Staff Inphection

[Just Some Girl]

I tried to order that "Heart Stopper" pizza they showed on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, but they won't deliver to this shitty office park.

I heart that show (even though I'd never in a million years eat 99.5% of that stuff dude profiles/highlights; it's usually meat-y). Hope you got your beer.

I hear ya on the protest everything uh, thing, Matthew. (Iran protest in front of U.S. Embassy tonight on the way home from Black Lips gig.*)

I can attest that Pogo! is drunk (prolly now passed oot) right now.

Major PMAs to KimFBP and her fam! I hope all works out for the best.





*OK, Black Lips' NXNE showcase at Yonge-Dundas Square**... I had Pilates trainer first so didn't get there til 9:45, already packed with kids (lots and lots and lots of angular haircuts, ironic t-shirts and facial hair, and general "cool"-ness) for the 10pm gig, free and outdoors. (I'll post pics later maybe -- shitty phone camera stuff but you'll get the idea.) Anyway, so way at the back, too old to want to wade into that shit, but great show. Great energy, rockin' tunes, they let a bunch of aforementioned kids dance on stage (maybe 10 or so of them?) and told security to leave them alone, lots of energy from the crowd. I'd like to see their showcase bar gig later in the weekend, but it conflicts with something else. Hmph. The security guys were seriously young, like, barely 18 it seemed, and their sole job (other than allowing people onstage at the band's request) was making people put out their smokes. Though we were outside. In a public square. Weird. Anyway..






**Toronto's lame attempt to be like Time Square

[Just Some Girl]

Forgot to mention: King Kahn also made an appearance (for one song), so... kinda like being at more than one NXNE showcases, right?


(shrug)

[Just Some Girl]

This was my viewpoint. Le sigh.

First up: This is what Yonge-Dundas Square looks like at 10pm. Thank you giant electronic billboards for helping me forget it's nighttime.

[Just Some Girl]

Here's my short-girl-at-the-back-of-the-crowd vantage point. (more sighing)

[Poop Fresh-Herbed Pickles]

knnnnncch

[Just Some Girl]

Then I came home and had two whiskey drinks. (Needed some medicine after all that tippy-toe standing on concrete.)

Tomorrow's Hank Pine & Lily Fine showcase will likely be tad more intimate.

Still, had fun, old woman aches and complaints notwithstanding. 

[Poop Fresh-Herbed Pickles]

How do you think ballerinas stay in such good shape?

[Just Some Girl]

Anorexica and parental pressure?

[Just Some Girl]

Sorry you don't get to go to Mempho this weekend, Kurt. Such a drag! I know you guys really wanted to make it...

Re: next Memphis trip, I don't care when we actually end up doing Crappitystock II: Electric Boogaloo, as long as we do it. (And swears I'll have actual conversations with people this time, and not just be all gooby with Ryan. Swears!)

Ok, my broadcasting day is over.

I feel oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooold.


(walking-with-cane smiley)

[matthew]

I'd kinda like to see the Johnny Marr incarnation.

Yeah, I saw them last two times they played here - (2004 for "Good News for People..." and 2007 for "We Were Dead Before...", the latter with Marr), but my world was just opening up to indie rock, etc. when they were at their creative peak (1997-2000).

If I had a time machine and could go back and see one band live...it might be them. I can't really think of any band more important to me (lyrically, though I don't often consider lyrics live) ...I spent so much time with those albums once I found them. For me they filled the gap left by the absence of new Simple Ones albums. Strange as that may seem, they occupy a similar place for me. In some way Grifters had previously occupied some of that space, but they were always a tad more abstract.


 

[matthew]

That wasn't really a question.

I am wondering if I should bother with Modest Mouse this time around. I wish I had caught them some time between 1995 and 2003.

I saw them twice: at the old Jailhouse, on Montroyal, when they toured with Califone, and a few years later, at the Cabaret on St Laurent.   I'm surprised that you missed the Cabaret show.   If I recall correctly, you were already into them at that point.

I can't believe they played Jailhouse. @#&! With Califone. #@$%

I graduated high school in 1995. When I entered CEGEP (college, sorta) I had seen big shows like Pink Floyd, Lollapalooza 1994 (which I went to for The Breeders, L7, Beastie Boys and Smashing Pumpkins, but was introduced to Flaming Lips, Nick Cave and the Boredoms), Rolling Stones. That was it.

Well, except for being dragged to Another Roadside Attraction by a friend who swore it would be a perfectly good substitute for Lollapalloza 1995, which had bypassed Montreal, but I try my best to block out this memory. I could not tolerate the Tragically Hip and the entire fratty scene perturbed me. Bleugh.

Anyway, the first shows I attended once I got to CEGEP was Fugazi, Love Battery and Radiohead/Remy Zero. I was taking stabs at the darkness, but I had no idea where to start. I did become keenly aware that modestly-sized "big" shows at medium-sized venues (Fugazi and Radiohead) left me feeling atomized and alienated, and that I wanted to see more bands/shows like Love Battery.

By 1996 I had become acquainted with Chris P., who would introduce me to the world of indie and garage. I would see Superdrag (opening for Echobelly!) and New Bomb Turks/Gas Huffer while in NYC, but most the music I was listening to was still of the buzz bin alternative stripe. I did manage to catch The Fastbacks the first and only time they played Montreal, and Hovercraft's two performances here remains some of the most indelible music memories I possess, but I was still being talked into going to shows like Beck/Cibo Matto, which I was only somewhat interested in. The Throwing Muses/Dirty Three show in September of that year serves as a marker for my slight transition from alt rock to indie/post rock. The next month I met W_____ (though W____ introduced me to little music that I ever enjoyed outside of Siouxsie and the Banshees, which I still love).

1997-1998 - We would see Man or Astro-man?, the Grifters, and Mudhoney together, but mostly I was going to shows with Chris, who, at the time, was moving away from indie/post rock, and into the world of garage. Consequently, most of the shows I see around this time are garagey. However, Chris does continue to make mix tapes for me, and I hear Modest Mouse's most popular song at the time, "Doin' The Cockroach", but I did not think all that much of it. To this day I find it worse than a lot of stuff on their last two albums. I almost always skip it. I vaguely recall hearing other tracks by Modest Mouse, but I couldn't tell you when and where. At some point I heard "This Is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About...", but I have no idea where in time this occurred.

1999 - Around this time, I joined the Grifters iMusic BBS and met surferrosad and Tripp. A month later we would bus down to Memphis to see the Grifters play Barristers. Unfortunately for me, I was already withdrawing from the world (I had left CEGEP with a single class unfinished and rejected the idea of university, and was dropping jobs left and right). I was thoroughly misanthropic and, though I was unaware at the time, the alcoholism had already taken root.

My memories of the shows I attended in 1999 are clouded by an seething hatred for the swarms that surrounded me, and I seem to recall W___ having to talk me out of picking fights with scenesters and people I considered "poseurs" (particularly these three shows: Compulsive Gamblers, No Neck Blues Band/Shalabi Effect, Guided by Voices). Curiously, my memories of the Man or Astro-man? show that year are entirely positive. It is impossible to feel grim with MOAM. November 1999 I manage to drag myself to see Kristin Hersh open for that guy from Dead Can Dance. Agoraphobia and a hatred for mankind overcomes me and we leave before Brendan Perry plays. I couldn't stand him, but W____ probably wanted to see him, but I was a selfish asshole drunkard.

I manage to see a single concert in the year 2000: Dirty Three/Storm and Strees/Shannon Wright. That was in April. In June I am rushed to hospital after shitting and puking blood for a week and a half. I am told that I have a liver of a middle aged alcoholic and that if I do not quit drinking soon, that I will die.

I quit drinking then and there and depart the hospital without a stitch of guidance or medication. Three days later (the very day that Moon and Antartica is released) I suffer an alcoholic seizure on a public bus and am again returned to the hospital. I start drinking again. The alcohol is now like oxygen - an oxygen whose pursuit now dominates every hour of my existence. I hear "The Moon and Antarctica" days later and I am soon obsssed with lyrics that seem to be describing E X A C T LY how I am feeling. I barely leave the house to work and fail to attend the Cabaret performance in September 19, 2000. Four days after that show I am on the floor of the video store I work at begging police officers to kill me and put me out of my misery.

I may have missed them, but I do know the albums outside and in. Even much of the 'corporate sellout album' ("Good News for People who Love Bad News") figures in as the soundtrack to my eventual recovery.

Meh, perhaps I will go see them.

[matthew]

Should I shell out $35+assorted bullshit charges for this?

BUTTHOLE SURFERS + DINOSAUR JR.
+ LOU BARLOW & THE MISSINGMEN
L'OLYMPIA

When is that?  I might go. 

Sorry:

jeudi 1 octobre (POP Montreal, Greenland GEG Présentent)
** POUR TOUS / ALL AGES **
BUTTHOLE SURFERS + DINOSAUR JR.
+ LOU BARLOW & THE MISSINGMEN
L'OLYMPIA
1004 SAINTE-CATHERINE E.
35.00$ + f.s. à l'avance et 40.00$ + f.s. à la porte
Billets en vente VENDREDI 19 JUIN @ MIDI à la billetterie de L'OLYMPIA, CHEAP THRILLS, L'OBLIQUE, PHONOPOLIS, SOUNDCENTRAL et sur le réseau ADMISSION.

[matthew]

Pop Montreal 2009 initial lineup:
Fever Ray
Butthole Surfers
Dinosaur Jr.
Lou Barlow + The Missingmen
Diamanda Galas
Os Mutantes
Roxanne Shante
Buffy Sainte-Marie
Dalai Lama'
Mono
DJ/Rupture
Tobacco
Lemonade
Ghislain Poirier
Chairlift
Matt & Kim
Iris Dement
Loudon Wainwright III
Wovenhand
Destroyer
Teenage Jesus & the Jerks (you cannot imagine what this means to Becky, who has lived and breathed Lydia Lunch for decades. She met her once at a book signing, but this will be different.)
Thee Oh Sees
The Intelligence
The Homosexuals
Bajofondo
tUnE-YaRdS
Zombie Disco Squad
Mike Simonetti

[Jeff]

No bold for Loudon Wainwright? I love that guy. Good songwriter.

[Jesse]

That wasn't really a question.

I am wondering if I should bother with Modest Mouse this time around. I wish I had caught them some time between 1995 and 2003.

I saw them twice: at the old Jailhouse, on Montroyal, when they toured with Califone, and a few years later, at the Cabaret on St Laurent.   I'm surprised that you missed the Cabaret show.   If I recall correctly, you were already into them at that point.

I can't believe they played Jailhouse. @#&! With Califone. #@$%

I graduated high school in 1995. When I entered CEGEP (college, sorta) I had seen big shows like Pink Floyd, Lollapalooza 1994 (which I went to for The Breeders, L7, Beastie Boys and Smashing Pumpkins, but was introduced to Flaming Lips, Nick Cave and the Boredoms), Rolling Stones. That was it.

Well, except for being dragged to Another Roadside Attraction by a friend who swore it would be a perfectly good substitute for Lollapalloza 1995, which had bypassed Montreal, but I try my best to block out this memory. I could not tolerate the Tragically Hip and the entire fratty scene perturbed me. Bleugh.

Anyway, the first shows I attended once I got to CEGEP was Fugazi, Love Battery and Radiohead/Remy Zero. I was taking stabs at the darkness, but I had no idea where to start. I did become keenly aware that modestly-sized "big" shows at medium-sized venues (Fugazi and Radiohead) left me feeling atomized and alienated, and that I wanted to see more bands/shows like Love Battery.

By 1996 I had become acquainted with Chris P., who would introduce me to the world of indie and garage. I would see Superdrag (opening for Echobelly!) and New Bomb Turks/Gas Huffer while in NYC, but most the music I was listening to was still of the buzz bin alternative stripe. I did manage to catch The Fastbacks the first and only time they played Montreal, and Hovercraft's two performances here remains some of the most indelible music memories I possess, but I was still being talked into going to shows like Beck/Cibo Matto, which I was only somewhat interested in. The Throwing Muses/Dirty Three show in September of that year serves as a marker for my slight transition from alt rock to indie/post rock. The next month I met W_____ (though W____ introduced me to little music that I ever enjoyed outside of Siouxsie and the Banshees, which I still love).

1997-1998 - We would see Man or Astro-man?, the Grifters, and Mudhoney together, but mostly I was going to shows with Chris, who, at the time, was moving away from indie/post rock, and into the world of garage. Consequently, most of the shows I see around this time are garagey. However, Chris does continue to make mix tapes for me, and I hear Modest Mouse's most popular song at the time, "Doin' The Cockroach", but I did not think all that much of it. To this day I find it worse than a lot of stuff on their last two albums. I almost always skip it. I vaguely recall hearing other tracks by Modest Mouse, but I couldn't tell you when and where. At some point I heard "This Is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About...", but I have no idea where in time this occurred.

1999 - Around this time, I joined the Grifters iMusic BBS and met surferrosad and Tripp. A month later we would bus down to Memphis to see the Grifters play Barristers. Unfortunately for me, I was already withdrawing from the world (I had left CEGEP with a single class unfinished and rejected the idea of university, and was dropping jobs left and right). I was thoroughly misanthropic and, though I was unaware at the time, the alcoholism had already taken root.

My memories of the shows I attended in 1999 are clouded by an seething hatred for the swarms that surrounded me, and I seem to recall W___ having to talk me out of picking fights with scenesters and people I considered "poseurs" (particularly these three shows: Compulsive Gamblers, No Neck Blues Band/Shalabi Effect, Guided by Voices). Curiously, my memories of the Man or Astro-man? show that year are entirely positive. It is impossible to feel grim with MOAM. November 1999 I manage to drag myself to see Kristin Hersh open for that guy from Dead Can Dance. Agoraphobia and a hatred for mankind overcomes me and we leave before Brendan Perry plays. I couldn't stand him, but W____ probably wanted to see him, but I was a selfish asshole drunkard.

I manage to see a single concert in the year 2000: Dirty Three/Storm and Strees/Shannon Wright. That was in April. In June I am rushed to hospital after shitting and puking blood for a week and a half. I am told that I have a liver of a middle aged alcoholic and that if I do not quit drinking soon, that I will die.

I quit drinking then and there and depart the hospital without a stitch of guidance or medication. Three days later (the very day that Moon and Antartica is released) I suffer an alcoholic seizure on a public bus and am again returned to the hospital. I start drinking again. The alcohol is now like oxygen - an oxygen whose pursuit now dominates every hour of my existence. I hear "The Moon and Antarctica" days later and I am soon obsssed with lyrics that seem to be describing E X A C T LY how I am feeling. I barely leave the house to work and fail to attend the Cabaret performance in September 19, 2000. Four days after that show I am on the floor of the video store I work at begging police officers to kill me and put me out of my misery.

I may have missed them, but I do know the albums outside and in. Even much of the 'corporate sellout album' ("Good News for People who Love Bad News") figures in as the soundtrack to my eventual recovery.

Meh, perhaps I will go see them.

Damn. Thanks for posting that.