A few comments on Knoxville concerts, concert-goers, and encores

Last night, we went to see Lou Reed in concert at the Tennessee Theatre. He sort of stumbled onto the stage and seemed, initially, disoriented. But, his band was great and the whole affair soon gelled into a pretty rocking affair, with a few Velvet Underground songs thrown in for good measure, including a fairly decent rendition of "Sweet Jane." After about seventy minutes, the band left the stage, returning a few minutes later for an encore of "Perfect Day." Then it was over.

One thing that I have noticed, over the years, is that Knoxville concerts often seem like a place to do everything but watch a band. Especially at the Tennessee Theatre. Cell phone calls, chatting with friends, CONSTANTLY getting up to go get beer or liquor. That can be distracting to those that want to watch the band. Especially when this is going on around you, like it was to us last night. A father and son sat behind us and talked through the first half of the concert. Now, for those of you unfamiliar with Lou Reed, he is recognized as one of the forefathers of punk music and, as such, there were several songs that contained walls of feedback and heavy riffing - quite loud and room filling. So, my peturbness, if you will, with this father and son was that their talking was intelligible OVER Lou Reed's band! I finally turned around and told them to please be quiet, which made them sheepishly cower down into their seats. The father apologized after the concert, and I graciously accepted his apology, but c'mon, we didn't pay $50 a ticket to listen to these yahoos talk about the son's flippin' troubles with girls at UT!

Finally, I have a word about encores. I HATE THEM! Why does a band or a performer think that we should have to scream for them to grace us with one more song after they only played the barest minimum of a set to begin with? Not that I am a big fan of his, but John Mellencamp refuses to do encores, believing that a band should come out and give 110% for 3 hours and then leave. I tend to agree with his philosophy. Are these bands and performers that big of ego cases that they want to lord it over us about the fact that we have paid lots of money to see them and THEY control the relationship? It was cool to see Lou Reed and all that, but c'mon, man, throw us a few bones!

Dance the dance of the space goddess ritual! Neuron-eating music and videos for your perusal!

People like to suggest, sometimes, that I am some sort of acid burnt wacko, a persona that I, sometimes, encourage perhaps. However, if youtube had been around when I was doing chemical alterations to my psyche, THIS kind of video would have made me a prime candidate for a rubber room and arm and leg restraints. Hell, it's freaky enough WITHOUT drugs; I couldn't imagine watching this already out of my mind! Of course, I have watched it repeatedly today!

You know me - I like all sorts music, high brow and low brow. But this video just makes my bowels and nads hurt with an unimaginable horror - no wonder punk music needed to happen and happened when it did! "But, wait," you might say, "I thought you liked bands like the Osmonds!?! Aren't they similar?" I won't quibble on that point - both bands are somewhat of the same ilk. HOWEVER, the Osmonds were musical geniuses, a Mormon Beatles, if you will. They mined the depths and heights of our emotions and imaginations, making this world a better, kinder, and stronger place. They played their instruments AND danced AND sang AND smiled AND all the while searched for ways to end world hunger, fight Communist Aggression, and pursue the race to land a man-made vehicle on Mars. The band in this video, on the other hand, was so obviously only in it for the money - how else do you explain someone voluntarily playing this kind of garbage and doing so in public on television? For the joy of the music and the ability to entertain? HELL NO! Money, pure and simple, is the source of this horse manure! So, go tell "the Man" to honk on bubba for foisting crap like this onto us! Enjoy!

A fun past time for the GSHA music set - fictional band album art

Here is a way to blow some time that I discovered recently on a variety of blogs, such as this one and this one. It is a way to create a fake album cover for a fake band that you make! Follow these instructions and you will waste a ton of time, giggling, sighing, or wishing that these bands existed. If you dream it, they will come to your house and rock!

Your band name comes from a random Wikipedia article and your album title comes from the last 4 words of the last quote from a random quotation and your album art is the third on this page of random Flickr photos.

Slap it all together and you get something like this:

Martorell - they're a zeitgeisty tour-de-force that combines the post-punk intensity of Joy Division, the dual lyricism of Bernie Taupin and Lou Reed, and the full-on feedback assault of the Jesus and Mary Chain, all nicely piled up together in a sunshine pop and vocal-harmonizing wrapping of the Osmonds. Check them out this spring on tour, if you can. Enjoy!

False Start, part deux

"Yes...victory is soon to be in our grasp! Mike has yet to take his group 2 exam and, if our plans go forward as I have anticipated, the longer we can postpone his exam, the more easily we can take over the world, the solar system, the GALAXY! HAaa-haaa-haaa-haaa-haaa!"

In case you are wondering, inclement weather prevented me from taking my exam, AGAIN! I need a hug...

The first Variegated Brainstem Music collection

Hello, loyal viewers! The Veeb has issued its first soundtrack CD, entitled Make the Madness Stop. It contains a variety of psyche-skewing songs for your musical aggrandizement. Tracks on this first of several collection include:

1. Stereo Phase Test - Man Or Astroman (01:04)
2. Magic People - The Paupers (02:45)
3. At The Mountains Of Madness - HP Lovecraft (04:58)
4. I Put Spell On You - Arthur Brown (03:45)
5. The year of the sun - The Gordian Knot (03:02)
6. my mind - The Misunderstood (02:35)
7. Spiral Galaxy 28948 - Hawkwind (03:47)
8. Through My Eyes - The Creation (03:07)
9. Lysergic Bliss - Of Montreal (04:04)
10. I'm A Nut - (01:02)
11. Bottle Of Wine - Fireballs (02:11)
12. Cup Of Jesus - Joel R. Cooper (02:26)
13. Sardinia - Alabama Sacred Harp Singers (02:14)
14. I live for the sun - The Sunrays (02:28)
15. Laughing Stock - Love (02:32)
16. A Chicken with Its Head Cut Off - The Magnetic Fields (02:42)
17. The Third Eye - The Dovers (02:17)
18. Happy - The Sunshine Company (01:58)
19. Trouble - Lindsey Buckingham (03:49)
20. Me - The Brain Train (02:25)
21. Groovy Summertime - The Love Generation (02:24)
22. White Cat Heat - The Godz (02:12)
23. Something In 4/4 Time - Daryl Hall (04:27)
24. You Keep Hanging up on My Mind - Wendy & Bonnie (02:59)
25. Watch out for Me Ronnie - Yo La Tengo (03:02)
26. Some People Never Know - We All Together (04:21)
plus a secret or too!

Not to toot our horns here at the VCC (Veeb Central Control), but we are pleased at how this CD flows, making everything from dish-washing to the daily commute to encounters with the rhino-hive mind something to look forward to! Drop us a line if you would like a copy. Enjoy!

My nose hurts and my eye has started twitching again! Bah-humbug!

I can't get into the spirit of the season. My sickness, my impending Group Two exam, my lack of anything exciting to give to anyone for Christmas, our death culture of plasticity - all these conspire to make me a melancholy Dane. What's a man to do? Ho freaking ho!

My eye twitch is driving me CRAZY!

Since a few days before my group three examination, my left eye has been twitching about every twenty minutes. It is making me insane, even more than I normally am. I have looked online about cures, but there are none, save for going the Six Million Dollar Man route, and having the offending eye replaced. It would be cool to be able to have telescopic vision, but I don't have that kind of bread with which to purchase such a replacement part. It probably means that I have a week to live. If that is the case, I'm going to get some cheese cake, a New Yorker Deli (in Roanoke, Virginia) submarine sandwich, a Bahia cigar, a bottle of scotch, and an XBOX 360 with which to play Halo 3. I'll let you know what happens...

Some of my most favoritist music that makes me happy

Yes, I know that this music isn't easy listening and, you may say, conventional. I also know it isn't good work music (despite the fact that I would listen to this stuff mowing lawns in my neighborhood for money when I was young). However, every now and then, I go back to King Crimson for some Veeb-ish excitement when needed, as well as fulfilling my need for hearing extrememly enviable musicianship from a freaky band. These videos are from the eighties version of the group, which is actually more concise and in your face than the earlier and bloated prog-rock path King Crimson took in the 1970s (as if you really cared). Be forewarned: THIS IS NOT your mama's Sunshine Pop! This is sunshine pop that has been knocked in the head with a bronze owl statue, run over and sucked up by a vacuum truck, spit out into a chemical factory sluice, and then tickled with a thistle bush during a 75 car pileup in a china doll outlet!

Enjoy!

Comateens - annoyingly cool!

I remember seeing these people on an old, old, old Nickelodeon show called Livewire. I thought this was punk rock when I saw them (this from the man who orginally thought that the Grateful Dead was a heavy metal band - go figure). And, I suppose, it is - depending on your perspective. After all, remember D. Boon's adage about punk rock being whatever you make it! Why I put this up, I don't know. Who knows how we think here at the Veeb? It's like watching television with an incessant channel-flipper, I suppose. And, I suppose, that I've supposed a lot in this blog entry. But, hell, I don't care as I passed my Group 3 exam. So, I suppose I need to start studying for the next one!

A Secret Shame that I Proudly Wear on My Sleeve!

One of the little known rock gods, albeit one without the intense political fury of The Clash or the skull-piercingly ear-damaging riffage of The Stooges, is Roger Whittaker, a South African born baritone singer whose beautiful voice has warmed middle class American livingrooms since the early 1970s. Many were the evenings when my family would joy to the sound of his records, eating Jiffy-Pop and washing it down with cola from glass bottles. Oh, how we thrilled at his jaw-droppingly exquisite take on the current MOR hits of other wimpy heavy weights, such as Anne Murray and John Denver. Oh, how we marvelled at his intense sincerity and his hyper-space speed-whistling ability. We knew that Christmas was coming with the emergence of the Roger Whittaker Christmas Album every year.

So, here are two of my favorite hits of Rog. If these don't move you to tears, you must be dead inside, you heartless bastard!

Enjoy!

Saw the Arcade Fire and discovered an equally good band in the process!

We went to see Arcade Fire in Asheville. They had a really interesting and kinda psychedelic stage show, with weird lighting and television effects. They were very high engery, exchanging instruments nearly every song! And, they seemed to be very full of themselves. Their sound people had them turned up too loud, which pissed off the main singer/leader of the band. Likewise, they only played "the hits," and didn't do anything either new or innovative like they had been described as doing at other concerts.

Indeed, the opening band, The National, actually gave a much better performance. Their music just grabbed ahold of your soul from the get-go and didn't let up until they finished their set, each song possessing a multitude of flavors and layers that washed over you like an ocean wave, only to suddenly cease right as it seemed that a tidal wave was about to descend on you. Or something like that. The big lesson here, especially relevant to the GSHA band, was: DON'T TAKE YOURSELF SO SERIOUSLY THAT YOU CAN'T EFFECTIVELY SCREAM AND WAIL AND DRUNKENLY DANCE ALL OVER THE STAGE WHILE YOUR BACKING BAND LAYS THE VOODOO DOWN!

New Favorite Band...of the immediate moment

Boredoms is a group of noise freaks from Nippon who make crazy static fueled music that sounds like a cross between Ozric Tentacles, Godspeed You Black Emperor, and a radio tuned to country-western music thrown into your bath tub while you are wacked out on cold medicine. They have been around for a while but, for some reason, never made Casey Kasem's countdown. So, I missed them during the first go-round. However, now that I have started listening to them, it makes me want to make Japanoise music for myself, albeit from a white Southern American perspective.

While you are awaiting my feedback drenched magnum opus, here's a clip of Boredoms for you to watch.

band styles...for our band!

A Mr. H recently hipped me to a British avant garde band called the Tiger Lillies who possess an interesting visual style reminiscent of cabaret acts from Weimar Republic-era Germany. He suggested that the GSHA band (still nameless, at this point) could adopt (adapt) their look and feel, with makeup and old types of clothing and dress (bowlers and suspenders). On that, I suppose, I agree, although I would amend that look to include some women's clothing items, as well as buckets of goat blood that we could cover ourselves with during moments of intensified on-stage catharsis requiring the ultimate in violent dénouement.

However, as for their musical style, while I enjoy Brechtian operatic noodling, I fear that our collective musical abilities fall far short of those necessary to produce such cabaret / Decemberists-esque music. I think we are far more confrontational (at least in our heads) and we would, accordingly, need a more Iggy and the Stooges chugging style that just grabbed onto one heavy distorted, amphetamine-fueled riff that beat the audience over the head repeatedly...until it was time to cover ourselves in the goat's blood and make the crowd fall down screaming in an ecstatic orgy of introspection and horrorific apocalyptic visions! The genius of this...

And yet, if I had my druthers, I think I'd go for something like this Uncle Wiggly video. Just enough psyche-heavy riffs with wacked out imagery for me!

My rock and roll dreams...with my bass

I have a Ibanez copy of the classic Rickenbacker bass. I have no bass amp - only the guitar...and a dream. A dream of being on a stage, drenched in goat blood, eyes a-blaze, smoke machine pumping out a layer of fog, strobe lights flaring, and me with my bass, providing the bottom bedrock force to an apocalyptic juggernaut assault on the senses that makes people two states away wail and gnash their teeth at the impending Lovecraftian horror-insanity produced by my band's music's ravaging of their psychic defenses. I only need a drummer, a guitarist, maybe a keyboard player, a van, some sound equipment, and a 100 square mile contaminated chunk of land to set up our stage show. Of course, knowing how to play our instruments and writing songs will be in there, as well. But it's the attitude and the bass that will start it all off to begin the sonic attack. Get ready...

Listen to the drone, part 6

Don't let the name turn you off - My Bloody Valentine is a dronefully exciting band. Do you feel the drone?

Listen to the drone, part 5

Spacemen 3 - they had the drone down. Can you feel it?

Listen to the drone, part 4

Michael Hedges and the harp guitar. Semi-drone music, perhaps, but one of the greatest guitarists EVER! I saw him perform live and it still ranks as one of my top 10 favorite concerts. He was killed in a car crash - an amazing talent taken too soon. Do you feel the drone?

Listen to the drone, part 3

"Shiny, shiny, shiny boots of leather, Whip-lash girlchild in the dark." The Velvet Underground had many songs that featured droning in the background. John Cale, the bassist and viola player for the first two studio albums, played only one or two notes through this song. This clip gives an indication of the droning intensity of their early shows, especially as they were coupled with Andy Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable stage show. Do you feel the drone?

Listen to the drone, part 2

The Beatles, on Revolver, ended the album with this song. It is obviously influenced by the droning sound of raga music, such as that of Ravi Shankar. This was a very influential song for many other musicians, especially those of the psychedelic mindset prevalent in the 1960s. Do you feel the drone?

Listen to the drone, part 1

Although my girlfriend can't stand it, I really enjoy music that has an underlying drone, which is defined as "a deep sustained or monotonous sound." To be sure, music with droning in it can become tedious after three or four hours. But, at the same time, it seems to pierce right into your third eye and then into your soul. Many different musicians, from many different styles, have used the droning tones of some instrument in the background of their music to accomplish this.

So, here are some of my favorite practitioners of the drone, beginning with Ravi Shankar. Here he is on the Dick Cavett show in the 1970s. Although the music gets uptempo, you can feel the underlying drone throughout. Do you feel it?