03.26.05
Posted in muzak at 10:10 am by shawnz
I’m a little late in posting this, but thats because I’m lazy.. err, busy… er, both, so thats pretty constricting..
I saw the darlings of SXSW, Maximo Park, at CineSpace on Monday. Unfortunately, after playing what must have been 20 gigs in the past week, the lead singer had really fucked up his voice and could barely sing his songs. I missed “Apply Some Pressure,” their first single, because I had to get a beer from the lounge bar, where my tab was open (fucking $20 minimum), but their other songs were good, and you could tell they’d put on a good live show if their lead singer had his voice. It was a $5 show, and it was cool they decided to go on regardless of the lost-voice difficulties…
As I think I noted before, Maximo Park are on Warp, which is a weird signing, but I think this band will be around for a while, and you know Warp will let them do whatever they want musically..
CineSpace is a very cool venue, at Hollywood and Ivar, across the street from a huge Church of Scientology buildling (incidentally, the Scientiologists were apparently having some kind of meeting, because these people with blue collared shirts and khaki pants were streaming in from all directions into the buildilng - it was a little freaky. kind of reminded me of Gattaca). CineSpace has a lounge, an outdoor patio, and a main performance room, where you can get dinner and watch scheduled movies on their screen. In this case, we watched Maximo Park play where they would show movies, which was fine except that there was seating all over and you couldn’t stand up front, just around the sides.
Anyway, thats my link-free, lazy, concert recap.
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03.14.05
Posted in muzak at 9:06 am by shawnz
Last Thursday I attended the Theremin Showdown #3, at the King King in Hollywood - its too bad I didn’t hear about Showdown #1 or #2.
Ed Sussman, of Mars Attack soundtrack fame, started the night off with some amazing jazz standards (Cole Porter, among others). I was standing in line to enter, and I heard what I thought was an opera singer, and it turned out to be Sussman’s virtuoso control of the theremin. He was by far the best pure Theremin performer of the night.
EQU and Sesko Robo played after Sussman. EQU started off with a lovely, theremin-vocalized version of “Loving You,” but then put away the theremin and messed around with vocoders and tubes, over hard, looped breakbeats. Sesko Robo used theremin prominently in their set, and while their theremin player was accomplished, I got the feeling he was using the same tricks each time, and his theremin playing got pretty mundane by the third song. All the theremin players got on stage briefly to perform a ‘jam session,’ but it was pretty much crap, and aside from the novelty factor, the instruments didn’t sound great jamming together.
Finally, the King King turned out to be a pretty neat venue, right in the heart of Hollywood (by Cahuenga). Its a huge square, brick room with parking right behind the venue. The bar is square and in the center of the venue, making the dance floor just a small space between the bar and the stage. There were couches around the perimeter and it was a pretty cool crowd. All in all, I recommend seeing Ed Sussman, especially if you can see him at the King King.
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03.08.05
Posted in movies at 8:39 pm by shawnz
Check out the trailer for Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, out in April ‘05.
Pretty exciting, and judging by the unconvential approach taken in the trailer, I think the movie is in good hands… though I found myself unable to recognize most of what was going on, even after reading entire series… clearly, the visual world i created from reading the book is drastically different from that of the creator’s of this movie.. as is to be expected. Anyway, looks good.
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