A Live One

5 Things I am Currently Obsessed With:

1. The new series of Dr. Who on the BBC

I can't believe I've just admitted that. In my high school where – for the most part – there was a place for everyone, there was a hard-core group of geeks (think 'trenchcoat mafia' types, except basically harmless and totally brilliant) who were really into things like Monty Python and science fiction. I mean, everyone was kind of into Monty Python (we used to watch Holy Grail at swimming parties all the time), but these were the guys who would organize "Spam Day" at school and walk around the cafeteria offering people spam sandwiches. (I also remember Freshman year they started a secret language that used the words "Spam" and "bibble" a lot. It was funny at the time, too. But I digress).

Anyway, these guys were all in the "Doctor Who Club" (in a school of 4000 kids, there were a gazillion special interest clubs), and so I've associated Doctor Who with the deeply nerdy and socially inept ever since.

Last year the BBC resurrected the Doctor Who series to great success. Michael and I happened upon one of the 2nd season's episodes one Saturday night and were instantly hooked. This is an amazingly funny show with great actors and writers with outstanding imaginations. It helps that the first episode we saw was a historical one...

(Time out for a quick overview: the show's basically about time travelers, a human girl called Rose and a "time lord" called "The Doctor" who fly around in an old phone booth called a Tardis that's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. They go all over time and space and generally get into trouble involving various aliens and the destruction of worlds and peoples and having to save the day and all that. But there are also longer story arcs (some from the original series in the Sixties!) and it's just good television.)

...and I'm a total sucker for historical fiction, so I gave it a chance. I've since learned that really good science fiction is just like historical fiction: the ability to faithfully create (or recreate) a truly different world in a way that highlights basic human similarities and makes one empathize with the situation. Aliens, whatever...it's just an awesome show. We bought the entire 1st season (of the new series...) on DVD and the experience of watching it was just intensely pleasurable. I think it's now on somewhere in the US (they're recapping it at TWOP, and they love it, so it can't be all bad...).

2. My new silver Birkenstocks

And basically anything that's summery or that I'm going to wear at High Sierra.

3. Alara's Rich Museli (especially with Helsett Farms live yoghurt and berries)

4. The new Built to Spill album "You in Reverse"

So. Good. No...seriously...so VERY VERY GOOD. Driving beats and punk-ish progressions (and whiny indy singing) that manages to be intensely interesting and beautiful at the same time. Definitely in the same vein as The Slip, Arcade Fire, and My Morning Jacket. More proof that pop or punk or indie doesn't have to be screamy and stupid to be good. Even more proof that the Arctic Monkeys are just a bunch of fucking...well...monkeys.

5. The fact that some lovely soul put the entire winter 1997 tour up on Sendspace in MP3 format and I can pull down some of the funkiest Phish ever while working and get it straight on my iPod.

Check out this Gumbo from Utah, 11/14/97 and tell me white guys don't have soul.

Posted by jmakunas at 08:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Musically speaking, it's been a good week for us.

Despite both being sick and the weather STILL being SERIOUSLY LOUSY WHEN THE HELL IS IT GOING TO GET SUNNY MY GOOD GOD IT'S JUNE ALREADY we've had a few excellent things happen.

Monday was a bank holiday and we went to see David Gilmour (guitarist for Pink Floyd) at the Royal Albert Hall. I was sick and realistically shouldn't have gone out (and sat outside in line for an hour to get a good place for our SRO tickets) but man am I glad I did. We knew Gilmour would have some special guests because he was recording the Monday show (and the Tuesday show, which I DID skip) for a DVD. And yes, David Crosby and Graham Nash were there to sit in on some of the songs from the new album. That was cool. They can sing, though they're looking rough. Crosby's huge and Nash looks like Gary Busey and cannot stand still.

The sets were pretty much standard for this tour: a few Floyd songs to open, then the entire new album On an Island for the first set. The second set was more Floyd, including a blazing Echoes. It's easy to forget the true power of Pink Floyd. The music is both menacing and achingly achingly beautiful and to hear it played note-perfect in a venue like the Royal Albert Hall is somewhat overwhelming.

And then, as he has been doing, he encores with "Wish You Were Here" (with more Crosby and Nash) and a CSN song, and then...AND THEN...he brings out DAVID BOWIE.

DAVID BOWIE.

And they sing Floyd's "Arnold Layne" and it's very cool. And then they sing "Comfortably Numb" and it's quite possibly the best single live music experience I've ever had. I've had all week to try to figure out what to write that would do it justice, and I just can't. That song is perfect already (gorgeous, haunting, capped by probably the best guitar solo ever written) and freakin' DAVID BOWIE was standing up there, looking sharp as fuck, sounding amazing, singing the Roger Waters parts, while David Gilmour nails that incredible ethereal bridge and chorus. The entire hall was silent. I have never seen anything like it. (And it made me wish that I'd seen Pink Floyd...in some incarnation...at some point.)

Mike went back on Tuesday but no more Bowie (he be 60, you know...heh...).

Today, more good music things: M got a job. Not just a job, but a job at a music network. Yes, that one. AWESOME. Tonight we went BACK to the Royal Albert Hall (M was there Monday, Tuesday, and Friday this week) to see Zappa plays Zappa: Dweezil and a band - many of whom played with Frank - playing two excellent sets of Zappa music extremely well. I don't know much Zappa (outside of Peaches en Regalia, which they played, using the ORGAN at the RAH...), and M kept leaning over to tell me the song names which were seriously weird. Zappa is seriously weird. But surprisingly, the show wasn't weird at all...it was truly a celebration of Frank's music - which is challenging, complicated, and really really fun - and a lot more engaging than I expected. No Bowie, though.

So all we need is for Phish to get back together and we'll be set.

Posted by jmakunas at 12:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)