Band Review: Sky Crawlers

Sky Crawlers is a pop punk/punk rock band from Turkey. The best comparison I can make is to early Green Day. Yes, I am a little surprised to be aware of them.

This is a case of a band that followed me on Twitter, and I followed back, and therefore I always knew I would review them. I am going with them for today because I am pressed for time and they don’t have a very large catalog yet, so I had time to review them.

I have to say that they are a lot of fun to listen to. On Soundcloud, that includes three songs, loaded individually and together on a three song demo. “The Voice Inside My Head” is my favorite of the three.

All of the songs are pretty good, guitar driven with fast tempos. The vocals sometimes come off as a bit flat, but that could almost be a recording issue. They also have some work to do on stage presence. From an instrumental point of view, they are very solid.

Moving over to Youtube they have nine videos, and you can watch them all in about half an hour. All three songs from Soundcloud are represented, as well as some previews of a new song and a Fall Out Boy cover.

In addition to their music, I like their attitude. On their Facebook page they list their influences as “Everything” and their hometown as “Earth”. That just warms my heart, even if I wasn’t predisposed towards punk.

I don’t know what my odds of getting to see them are, whether that means them touring the States or me making my way to Turkey, but I could be good with either of those. Check them out.

https://www.facebook.com/skycrawlers/info
https://soundcloud.com/skycrawlersband

http://www.youtube.com/user/SkyCrawlersBand/videos?view=0

http://twitter.com/SkyCrawlersBand

Cynic-rella, by Gina Harris

It had been a magical evening in every way.

To go from being the unwanted, ash-covered stepchild to dancing with the prince, charming him as much as charmed by him, because of a fairy godmother – well that was literally magical.

Better yet, when the evening ended it hadn’t really ended because the prince came looking for her. He found her! He recognized her! And then he changed his mind.

“Somehow, being here with you now, instead of in the ballroom, with that dress…”

“We can go back to the ballroom! You can buy me a dress! I’ll change!”

The fairy godmother still probably could have pulled off a save, if she had showed up. In retrospect, a fairy godmother who lets you spend years neglected and slaving away for your stepfamily is probably not the most reliable source of help.

So, that seemed to be that. She’d had her moment, which turned out to be a very brief moment, and now it was over.

It shouldn’t have been so unbearable. Her life was exactly what it had been before. Yes, it had been a miserable life, but she was used to that. Somehow, everything felt worse.

It didn’t make sense until she heard her stepsisters griping to each other.

“I thought I could be a princess, and now this!”

“Well I wanted to be a princess too!”

Then it devolved into cat-fighting, but she found her answer in that brief exchange. It was so rare for her stepsisters to say anything valuable, but that made sense. It was one thing to have a view of a better life, but she sort of had that already; the lives of her stepsisters were really pretty good, regardless of what they thought.

No, what was tearing her up inside was that hope that she could have something better. It had been so real, and then it was dashed. The misery of her daily life was old, but the sense of loss was new, and it was hurting her in spots that she hadn’t even known existed before.

The first thing she did was consult a lawyer. He was initially reluctant to get involved, as a breach of contract case without an actual contract is a tricky thing. However, as she explained more about the case, particularly that it involved the royal family, the case became more compelling. For once in her life, things started going right.

It turns out that popular opinion regarding the royal family was at an all-time low in the kingdom. That the ball had resulted not in the elevation of a fellow citizen, but a hasty marriage to a princess from a nearby and uninteresting kingdom left a sour taste in the public mouth. There was even briefly talk of a class action lawsuit for all of the disappointed eligible young women who attended the ball.

That never materialized, because clearly not all of them could have married the prince. However, his pointed interest in our heroine, his seeking her out with the stated intent to marry her, and the subsequent rejection did end up counting, and with only one claimant, the claim was huge.

And thus, fortunes were reversed. The royal popularity never recovered, and while marriages started through romance are not always happy, arranged marriages based on pride and politics aren’t the best starting point either. The prince did become a king, but he was a king with a low treasury, a disrespectful populace, a shrewish wife, and the beginnings of male pattern baldness.

She could have gloated over this. She could also have taken pleasure in a drastically different attitude on the part of her stepfamily. Instead, she decided not to care. She only wanted to get away.

Searching through real estate listings, she eventually found the perfect thing: an olive grove in the Mediterranean. She knew enough about exploitation of the disadvantage to never want to be like that, so she treated her employees well, with good wages. If those handsome young orchard workers ever decide that they want shirts or shoes, they will have no trouble affording them.

The rustic life is peaceful, but if she ever gets restless she simply takes a trip and stays at nice hotels, where at last she is treated like a queen.

Corporate Malfeasance, by Gina Harris

In many ways, it is merely luck that I am alive and director of human resources.

Everything is due to my vacation. The timing was most important. True, I was unusually exhausted before I left, but the vacation schedule had been set long before I started sliding downhill, so I can’t take any credit for that. It was also important that the vacation I chose was relaxing and refreshing, but as a single apartment-dweller, that was the most likely option.

Most of my coworkers spent vacations chasing kids or catching up on home improvement tasks. These are worthy accomplishments, but you may return in worse shape than when you left. I spent two weeks reading, lying on the beach, and basically just resting up. When I returned to work I found out there had been three heart attacks during my absence, one fatal, and everyone looked very sickly. I mean, more so than usual.

We’d had cardiac incidents before, but usually more spread out over the course of a year. When you stick two hundred data entry clerks and programmers in a concrete, fluorescent-lit box with candy and soda machines in every corner, it just kind of happens. Of course people look bulgy and pasty. Of course they tend to get listless in the afternoon. Of course they age prematurely. Somehow this time was worse.

So there I was, feeling fully alive and standing among the sitting and typing dead. With my mind alert for once, I was disturbed by the image, and curious about it as well. I had to know what was happening. I began to look around, hoping to solve the mystery before I became a casualty of it.

The first thing I noticed was that upper management all had a healthy glow. This was odd. One would expect managers to face higher pressure, and show a higher toll from stress. They seemed cheerful, well rested, and highly nourished. The only people who seemed to match them at all were a couple of IT guys running around doing system diagnostics.

That was the other thing that was odd. They stated there were some serious performance issues that they needed to resolve, and they were working very hard to do it, but no one was experiencing any computer problems. The network was running fast, the database was stable, and no individuals were experiencing system problems. Also, it seemed like a lot of the things that they were checking were not actually computer-related.

That night I stayed late, catching up on two weeks worth of e-mail. As the building slowly emptied, I could not stop thinking about the lower level of the building. There was one door leading down to the basement (conveniently near my desk), and the two IT guys had been going in and out of it all day. That in itself would not be unusual; all the backup servers and mainframes and such were supposed to be down there. However, the three upper managers had also spent a lot of time down there. As I thought about it, it occurred to me that I had seen the managers go down there almost every day, while no one else ever did. And the regular IT guy, who took care of minor PC and network repairs had never gone down there, at least not that I had seen. In light of this, though I was scared, I had to check it out. I was already feeling my energy level sinking to pre-vacation levels, and it was happening far too fast.

Down I went, first there was a very normal, concrete flight of stairs, then a non-descript metal door which I thought would be locked, yet was not. Tentatively I pulled open the door, and saw no mainframes, no servers, just a bank of video cameras and a distillery.

When I say a distillery, that does not give the full impression. There were various tubes and hoses leading down from the ceiling. Can you imagine a pale liquid light? That was being sucked through them into a large glass globe. Steam from a copper boiler to the side was being introduced into the globe, forcing the liquid down a narrow neck into a smaller tub. One side of the tub had a tube that was apparently used for filling the nearby bottles, and on the other side was a tap. I saw our senior manager fill a mug and drain it with great satisfaction. He smacked his lips and gave an “Ah!” of refreshment, and then he turned around and saw me.

“Well, this is awkward,” he said.

I could have reacted to that, I suppose, but my attention was caught by the video monitors. They showed different areas of the work floor, and underneath the photo image each screen showed the names of the employees who worked in that area. Each name had a human shaped meter, and below the row of meters was the label “Life Force Remaining”. Higgins was the fatal heart attack from last week, and his meter was all black.

“You’re sucking the life out of us!” I exclaimed in disbelief.

My manager ducked his head sheepishly. I guess I had expected some argument or denial, but nothing.

“Well,” I struggled to find the words, “you shouldn’t.” Even I thought it sounded lame.

“You think other companies don’t?”

“Not this literally.”

He shrugged, disturbingly calm. “So what are you going to do about it?”

“I guess I should try and stop you.”

“That’s not very likely.”

I struggled for a rebuttal. If this was an action movie I would have to blow the place up, but even if I had access to powerful explosives, I would probably get arrested, and then locked up as insane when I tried to explain my actions.

“I’m quitting!”

“In this job market?”

“And I would be abandoning everyone else.”

“Do you really even care about your coworkers that much?”

He had me there. Most of them were unobjectionable enough, but we were not a tight-knit bunch, and I had homicidal fantasies about Elliott in the next cube almost daily. Still, it should not have been this difficult to hang on to the moral high ground in an argument against corporate vampirism.

“Allow me to show you some studies. We keep a careful eye on industry benchmarks, and I think you’ll see that our mortality rate is significantly below the standard.”

He then showed me several pages of charts. For the technology sector, it was apparently safer to work at our company than six of the top ten companies. The only reason things had gotten so bad lately was that the energy drain had started leaking, and extracting more than the usual amount. That was the problem IT had been investigating, but things were expected to return to normal next week, leaving my employer less deadly than 270 of the Fortune 500 companies.

“In fact, every five years spent at (a well-known company) takes one year off the average lifespan, whereas you need to spend seven years here for the same effect. I admit we’re far from equal with companies in the athletic apparel industries, but this seems to be due to a more active employee lifestyle, which we don’t believe we would be able to successfully encourage.”

He had a point there.

Plus our benefits are significantly better than half of these companies. You know we have excellent medical, dental, and retirement plans.”

“Do people live to use the retirement?”

“Sometimes.”

I was not comfortable with this, but I was losing the fight.

“I am going to have to take my chances elsewhere.”

“We’ll give you a raise.”

“How much?”

“I’ll raise you to $70,000 a year.”

“Plus an extra week of vacation.”

“Done.”

And so it seemed that I could do more good within the organization than without it. Ultimately, we agreed that the best way to overcome the current crisis was a complete reorganization. Lay-offs were announced and the weakest were let go. Our two surviving coronaries got generous severance packages, and a suggestion to follow their doctors’ advice about working towards a healthier lifestyle.

Naturally the reduced workforce did not last long. We completely refigured and retooled. We took away the retirement plan, and downgraded the medical and dental. Instead, we went with higher pay, discount gym memberships, and scholarships. That way, people came, but they didn’t stay long-term. When we started recruiting again it was with an emphasis on students saving up for college.

They had a tendency to be younger and stronger, as well as less concerned about benefits, and they would usually move on before we used them up. The less ambitious ones would often stay on at their own peril. We tried to discourage it, but I guess there is a point to survival of the fittest. Should I have felt guilty when Elliott slumped over one day? Perhaps, but I had called 911 right away and what more can you do?

You see, the emphasis had been all wrong. With the comfortable, non-stimulating environment, management had been working towards retention of a docile herd. Production was steadily, but generally declining. I recommended the changes for the sake of the producers, but it turned out to be more efficient for the consumers as well. The younger, livelier stock produced at significantly higher levels, and at much lower cost, and then they would rotate out before they died. Sure, they might end up in another soul-killing job, but we were giving them a fighting chance and profits were up. Sometimes you are rewarded for doing the less wrong thing.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, and I can’t blame you. I was had the same thoughts myself. So I did try it, just once. It’s most similar to Mountain Dew, but more effervescent.

Writing showcase

I am on vacation this week, and I didn’t want to give up daily postings, but also I had a lot of things I was trying to get done, so I decided Monday through Wednesday would be other things I have written where I don’t really have anything to do with them.

I guess it goes back to The Bear in the Net. I care about that, but I don’t think I will spend a lot of time doing children’s stories. Still, posting that was good. Some people read it, and some people liked it, and that meant something to me.

I don’t know how anyone feels about the comic book, but I finally finished the screenplay based on the dream I had involving vampires and the All-American Rejects, and I let a fan read it, and she loved it, so I will take that. Yes, I write for me, and yet they are still meant to be read.

I can’t do too much posting with the screenplays. I want to sell them, so as intellectual property they need to be somewhat protected, but that’s not all I have, and most of the other stuff is never going to go anywhere.

The novel is too long for posting, and I think I would be pretty unhappy with it now. There is a novella that I wrote of “Hungry” before I wrote it as a screenplay, which I really needed to do first, but that’s kind of long too, and again, I would probably not be satisfied with the quality. I have an unfinished ghost story that still may become a screenplay, so that is off the table too.

That leaves us with a song, a couple of essays, and the things that we are actually going to use: one poem and two short story type things. And yes, they are getting some rewriting too.

Corporate Malfeasance was absolutely written while I was working at Intel, but there are other inspirations there too. That will probably go up Tuesday.

Cynic-rella came about after the accountant, so it’s a few years old, and honestly, I didn’t write it correctly the first time. What I did write has some interesting points, but I got lost in the lead-in without getting to the point. Therefore, it will be the most re-written.of the three. I have still kind of given the material as is, though. One night I was scheduled to do stand up comedy, and it was a bad week ending in the death of a pet, and I could not do what I normally did, so I just told them Cynic-rella and it worked.

Thursday and Friday should be reviews of bands that don’t have many songs available yet, and of course, all of this hinges on me being able to get an internet connection at least once a day. If I can’t, the material is still written, so will be there waiting for me.

That just leaves Monday, today, and a piece that is not cynical or satirical, but very close to my heart.

I have always wanted the magic wand solution, where good things happen and you never have to worry again. Big hopes have been selling a screenplay or winning on Jeopardy. I can rule out the second one now, but am still hoping for the first.

If I sell a screenplay, that will be amazing, and it will help financially, but it would probably take multiple sales to be able to write full time, and ultimately, I will still need to work. There is always the chance of contacts drying up, or losing a job, and accepting that was one thing, but I also had to learn that it was for the best, and there ended up being Biblical overtones.

I did try writing an essay about that, but putting in the specifics dragged it down, and leaving out the specifics made it weak. Somehow the answer to that was to turn it into a poem.

Daily Bread, by Gina Harris

Elisha, at the widow’s need

Found one resource she had left

Then made the oil multiply

Pouring in to pot and cruse and vase

Each filled container set aside

Until she could repay her debt

I am more like the widow of Zarephath.

In a lean and hungry time

She took Elijah as her guest.

Oil multiplied, and meal,

But only day by day.

Never empty, but not overflowing,

Until the famine went away.

I’d like to see Heaven’s windows open,

Spill out in plenty over me,

See the fruits of years of toil

Blossom with great rapidity.

But I might find, were that the case

That sloth would grow from too much ease.

Perhaps I’d think the glory mine,

And spend less time on bended knee.

Enough for a day is still enough.

Not rich, I am still loved and fed

Remembering always, I need Thee

And always granted daily bread.

Concert Review: Keane – The Breadth of Life

This may be my most rambling poorly organized review ever, but we’ll see how it goes.

For the concert itself, it was really good. As I said, it was the first concert that I have gone to alone, and knowing that can turn out okay has opened up my options some, as I have bought single tickets to three concerts since then. (To be fair, those are all general admission shows, as Keane was, so other people can join up later and it’s not an issue.)

One thing that I found kind of funny is that I got a great e-mail from the Crystal Ballroom (venue) on the day of the concert, with information about line and times and it was very helpful, but either there or on a sign, there was a warning about bright lights, in case you were seizure sensitve. Honestly, it never got that strobe-y, but I am not prone to seizures so what would I know. However, it was brighter than most shows, which meant that my photos were less awful than usual, which is why I have included a few.

The concert was really good. I came home and sent a tweet to Keane and Richard Hughes (drums – he’s the only one on Twitter last I checked, but he is my favorite so it works out) that it was perfect, and they played every song that I could possibly have wanted. Later on I thought of others that they could have played that would have been nice, but still, it was great song after great song, and the crowd was really into it.

The crowd was much younger than I expected, and I had some very annoying young people push in front of me, which would have been okay if the girls hadn’t been so stupid and the one guy hadn’t been so tall. However, the other guy, after one of the songs we just kind of looked at each other, and nodded, and we had this moment. I don’t know you, and your friends have irritated me, but at this moment we are emotionally in sync because of our response to the music, we are united, and that was kind of cool.

Like many people, my first introduction to Keane was hearing “Somewhere Only We Know” on the radio, and it instantly grabbed me. It’s a very powerful song. Based on that alone is pretty much why I wanted to see them back in 2006. Honestly, I hadn’t thought much about their music beyond that, until later. 

I guess the first step came at, if I recall, a McDonald’s in Rotorua New Zealand. I think that’s where we were. It was on that trip anyway. We were eating in the restaurant and they had a video screen, and they played some pretty good videos, including “Is It Any Wonder”. I realized I liked it, so I was going to watch it again, and that led to more videos. There were two songs that ended up being especially important to me shortly after.

I have written before about how the period of unemployment that followed that trip, and how much it altered my sense of myself, and the depression that came with it. Yes, My Chemical Romance’s “I’m Not Okay” was my anthem for the rebellious side of that, but for the aching side it was ”Everybody’s Changing”.

I have also written how the loss of the job was quickly followed by illness, and isolation, and then death, and they helped me there too. It took a while to find a song for Josh, and that ended up being “Kids in the Street” by the All-American Rejects, but right away there was a song for Uncle Paolo, and that was “A Heart to Hold You”. It wasn’t even a regular track. It was something they did on a radio show, but people recorded it and loaded it to Youtube, with stills of the bands or scenes from TV shows. It would have been easy to miss, but it found me at the right time, when I needed it.

Frank Iero was writing lately about losing people and how hard it is to be helpful, and I’ve run into that too. I am religious, I believe these separations are temporary, but it doesn’t stop the pain. There would be something wrong with our hearts if we didn’t feel it. So, all you can really say is “I’m sorry this hurts and I know I can’t help, but I care”, and somehow that does help. I think it’s because you take away the pressure for them to feel better, which will proceed at its own pace. 

So if we need to feel the pain, and sometimes we have hard times dealing with it, music is amazingly powerful for that need. In fact, there is a definite ache to many Keane songs, and that is not a bad thing. Sometimes it is an ache that not only you relate to, but you specifically need, because they’re putting it in the song somehow takes a piece of the burden for you. 

In addition, they do it beautifully. I love guitar, and I have written about that a lot, but does any band use piano and keyboards better than Keane? I don’t think so. Thank you Tim Rice-Oxley. Combine that with Tom Chaplin’s amazing voice, and so often their music just soars. They send that pain into the sky, and perhaps that’s why there ends up being so much hope to it.

For some of the band’s other good qualities, it may be easier to start with a song that I did not like right away. “Disconnected” was the first track I heard off of Strangeland. Actually, it was not just hearing it, it was also seeing the video. 

Now the video is a really well-done homage to old Italian horror movies. They have really captured the look and feel and mood of them; it is amazingly done. I don’t really care for those movies, and so initially I was not thrilled with the song.

As I listened to it more, I could see how it really fit. Without spoiling too much of the video, it seems to be a story of a haunting, where the haunter and the hauntee is not immediately clear. There is a man, and a woman, and they once loved each other, but they cannot see each other now, they can only be aware of a supernatural presence.

The song is about something undefined that is creeping into a relationship, and slowly separating the two from each other. It’s an old issue, perhaps the same one at the root of “Dustland Fairy Tale”, however here they take it from the prosaic drifting apart to focus more on the eerieness of it; how is this happening? Are we powerless against it? And in that sense, the video is perfect.

So that’s two other things that I wanted to point out. One is there commitment to the visual artistry of the videos, as a natural extension to the art of the music. I haven’t seen all of their videos, but from what I have it’s a common thread. They have some really amazing short films.

Also, I have to give them credit for a lot of intelligence, and a serious application of it to the human condition. That sounds stuffy, but it isn’t. They have a broad catalog, and it covers a lot. “Disconnected” is about a relationship that is losing its power but the trappings are still there, but they have other songs about physical separation, and togetherness. There are songs about helping yourself, and about helping each other. Sometimes it gets existential, and often there is a feeling of something more, but they cover a lot. 

So there are songs that have meant a lot to me in different ways, and there may be songs that haven’t resonated with me yet, but will. I have not gone through and nerdily created a spreadsheet tracking every single emotion and situation they cover, but you know, now that I have thought about it, I might. Anyway, that’s what I mean by “breadth”. There is depth, but it is the broadness of their scope that speaks to me more.

Keane added Jesse Quin in 2007, and I think he adds an interesting energy to the band, but they are still very much them: beautiful, intelligent, and full of meaning. I’m glad they’re around.

http://www.keanemusic.com/

Band Review: Youngblood Hawke

The review gave me a serious case of cognitive dissonance.

First let me cover the band I saw. I admit I walked in late, so I may have missed some things, but what I thought I saw was very much a 70’s band, builidng up the hair and glam a little bit as they transitioned into the 80’s. Actually, seriously I thought they could have been guys that had gone to school with my brother (class of ’83), but had not aged. I kind of started looking for Ron and Darren.

That did not make me particularly happy, because never having heard of Youngblood Hawke before, I kept thinking of Hawkwind, so seeing the 70’s clothes and hair made me think I was going to find myself back in the Pulsing Cavern, and I was annoyed in that cavern!

Fortunately, they were fine. It was only a few songs that did not really stick with me, so I stayed fixated on the clothes and hair. I did see them taking pictures with people out front after the show, which I respect, but I knew that any real analysis of their music would have to come later.

Well, that brings us to Spotify listening, and this is where things did not seem to match up. First of all, suddenly there was a woman. I’m not saying that it’s impossible that there was a woman on that stage, but it had seemed to be all males, and suddenly listening to their recordings it sounded very female. There is one in the band, but she seems to be a much bigger part of the vocals than I had noticed at the show.

Also, it turns out that they don’t really have many songs. They are a new band, working on new material, so this makes sense, but they really only have four songs. However, they have 24 tracks on Spotify. How did this happen? Lots of repetition. The five top hits are exactly the same as the five singles, and under albums you have those same five again plus commentary on four of them. Why only four? Because one of those five is just an acoustic version of “We Come Running”. Also, I’m not sure it is truly acoustic. There is less electronica, but it is still there.

The other six are different mixes of “We Come Running” There’s the Tiesto Remix, the RAC Mix, the Knocks Remix, Spacebrother Remix, Vicetone Remix, and BIZNIZ Remix. I’m not sure I understand the difference between a mix and a remix. Actually, the main point I want to make here is that if you listen to their whole catalog this way, you will hear “We Come Running” 12 times; “Stars”, “Forever”, and “Rootless” three times each, plus the four commentary tracks. Obviously this seems insane so I decided to do it.

You know, it wasn’t awful. They do fall firmly in the category of “not my thing”, which it is good to be okay with, and “We Come Running” does finally stick in my head now, so even though the show did not manage that, listening to it 12 times in a row did. (I still don’t really remember the other three.)

They do have a definite spirit to them, and I did see them being attentive to fans, so maybe they just need more time. Eventually they will have more songs. I don’t know that any song will ever be improved by a club mix, but again, there are people who like that sort of thing. I could conceivably check in on them again in a few years.

That being said, I am finally cured of hearing “indie” and thinking that’s the logical follower to “alternative”. It hadn’t quite sunk in with M83 yet, but I’ve got it down now.

The Year of Magical Concert-Going

Yes, this was not either of the previous two choices, but I have been so ecstatic about my concert-going lately that it’s just on the brain.

Now, if we hark back to Concert Scorecard, I have been having really good luck, and suddenly I have also bought tickets to The Gaslight Anthem, Mindless Self-Indulgence, and Fall Out Boy is coming, though the tickets are not on sale yet.

So, I was already feeling like rock was smiling on me, and then two things got me thinking. One is that my sisters asked me whom I had left. Technically that would be Jimmy Eat World, Maroon 5, and My Chemical Romance. Also, thinking about the Revenir show Sunday, I do feel bad that I won’t get to see it, but I decided mentally that it’s okay because they will be here in September.

This kind of got me into a train of thought that hey, maybe I can just make it happen. Therefore, if I am somehow the driving force behind the end of the Fall Out Boy hiatus, you’re welcome! (Actually, Mark Hoppus says it was his idea, and I believe him.)

Anyway, as lovely as it was to see The Fixx in August, I am going to say this lucky streak started October 28^th with the All American Rejects. Then we have the Gin Blossoms on November 10^th, The Killers on December 5^th, and Keane on January 8^th.

Concerts that are scheduled and which you better believe I will attend include The Gaslight Anthem in April, Mindless Self Indulgence in May, and Fall Out Boy in June. That seems to leave February bare, but actually I am going to see Toque Libre Friday night, so I’m calling it good.

In some ways it might be fair if my luck only continues through September, because otherwise that’s more than a year, and yet, I don’t see how My Chemical Romance could possibly get here before December, so I am going to call it as 2013 being the lucky year, and it just happened to start a few months early.

Revenir in September still feels good. That gives them time to get the record out, tour closer to home, and work their way out here. That leaves July, August, October, and November.

Jimmy Eat World should totally come in July. Their record is already finished, and we are much closer to home for them.

I don’t think Maroon 5 is plausible for this year, because they are already touring and already and they don’t have a Portland date. They are the one I am most ambiguous on, though, so it’s okay.

Now that we have covered the biggest priorities, who is good for those remaining three months?

Well, I would love to see Charlie Sexton again. He would be lovely in November. Should a spoken word show count? I have seen Henry Rollins before, but actually, I did have to leave early because of Maria. To be fair, he can talk for three hours straight, so it is not entirely her fault, but he can come in October.

That just leaves August. The funny thing is that we are taking a road trip to South Dakota, so maybe we should just go see someone in Sturgis. However, I have been thinking about a couple of bands here. Green Day and Blink 182 both have new stuff out. Green Day I have seen, and it was a great show. Blink I have avoided, sensing that perhaps they would be so immature that I would not be able to enjoy it. Years later, perhaps they would be more mature.

Or, if we take the healing to include not just missed shows, but also disappointing shows, a good Foo Fighters or Cheap Trick show would also be in order. I may need more than a year’s worth of luck.

Anyway, that’s how I say things are going to be, and my logic is clearly flawless.

Naw, I know there’s no logic, but it kind of doesn’t matter. Great things have happened, additional great things are scheduled, and I’m just happy. You can be happy for me too.

I guess if I shouldn’t pick on you, I shouldn’t pick on your music

It turns out that I can combine tolerance for other bands with Ask.fm, so I still really haven’t made a choice. There would not be a logical connection between Amazon Studios and defending Katy Perry, though, so we still have some suspense for tomorrow.

I guess the first thing to do is to reference once again that I am now connected to a lot of young people through Twitter. I don’t think I have really written that much in the blog about that, but I mention it a lot in conversations because it is always on my mind, and it is probably what is having the greatest influence on my life right now. I will get more into that at some point.

Anyway, part of that is that I am learning about things I would probably not encounter in other ways. One of these has been Ask.fm. It is a web site where you can register so people can ask you anonymous questions. A lot of the people I follow use it.

As anyone who has spent time on the internet knows, anonymity can bring out some horrible bits of human nature. There are occasionally normal questions and compliments, but there also ends up being a lot of vulgarity and a lot of harassment and some really crude harassment.

My initial response was disbelief that anyone would keep inviting these questions, but I do understand the need for contact. I do understand the desire to have someone be interested in you. Most of my bad spells come from that lack, actually. And yes, a lot of it is boredom too, where really, they should go read a book or something, but growing up along with this developing technology has resulted in a different mindset, and that will be interesting to explore at some point also.

So initially I would see these posts “Ask me something, please!” and have no idea what it meant, and then I got what it meant but would see all the sexual questions and suggestions to go kill yourself and name-calling and have no idea why anyone would put up with it, and just recently I have started asking questions, and trying to come up with good questions.

Honestly, it feels like a lot of pressure. Perhaps I should come up with a stack of questions that I can rotate through. I did get one “Best question” with an answer, though, so hey, I could be doing worse. (That particular question was “Superpower: super strength, invisibility, or flying?”)

The thing is, okay, I am at a point where I don’t need to invite questions. If I were to set up something like that, I would want it to be more in-depth or more for advice, because I have a different mindset and am at a different life stage and that’s fine. It doesn’t mean that their desire is invalid, and so if I can help gratify that, I should. This is new, I hope to get better at it, but for now, okay, it’s a reasonable accommodation to make.

Really, everything is new. Tomorrow is the one year anniversary of my even getting on Twitter, and between following and being followed, they were all known, either personally or because I was familiar with their work. My first random young person came about through My Chemical Romance, and seriously, I am still not sure how that happened, but it was cool. Then I picked up an All American Rejects fan, and slowly it started growing, picking up a small number through them. Okay, it was still good.

Everything changed one Friday in October. I was thinking that Friday Follows are dumb, and then I thought, who am I to think that, and decided to follow all suggestions for that day, adding about 80 follows. Even then, that put me at 280, and I follow 437 now, again, often happening in ways that I do not understand.

At the time, we still all had pretty good taste in music, but as my contacts grew, some horrible tastes crept in. I have had to block Justin Bieber because Alyssa keeps retweeting him, and I care about her, but not enough to read his tweets. I have also had to block Taylor Swift and the more popular members of One Direction.

Okay, I blogged quite a bit about what I have against boy bands and pop princesses, and it’s out there, and it still hold true, but if it means something to someone else, I don’t want to rain on that.

I cannot stand Lady Gaga. I think the reason she has to be so bizarre is because no one would pay any attention to her otherwise. However, Mandi loves her, and she finds things that she needs in there, and when she posts about getting ready for the concert and how Gaga took the doll she made, I favorite those posts, because someone I care about has been made happy, and I am grateful for that.

Some of these kids get a lot of grief for their musical tastes. I have mentioned before that I was lucky that my friends and I were all supportive of each other, and of each other’s music. Of course, that was in the 80’s, when you could reasonably like everything, and also, in my group we just didn’t feel the need to be jerks to each other. There were other people who did, and probably some people who were not jerks in junior high started in high school, but that was not part of my experience.

So now there is in fact music that I find horrendous and makes me want to puncture my ear drums, and also, a lot of music that I have no idea what it is, or if I will like it or not when I finally listen to it. I can honestly say, it doesn’t matter. What matters is being kind to each other. If you’re doing that, you’re not going to be picking on each other’s music, or hounding them about their ex and encouraging suicide anonymously.

It’s not my job to tell anyone else how to be. I need to worry about how I am and the correct answer is always going to be kind and loving.

That being said, if I can help introduce some people to better music, I’ll feel good about that, but I’m not going to make them feel bad about what came before. People come up with enough bad feeling on their own. I don’t need to add to it.

Spotify Playlists

A very busy, overloaded time turns into a vacation Saturday afternoon, so while I am excited, I still have a lot of things I need to do, and am feeling a little bit muddled, including regarding knowing what to write about. This week could be technology or music, so the logical place to start is Spotify. Whether the next two days end up being AskFM and Amazon Studios, or respecting other people’s musical choices and please don’t make me defend Katy Perry, I really don’t know yet.

(By the way, rock continues to smile on me. Fall Out Boy is off hiatus and will be here June 18th.)

I have already written about Spotify, and using it over Youtube to check out music before buying, because it seems to be a better way of getting the artists money. It is not perfect. First of all, they don’t pay much at all. It sounds like Pandora pays more, but of course you have less control over that. Also, while a lot of the Youtube videos would not generate anything for the artist, it seems that some do, probably through Vevo especially. So, if anyone has other suggestions for places to listen and explore, I would be interested.

The other issue is that there catalog still has some limitations. I can find a lot, but not everything. A good way to get at this to talk about my attempts to create playlists. For example, I had written some time ago about how there are certain songs that lead into each other for me, and so I thought that would be a good playlist. The proper sequence would be “Desolation Row” by My Chemical Romance, “We’re Not Gonna Take It” by Twisted Sister, “Cum On Feel the Noize” by Quiet Riot, and “Run Run Away” by Slade. All was going fine until Song # 4, and they don’t have it. They have some Slade, but not that one.

So that was frustrating, and ultimately the solution there will be to have everything digital and make playlists in Media Player, which can be done. Also, though, sometimes bands don’t cooperate. The next playlist I made was “Merry Christmas from New Jersey”, and I had contributions from My Chemical Romance, Bon Jovi, and Bruce Springsteen, which was great, and I added “59 Sound” for The Gaslight Anthem, which is not super Christmas-y, but it does reference Marley’s chains, so I went with it, and would it have killed The Misfits to have at some point done a Christmas song? Come on! You have Silent Night, Deadly Night and Santa Clause versus the Martians as source material.

Actually, I suppose they might have; the Spotify catalog for the Misfits is a little spotty. That was actually an issue when I added the two Valentine’s Day lists. If you will recall, last year I posted a love song that I did not find stupid daily from February 1st through 14th, and after mentioning that to Lisa, she gave me her alternatives, which included “Saturday Night”, which took a hold of me, and playing that obsessively led me to My Chemical Romance, and everything that followed from that. Seriously, I still have not been an MCR fan for an entire year. So, I put both of those lists up, but you know which song is missing? “Saturday Night”, which was the most important.

For that issue, what Spotify has for the Misfits seems to lean more to their new configuration, and I don’t know how I feel about that, though they seem to be having more fun now.

Speaking of the Misfits, I did do a Halloween playlist, going from that blog post plus adding some songs I had not known at the time, and that included their “Monster Mash”, because they whole point of that post was that people focus on the original “Monster Mash” and “Thriller” to the point where it’s ridiculous. There’s a nice body of spooky songs out there. True to form though, Spotify does not have “Dracula’s Tango” by Toto Coelo, which would be a good fit.

I have one more playlist, which frankly, is a mess. I started doing it for 12/21/12, where the world did not end, of course, but if it had, what would you listen to. And the problem is that it’s just too much of a hodgepodge. Some of it is apocalyptic, some of it about hope and keeping on, some of it is about specific time constraints, and some of it was just because hey, if I’m on my way out, I want to listen to this one again. Therefore some of it was also reasonable for New Year’s Eve, but it needs better organization.

Actually, I don’t know if I will get back to it. I still have so much else to listen to, and explore, that I don’t know that I need playlists, though I do like my love song one. (Without “Saturday Night”, the only one I really love on Lisa’s is Sparks’ “Eaten by the Monster of Love”.) However, sometimes I think that even when I own the CD (or digital files) that I should still listen on Spotify so the band gets that extra sixteenth of a cent. Plus, if other people click on my lists, then I have gotten them to contribute to supporting bands I like. Well, if I get another good idea for one, I probably will.

Concert Review: The Killers

If I was not able to be wildly enthusiastic about their openers, I am indeed about The Killers. As I posted yesterday, the audience was pretty into M83 and Tegan and Sarah. Some people stood at times, or danced. They definiitely clapped. It was just nothing compared to when the headliner took to the stage.

The excitement had been building. We knew they were coming. Then the house lights went down, and they came out, and with one accord we all rose to our feet and cheered.

It’s you! We’ve been waiting for you! We love you! You’re the reason we shelled out $50 a piece!
$50? We only charged $38.
Ticketmaster is evil, but we’ll put up with it because we love you!

And they received our love, and played a great show.

The funny thing about this, is that just before they came on, Karen and I had been talking. Now, Karen is the reason I go to Killers concerts. I have been to three with her. It’s not that I don’t like the band, but I don’t get passionate about them. In terms of the lamest thing I could possibly say, exposing myself as a total poseur, I love “Mister Brightside”, and play it often, but otherwise I am usually only listening to other songs of theirs when it is time for another concert and I am prepping. Oh, and I always play “Please Don’t Shoot Me Santa” a few times around Christmas. I love that one.

(This is similar to Duran Duran. My sisters love them, and I like them but just don’t normally think about them, but they put on great shows, and I am personally fond of the members, as I am of the Killers.)

Anyway, Karen was kind of complaining to me about how they just kept repeating the theme of “Dustland Fairytale”, where over and over it was about young lovers who became jaded, and that was all of Day & Age and half of Battle Born, I guess, and coincidentally this part of the conversation happened right before they went on, and suddenly she is standing and screaming and glowing, just like the rest of us.

Obviously, I had to tease her in as the most immature way possible. Since we had been talking about the songwriting issue mostly in regards to Brandon Flowers, who had said in an interview that he is most proud of “Dustland Fairytale”, I went with “You love him. You want to marry him and have millions of babies.” (Even though I know that she is quite happy with her husband and two children.)

In relation to the songs, my first thought was to wonder if Brandon’s marriage was in trouble, and I hope not. If only half of Battle Born is that theme, maybe they are okay. I may be being too literal there.

Seriously, I have been paying more attention to comments now, and so many people were thrilled with the “Miss Atomic Bomb” release, and others have been liking Battle Born less, and others have said they only liked the first album, Hot Fuss.

I have been listening to them more now, and I sort of get where everyone is coming from, and I understand more now what music critics mean by “irresistible pop hooks”. There are songs on Hot Fuss that have them, but off hand I would say that is only about half of the songs.

A lot of Killers songs aren’t really poppy at all. I almost feel like they are more of an adult band, and the playfulness of some of their early songs made them look like that was not the case, but that really they are about mature themes with an Old West sensibility. I do feel the Nevada desert and sweet Mojave rain when I am listening to them.

There may indeed be a rut there. It was around this time that I listened to the Smodcast with Kevin Smith and the Way brothers, and Smith talked about needing to be revitalized at one point, even though he had his dream job, or perhaps because he already had his dream job. It can be legitimate for a band to make gradual progression down one road, or to have sudden shifts and reinvent themselves, and if it’s working for that band, that’s okay.

That being said, while I do believe Karen sincerely felt that was the case, no, it’s not. There are similar themes on the album before, Sawdust, but come on, “Human” and “Spaceman” are on Day & Age. That some themes pop up frequently is, I think, fairly common, but they aren’t mired in it, and the other thing that I think is really important is that the music changes around quite a bit, regardless of what the lyrics are saying. There is a lot of variety.

Okay, my love for “Mr. Brightside” and “All These Things I’ve Done” could mark me as pretty pedestrian, but “Tranquilize” is an amazing song, and I am overall enjoying listening to them, though I feel like there is still a lot to discover.

For Battle Born specifically, which I got for my birthday, so far I really love “From Here On Out”, which may be a good example of both the band’s range and the Western influence. “Be Still” is beautiful and comforting. It’s not exactly spiritual, but it feels like its underpinnings are. I think “The Way It Was” is pretty good too. What’s interesting to me is that there are references to the last and title track, “Battle Born” in the first track, “Flesh and Bone”, and I feel like there are overarching themes that I just haven’t picked up on yet, and that I want to.

Okay, there are songs and bands that touch you in an immediate and powerful way—musical soulmates, if you will –and those are important, and it would be easy to listen to nothing else, and that has kind of been my pattern. However, you can miss out on a lot that way.

That’s why I feel that this branching out that I have been doing is good for me. I may find other soulmates, but I may also build kinships that are different but still rich, which is my way of saying that I will be listening to the Killers more, even if there are other bands that I still must and will listen to every day. There’s still room for new heights and new depths.

Perhaps that is why I found it such a joy to watch Ronnie Vanucci Jr. drum. I kind of doubt he changed the way he is doing it, but I love it and I’d never noticed it before. Probably the change is in me.

For pointless but possibly amusing stories, on our way in the usher was asking who the band was, and the name didn’t ring a bell, but I knew if I sang a bit of the chorus to “Somebody Told Me” she would recognize it, and she did. Karen had tried that with someone earlier in the day, and they looked at her like she was a total freak. I just knew it would work. Also, by the end I was getting really thirsty, and as they sang and showed video clips of “All These Things That I’ve Done”, where Brandon has his face in the puddle, I know it’s not the intended reaction but I was really jealous. It looked much cleaner and more delightful than your average desert puddle.