Mogwai
Ahh Orlando...how I have missed you ha! :o)
Edie the traveler, taking a moment to write in her journal before going to rock out with Mogwai
Some colorful Mogwai pictures: my favorite, my other favorite (the lighting at the show was so beautiful, I couldn't resist taking mostly flashless pictures...it gave them a kind of fuzzy-aura...)
I think I have permanent hearing loss from that show. What? Oh, sorry, I thought I heard something, but it was just this annoying ringing in my ears. Was it worth it? Oh yeah! Despite some technical problems with the sound (i.e. eardrum-shattering noise that wasn't supposed to be part of the other eardrum-shattering noise), and a 3-hour wait for the band to take the stage in a crowded, smoke-filled room, with the only sounds to entertain me being IDM music and the ignorant banter of indie rock kids getting drunk or dropping X or shooting transmission fluid or whatever the kids do these days in preparation for witnessing their favorite band, Mogwai put on a powerful show, and left us with an incredible encore that ended in 10-minutes of pure, paint-blistering noise. I'm not a 100% fan of the band, mainly because their songs tend to be kind of similar and predictable (soft to loud to soft to loud to louder to blood-spewing decibles to soft to over...and repeat.) But, still, I am a fan, because they're such talented musicians who write some beautiful stuff, and I'm a sucker for musicians from Scotland :o) There were several moments during the show I was very moved by the music. Speaking of which, I would just like to state for the record that there is nothing more obnoxious than drunk people screaming ludicrous statements out (or screaming in general) during quiet moments in songs. But, what can you do, not everyone is there to appreciate, some are just there to party. Even the cute little Mogwai himself, Stuart Braithwaite, was laughing about it a couple times, and responded to one audience comment with a joke I couldn't understand because his microphone was too low (or maybe it was the Scottish accent, or maybe it was my permanent hearing loss, at this point who knows??)
I also saw two bands at Back Booth on Thursday night: Drums & Tuba and Parlez-Vous Jigaboo. The first one is an instrumental, jazz-noise group, which consists of one guitarist (periodically playing 2 guitars at the same time), a drummer, and a tuba/trumpet player with an electronic supercenter to sample and distort everyone's instruments at will. They were maybe a bit too jazz-oriented for my tastes - you can tell they're all very well-schooled musicians, and sometimes the music ran into that theory-driven-musicial-masturbation territory. But they had enough mix of quirkiness and obscene noise to keep me interested, and I, just like everyone else there, was blown away by what I witnessed. Parlez-Vous Jigaboo is an intellectual rap group with a jazz-trained drummer and bassist providing the beat for their white, tattooed, outspoken front man who looks like a mixture of a harley-driving-convict and Uncle Kracker. Needless to say, I was instantly hooked :o) It was very cool to see a local non-mainstream rap group along the lines of Anticon and Aesop Rock (well, local being New Smyrna Beach, which isn't really local, but it's Florida, at least.) I gave the rapper's friend my e-mail address so he could keep me posted on their shows, as they're so new they don't have a web site yet, and don't even have an album recorded. If there's a scene with bands like that in Florida, I'd love to hear more about it.
