The Red Elvises at Rusty’s Surf Ranch 3/24/07

The Red Elvises are quite possibly Russian rockabilly at its best. Imagine a band made up entirely of men in flamboyant suits of red flames or sofa patterns along with a normally clothed woman on guitar and a scantily clad woman on keyboards/accordion/keytar. The frontman has the most amazing energy I’ve ever seen out of all the shows I’ve been to; he really knows how to get the crowd going. His lyrics are written with the intention of sounding badly translated and his delivery in each song is impeccably timed.

Under the blue blue sky
Stupid blue birds fly
It ain’t butterflies
Sex in paradise

I’ll get me a hat, you’ll wear a thong
We’ll love and dance to a metallica song
O baby, what a beautiful day
Tra la la la la

We’ll live in a hut, and talk about art
We’ll get a fat cat, named Bonapart
O baby’ why don’t we get away

-excerpt from Sex in Paradise

They’re so gimmicky that it’s hard not to love them.

Bloc Party at the Wiltern 3/20/07

Wow. All I can say was that might have been the best show I’ve ever been to.

OK, so the first opener, The Like, was pretty terrible. Their songs were all structured exactly the same, making them intensely boring. But whatever.

Next up was Final Fantasy. Basically a solo effort by Owen Pallett of Arcade Fire fame (he co-wrote the strings arrangement for their albums Funeral and Neon Bible), his performance alone made the show worth the money. He loops violin sounds to create amazing songs, all the while someone is showing a story through transparencies held over a projector. It was a really cool effect.

Then finally Bloc Party. Now, I wasn’t really expecting a lot from them. Their new album was less new wave, a bit slow, and when I saw them at the Greek Theatre last summer their playing was sloppy and the vocals were muddy. Everything has changed. Their playing was impeccable; they’re the type of band much more well-suited to the small-club-venue setting rather than the whole outdoor 2,000 person audience. They played every single one of their best songs in a lengthy hour and 15 minute set. At the Greek, I felt Bloc Party was very intimidated by their opening bands, MEW and Broken Social Scene. MEW I might let slip by as an opener, but Broken Social Scene is a huge band, way bigger than Bloc Party was at the time.

This will probably be the last time I see them.
Why’s that?
‘Cause they’re so mainstream now that I’ll never be able to get tickets.
They’ll probably be filling up the Staples Center not too long from now.

Like I Was Never Gone

I realize it has been a while since the last post, but what can I say.

Despite their lackluster live performance a few months ago, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s first eponymous album is my favorite album ever. I can sit down and listen to it all the way through without so much as moving a finger; I fall into a state of utter calmness as I walk through each song as if they were each part of a trail finally culminating to a grand view of the entire world below.

Menomena do doo dododo. Menomena do do dodo. Front and center at the shadiest venue I’ve been to yet was a band renown for its catchy weirdness and the use of a bass sax. I mean, seriously, it’s one of the silliest sounding instruments ever used in a band, but it contributes to the overall sound nonetheless. I am speaking of none other than Menomena at the Echo.

First and foremost: find the venue. No signs, all the billboards in Spanish, 8 pm and black as pitch, where the hell could this place be?

Oh yeah, you see that neon sign which isn’t glowing that says Restaurant? Well there’s a white door underneath it. That’s the uh… entrance.

Luckily, the acoustics were great inside (at least they were in front of the stage) and the outside really didn’t do the disco-ball-smoking-room-out-back venue dubbed “The Echo” justice.

Sidenote: Ever since I purchased the twelve dollar Etymotic Research earplugs, I haven’t been so paranoid about hearing loss at the shows I go to. The case being that hearing loss runs in the family and it would be majorly uncool to wear a hearing aid when I’m 30 rather than deal with earplugs when I’m 18.

The Parson Redheads opened first for Menomena. A nine-member psychedelic hippie supergroup who put on a pretty decent show. They might have done without the tambourine guy, but each of them contributed pretty much equally throughout their entire set. Besides, the dude was really into hitting that tambourine; he was almost lost in the waves of rhythm those lovable Redheads were dishing out.

Next up, Bon Savants. Bass guitar, drums, guitar, and barely audible keyboardist (only live). Highlight: guitarist looked like a combination of Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai and Jason Lee and could play the Junior SG like no other.

Finally Menomena came on. They played my two favorites right off the bat. The two songs which I they needed to play for me to be content with this show and not go home and bitch about how they didn’t play their best for a show in LA (TV on the Radio I’m looking at you). Pretty convenient coincidence, I guess.

A good drummer keeps rhythm. A great drummer sings while never missing a beat. Danny Seim is a great drummer. Not only did his drum beats sound identical to those on the album, but never before have I seen such a dedicated individual. Closing his eyes the entire time, his sticks never missing a beat, I could see he was doing this with a self-satisfaction that only comes with a love for what you do.

By the way, Menomena’s “No Encore Policy” has officially ended with LA.

Movies, iTunes, iPod

Movies to see:
Science of Sleep
Idiocracy

The recent update to Apple’s iTunes is a huge improvement, despite the occasional bugs, especially on the iPod front. It not only is much more visually rich and attractive, but the syncing is significantly easier to use, not to mention intuitive.

I don’t know about the rest of the population, but a 60 GB iPod simply is not sufficient for an 86.68 GB song collection, and this has been very limiting. I use to manually manage my songs and videos, which was a huge pain if anyone’s ever tried it. Essentially, it entailed dragging every single file I wanted to be on the iPod from the Library to the iPod Library. It worked fine for a while, but then it started to become annoying when I wanted to change the tags for some of the songs or videos, and noticed that, since the computer and iPod don’t sync, I’d have to do the same change twice, once on the computer and once on the iPod. An incredible waste of time to say the least.

However, I recently had an epiphany. I realized that if I put all the music and video I wanted on my iPod into a playlist on my computer, I could have iTunes simply sync that playlist every time I connected. This meant that I could make sure everything was up to date (tags, play count syncing, etc.) on both my iPod and computer. Not only that but now if I want to add a new CD to my iPod all I have to do is drag it to the “Master” playlist, and the next time I hook up my iPod, it’ll be synced automatically.

Now I know this may seem like a very obvious solution, but if I can help just one more troubled soul out there, I could go to sleep proud that I made a difference in the world, albeit a very superficial one.

On games and movies for the iPod:

I’ve just bought Vortex on the iTunes Music Store (they finally dropped the ‘Music’ after about a year of offering TV shows in addition to songs) after adoring Zuma while bored on the bus. Both of these are games designed specifically for use on only the iPod 5th generation (i.e. video enabled), and they are gorgeous. The graphics are great, the gameplay is fantastic, and the fact that you can save your progress was a stroke of genius on the designer’s part. So if you have a video iPod, consider shelling out the $4.99 for Vortex or Zuma (the only ones I can vouch for as amazing).

I’ve also just bought my first movie from the iTunes Store, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. As mentioned in the Stevenote on Tuesday, all video on the iTunes Store will be 4 times the size of what was previously offered, and on my 17 inch monitor, it doesn’t look half bad, but on the iPod it looks fantastic. I’ve downloaded my share of movies and converted them to iPod format, but none ever looked as good as this did.

Sidenote: Saw The Black Keys at Amoeba (got a pin and a poster, which I ripped off the wall and had them sign), then Ima Robot at Safari Sam’s on Tuesday (another poster, no signage though). New club, pretty nice, but no air conditioning. What were these people thinking when they built this place? Pictures will be posted as soon as disposable camera film is developed.