(no subject)
I've been writing this all week. And by all week, I mean Saturday night after the thing, a little bit of Sunday, more Monday, and then there were distractions. But if I don't finish now, I never will, or I will, but then I'll be like "this was ages ago!" and not throw it up.
I think this whole thing with meaning to write more gets all fucked up because I look at what I've written and think it's boring. Oh well.
Back from San Francisco this weekend. Sunday night, got back from San Francisco. Went for reasons mentioned in my previous entry. Zoë Keating was great, even if she had the shortest set of the three performers. She played two songs from her last album (including "Tetrishead," one of my faves) and three songs from her forthcoming album, all of which were good and each better than the previous. I don't have any good photos of her because I ended up kinda half behind a pillar and a light stand, which was incredibly frustrating, but I tried not to let that hinder my enjoyment of the music because being moody artist guy is retarded. Her cello sounded goddamn fucking amazing when she started soundchecking. I think the pillar I was kinda behind fucked up the overall sound though because I was able to move other places for the other bands and they sounded a lot louder and clearer. Pillars are not for performance spaces! Harrumph harrumph! I did manage to tell her I enjoyed her set briefly as we walked by each other later. She seemed very appreciative.
A duo called Loop!Station, who played after Zoë, did a looping cello thing too (with looping vocals as well), but their set overall wasn't terribly remarkable. There were a few moments where it was brilliant but most of it felt impressive only from a technical standpoint. It's kinda like what I was talking about in my last entry. Zoë's music feels like music. It doesn't make you think about how it's constructed. Not so much with Loop!Station. That said, there were a couple songs that were fucking amazing. Hands down, fucking amazing. They should write them all like those two.
After them was Matmos. I mostly know Matmos from Björk, who has worked with them and toured with them (as in, Matmos as part of her band). They were really good but a lot of it was very atmospheric stuff and having been awake since 6:something-or-other in the morning and driven half the length of the state (it's long, like Courtney), I needed something really on to hold me and they were good but not quite there. Then I realised the music could be heard from most rooms in the museum, so I resumed looking at the photography section while their set continued rather than leaning against a wall bopping my head like a zombie at a rave (I'm assuming I looked odd, wanting to move to the music but being obviously very tired... and also wearing a storm trooper jacket (what? (hey nested parentheses!))).
There were a lot of great photographs from the 19th and early 20th century. I love photos from that time frame, when no really knew what to do when they were in a photo*, and obviously things looked considerably different. There were some shots from the first album of photography commercially released of San Francisco, put together by a group wanting to bolster the city's image to bring in business and labour in the 1800s. The economy had taken a turn for the worse in the city because of its reputation for lawlessness, so they had these shots of newly constructed areas looking nice and churches, to show it was a good, "God-fearing" town. People are weird.
There was a certain level of appreciation a lot of people there had for these that I think I could only touch on, not actually having lived in San Francisco.
It was mostly pouring on the 380 mile drive back today. Nevertheless, I (along with most everyone else on the 5) still drove 80-90mph most of the way. I wasn't going to but it felt safe enough. There's probably some whole thing about road quality in city locations versus rural stretches that someone could go into but that'd be really fucking boring.
I'm glad I was alone. It felt really nice to be away from everything. No familiar faces. A different city. Cue that Modest Mouse song.
FOOTNOTES! This must be really boring!
*You know what's fucking awful? Pick someone, go to their facebook, and look at all the pictures they're tagged in. They're making the same face in all of them. The "I know I look at least OK with this face" face, which is also the "completely fucking insincere smile or blank look" face. Like, you can get a decent shot of someone with that face, but then you look at other pictures of them and you're like "oh, fuck" so next time you're taking a picture of them and they do that face, you tell them something funny to get them to laugh and smile like a real person.
Yeah, see how I can't see shit. Fuck.
Sea lions!
On an unrelated note, does anyone know where to order googly eyes in bulk? I have an idea.
I think this whole thing with meaning to write more gets all fucked up because I look at what I've written and think it's boring. Oh well.
Back from San Francisco this weekend. Sunday night, got back from San Francisco. Went for reasons mentioned in my previous entry. Zoë Keating was great, even if she had the shortest set of the three performers. She played two songs from her last album (including "Tetrishead," one of my faves) and three songs from her forthcoming album, all of which were good and each better than the previous. I don't have any good photos of her because I ended up kinda half behind a pillar and a light stand, which was incredibly frustrating, but I tried not to let that hinder my enjoyment of the music because being moody artist guy is retarded. Her cello sounded goddamn fucking amazing when she started soundchecking. I think the pillar I was kinda behind fucked up the overall sound though because I was able to move other places for the other bands and they sounded a lot louder and clearer. Pillars are not for performance spaces! Harrumph harrumph! I did manage to tell her I enjoyed her set briefly as we walked by each other later. She seemed very appreciative.
A duo called Loop!Station, who played after Zoë, did a looping cello thing too (with looping vocals as well), but their set overall wasn't terribly remarkable. There were a few moments where it was brilliant but most of it felt impressive only from a technical standpoint. It's kinda like what I was talking about in my last entry. Zoë's music feels like music. It doesn't make you think about how it's constructed. Not so much with Loop!Station. That said, there were a couple songs that were fucking amazing. Hands down, fucking amazing. They should write them all like those two.
After them was Matmos. I mostly know Matmos from Björk, who has worked with them and toured with them (as in, Matmos as part of her band). They were really good but a lot of it was very atmospheric stuff and having been awake since 6:something-or-other in the morning and driven half the length of the state (it's long, like Courtney), I needed something really on to hold me and they were good but not quite there. Then I realised the music could be heard from most rooms in the museum, so I resumed looking at the photography section while their set continued rather than leaning against a wall bopping my head like a zombie at a rave (I'm assuming I looked odd, wanting to move to the music but being obviously very tired... and also wearing a storm trooper jacket (what? (hey nested parentheses!))).
There were a lot of great photographs from the 19th and early 20th century. I love photos from that time frame, when no really knew what to do when they were in a photo*, and obviously things looked considerably different. There were some shots from the first album of photography commercially released of San Francisco, put together by a group wanting to bolster the city's image to bring in business and labour in the 1800s. The economy had taken a turn for the worse in the city because of its reputation for lawlessness, so they had these shots of newly constructed areas looking nice and churches, to show it was a good, "God-fearing" town. People are weird.
There was a certain level of appreciation a lot of people there had for these that I think I could only touch on, not actually having lived in San Francisco.
It was mostly pouring on the 380 mile drive back today. Nevertheless, I (along with most everyone else on the 5) still drove 80-90mph most of the way. I wasn't going to but it felt safe enough. There's probably some whole thing about road quality in city locations versus rural stretches that someone could go into but that'd be really fucking boring.
I'm glad I was alone. It felt really nice to be away from everything. No familiar faces. A different city. Cue that Modest Mouse song.
FOOTNOTES! This must be really boring!
*You know what's fucking awful? Pick someone, go to their facebook, and look at all the pictures they're tagged in. They're making the same face in all of them. The "I know I look at least OK with this face" face, which is also the "completely fucking insincere smile or blank look" face. Like, you can get a decent shot of someone with that face, but then you look at other pictures of them and you're like "oh, fuck" so next time you're taking a picture of them and they do that face, you tell them something funny to get them to laugh and smile like a real person.
Yeah, see how I can't see shit. Fuck.
Sea lions!
On an unrelated note, does anyone know where to order googly eyes in bulk? I have an idea.