WWWhat in the World Wide Web

On Saturday, local band Withnail celebrated their first birthday with cake pan cookies, and a piñata filled with candy, noisemakers, airplane booze, and other goodies.

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I saw Daikaiju tonight, a mere four months since they came here last. And I actually brought my camera for once. All I got at their last show was a crappy cellphone pic of the destroyed stage at the end of the night, and all it looked like on that crappy camera was a bunch of red and something that may have been a drum.

So

To make up for last time, I took way too many pics… »

This

And

But

Not pictured: The actual bands themselves (who were awesome and loud and awesomely loud), because I don’t like bringing my SLR to major/crowded shows (I also prefer to, you know, just remember those).

Also not pictured: The most delicious burrito I ever ate in my entire life. You can believe me now, for I have had many burritos in many cities.

Should have been pictured: This would have been the perfect chance to bring Travel Bot along, but I plum forgot. He lives in my camera bag. You know, the bag for the camera I don’t bring to major shows?

Say hello to Millimeter Mountain (whose singer may look familiar to astute readers). This show was shot, as always, in Streak-O-Vision.

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Not pictured: the drunken jackass who did not like the use of maracas.

…of live music photography, and how my equipment is not up to the task without resorting to “space effects”, here’s a batch from May that I forgot to post. In this case, the “space effects” were appropriate, since they are from the future.*

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I’m not sure which of the duo is the one I work with, since they both have the Same Haircut. Sorry for that awful pun, but not really.

*Good news: in the future, I bought 3 copies of their CD, which is not yet out in my time.

In which I attempt to photograph a band, give up, and settle for “space effects” (flash + slowish shutter).

19 attempts, to be exact »

I discovered my new delay/looping pedal can do continuous notes. No gaps! My old pedal (which admittedly wasn’t so hot) couldn’t do this. I didn’t think my new one could do it either, until I accidentally did the following:

1. Start a loop, but don’t actually play anything
2. Play a note with the guitar’s volume all the way down
3. Slowly fade the volume back up
4. Repeat steps 2–3 as necessary
5. ????
6. SPACE ROCK!

At some point I should really make a video of this process, so I can put it on youtube and have everyone say that it’s FAKE. Yeah, about that: see below!

Examples

1. almost three minutes of building a chord
2. about one minute of a different chord (already in progress)

Needs work

• So far my output has been really quiet for some reason
• And I have really bad line noise coming from somewhere (shitty cables?)
• Distortion makes the bad line noise even worse, so no bowel-shaking drone metal just yet

NOTE, FROM THE FUTURE: Here is a totally FAKE video I made:

ANOTHER NOTE, ALSO FROM THE FUTURE: The line noise/quiet output only seems to be a problem with headphone rockin’ (which is a problem in many other ways). I’ve been playing through an amp, really loudly, and the output’s been fine. The line noise is about what you’d expect when you also have a billion other pedals, so no complaints here.

On Thursday I went with a car full of girls to see some Pixies up in Chicago. I was a bit worried at first, because the last time I was at the Aragon it sounded like muffled ass, and I was also wary of reunion shows. But then again, I have loved the Pixies for almost 20 years, and they were playing Doolittle all the way through, a-and the car full of girls…

…and anyway, once they started playing it was all magical and great. They even did all the b-sides! I spent most of the show either grinning like an idiot, fighting back Manly Tears™, or screaming like a girl. The best part was that they were enjoying themselves (I saw them in 1991 when they all kinda hated each other, and it wasn’t the same). The other best part was the whole audience singing along to every song, even the b-sides.

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Honorable mention for “best part” goes to the 7 foot tall Eurodude in the tracksuit who was dancing and jumping like he was trying to punch God up in heaven. I think his energy alone brought the band out for the second encore.

I keep forgetting to do this list, but this is one of those weird phenomena that I have noticed. Say there is a band you like. No, not them, that other one. Similar names are the death of me, especially when I love one band and hate the other. I spent years of my life not liking Chavez, because I saw a video by Gomez (which I hated), and the names were permanently mixed up in my mind.

SOOOOO, in no particular order (except alphabetical), and varying levels of similarity…

• The Arcade Fire / The Fiery Furnaces
• Black Dice / Black Lips / The Black Keys
• Cake / Cake-Like
• Chavez / Gomez
• Codeine / Morphine
• Deerhoof / Deerhunter
• Del Fuegos / Del Lords
• fIREHOSE / Firehouse
• Fucked Up / Holy Fuck (and they’re both from fuckin’ Toronto, fuck!)
• Garth Brooks / Brooks & Dunn
• Jawbox / Jawbreaker
• The Mars Volta / Volta Do Mar
• Mew / Muse
• Modest Mouse / Mouse on Mars
• Múm (from Iceland) / Mum (NOT from Iceland)
• OMD / OMC
• Panda Bear (from Animal Collective) / Grizzly Bear (not from Animal Collective)
• Polara / Polaris
• Stroke 9 / The Strokes
• Super Furry Animals / Animal Collective
• Supergrass / Superdrag
• Television / Telephone
• The Verve / The Verve Pipe
• The Vines / The Shins
• Whitesnake / White Lion / Great White
• Wolf Eyes / Wolf Parade / Wolfmother / Wolf Balls (ok I made that last one up, but it’s only a matter of time)
• Yeah Yeah Yeahs / Hot Hot Heat / !!!
• Honorable mention: the seven hundred or so bands during the 80s that had all one word names that started with a C.
• BONUS ROUND: XTC album “Black Sea” / X album “Under the Big Black Sun”

It seems like there were more, but my memory is terrible—which is why I am always mixing these groups up in my head to begin with.

Last Saturday I went to the farmer’s market in Urbana, because I got word that my brother Dan was going to be playing. That turned out not to be true, so here are some other people instead.

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