nah pop, no style

Let’s talk about the weekend.

There were some dogs and some not-dogs. The dog show was sweet and totally bizarre, as expected . . . I’m a fan of the dogs that misbehave, and of the prissy men with well-groomed Afghan wolfhounds.

Howlin Rain ruled hard. As was pointed out by another attendee, Ethan is looking pretty much exactly like Earl from My Name Is Earl right now. Anyway, best moment: they come back on for an encore, and a woman asks them to play “Me and Bobbie McGee,” then offers to sing it for them if they’d like, and tells them what the chords are (Woman: “It’s just G, C, and D!” Keyboard guy: “Yeah, I know the song . . .”)

Not that into having four bands on a bill and not starting until 10, but I guess I’m an old man. The downside to adding locals to draw their friends is that if the touring band doesn’t go on until 1am, their friends will all have left to go party or sleep or whatever and won’t see an awesome band like Howlin Rain.  But I digress.

Peak moment of the weekend may have been driving to the parents’ house early Sunday afternoon in the sun, with the windows down part way, listening to Fragile.  I take what I can get when it’s late March in Pittsburgh.

Last night, checked out Citay at Belvedere’s, which both of the readers of my FFW>> blog on the CP site knew about. Good show — they’re supposedly a 9-piece on record, but there were six on tour. They sounded full and beautiful; twin lead guitar is one of their “things.” They make very pretty songs.

Next up is another California band, Howlin Rain, playing at the Pub on Saturday night. I interviewed Ethan (also of Comets on Fire) and hastily threw together this article for the paper. Also for this week, I wrote this about Audrey Chen and Frederic Blondy. I apologize to my middle school music teacher for my having made an example of her; she was never so rude as to do the same to me.

Elsewise, there are plans afoot to go to the dog show on Saturday. Last year it was fun, but I’m hoping we’ll catch more of the agility trials this year. I can’t lie; I prefer dogs when they’re running around like maniacs.

Also, there was a frightening moment early this week in the P-G when Steve Massey casually threatened to axe MARY WORTH, REX MORGAN, AND/OR SPIDER-MAN! Tell him that he can take Cathy, but leave the boring cartoons that are hilarious in their boringness. What heresy.

This is mind-blowingly, hilariously awful. I love the original song, too.

(This is not an endorsement of any candidate, nor of sexualizing the presidency as is clearly done in this song.) (Also I wish Hillary appeared at the end to deliver the penultimate line from the original, “I’m gettin’ on my camel and I’m ridin’ uptown.”)

I’m one of the three people left in the US who doesn’t have cable and therefore has to go out and buy a conversion box for DTV in time for the switch next year (or else buy cable like they want me to). Also I care about the FCC not being a bunch of stooges for shitty communications corporations, and facilitating planned obsolescence. Thus, stuff like this irks me.

From www.dtv.gov:

Why are we switching to DTV?

An important benefit of the switch to all-digital broadcasting is that it will free up parts of the valuable broadcast spectrum for public safety communications (such as police, fire departments, and rescue squads). Also, some of the spectrum will be auctioned to companies that will be able to provide consumers with more advanced wireless services (such as wireless broadband).

From the AP story about yesterday’s airwave spectrum auction:

Bidding closed Tuesday on a record-setting government airwaves auction with the total amount pledged reaching nearly $19.6 billion. But enthusiasm in the result was tempered by doubts concerning the future of a proposed emergency communications network.

[ . . . ]

About one-sixth of the spectrum at auction was dedicated to the creation of a nationwide, emergency communications network for first responders. But the so-called D block did not attract the minimum bid required by FCC auction rules.

Nice sell, FCC.

First of all, check out this NPR story I heard over the weekend (I know, not usually the way one introduces something that will be truly funny — bear with me here). It’s about Dame Shirley Bassey coming out with a new album, and features a stream of her cover of Pink’s “Get the Party Started.” It’s well worth a listen.

Then once you’re done with that, check out this Youtube: it’s the TV commercial, which I vaguely remember, for the cereal called Croonchy Stars. I feel as if I’ve blogged on this before, but maybe not. It was around in 1988, apparently, and I can remember being obsessed with it as a youth. It was the cereal marketed as a creation of the Muppets’ Swedish Chef. Look closely at the chef’s hands. Creepy.

How was my weekend, you ask? Splendid, thank you!

I did things like get my oil changed (it’s every nine months or 3000 miles, right? right?) and clean my apartment and turn my filing cabinet back into a filing cabinet instead of a piling cabinet. I got the same thing I always get at Taste of India, and checked out Life In Bed and Good Night, States at the Brillobox, as promised.

Life In Bed has had some lineup changes of late — the last time I saw them was last summer, and they were about to take on a new guitarist. Since then they’ve gotten a new bass player too, and they changes are pretty clear. It’s nice to see lineup changes actually change a band like that to an extent; it makes it obvious that there’s a certain amount of collaborative energy going on there.

Good Night, States sounded excellent, though they were rather tired from doing some recording. It was my first time seeing them live, finally. If I didn’t make it clear before, I like their album and think it’s worth checking out if you haven’t yet. There’s a certain complexity to the song structures that I didn’t even register that much upon my first several listens, but which makes it a fun record to listen to over and over.

The Slits are coming this Friday and I haven’t gotten a ticket yet. I bet they’re sold out, eh? Hrmmm.

If you’re lucky, I’ll soon be blogging about how much I hate electoral politics. Maybe.

What did I do this past weekend?

Friday night was the Hair Police show that was not a Hair Police show really, since Hair Police failed to show. I guess they had complications with travel or whatever. Missed In the Belly of the Whale, unfortunately, but I’ll catch them at Belvie’s with Citay. Caught Slices, who were sweet — I haven’t seen them in ages. I won’t actually confess precisely how long it’s been.

Saturday night, also at Roboto, was Blues Control, whose recorded stuff is pretty sweet, but who were totally underwhelming live. Kind of sounded like a muddy mess; I couldn’t really make out what was going on. Fortunately, Sun Tornado were awesome, making the trek across the Wilkinsburg tundra worthwhile. The Tamburo-Beyer-Kasunic set was good, and newcomers Altaic were surprisingly enjoyable.

I also managed to track down the final bill that I forgot to pay in February, so I think we’re clear on that now. March is like the month of my personal reconstruction. Wish me luck.  And I ate donuts with my parents, who had no power on Sunday afternoon/evening, because a jagbag hit a telephone pole and took out the power lines.

Looking forward to NEXT weekend, I plan on at the very least checking out Good Night, States and Life in Bed at the Brillobox Saturday night. Perhaps I’ll go to one of the numerous Friday night shows too, but who knows?

I arrive at work this morning to find a press release announcing that St. Vincent College’s commencement speaker this year will be none other than Coach Mike Tomlin.

Needless to say, this is a much less controversial pick than last year.

In other St. Vincent news, which I usually do not broadcast much of, next month they’re hosting a one-night-only, one-woman show on the life of Catholic Worker Dorothy Day.  It’s April 3; I’m considering going. I have a soft spot in my heart for Catholic anarchists.

So anyway — Baby Dee Saturday night was splendid. The crowd was a little weird — mostly stuffy people who didn’t laugh when it was appropriate. But whatever. Dee’s album is pretty great, and if she’s coming through your town in the future, check her out.

This weekend is Hair Police and Blues Control at Roboto Friday and Saturday nights, respectively . . . just blogged on that over at FFW>>. In between time, I’m going back to Torley tonight to re-learn how to make the vegetarian meatball substitute known inappropriately as pirate balls.

An announcement on today’s P-G Magazine section notes that “CATHY” HAS RETURNED TO THE COMICS PAGE after a brief hiatus during which “Brevity” was sampled.

I, for one, had the toughest time figuring out what they had chopped to make space for “Brevity” (and I noted this in the email I sent to Steve Massey on the subject of comics). I wonder if anyone else in the tri-state area actually missed “Cathy?”

PS this is a couple weeks old, but while we’re on comics — this “Family Circus” really digs into the heart of Baudrillardian simulacrum theory: