a new redesign for their site. The new theme? NinjaErotica. That’s right. It’s got Ninjas. And it’s Erotic. Dude, I didn’t make it up. Blame Matt Fraction.

Anyhow, check it out. It’s a big flash download and then another big quicktime download, but it should all move pretty quickly if you have a good connection. After checking out the main movie, make sure you check out some of the other work they’ve done, including the show packaging for TRL and ESPN’s The New American Sportsman (starring Rick Schroeder!). If you get a bit confused with the interface, just click on the shurikens on the right. That’s right. Navigation by Ninja Star. Like a compass rose but dangerous… and erotic.

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Another day, yet another Sleater-Kinney concert. OK, it’s my last one, for a long, long time. I wasn’t planning on going to the third show, but the first two were so good I figured it’d be worth a shot. Even if it was in Pomona. I don’t want to dog Pomona too much, but it’s a bit different than Los Angeles proper. Let’s leave it at that.

After an hour plus to get from Santa Monica to Pomona, we staked ground in front of the Glass House and waited. While we waited, the ladies of Sleater-Kinney probably walked past seemingly twenty times. First they went shopping, they went to shop some more, they hit the taco stand… whatever the case, it seemed like I was seeing them every ten or twenty minutes. Sarah Utter from the Bangs was also popping in and out of line talking to a friend of hers as well.

Shannon Wright opened the night first and put together the best set of the three shows I saw. The Bangs came up next and were pretty much the perfect opening act. That “opening act” comment sells them short though, as I’m sure they’d be a fine headliner as well. Their metal tinged pop punk was instantly infectious, and it was easy to start bouncing along to the tunes even on the first listen. I think Sarah was a bit under the weather, as she kept referring to her scratchy voice, and it seemed like they cut their set short by a song or two.

I don’t know when it happened exactly, but some guy peed on the floor a few rows of people behind me. There was a huge gap in the crowd, and apparently somebody just whipped it out and peed on the floor.

Sleater-Kinney came on and delivered a pretty hot set, with song selection similar to the Hollywood shows. The main difference would be the extended version of Dig Me Out that they closed the show with. It wasn’t as charged as the previous L.A. shows but it was still really fun and a great time… well, for most of us.

Towards the end of the set, the night really started to fall apart for Carrie Brownstein. First, her shoelaces came untied during a song so she had to take a quick break to retie them. Janet played some shoe tying music and Carrie joked that “Janet shows up every morning at my house to play that while I get dressed.” A little bit later someone tossed up a dirty sock on stage. This were all little incidentals, not anything major. Then it got worse.

During the main set finale of Step Aside, Carrie ran into some technical problems when she stomped her blues driver pedal for her little solo section. Instead of adding a little distortion, her guitar just hit dead air. Nothing. While Corin fought for time, Carrie tried to fix her equipment. Now, anybody that’s hooked up a chain of guitar pedals knows that when there’s a short in your wiring, it’s the most agonizing thing because there’s no way to know where the short is among the five or six cables. Carrie finally decided to plug directly into the amp… except when she yanked the cable she found out that the roadie had tied a knot with the cable to secure it to the pedal board. It’s one of those stage nightmares that you never wish on anyone, and it was heartbreaking to see it happen. They finally hooked everything up and they finished out Step Aside and Carrie worked with the guitar tech to get everything up and running again.

When they got back for the encore, Carrie got on the mike and said “Will whoever is throwing nickels up here please stop? If anything you should be throwing hundred dollar bills, and not fucking nickels.” Now… who the hell throws nickels at a band you paid to see? I mean, it’s not like Carrie half-asses it out there… what did she do to deserve change getting tossed at her? First there are people peeing on the floor and now there’s someone using Carrie as target practice. What is wrong with people these days?

They knocked out a short encore of two songs and left. I think they were planning on playing Private Idaho (they were practicing it during soundcheck) but it never got played. They had never played Pomona before, and I’m not sure they’ll be all that eager to go back.

Hopefully Carrie used up all her bad luck tonight and has flawless shows the rest of the tour.

Pictures of the show available here.

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I spent the last couple of nights (yeah, two nights) at the Sleater-Kinney shows in Hollywood. I won’t clutter the blog with my extended rambling, but I did do some fairly detailed writeups that I put on the SK show review archive thingamajig. The first night’s review is here and the second night’s is here.

I also put up pictures of the two nights here and here.

I don’t really recommend the show reviews for anyone that’s not into Sleater-Kinney, but everyone should look at the pictures, just to see how close I was to the stage both nights.

Short notes:

Sleater-Kinney still rules.

Frighteningly, I think they’re still getting better.

I saw people weeping and screaming like the Beatles were on Sullivan again.

The people that are stalking Carrie Brownstein scare me. That’s saying something.

It felt like there were thousands of people there the second night, although it was probably only seven or eight hundred.

Corin, Carrie and Janet are probably the most considerate rockstars I’ve ever seen.

Rock shows are better when it’s hot and sweaty.

Being in the front row puts a lot of pressue on you as a fan to sing along and dance constantly. I felt rude if I wasn’t at least bobbing my head and lip-syncing.

I’m probably too old for the rock shows.

It never feels like I’m too old when the music’s still this good.

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The Scratch documentary was already one of the greatest things ever, but the DVD ups the ante by including extra footage and a couple of instructional vids from Z-Trip and DJ Q-Bert and some more footage from BattleSounds. BUY IT.

To celebrate the release, there was an instore at Amoeba with DJ Rhettmatic from the Beat Junkies and MixMasterMike. Rhettmatic’s set was stunning, but Mike’s was just a wonder. I’ve caught him spin before, but the thing that I always marvel about him is how percussive and punchy his scratches are. He has a really good knack of ending all his scratches on the kick, so there’s always this element of a finish that other guys lack. The only comparison I have is how the JB horns used to punctuate James Brown’s interludes with that thunderous BAP that’s found in only the funkiest of the funky.

I also picked up Z-Trip and DJ P’s 2001 release Uneasy Listening Vol 1, which is basically the most messed up blended mix tape ever. It starts with Rhinestone Cowboy blending into Pink Floyd’s “Run Like Hell” and gets weirder and weirder, including blends like Pharcyde over Pat Benatar, Metallica fading into Midnight Oil. There were only 1,000 of these printed a year ago, but for some reason Amoeba has five or six copies. So if you were looking for it, go there.

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After getting nothing but good word of mouth for a weekend, I found myself checking out Barbershop, a great movie about a shop on the downside of Chicago. I’m not going to get too much into plot, because it’s not really important. I won’t even talk about how funny it is, although it is really, really funny.

The thing that struck me about Barbershop was how perfectly it captured the vibe of a neighborhood shop. All the characters seem like stereotypes at first, but they get filled out immediately with little excess. Every character seems like someone you know or once knew, or better yet, wish you knew. I’m sure the crew had a fun time filming, because that joy infects the film, and it’s hard not to crack a smile.

The film reminded me too much of growing up, of stoop conversations and killing time with neighborhood folks. I used to go to this barbershop, occasionally, over on Crenshaw and MLK, and I never once got my hair cut. I was there because my friend hung out there (it was downstairs from his mom’s shop). Guys would talk, play dominoes and a crazy dude would always bust in trying to sell something. And like clockwork, every Sunday morning at 11:00am, everyone, and I mean everyone, would stop dead and watch Soul Train on Channel 5 and stare at that one chick that was way finer than all the other ones on Soul Train. Yeah, you know the one. One time, we even busted a Soul Train line.

Man. I need a haircut.

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I got tired of the gray, so we’re back to bright and peppy and possibly even eye-damaging colors.

School’s in session, so I figured I’d show off the colors.

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Does anybody remember when Quentin Tarantino used to make movies? After five years, he’s finally paused his burgeoning acting career *cough* to put together Kill Bill. Will it be any good? Will anyone care?

The unofficial Kill Bill website‘s got everything you might want to know, as well as a script (no idea how close it might be to the shooting script). A quick skim of the script makes it seem like Tarantino’s essentially made a FoxForce 5 movie, with one of the foxy ladies declaring glorious revenge on her former teammates and boss for doing her wrong. Mix that in elements from Hong Kong, spaghetti westerns and some more generic 70s exploitation flix, and you start to get the idea. Doesn’t seem particularly deep, but it might be fun. The whole shebang should be ready in October 2003. Hell… everyone’s waited long enough. What’s another year?

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