Nos Chers Amis 2007 (Part 5)

There's been a fucking breakdown. This is unacceptable. Get me some protocols here!

For Christ's sake...


Addendum: UFC 83 Predictions
Mac Danzig vs. Mark Bocek
Charles McCarthy vs. Michael Bisping
Nate Quarry vs. Kalib Starnes
Travis Lutter vs. Rich Franklin
Georges St. Pierre vs. Matt Serra

Jay Reatard & The Black Keys @ The Riviera (4/12/08)

I handed my printed-off Ticketmaster ticket (what the fuck!) to the gatekeeper of the Riviera, expecting some kind of orderly barcode-scan or basic display of interest in my identity -- pretty standard stuff these days, so imagine my surprise when he just ripped the barcode off the sheet with a massively-jaded expression and let me in. I- I could have just printed out 30 of those things and no one would have even noticed!

Oops! Not that I'd have any friends who'd be particularly stoked to see Jay Reatard OR the Black Keys with me because they are, respectively, unknown or (Daaaaaanger Moooooouse!) seen as having loosened their own quality control standards as of late. Jay & crew appeared with zero fanfare, strolling hesitantly onstage wearing Urban Outfitters sneakers (tag still dangling :\) and silly white-kid afros. As an actual fan of their debut Blood Visions -- but with no image of the band to go by -- I was pretty confused by the dreadful aesthetic brought on by the 2001-kids-dressing-for-the-'80s style and the obvious, distracting youth of the members. Shit man, the no-vocals guitarist didn't look a day over 16 as he emphatically lipsynched the songs (far more convincingly, yes, than Jay himself) and wailed on his TOTALLY BODACIOUS white Flying V. ... ???

The band played through maybe 10 songs in 20 minutes, never really stopping in between, to a crowd of mostly drunk and confused morons and one guy (Our Hero, paris.by.night!) dancing like a complete goon. A quick check of their MySpace revealed more than one comment consisting of "GREAT SHOW GUYS, SORRY THE CROWD SUCKED SO MUCH". Seems only a select few are into this? We'll see how these clowns change their tune when Jay plays Pitchfork this July. That's right, I loved the show - I just closed my eyes to the blinding aesthetics and enjoyed it like I enjoy the record. I recommend you all do the same.

Anyway, The Keys came on to a roar of annoyingly-relieved applause and played a damn good set - damn good! - until something about (new lead single) "Strange Times" sent four frat boys on a convulsive moshing spree down the floor. Who on earth would want to mosh to blues? It felt awkward and unwanted for all subsequent tracks except "10AM Automatic", enough of a straightforward stomp-rock affair to almost justify the number of broken noses that inevitably left the theatre that night.

And uh, Patrick can really play. That alone's worth the price of admission. Charmed, a little hesitantly.

Fuck Video Games (Vol. 2)

So I'm sittin' here in a veritable hell-hole of mechanization. Everyone around me's really into it, y'know? I casually check the blogs to kill the boredom. Oops, here's a videogame blog -- yep, there's another. GTA4's coming out, yeah? Looks like it's time for another FVG.

First I'd like to point out that this post will be entirely void of images. Images, man. Who needs 'em? Actually this is rather an interim period for Blogger and I (fourth wall come back!) and apparently despite the "upload" button I press for my images they're still just LINKED to their original sites. That's why my tissue-trophy Heavenly Sword coverage is now lacking its emphatic "GIVE IT UP FOR ROCK 'N' ROLL", an issue I'm going to have to promptly take up with support staff.

But yeah, anyway, I'm sitting here in this RAM-laced shitgarden and I'm reading these blogs, right? I got exposed to the usual gaming blog drama: the trenches of console loyalty, the pathos-missile rants of excitement held next to anger, the..

Wait, huh? No, there were two avenues I could go down today. I could sneak in a quick game of Mario Kart DS (Fabulous, by the way! 9.5 / Charmed) or I could present my review of M83's latest, Saturdays=Youth. I made my choice, kids!

Fuck video games.

But I am glad I touched briefly on blog drama before entering a discussion of this revivalist (reactionary...?) production. I've found that I enjoy reading a good blog comment thread in the way a masochist takes pleasure in denying himself pain, and in the Grand Old Spirit of morbid curiosity I decided to check out various responses to this (leaked!) album. The results, it seemed, were as I'd feared: announcements that this marked a deviation from M83's previous output -- and quite the negative one, at that.

Bullshit. Unpretentious Pretentious kids (best summarized as the "I'm Accomplished, No Really" crowd or IANRs) attacking pop are identical to '90s bubblegum-girls lashing out against lush production. Identical? No, sorry: when pop girls say they don't wanna fuck, they mean it.

And yeah, "I don't wanna fuck" basically sums up any argument any detractor can possibly throw at Saturdays=Youth.

Let's talk about the role of time in electronic music. Not musical "time" per se -- we all know about boom-boom-boom-boom-CHANGE -- but rather the painful truth that electronic music is subject to the very same chronological-developmental whims of the computers that help create it! One can listen to a computer-assisted record from any point before 2000 (and in some cases up to 2004) and instantly produce a measure of "currentness" based only on the technical prowess of the master and the samples available (or desirable) at the time. The conventional wisdom of electronic production is that everything must be made bigger and better with the passing years, leaving huge openings for genre detractors to identify that "that record you're listening to? It's gonna sound like shit in a year or two." "Maybe they're wrong, maybe they're right" sums up your mental response, doing your best to hide from yourself your own concern about the notorious 3- to 4-year watermark!

So what's the problem? Just use old instruments, right? Sorry -- if you make a big thing of your equipment's age, your form just raped your function and you're being ironic. It's FUNNY, guys! I'm serious! Next thing you know you're in a band called The 8-Bit 1-Ups, and I don't even need to make a snide comment about your fuckin' first release.

Through Saturdays=Youth, Mr. Gonzales has (with startling grace!) reinvented the American 1980s in his image. After a quick runthrough of "Kim & Jessie" even the most grizzled rockist finds himself questioning his own religion: the '80s weren't good, were they? NO! No, 1967 was good! I'm sure of it! Meanwhile their IANR kids are tugging at their pantlegs, demanding info on an apparently brave new-old era their parents had been guarding so selfishly all these years. What the kids REALLY need to learn, though, is that Kim and Jessie have a secret world in the twilight. 8.7 (Charmed)

You Used to Be So Amused: Explosions in the Sky at Congress Theatre

EXORDIUM

Get this out of the fuckin' way quick: the opening act's staggering lack of musical merit (I'm so proooooooooggy) was outweighed entirely by his situational merit. Confused? Half of a concert experience is the interaction you have with those with whom you went- in my case a very attractive, intelligent girl with whom I share a brotherly-sisterly bond. And the opening act gets ya—they always fuckin' get ya—at the worst possible time, because they're up on stage and you're in the middle of a brilliant statement and—wait, should I stop talking, should I quiet down?—nah, they're just fuckin' roadies, they all look exactly like fuckin' roadies—and holy shit they're playing music, they're legit, and now I have to stop! Bullshit! So this roadie-lookin' blowjob comes up on stage with his guitar (I think it was a guitar, but since he was a proggy douchebag, he refused to make guitar sounds for the entirety of his set and I have no way of confirming) and he plays a few random notes. Some boring atonal samples start looping (so prooooooogggy) and we all quiet down. And then one by one we, bored by his pretension/convention (note to self: coin neologism) realize that there's nothing worth listening to and one by one we return to our conversations, the volume increasing so beautifully—this is logarithmic, get a fucking mathematician in here because this is logarithmic—and bam I have one more hour to finish my conversation and the next conversation and the one after. We're all on the same page vis a vis situational merit now? Mmmmmkay. And now I come staggering out of the gate.

DECLAMATION

In the professional wrestling community we have this distinction between two types of fans. There's the marks, right. They're the mouth-breathing plebians who still think the shit's legit—or at least act like it—and basically make 8-year-old children out of themselves at the first opportunity. If you are a good guy, the mark will cheer for you—If you're a bad guy, the mark will boo you—If you're selling a T-shirt the mark will spend for you—because he is a fucking child and that is all he can do. Then we got the smarts, who are the smug, self-absorbed assholes who will cheer someone because they do a 450 arm-trap corkscrew springboard original powerbomb five times a minute. They boo people because those goddamn infantile marks happen to like them, and they buy merchandise so they can strategically create the “Oh, you're wearing a pro-wrestling shirt—isn't that stuff fake?” moment where they look down on that fucking mongoloid who doesn't understand their sophistication. But there are these moments—these rare, fleeting moments—when the deformed creature that is the smart, that is the pro-wrestling fan in general, becomes something more. When the smart realizes he's watching something truly epic, truly memorable, he will—as we say in the biz—“mark out”. Away go the asshole pretensions and in come the representations of the best aspects of the medium: this right here, in this brief moment, is a man who not only appreciates the technical mastery and storytelling capability shown by the two men in the ring, but appreciates their match on the child-like emotional level as well.

See I mention this because when you are seeing Explosions in the Sky live, you are marking the fuck out. You are standing there or sitting there and up on that stage you see those fuckers—those brilliant fuckers!—and they are Hulk Hogan, they are Michael Jordan, they are Superman, they are Jesus Fucking Christ—and you're a child, you're just a fucking child, what the fuck could you possibly do, what the fuck else do you know how to do but display unconditional love? They're up there and you're trying to marshal your forces, all your musical knowledge—is that a Swamp Ash SG he's playing, I think it is but I can't be sure—but it's not, it's not, Gibson had nothing to do with it and it's made of light and its strings are sound and he's up there, playing that guitar! And you thought you could defy him. Critique him. You thought in your hubris you could understand a single thing he's doing up there on that stage, you fool, you human, you fucking child.

That's not to say that Explosions don't hold up under laboratory conditions. Rather! Far be it from me to suggest that they display anything but the highest levels of science in their recorded compositions. I mean, why the hell would we need another tub-thumping ringmaster commanding our attention raptly but shyly staring at her $400 leather boots when the whiteboards come out? I'll leave the honors to you, Hannah! See, she's got half the act down because Explosions only have so much time in their days and so many lives they can change, but I assure you—I'm callin' it—that Hannah will have, within four years, released a post-rock masterwork. Imagine her on the cover now! And return to this article after you've finished your twenty push-ups.

It was refreshing for me to receive confirmation that Explosions does in fact agree with me on the identities of their best songs (The Birth and Death of the Day, Catastrophe and the Cure, The Only Moment We Were Ever Alone). I mean, opinion becomes nothing the second you start doubting it, but there's all this fuckin' relevatism and it's good to see that Generic Pitchfork Writer #12 (Joph?) will find himself in a gleaming white prison of sound some day or other. Hey, not my call. Matter of fact, all I can be sure of is that Explosions delivered the most powerful concert experience I've had in the last year (don't get greedy now!), managing without any gimmicks. Fuckin' gimmicks! Can't go to a concert without having some blowjobs in Princeton haircuts acting out an ancient Greek morality play on a greenscreen! All they did for us, all they did to us was play music. We were treated to two hours of three men convicting us of murder with their guitars while the drummer played stenographer.

PERORATION

The stenographer is Vergil! The stenographer is Kafka! In the parlor! With the candlestick! Without remorse! Without hyperbole!

Nos Chers Amis 2007 (Part 4)

Cutting Down Trees

• 300's Fans: This is not Sparta, nor is it particularly madness. Additionally, we have no plans to dine in Hell tonight. I'm sorry to say that repeating these statements will not make them true. Even if you attach a zany photoshopped picture or wacky word replacement to it!
• NME: "Shoegaze" was bad. "Nu-rave" was worse. But I should be able to safely read an online conversation about the revival of "Shoegaze" without seeing a comment praising the arrival of "nu-gaze." Not "nu-gaze". I draw the line there. "Nu-gaze" just goes WAY too fucking far.
• Amy Winehouse: The scene: a TreasonShit concert in LA. Who are they? Oh, you know the drill... grindcore with a Foals bent, I guess. Wait, what's this? The leading lady seems kinda thin!

Napoleon.In.Rags: Alright, I got a challenge. You up to the task?
paris.by.night: Fuckin' Agamemnon, y'know?
paris.by.night: Oh, sorry chief!
paris.by.night: Sure thing.
Napoleon.In.Rags: Name one heroic thing Pete Doherty has ever done.
paris.by.night: I hear he's got the Jonestown Pout down pat.
paris.by.night: There's gotta be something in that?
Napoleon.In.Rags: Jonesto- what, what the fuck is that? That isn't anything, that doesn't mean anything! Now shut the fuck up before it turns into a genre!
Brian: Hey, I--
paris.by.night: Fuck, I guess you're right.
paris.by.night: Last thing we need is Pre-Jonestown No Wave records appearing on W.A.S.T.E. Central.
Napoleon.In.Rags: If ya don't cut that out right now, buddyboy, I'mma have to surround you and kick you into a conveniently-placed bottomless pit!
Napoleon.In.Rags: That- that's badass, right? That would be badass? Yeah? Alright, just checkin'. We're cool, we're cool.
paris.by.night: Leonidas... isn't that the name of a Jonestown Stomp record from the 70s?
paris.by.night: Wasn't very good, if I recall. Got a bit overplayed.
Napoleon.In.Rags: Now now. If it's good enough to have such a fuckin' meaningless genre, it's good enough to be played incessantly!
Napoleon.In.Rags: Babyshambles! Muse! Arctic Monkeys! All I got, folks, all I got!
paris.by.night: As much as I appreciate the fuckin' nu-town list--
Napoleon.In.Rags: Babyshambles! Babyshambles! Babyshambles! How many times I gotta say it to make you forget that it's the same band as The Kinks?
paris.by.night: Don't forget The Doors!
Napoleon.In.Rags: Wait, who?
paris.by.night: Quiet!
paris.by.night: I hear sandworms!
Napoleon.In.Rags: Wait, seriously! If these "Doors" are some sort of Yankee bollocks, you can't expect me to-
paris.by.night: You were AT that TreasonShit concert. They opened!
Napoleon.In.Rags: Hey, hey, keep your voice down. Can't expect Leonidas to bail us out of another sandworm attack, can we?
paris.by.night: Hey, I got a quick VAMPIRE WEEKEND theory.
paris.by.night: I know you're not tired of those!
Napoleon.In.Rags: Shoot!
paris.by.night: Alright, so I believe YOU were the one to originally show me the Winehouse before-and-after shot...
paris.by.night: Look at the high school side.
paris.by.night: Prep-rock.
paris.by.night: Do I gotta fill in the rest of the blanks?
Napoleon.In.Rags: So within ten years or so we can expect Vampire Weekend to have morphed into drugged-up goblins who ride piggyback atop slack-jawed, moaning convicts?
Napoleon.In.Rags: Or uh... you referring to the Grammy part?
paris.by.night: I...
paris.by.night: I think we've got a Jonestown Tossup on our hands!

Most charming in our eyes: Amy Winehouse (???)

Building Cities

• RPG Elements: I'd be overusing italics here like I usually do, but I guess my dexterity just isn't high enough. Ding!
• The iPhone: First and foremost a postmodern tool of deception. I know a guy with an iPhone. He has Cross on it. Impressive, eh? Guess what his favorite fuckin' track is.
• The Justin Timbaland War Machine: We've mentioned their name. Now they're aware of our existence. They smile, maybe chuckle a bit, and go to work on making a club remix of this blog.

paris.by.night: I'm making some calls.
Napoleon.In.Rags: Using what? A reasonable type of telephone, I hope?
paris.by.night: Well I tried, but these gentlemen aren't too responsive!
paris.by.night: They're wrapped up in some kinda fuckin' award show or something.
paris.by.night: So I've had to... well... you can take a quick look at the noms yourself.
Napoleon.In.Rags: Okay, let's see what we ha- what, fuckin' iPhone?
Napoleon.In.Rags: See, the thing about those is that Apple had to put "Phone" in the name, else nobody would remember that you can actually use them to make calls.
Napoleon.In.Rags: All surfing the internet, watching Lost and listening to Jet, when suddenly comes a mysterious ringing.
Napoleon.In.Rags: What, am I low on RAM? Is that it? Do I gotta upgrade my graphics card?
paris.by.night: I'm gonna walk you through a bit of the functionality I find useful 'cause I feel iPhones get a needlessly bad name, k?
Napoleon.In.Rags: Fire away!
paris.by.night: Alright, first: the actual interface is profoundly robust.
paris.by.night: "Interaction on new levels" and all that? No, it's mostly just dragging shit. But there's this button people don't usually use...
paris.by.night: It's tucked away in the corner of the Preferences menu. A little scope.
Napoleon.In.Rags: (Still no mention of phone calls)
paris.by.night: Wait, it's coming!
paris.by.night: (As best I can figger it) the scope button is some kind of primitive conference call feature
paris.by.night: Primitive in that you don't actually control which two people you find yourself speaking to!
Napoleon.In.Rags: I know many phones which trump the iPhone in this respect.
paris.by.night: Wait, hear me out!
paris.by.night: See, I've been trying for months to figure out why it's a scope button, right? Then earlier today I realized -- the two men on the other line are snipers but GET THIS -- they don't know it yet!
Napoleon.In.Rags: So call one of them on a reasonable phone! He'll tell the other and your problems are solved!
Napoleon.In.Rags: But you know what? Fuck that. On a reasonable phone, most you can do is get a Hannah Montana wallpaper.
paris.by.night: Hey, hey! Sorry to interject, but--
Napoleon.In.Rags: You're crusin' with an iPhone? Bam! You're watching her live concert DVD while listening to the studio version and looking up Wikipedia trivia about the TV show!
Napoleon.In.Rags: And this is the only acceptable use for an iPhone.
paris.by.night: You got a phone? Like just any old kind?
Napoleon.In.Rags: Yeah.
paris.by.night: Alright. I can tell from your glib description of the iPhone's function that you still don't take it seriously--
paris.by.night: so here, I'mma call you and your roommate up.
Napoleon.In.Rags: No, don't, you'll regret tha-

[The phone rings. He answers, don't ya know.]
Justin: Who's this?
[Irreplaceable!]
[The One And Only.]
Justin: Aaaaand thanks for the samples. Hey Timbaland! Let's go crank this sucka out and buy a private jet.

paris.by.night: I-- it's not working!
paris.by.night: I swear, the iPhone is so useful!
paris.by.night: I was going to have those guys attack that one awards show--
Napoleon.In.Rags: Attack? Attack? Listen, asshole, I got a pair of pants that give me +50 Attack!


Napoleon.In.Rags: Pockets are just too small to fit an iPhone, don't ya know.
paris.by.night: Comfortable enough for a private jet?
Justin: Comfortable! There we go, I was lookin' for a song title.

Most charming in our eyes: The Justin Timbaland War Machine

Planting Trees In Cities
The Bioware Guys: The Bioware Guys: These two were inadvertantly responsible this year for the headline "Sexbox Sexpose!" That is all I can ask of two men.

• 
  
• Shigeru Miyamoto: Miyamoto-san, can you help me read the sign in the castle garden? It's blurry, I... what's that? No, please don't leave, I-- oh. It's so cold in here.
• Thom Yorke

paris.by.night: We fucked up. Bad.
Napoleon.In.Rags: Do you think if we apologize now, could we still-
paris.by.night: Naw. I already sent the nominations in.
paris.by.night: Best to move forward from here, I guess...
paris.by.night: Try to deal with the fact we just pit Thom Yorke against other people?
Napoleon.In.Rags: Yeah, well, ah- okay, uh... paltry commendations for the other two nominees? Is that how we wanna play it?
paris.by.night: That's how it's gotta be. Mario Galaxy was a good time.
Napoleon.In.Rags: And, well... I read some good reviews of Mass Effect?
paris.by.night: Fuck! We really dug ourselves in this time, didn't we...
Napoleon.In.Rags: We still have a few scrolls to go! We can't just end here, but... what the fuck do we say?
paris.by.night: This was really, really dumb, I--
Napoleon.In.Rags: Can we just stop now?
Napoleon.In.Rags: Like, is that allowed?
Administrator: Tsk, tsk. No, boys, this just won't do!
Napoleon.In.Rags: Fuck! We gotta pay the bills!
Administrator: Listen, boys, I been in this business a long time. I seen kids like you rise and fall like a shitty nu-town record in a fickle editorial. I seen girls -- good, reasonable, KIND girls -- slandered mercilessly in shit like this. In this.
Napoleon.In.Rags: I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry!
Napoleon.In.Rags: Look, we'll fix this! We'll-
Administrator: Boys, I'm gonna need you to apologize.
Napoleon.In.Rags: - we'll put everything-
paris.by.night: Huh? He just di--
Administrator: Apologize to this poor girl right here.
paris.by.night: Listen, sir, there's a certain degree of journalistic integrity that needs to be respected here, and--
Administrator (The Gentile): They call me a man of old-fashioned values, kid. You? You call me 'sir'.
paris.by.night: But what of... what of the very institution of the editorial?!
The Gentile: You boys are complainin' about a past decision. No amendments in this constitution, kids. I've taken in young Amy and --
Napoleon.In.Rags: - hey! You two fuckbags, shut up and listen!
Napoleon.In.Rags: This is all a foregone conclusion, 'cause like I said, I'mma fix this! I'mma put everything-
Yorke: - everything -
Yorke: - in its right place.
The Gentile: [Sputtering] M- Mr. Yorke, you've got to understand me, I--
Yorke: What was that you tried to say?
The Gentile: You've got to--
Yorke: Tried to say?
The Gentile: Please! We--
Yorke: Tried to say!

Most charming in our eyes: Thom Yorke