Without a Yard

So I was right about the cold. & CopyCamp. Both arrived as I expected - one was kickass & one kicked my butt. Tho I could only attend the 2nd day of the unconference today, I’m glad that I donated my Saturday to geeking out & talking about DRM & WIPO & bittorrents & other nerderies. Seeing Mark from Negativeland in the flesh was bigtime surreal. Even better was running into Harmony from Spirit Magazine & more importantly PSHS - hopefully I can work on/make it out to her November event offering business skills to aboriginal artists…I am in withdrawl after hearing about Austin Music Foundation’s amazing Boot Camp on Monday - what a high-calibre lineup, guys, congrats!

Dunno if I’m brave enough to push my luck & head out for late-night nuit blanche stuff. The night swim is tempting & I know that there’s a ton of amazing stuff on campus @ UofT (yesterday I did a nostalgia visit with a QP staffer….back to our old stompin’ grounds, Diabolo’s at University College. The history & warm vibes of those buildings still make me as comfy as a pudgy undergrad in scrubs…sigh).

Thanks to the new discovery of a new zen-Crue hybrid cocktail, JD & Green Tea, I think that I overcame the worst of what could’ve been a drawn-out week-long head cold. I’m on the mend still, tho. This was another harried & busy-ass week at work - with some sickness-related cancellations & the accompanying guilt, of course. Still have some rainchecks to make up for in the next couple of days & I do intend to re-book - so I apologize again & again for the scheduling snafus.

I could go on & on about the unconference - but that’s why there was a wiki! Go to this website & enjoy almost all the sessions’ notes.

Please do come out for See Vous Play tomorrow - it will be fun & free. Print out a ticket here.

Oh, and other big news…I am indeed going to Pop Montreal (whoo hoo) the first weekend that the Beau is back (and instead of trouble, there’s gonna be the amazing, legendary, historic, brilliant, heroic, manic, Austinite - Rocky Erickson. SO PUMPED.) Hoping to connect w/ Martine @ Sopref to get the real deals on all the local acts that’re in the fest, too….

Oh, and one more thing….I bit the bullet & decided to go to SXSW. No platinum badge, tho - can’t do interactive & film. I’m immersing masself in the music conference & will have to latch onto one of the medal-credential-wielding buds for my chair massages & booze.

Too meh to continue….

peace
meegs

Just re-read my Saddle Creek e-mail to find that ATX’s one & only Richard Buckner is on the Eric Bachman tour - another reason to come out to the Horseshoe tonight (If you won’t take my word for it - in true Reading Rainbow style - he has Beatle Bob’s endorsement)!

Reached out & touched some long-lost buds this week, which was long-overdue. Peg’s run rampant with New Mexico’s fest’ requests - so no indepth catching up….MC’s as vivacious as ever & it was kickass to enjoy some music & gossip with her again @ the Mod Club…Kristy’s now spinning at Gladstone & Ciao Edie on a regular basis…Theo is back in ATX for ACL Fest (WTF?) working?? (colour me jealous)…Sam’s reaching the one-year mark at her perfect NPO job…Karim is settling into Beantown…his better half is on the way soon, too…there’s probably more, I made a real effort to re-connect with a variety of peeps last week - including ex-Lemonheader who’s career path is eerily similar to Chris’, check out his article here….Makes me wonder if they’ll be this calibre of participants at this month’s CopyCamp…which I hope to attend on the Saturday (still gun shy about taking work-days off for conferencing & the like…)

Nouvelle Vauge was SUCH an incredible show - so well put together, from the vampy choreography, lighting, arrangements, audience interaction (especially during ‘Too Drunk to F*&k’), where the ladies hopped on the bar & started passing out shots to the crowd…& it was a great unpretentious vibe at the Mod Club, too - A much older, preppier crowd (can’t imagine that these were the Dead Kennedy fans of their high schools…) than I’d expected, but they were really into it & managed to finnegle two encores out of the band, despite the tight deadline to accomodate the club-night. I regret not taking my camera & filiming or snapping a clip or two of the gig…bygones.

Not much else to report - spending today catching up on all the abandoned errands that were sacrificed for V-Fest last weekend. Contemplating a splurge on basketball shoes…Thinking about joining a pickup league that meets weekly on the Esplanade - fighting timidity & laziness in my Getting to Yes moment, tho. There’s no way in hell I’d join the West End Y crew, it’s a complete sausage party with no sign of buns participating…might have to suck up my pride & test the waters again in this game that is pretty conveniently located in relation to my workplace. Hopefully I won’t have ‘nam-like flashbacks of Olympia’s rigorous training sessions….

On that note, I should get to my chores. Still spinning Tapes’n'Tapes & Pipettes & Detroit Cobras non-friggin-stop (with Buckner in the rotation now, too - & revisited the Nouvelle Vague oeuvre…)…so Tapes’n'Tapes are indeed playing Pop Montreal on the 7th…ugh…so tempting…& Roky Erickson (speaking of REAL ATX legends) is playing under the ‘fest banner the night before…then they’re screening a doc about his life/music…basketball kicks/safe ankles vs. Roky Erickson/VIA Ticket to MTL/Tapes’n'Tapes/Born Ruffians/Lovely Feathers/Sunset Rubdown….might get my ankle-protecting shoes @ Walmart or 2nd hand in Kensington after all…..

To even try to describe the Cat Power show would do a disservice to Ms. Chan (& why reinvent the wheel when Chromewaves’ Frank did such a succinct & brilliant job - great photography, too). I was completely overwhelmed by her new (sober, less one drink a month…) engaging energy, her banter (?!) & her charming wit.

Although you could tell that she was nervous about performing (to a sold-out & very, very supportive audience - a few Bozos broke the no flash photography rules, but I’d like to chock that up to mistakes made in digicam settings - takes a flash-photog-failure to know one), eventually she let her guard down & started cracking jokes & interacting with the audience & actually taking requests.

It was like bizarro world Cat Power show. All the urban legendry & mystique & fear that usually swirls around Marshall’s live gigs (as demonstrated in the Phoenix’s unnecessary dredging up of some pretty old & unpleasant stuff here) completely dissolved within twenty minutes. A calm settled over the crowd. Shoulders fell. People chilled. Some to the point of passing out….which sort of sent the last 1/4 of the gig into a tailspin…but by that time it was after 1am & I was wrecked.

We lucked out & scored my favourite Lee’s Palace sightline real estate: Stage Left, Far Side on the ledge - shove yer coats & purses & crap into the speakers’ crevices & enjoy being thisclose to the performer, their monitors & the venue’s PA. Yum.

Check out iTunes for a four-track just-released/exclusive Cat Power live sessions from The Greatest era….should be good….her version of ‘Who Knows Where The Time Goes” & “House Of The Rising Sun” were breath-taking on Monday, so I’ll be damned if I don’t download an Mp3 version of’em sooner or later….but where the $^&# can I find her Mary J Blige cover tune? That’ll require trolling around LimeWire or BearShare or whatever else spits out decent bootlegs on some geeking out evening (not up to it tonight…).

So, um, yeah….that was Monday & it feels like AGES ago. Tuesday I got a chance to hang out with my Dad before he went out to Markham &, as always, we ended up at Phil’s….where I think the servers are actually starting to recognize him…Yesterday I caught the artsy-but-accessible ‘Conversations with Other Women’ which could be called - staring at two different shots of Aaron Eckhart’s caricature-level-cleft-chin. Don’t be too freaked out by the split-screen format; the brain adapts soon enough & starts processing the different nuances & information that it’s receiving from the two sides of the screen….More difficult than the film’s technical format was giving Eckhart’s character the benefit of the doubt as a sincere suitor…It’s still hard for me to NOT think of Labute’s character from ‘In the Company of Men’ in every movie, the ‘Thank You For Smoking’ anti-villain was a bit more sympathetic than completely-evil Chad, but still had a smarmy edge….

Enough recapping bleeblah. This weekend’s V-fest looks to be a great lineup of acts (Massive Attack, though…will they/won’t they? - still dunno the newest schedule…); The Sadies will tear the roof off the Horseshoe on Saturday night - Can’t wait for that gig….& well, everything inbetween that makes a weekend riiiight….Including still-to-be-cashed TIFF tix….Any suggestions? I couldn’t bear to tackle those brutal lineups yesterday & hope that I can still get into a decent movie without waiting longer to get into a film than the film itself…

Peace
Meegs

Forgot to say that I’d posted the DREADFUL Hidden Camera pics from the waterfront gig last Sunday. Looks like some CNN Desert Storm night vision operative - so once again, sorry & spend some time trolling around Chromewaves for a reality-based set of photos…I’m starting to wonder if it’s not just my photog-incompetence (would that make over-snapping at gigs photog-incontinence?) but also the low-rent camera herself. But I digress. The Flickr account is aflutter with other random goofy stuff, including some from the OhBijou CD Release last night, too….(J-dog, Imma put yer pics up, too for the C.A.Face sweepstakes series)

Tho I posted about my eagerness to space out to a The Acorn set - I was brutally disappointed….half of it was the tech specs not living up to Club SAW-standards…& the other half was the bizarro, unnecessary banter & too-long opening set (don’t get me started on the pure chit-chit-chatter of the band DURING the OhBijou set - um, are you overcompensating for your Ottawa inferiority complex or are you just plain THICK? Spare us the details of your post-gig crash plans & show the hot-indie-songstresses of Dixie Chopstickness some goddamn respect??) Sorry to sound like a crusty purist, but if you’re opening for a band - shouldn’t your set be, um, shorter than the headliners? Ugh. I peaced out at 1:30 & I’m pretty sure I didn’t even see 2/3 of the Oh Bijou repertoire…foiled. But I snagged a CD & it has been a poifect rainy-day companion for my time spent indoors at the apartment reading papers & language textbooks….

Not to say the rain has kept me inside for all 24-hours - Immabouto venture out to Octopus Lounge& Lee’s Palace (better get used to hanging out at Lee’s they have a spectacular September lineup - French Kicks, Magnolia Electric Co, Mountain Goats, Cat Power-of course, Memphis, Corb Lund…) for a b-day party & Kids gig, respectively…& I was out this afternoon…which leads to another somewhat disappointing artsy-fartsy-curmudgeonly-comment in today’s post (Blame in on the Rain, indeed!)…

I found my comp’ed AGO ticket & took it as a sign that I should finally cash it in for some pop-art Warhol time…So I trekked down via a series of re-routed (Little Italy Fest - I pity the poor dudes slinging corn this weekend, I can only imagine how cold it must be at the EX on the waterfront…) TTC lines, listening to some classic Nico tracks to prepare for Cronenberg’s guest-curated/narrated exhibition of the Factory’s host. I’ll admit, the audio tour was kickass (click that last link to get a taste) - I was really surprised that so many people chose to use those awkward phone-baton-thingies (& even more surprised that it doesn’t look bizarre anymore to see 80% of the people in a room jamming a piece of plastic onto their ear & not interacting with anyone else….)…

But (I like BIG butts, & I cannot lie) the haunting narration of Cronenberg couldn’t make up for the scant display of work…I understand that it is a small traveling exhibition, but damn, I was SPOILED by
Pittsburgh’s wealth of Warhol artifacts, stories, life works & multimedia displays. The AGO display is definitely worth a look & the theme of disaster, celebrity and self-implosion is (almost oppressively) drilled into your head throughout all the displays…which is maybe why I left a bit unfulfilled.

I appreciate (re)interpreting art & juxtaposing works from different eras in any artist’s career (& any medium - especially music - see the brilliant Country Music Hall of Fame retrospective on Ray Charles’ life & career here), but there was something a bit disingenuous in picking two years (1962-1964) & projecting a rather taut theme onto a time in Warhol’s life that were surely more varied than the title suggests (Supernova: Stars, Deaths and Disasters). What would have added some nuance & insight (besides more Dennis Hopper interview snippets - it was yummy-surreal to have his version of past events…) would’ve been a two-year display showing the 1962/63 time capsules. Not only was he an obsessive recorder of the Factory’s macro-level-events, he was DEVOTED to packing away the minutia of his life into exhaustive yearly time capsules. These archive items brought Warhol to life & made his art seem less conceptual & more routinized & natural to me - I wish that the Toronto audience could’ve had a more human angle to the exhibits by checking out his time capsule-obsessions, phone-conversation doodles & correspondence from mentoring of other NYC artists. Sigh.

But bring on the AGO-Pop-Art relationships! Howabout Keith Haring & Takashi Murakami pretty, pretty please….le whine.

I better get ready to go….but in the meantime, besides the other linkage - check this out & let me know if you are going..or know someone who knows someone who’s going…Copynerds, Unite!

Peace
meegs

P.S. Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery.