Strange Pulse

This was my fourth show in a week, so don’t blame me if this is incoherent.
—

We got there pretty early so we could get a seat at a table. Which meant we had to sit through torture. Actually, the first band wasn`t that terrible—southern rock kind of thing. My husband said they should be called the Bad Crowes. A singer with a scarf and a tamberine and goofy dance moves and everything. I kept looking around at the crowd, trying to figure out what the deal was. They did not strike me as a Drunk Horse crowd.

Then I found out the second band was Shakey Mallard, and it all made sense. They`re a local (L.A.) band I once saw open for Atomic Bitchwax. The guitarist for the first band, Sweet Evil (yes that’s right), is the singer/guitarist for Shakey Mallard. Off came the leather jacket, to reveal a vest–with no shirt underneath, yes that’s right. He’s the type to throw all kinds of rock star poses, while singing lyrics like, “I’m a tarantula, and I’m coming to get you.” Yes that’s right.

For some inexplicable reason, they have somewhat of a fan base in L.A. He also mentioned it was Shakey’s last show, they were splitting up. If I heard him correctly–I did have my head down on the table, buried in my arms.

We moved up front for Pride Tiger. Don’t ask me what the deal is with that band name, I don’t know—and I don’t care. They ruled.

The two guitarists are the original guitarists from Three Inches of Blood, Sonny and Bob. They play like they’ve been playing guitar together since they were infants. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out they have been. I’m pretty sure they dropped out of Three Inches because they run a business together and weren’t able to tour as often as the band wanted to, but my memory’s not the greatest, so some of those details may be wrong. I had heard that they were in this new band from the singer of Three Inches, and we were really stoked to check them out. (Not much else would’ve gotten me out to a show after already seeing three this week, my body can’t handle the lack of sleep.)

They’ve been described as Thin Lizzy-ish, and I’d say that’s spot on. Only—what’s the word I’m looking for? Faster? Heavier? These dudes shred. The drummer is from a band called Goatsblood, or something like that, but he was also the drummer in ThreeInches for awhile. I have pics of him playing with Three Inches, here’s one:

And here’s one of him with Pride Tiger:

It’s hard to recognize him, don’t you think? But that’s the same mole, no? He looks so different.

Anyway, he does most of the singing, with occasional help from Bob.

A sax player joined them for one song at some point.

I was wondering if they’d do a few really good songs and then the rest just be mediocre, but they all killed. I took a lot of videoclips, here’s the longest:

http://qsysue.tagplazen.org/shows/pridetiger/09-30-06/DSCF7018.AVI

We left before Drunk Horse, who were headlinging, too tired to stick it out.

More pics here (along with videoclips):

No pics, sorry—no cameras allowed and I didn’t plan ahead enough to get a photo pass.

I was most excited about seeing Converge, a hardcore band—and in my opinion, THE hardcore band—since I’d never seen them before. And I LOVE them. Mastodon I’ve seen a couple times before, but not at a venue like this—the Henry Fonda Theater, which is a bigger size venue (hence the no cameras). It’s got an open floor and a small balcony with seats. Even though Nathaniel and I got there late enough to miss the first band, we still scored balcony seats.

Converge were as awesome as I expected them to be. They did a nice mix of material—a couple songs off of Jane Doe, a couple off of You Fail Me, a couple new ones (their new album is out next month). The crowd was insane. The singer talked a lot in between songs, but I couldn’t make out most of what he was saying.

Mastodon ruled, really tight, but for me they weren’t quite as great as Converge. I had told Nathaniel we could leave early if he wanted, since he’s been up at 5am all week, and I’ve seen Mastodon twice already. We left after an hour of their set, so I think we mainly missed their encores (which would have been my favorite songs, but oh well).

I’m really excited about Converge’s new album, I hope it means they’ll come back as headliners. I’ll post a song by each band to the radio.blog.

I’ve been listening to a lot of early New Order lately, stuff I haven’t heard for years. I’d forgotten about the song “Temptation.” There’s a line in it that goes,

“Oh you’ve got green eyes
Oh you’ve got blue eyes
Oh you’ve got grey eyes”

It makes me laugh, because sometimes my husband and my kids will all argue over what color eyes I have. Sometimes they look green, sometimes blue, and sometimes grey. (That makes them sound a lot more exotic than they actually are, though. My eyes are actually really boring.)

My husband has brown eyes, and so do all our kids. I’m a little bummed none of our kids got my eye color. All my siblings have blue eyes, and growing up, my eyes were more green/hazel.

I don’t usually notice people’s eye color unless it’s really striking. There was a little girl in my nursery at church who had dark brown eyes with really light blonde hair, and the combination was so unusual.

I was listening to New Order on the way home from the Pelican show and started trying to remember what color Mike’s eyes were–are they blue? Sorry, can’t remember!

I’ll post the New Order song to the radio.blog.

So the Anaheim show was at Chain Reaction, a small all ages club 20 minutes down the road from me. I`d never been there before. I thought maybe it wouldn`t be that crowded, since it`s an all ages place and it was a school night. But it was packed.

I got there in time to see only one of the opening bands, Daughters, who I`d never heard of. I liked their first song but then the rest just didn`t quite cut it. I`d like them more if they had more riffage and moments of heaviness. I`m still thinking I might like them on cd, but I didn`t end up picking one up.

I spent most of their set trying to figure out if the guitarist was someone my husband was friends with years ago, and I never did decide if it was him. He sure looked like him, but chances are slim.

Pelican ruled. I never would have thought I could love an instrumental band so much.

The all ages club was fun, but the Knitting Factory show was better. Better sound. They played a lot of new stuff both nights, and since by the second night I was able to process it
a little more, the show was better for me. I LOVE the new stuff. And I took videoclips:

http://qsysue.tagplazen.org/shows/pelican/09-26-06/DSCF6967.AVI

http://qsysue.tagplazen.org/shows/pelican/09-26-06/DSCF6949.AVI

You can see all of the videoclips I took at the link at the end of the post. I haven`t uploaded anything to youtube.com yet.

The Knitting Factory show was being filmed for both a Hydrahead documentary and an issue of the video magazine TVI. I think that`s what it`s called. Again, I only got there in time to see Daughters (of the opening bands). The singer started pouring it on a bit thick—he was doing some crazy stage antics at the Anaheim show, but in LA he really went for it. Kept pulling his pants down. I assumed it was for the cameras, but maybe he just does that at larger shows.

The sound for Pelican was great. They killed. My only complaint was the show didn`t go on for hours longer. I wasn`t alone in that either.

I’ll be posting a review on Kulturblog.com soon, hopefully.

You can access the rest of pics and videoclips here:

http://qsysue.tagplazen.org/shows/

Sort of. I heard it, didn’t actually see it.

It was a few years ago when we were living in Seattle. Daniel and I went down to the Ave in the U-District to check out some used cd stores. It’d been awhile since I’d been down there and I wasn’t sure where the stores were located anymore. We went down to 2nd Time Around, and then I wanted to walk up the Ave a bit to see if there was anything up past the McDonald’s. We were standing on the corner of 45th and the Ave waiting for the light to change so we could cross the street, and I heard this loud bang. I’ve heard gunfire on a city street before, and that’s about what it sounded like—a really loud CRACK. I immediately started looking around to see if someone had a gun, but Daniel and some other people standing on the corner with us started saying something about a skateboard, and pointing across the street.

I looked over and could see a man was lying on the sidewalk, he was partially obscured because he was lying in a storefront doorway area. I could only see his legs. I grabbed Daniel’s arm and asked if he had his cell phone. He ran over across the street (the light still hadn’t changed), whipping it out, but a woman was already on her phone with 911 when he got over there. She was the victim’s girlfriend.

Daniel saw it happen. A man had hit this guy with his skateboard on the head—the metal truck of the skateboard. Then he and his two other skater buddies had skated off around the corner. An ambulance and a cop just happened to be driving by and people on the street waved them down. Daniel tried telling the cop that the guys who’d done it had just gone off around the corner, and he could probably still catch them, but the cop didn’t seem interested in chasing them, he just started asking questions about the incident. Daniel got disgusted and walked back over to where I was, still across the street.

I didn’t go over there because I figured I’d just be in the way, plus I didn’t want to see what kind of shape the victim was in. Daniel said there was a big pool of blood around his head on the concrete.

As we walked back to where we’d parked the car, we both felt really shaken. I kept looking around, wondering if we were safe.

The next couple days I kept an eye on the local news websites to follow the story. At first they had details wrong about what actually happened. But eventually they got it right—the skaters had been skating in the street, blocking traffic, and the guy they attacked had honked or yelled at them. They yelled back, he got out of the car to confront them, and next thing you know, he’s in a coma.

He was in a coma for a couple days. From initial reports it sounded like he was going to be ok—he actually came to in the ambulance and said a few words. But then he slipped into a coma for a couple days. Then he died.

I sent his family a card with my condolences and mentioned that I’d been there when it’d happened, although I hadn’t seen anything. His mother called me to thank me for the card. She became very emotional, crying, ranting and raving, telling me about the man who’d done it and how he’d plea bargained for a very small charge and hardly any jailtime. She wanted me to go to his sentencing and testify, but because I hadn’t actually seen it, only heard it, I didn’t think it’d do any good. She asked if Daniel would, and I told her I’d talk to him about it. But when I got off the phone he just said, “No way.”

It was one of the most difficult conversations I’ve ever had in my life. I still don’t like thinking about it. She was so raw in her grief.

What I remember most is how loud the sound of a cracking skull can be.

This is my great-grandfather. I don’t know much about him. Except for this:

• He got married when he was 31
• He had 8 children
• He was born April 8, 1859
• He died when he was 86 years old
• If my dates are correct, he was 49 years old when my grandfather, his 7th child, was born
• He almost had a unibrow
• His first and middle names were Francis Marion, so he was named after a Revolutionary War hero
• He and his wife divorced and she remarried
• According to my father, he wasn’t a very nice person
• He had quite a moustache

I think that’s about all I know about him. It’s interesting to see pictures of ancestors you’ve never met. He doesn’t look anything like anyone in my family, except maybe a little bit like my grandpa.

Here’s a picture where he’s younger:

…what color things were when you’re watching a black and white movie? My daughter and I were watching a Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire movie this weekend and we started speculating. Was the shiny dark floor black? Or dark blue? Those sparkly table cloths we decided were gold, or light blue. Then someone referred to Ginger as a redhead. Was she really a redhead? I thought she was blonde. I mean, I know she started out with dark hair, but this was one of her light-hair-color movies.

Something I always wonder about when looking at photos is what’s just off frame. Who took the picture?

I’m the baby in this one, who or what am I looking at?

What are we writing or drawing? Is there a baby in that pile of blankets (note the baby bottle)? Who is it? And the really important question—what record single is that?

What does this paper I’m holding say? I’m only about 4 years old in this picture, I doubt I could read it. Why was I holding it? (Love the shoes)

Various stuff…

Magnolia Electric Co - “Such Pretty Eyes For a Snake”
I don’t care how much they want to be Neil Young, I love these guys. This song in particular gets me every time—something about the menacing anticipation of it. And when he sings the title line, so awesome. Plus just after it when he says, “You got still something to say about it?” like he’s talking to someone in the audience. I’m always caught off guard. Is that supposed to be part of the song?

Patty Griffin - “Forgiveness”
This is a song I used to skip all the time, because how awful is that opening verse? Snakes? What? But the rest of it is really wonderful. Of course, I’m a huge fan of her voice, and not many people are.

Whiskeytown - “Easy Hearts”
This is one of my theme songs. I’ve had a pretty hard life for such an easy heart!

I’ll post all three to the radio.blog.

She found a combination lock that she used last year for her gym locker and was determined to figure out the combination for it. She thought she remembered two of the numbers, but had no idea what order they were in. So she started trying different combinations, guessing. She brought it to church with her yesterday and kept trying. When we got home, I said, “Get on the internet and look up ‘how to crack a combination lock.’”

Gotta love the Internet. She found instructions on how to do it—it’s complicated, although it gets easier after the first time. She figured it out and got the lock open!

This is our kid who is the Rubiks Cube whiz, as well. I’ve posted a video of her older brother solving one a long time ago. He lost interest in it, though. Catherine actually became a minor celebrity at her junior high when she showed a friend that she could solve it. She still carries one or two around with her and solves them when she’s bored between classes, or whatever. She’s figured out it’s a great way to get people to notice her and start talking to her.

I told her now she can impress all her friends with her lock cracking abilities. She’ll have to say, “Just give me an hour,” though, because it does take awhile.

(Cat with a butterfly)