I won't rest until I don't care

I didn't really do my homework before we went to see Xiu Xiu last night. I mean, I did go to womenaslovers.com but I mostly just dicked around looking at pictures and reading the haikus Jamie Stewart writes for people. I fucking love haiku.

So anyway, when Xiu Xiu took the stage, I was actually surprised to see that Jamie Stewart is a guitar man. It is probably because I'm ignorant or some shit but when I listen to Xiu Xiu recordings in most songs the last thing I really think about noticing is a guitar. That's just the magic of technology I guess.

Xiu Xiu is absolutely amazing to watch. There is incredible tension and energy. Noises that seem random and chaotic on record make more sense live. You can see the band's awareness of each other. You can see them anticipating sounds, watching each other, and those interactions create a kind of context for the chaos. I was especially impressed with the drummer Ches Smith, and not just because he is foxy and really tall. Homeboy is by far the sweatiest guy in the band and he just pulls beats out of nowhere.

For me, the highlight of the show was when Jamie Stewart busted out the autoharp. I couldn't restrain myself from shouting, "OH YES!" when I saw him plug it in. I'm really excited about autoharps since I found one in my garage a couple weeks ago. It was awesome to see him just fucking rock with it. He does the same kind of rockstar lunge with the autoharp that he does with his guitar. It is probably the most masculine posture it is possible to assume while playing such an instrument.

I kind of missed two of the opening acts because I was busy drinking on an empty stomach (I never said I didn't make bad decisions). There were a lot of people at the Casbah last night and it was stressing me out so obviously the best choice was to have a couple vodka tonics for dinner. There were guys on the patio giving out free packs of cigarettes that start out as normal cigs but if you squish some magic bubble inside them they turn into menthols. Didn't colonists used to give out cigarettes to indigenous peoples to gain their trust and then trick them into shit by exploiting their addiction? I think I remember something like that from some history class I slept through once.

I did catch half a set by this rad San Diego band Fantasic Magic. An acoustic guitar, an electric guitar, a bunch of weird noise and dudes singing in falsetto. What's not to love? They don't seem to have any more shows coming up but they did release and sell out a limited edition cassette tape. They also blog about the musics here. One of them really reminds me of Nicholas Cage in Raising Arizona. I think that's really important for y'all to know.

That's all I got for now. I gotta go wash my bangs so the rest of me can stay dirty.

I Do What I Want, When I Want

The last couple of days have been a little rough for me. I get to take home a lot of expensive skincare products FO FREE thanks to my job and I tried a new one a couple days ago only to find out I am allergic to the main ingredient. For a day, I had this horrifying blotchy rash all over my neck, decolete and inner forearms. It has by now reduced itself to my neck being itchy. Sucks. It reminds me of that one episode of South Park when the boys get chicken pox and Cartman yells at his mom about calamine lotion. CAN'T STOP SCRATCHING!!! And don't even start me on eating frozen yogurt and a veggie burrito from Rico's in the same day. Shit works your system.

Complaining about nothing and over-sharing aside, we are going to see Xiu Xiu tonight at Chateau Casbah. Mostly because there are probably going to be a lot of really foxy oversensitive dudes that could be easily manipulated. I'm just kidding, I don't go to shows to pick up dudes. I don't blog to pick up dudes. Who told you that? Whatever.

I have been trying (again) to warm up to Xiu Xiu (I used to hate Sunset Rubdown and look what happened) and I'll admit I like the music a lot, I just don't really know yet if I like homeboy's voice. I've heard they put on a pretty impressive live show, I AM COUNTING ON IT, XIU XIU!!!

This here first video is for "Boy Soprano"



and this video is is for the song "I Do What I Want, When I Want" from their latest album "Women as Lovers." You know, the album they are probably touring for.



If you're into it, go hit up Kill Rock Stars and order it. Dudes can't keep making records if you steal it all from the internet.

If you hate having fun and don't want to get your tits signed (by me, you may kiss Megan's hand but not address her) you can also go to that storage closet in the middle of a swamp the Che Cafe to see some local clusterfuck. Weatherbox, Lanterns, BoomSnake, Crooks and Fever Sleeves. Starts at 6 p.m. , costs $10.

Now that all of that is out of the way, I can talk about black metal. I talk a big game about being a black metal elitist and it's true, I still love some of it. I like shit that makes me want to ride a dragon to work. Nothing wrong with that. I was even in a black metal band in high school. We were called F.A.T.E (Five Across the Eyes) and our fake three song EP was called "Dragon Kick." I was in a period in my life where I wanted to be as offensive as possible and simultaneously play guitar as loud and fast as I could. The good news is, I'm still pretty offensive. I like black metal because it's fucking ridiculous. The corpse paint, the costumes...if you want to be taken seriously in black metal you best be lookin' right. Fine examples of corpse paint below:



My favorite bands are of the Norwegian symphonic persuasion, like Emperor. They ditched the corpse paint after a while and a couple of their original members got in a hot mess of trouble for shit like church burning. Fuckin' brutal. Now they are "broken up" (played a show in Los Angeles in June) and doing shit like voice acting in Metalocalypse and getting endorsements from Ibanez. They unfortunately don't have a video for one of my favorite songs "In the Wordless Chamber" but here is a video that was made in the last decade, for the song "Empty." I just really like the violin.



In a display of total ludicrousness, stupid costumes and all, the video for "The Loss and Curse of Reverence:"





gotta find my upside down cross necklace,

'stina

Poppycock

I spent way too much time looking at lolcats this morning so this might be a mess 'cause I gotta go to work in an hour and I still have to brush my disgusting mane and get my makeup on, you know, gotta paint the barn.

We saw Thao with The Get Down Stay Down last night at Chateau Casbah and her set was really fun and stuff, but we are going to vlog about the show and I don't want to give it all away now (that's what she said). We had a quickie (interview) with Justin Ringle from one of the opening bands, Horse Feathers and he offered to let us shoot him an e-mail with more questions. So, gentle readers, what do you want to know about the dude whose voice sounds like a thousand tiny angel kisses? Don't let these ponies resort to familiar tricks like "who's your favorite Bronte sister? SAY EMILY!"

not naming names on that last one or anything,

'stina.