Fraternal Saliva Exchange is the name of my Curtains For You tribute band.
On Friday zabira and I went to see a few local bands, including the two brothers from Curtains For You, which is a VERY delightful band, both musically/lyrically and in terms of personality. Anyway, they played a couple of songs and then introduced themselves, "I'm Matty and he's Mikey, and we're brothers," and then, from the end of our row, this burly, bearded, tattooed guy roars, both arms upstretched, "BROTHERS IN LOOOOOOOOOOVE!" And Matt and Mikey laughed, and then after the next song, Burly Tattooed Guy again, "You're in loooove! Say it! Say you love each other! It's my birthday!" I guess he's at all their shows. I leaned over to Z and was like, "I have some links for him…" and she goes, "Yes! Their superfan slashes them." It was hilarious. They also have a song called "The Iron-Pumping Older Brother," which was inspired (in a roundabout way) by The Goonies. Seriously, they're delightful.
We also had dinner at an amazing vegan diner beforehand, and we might-MIGHT-have pretended it was the Skeleton Diner. SHUT UP, IT WAS AWESOME. (Vegan patty melt and vegan poutine. Mmmmmm. And lovely people working there, too. ♥) (ETA: Z just also reminded me that after the show, I got accidentally groped by a guy in a chicken suit. So Friday night was a win, is what I'm saying.)
Then on Saturday night Mr. McK and a couple of friends went to see a flamenco performance, which was FABULOUS. I think we were the only few people there who didn't know/take lessons from one of the performers, so it was a really fun atmosphere to be a part of-there was a very strong sense of community, and lots of exhortations from the audience ("Ole!" and "Esse!" and the like), which I just love to no end. And oh my god, I love flamenco, it is so sexy and playful and so badass at the same time; we took a lesson while we were in Jerez last year and our instructor was fucking amazing, I wanted her to be my life coach. Just so passionate and brave and take-no-shit, and the type of flamenco that has flourished in Jerez is steeped in the strong gypsy tradition there, with that wildness and sadness in it (similar to the blues, our instructor said, which makes total sense), and oh, I loved her. We actually spent about half the class just talking about the traditions behind flamenco; the reason we were in Spain was that Mr. McK was taking a workshop on Spanish rapier and Spanish knife, and the whole point of doing that in Spain was to be able to connect it to the greater cultural picture. So we went and saw baby-like, 13-year-old-bull-fighters training (SO adorable, with their little gruff matador pouts and poses, and switching off holding a giant pair of horns, pretending to be the bull), and they taught Mr. McK's group some of what they do, and Mr. McK and his friends taught them some basic rapier and navaja (Spanish knife) things, and then we took the flamenco lesson a couple of days later, and it was so fascinating to see the relationship between all of those arts. (I mean, I am not in favor of the killing-for-sport aspect of bullfighting-"Most of you are probably anti-bullfighting," our flamenco instructor said at one point, and my friend replied, "Well, I think you could say that most of us are pro-bull," which was a perfect summation, I thought-but there are aspects of the art of it that I admire tremendously, the precision and the athleticism and the attitude, and I wish it didn't come with, you know, brutal torture/killing of an animal for entertainment.)
So anyway, there was all that behind us when we went into the flamenco lesson, so that's how it ended up being as much of a philosophical discussion as it was a dance lesson, and watching the fighters find common ground with the dance instructor was so brilliant. They ended the class with our instructor clapping out a flamenco beat while two of the fencers, well, fenced, with their arms stretched out straight to stand in for rapiers, and it was brilliant. Western martial arts is a bit like baseball, I think, in that it can be very very boring if you don't understand the nuances of what's going on. And I definitely don't, and especially with Spanish rapier, which is a pretty sedentary style (largely because it's too fucking hot in Spain to be waving heavy metal objects around too much, as we discovered, even being there in late May/early June). But like that, with the beat under it, it got my heart going, and I understood it in a way I've never understood it; it was like being inside the bout, hearing the fighters' heartbeats made audible for all of us, and I loved loved loved it. I was sitting next to my friend C, who's married to Mr. McK's best friend (who was one of the guys in this mock bout, and a professional classical fencing instructor at a pretty prestigious school), and we were both saying that we'd never really understood classical fencing at all until right then, despite the fact that both of our husbands are very passionate about it. So anyway, it was such a wonderful experience, and seeing the flamenco on Saturday night brought that all back.
When Sal and I were watching It Might Get Loud last week (seriously, I love that movie, I love it so hard), there was a clip of some anemic 60's soft-pop thing and I said, "What did people do with their feelings before there was rock music?" But of course, they did flamenco, they did swing, they did the waltz, they did Stravinsky symphonies, they did Shakespearean tragedies, they did throat-singing, they did things I've never heard of. My guitar riff or soliloquy is someone else's quick-step, someone else's complex recorder run. I kind of love that thought.
And a few quick links, because all the good musics are happening to me right now:
Everyone who cares probably knows this, but David Cook's new album is being released on June 28! YAAAAAY. Though I will be in Vegas on that day, I believe, so instant gratification will be interesting. But still. YAAAAAY.
There have also been LOTS of MWK shenanigans on Twitter lately, most recently this. DELIGHT.
Crash Kings are working on a new album. Hey, their writing process looks just like mine, only theirs has less random internet surfing and more sun and pool. I think they win.
Jeffrey Foucault's new album is going to be available May 3, though if you pre-order it, it ships nowish, I believe. I AM SO EXCITED FOR THIS. This is the first album of his own original tunes that he's done since 2006-he's released three albums since then, but they've all been covers or adaptations of other people's words. So I cannot WAIT for this, because he is my favorite lyricist, and I am dying to see what he's been working on. If you want to try before you buy, you can download the title track here, and/or a second track here. SO EXCITED.
And finally, Greta Morgan is a hula-hoop savant, apparently? OH MY GOD. I don't know why this makes me so happy, but it does. You guys, I am pretty sure she is an actualfax celestial being; no mortal could be that beautiful (seriously, the amount of time that Z and I devoted on Friday night to handflappy inarticulate admiration of Greta's many charms was kind of hilarious) AND that smart AND that talented AND that snarky-sweet. Is all I am saying. ♥ GRETA ♥
We also had dinner at an amazing vegan diner beforehand, and we might-MIGHT-have pretended it was the Skeleton Diner. SHUT UP, IT WAS AWESOME. (Vegan patty melt and vegan poutine. Mmmmmm. And lovely people working there, too. ♥) (ETA: Z just also reminded me that after the show, I got accidentally groped by a guy in a chicken suit. So Friday night was a win, is what I'm saying.)
Then on Saturday night Mr. McK and a couple of friends went to see a flamenco performance, which was FABULOUS. I think we were the only few people there who didn't know/take lessons from one of the performers, so it was a really fun atmosphere to be a part of-there was a very strong sense of community, and lots of exhortations from the audience ("Ole!" and "Esse!" and the like), which I just love to no end. And oh my god, I love flamenco, it is so sexy and playful and so badass at the same time; we took a lesson while we were in Jerez last year and our instructor was fucking amazing, I wanted her to be my life coach. Just so passionate and brave and take-no-shit, and the type of flamenco that has flourished in Jerez is steeped in the strong gypsy tradition there, with that wildness and sadness in it (similar to the blues, our instructor said, which makes total sense), and oh, I loved her. We actually spent about half the class just talking about the traditions behind flamenco; the reason we were in Spain was that Mr. McK was taking a workshop on Spanish rapier and Spanish knife, and the whole point of doing that in Spain was to be able to connect it to the greater cultural picture. So we went and saw baby-like, 13-year-old-bull-fighters training (SO adorable, with their little gruff matador pouts and poses, and switching off holding a giant pair of horns, pretending to be the bull), and they taught Mr. McK's group some of what they do, and Mr. McK and his friends taught them some basic rapier and navaja (Spanish knife) things, and then we took the flamenco lesson a couple of days later, and it was so fascinating to see the relationship between all of those arts. (I mean, I am not in favor of the killing-for-sport aspect of bullfighting-"Most of you are probably anti-bullfighting," our flamenco instructor said at one point, and my friend replied, "Well, I think you could say that most of us are pro-bull," which was a perfect summation, I thought-but there are aspects of the art of it that I admire tremendously, the precision and the athleticism and the attitude, and I wish it didn't come with, you know, brutal torture/killing of an animal for entertainment.)
So anyway, there was all that behind us when we went into the flamenco lesson, so that's how it ended up being as much of a philosophical discussion as it was a dance lesson, and watching the fighters find common ground with the dance instructor was so brilliant. They ended the class with our instructor clapping out a flamenco beat while two of the fencers, well, fenced, with their arms stretched out straight to stand in for rapiers, and it was brilliant. Western martial arts is a bit like baseball, I think, in that it can be very very boring if you don't understand the nuances of what's going on. And I definitely don't, and especially with Spanish rapier, which is a pretty sedentary style (largely because it's too fucking hot in Spain to be waving heavy metal objects around too much, as we discovered, even being there in late May/early June). But like that, with the beat under it, it got my heart going, and I understood it in a way I've never understood it; it was like being inside the bout, hearing the fighters' heartbeats made audible for all of us, and I loved loved loved it. I was sitting next to my friend C, who's married to Mr. McK's best friend (who was one of the guys in this mock bout, and a professional classical fencing instructor at a pretty prestigious school), and we were both saying that we'd never really understood classical fencing at all until right then, despite the fact that both of our husbands are very passionate about it. So anyway, it was such a wonderful experience, and seeing the flamenco on Saturday night brought that all back.
When Sal and I were watching It Might Get Loud last week (seriously, I love that movie, I love it so hard), there was a clip of some anemic 60's soft-pop thing and I said, "What did people do with their feelings before there was rock music?" But of course, they did flamenco, they did swing, they did the waltz, they did Stravinsky symphonies, they did Shakespearean tragedies, they did throat-singing, they did things I've never heard of. My guitar riff or soliloquy is someone else's quick-step, someone else's complex recorder run. I kind of love that thought.
And a few quick links, because all the good musics are happening to me right now:
Everyone who cares probably knows this, but David Cook's new album is being released on June 28! YAAAAAY. Though I will be in Vegas on that day, I believe, so instant gratification will be interesting. But still. YAAAAAY.
There have also been LOTS of MWK shenanigans on Twitter lately, most recently this. DELIGHT.
Crash Kings are working on a new album. Hey, their writing process looks just like mine, only theirs has less random internet surfing and more sun and pool. I think they win.
Jeffrey Foucault's new album is going to be available May 3, though if you pre-order it, it ships nowish, I believe. I AM SO EXCITED FOR THIS. This is the first album of his own original tunes that he's done since 2006-he's released three albums since then, but they've all been covers or adaptations of other people's words. So I cannot WAIT for this, because he is my favorite lyricist, and I am dying to see what he's been working on. If you want to try before you buy, you can download the title track here, and/or a second track here. SO EXCITED.
And finally, Greta Morgan is a hula-hoop savant, apparently? OH MY GOD. I don't know why this makes me so happy, but it does. You guys, I am pretty sure she is an actualfax celestial being; no mortal could be that beautiful (seriously, the amount of time that Z and I devoted on Friday night to handflappy inarticulate admiration of Greta's many charms was kind of hilarious) AND that smart AND that talented AND that snarky-sweet. Is all I am saying. ♥ GRETA ♥