My Bloody Valentine Live @ Roseland – September 22nd, 2008

Yusef: dude your wife totally facebook friended me
sorry to be the one to tell you

me: ha
that was hilarious

Yusef: haha oh life 2.0

me: indeed

Yusef: so yea, i saw that you guys moved back, but did you hear the outro?

me: how long did the noise go on for? we cut out after ten
minutes or so

Yusef: oh ok

me: you could hear it down the block
which was pretty neat

Mogwai + Fuck Buttons @ Terminal 5

“AH’M AHN EPILEPTEEEK!”

“AH’M AHN EPILEPTEEEK!”

The short drunk Scot (“a wee cunt”?) next to us continually mooed this particular phrase for a good ten minutes before lapsing. Theories abound as to why, but I’m no expert. Hell, I’ve barely seen more than 20 minutes of Braveheart. Maybe it’s an attempt to compensate for the overall dourness of the Brit with a peppy, can-annoy attitude. Maybe he had his kibbles fondled by a soccer* coach as a child. Perhaps he has a tiny penis that, even when excited, can barely be seen from six inches away.

We will never know.

Joe had a good point during the cab ride back – such things are part and parcel of the “live experience”; crowds of people, in addition to being a slew of crowdy, pushy bastards, tend to do things like that. But it just seemed like last night’s crowd was shittier than usual, from the pushy young ladies who are too young, pretty or short to punch, to the short guys and the old guys respectively – or in combination. I’d hate to see these guys at a Low show; it’d be a bloodbath!

Maybe I was just cranky? I don’t think so, because Fuck Buttons rocked my socks off.

Not Breathing – Laquarto & Perky

This collection of Not Breathing jammy drum n’ modular tracks is rough and raw, and has a structure that is something of a throwback to the hazy days of The Starry Wisdom*, particularly “Mycomaster.” Let the loops ride and the knobs tweak on.

There’s a detuned thump to a lot of the leads that’s either delightfully nauseous or a bit sick – the aptly-named “Antibiotic Throwdown” sounds like someone’s squeezing a seal that’s crying for help from the pack. This is fine with me, seeing as seals are assholes who do a lot of raping and killing for sport, like most of the animal kingdom**, so let’s get a really big vise grip and squeeze those bitches.

There’s a lot of joyfully simple booty bass rhythms, admittedly distorted, filtered and modulated – ring and otherwise – and the splashy 4-bit snare sounds evoke an early NES game, perhaps something you played while home sick from school and bombed out of your skull on Robitussin.*** “Masonic Sadness Vortex” begins as a bopper and ends with a wet crash; I don’t see the Masonry or the Sadness myself, but I the Vortex part is clear.

Record Shopping Is Always Better When Drunk

Drunk record shopping is a special pleasure best reserved for a few occasions each year when pocketbook and pocketwatch both are giving a hearty thumbs up to your endeavors. Like record shopping while blazed, the drunken cd spree tempers one’s natural skepticism with an open heart and an open mind; unlike weed-driven browsing, shopping while soused will not take three hours and result in no purchases. Exuberance can be hard on the pocketbook, but even enjoyable indecision leads to a non-buyer’s remorse hours later.

You know the time was wasted, if not exactly how.

What cannot be recommended, however, is shopping with a loving heart while under no (natural or artificial) chemical alterations, because you just stone cold make poor fucking decisions about everyone and everything involved. Good intentions are a vampire that takes the great things from life and replaces them with nonsense.

This is one of those stories.