Bazan in LA

We saw David Bazan (of Pedro the Lion fame) perform a set at Tangier's in LA. He played songs from his new solo EP, as well as a few Pedro tracks and a Headphones song.

Things learned from his answers to audience questions/random comments throughout the show:

John is to Leonard Cohen as Paul is to Bob Dylan, (meaning Paul never had anything to say, thus John is better than Paul). His favorite movie is The Big Lebowski. "Selling Advertising" is a direct criticism of Pitchfork Media. He has a full length solo album coming out in the spring. Christians are always about 4 years behind (because Headphones electronic style is so 2002).

If you want to see a show where you can hear the lyrics with little other distractions, there's little better than David Bazan. "Fewer moving parts means fewer broken pieces."

Here's an incomplete setlist put in order as best as I can remember:

Longer I Lay Here
Selling Advertising
Bands With Managers
Fewer Broken Pieces
Priests and Paramedics
Shit Talker
Transcontinental
Big Trucks
Backwoods Nation
Start Without Me
Progress
Cold Beer And Cigarettes

Encore (sort of, since he never actually left the stage):

Political Science (Randy Newman cover)
Winners Never Quit

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

Pirates 2 the curse of the sequel. That would probably be the more appropriate title for this movie. I mostly blame it on Orlando Bloom, it's gotta be his fault that the Pirates trilogy is turning into Lord of the Rings. The movie seemed to do exactly what the crowd wanted it to do, which I guess is kind of what you expect from a blockbuster, but this seemed a bit too much. It's like they polled fans or had a focus group to figure out exactly what they wanted to happen in the movie. In doing that, they ended up with many of the same jokes, done slightly differently and much less funny. For example, there's the rum joke used in the first movie, when Elizabeth Swann burns all the rum to build a fire so they would get noticed and saved, and Jack asks, "But why did you have to burn the rum?" The same joke again in this movie, except it's Will Turner commanding Jack's pirate crew to throw in the rum with the gun powder as an explosive. We get it, pirates like rum. And that wasn't the only rum joke throughout the movie.

Two hours and 32 minutes is a long time to sit in a theater, especially when the movie isn't that intriguing. But they are selling out in theaters around the country so they gotta be doing something right. The movie was well choreographed, even though some of the scenes didn't make much sense. Every island they go to, everyone gets split up, fighting in different areas, then they all show up at the shore at the exact same time.

Orlando Bloom's second huge blockbuster trilogy seems to be moving in the same bad direction as his first. If the last movie ends in an hour long resolution with everyone saying goodbye to each other, you'll know who to blame.

Harold and Maude

After seeing a movie for the first time, I often read reviews to get an idea of how the movie is perceived. If I really hated the movie, I like to see how anyone could’ve liked it. In this case, however, it was the opposite. I really enjoyed this 1971 cult classic that I just got around to seeing for some reason. I found that most people agreed with my opinion, but one certain famous critic did not.

Death can be as funny as most things in life, I suppose, but not the way Harold and Maude go about it. -Roger Ebert

Usually I'm criticizing Roger Ebert for not being a critic. For example, when I saw him give a thumbs up to The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift and The Lake House in the same show, I knew he could never be considered a critic again. Even Roeper got on him about giving every movie a thumbs up.

In the case of Harold and Maude, Ebert was way off in the other direction. Maybe 30 years ago he was a bad critic because he hated everything, and now he's a bad critic because he loves everything. Harold and Maude is a dark comedy with morbidly funny suicide attempts and an unlikely connection between two characters who both happen to enjoy going to funerals.

Despite the fact that Harold is such a disturbed person, I think we can all relate to his character. I've often felt more inclined to chop off my hand or burn myself alive rather than sit through another date. Also, sometimes it seems it'd feel better to be dead than it does to be alive. Maude is able to understand and feel this as well, but she puts a new spin on it. You don't want to kill yourself with regrets, so live life without holding back, and don't hold back just because you're afraid of feeling stupid. "If you want to sing out sing out." Maude somehow sings the Cat Stevens song as if she wrote the lyrics herself. For such a morbid movie, Harold and Maude leaves you with an optimistic outlook on life and a feeling of wanting to do more, love more, and live more.

hey, isn't that doug?

last saturday, we got to kick off our holiday weekend by seeing built to spill at the troubadour in LA.

while we were waiting to pick up our tickets at the box office, we found ourselves standing maybe three feet away from doug martsch, who was trying to convince the girl behind the window to let him replace a few names on the vip list, otherwise he would have to go buy tickets for his own show from a scalper. it didn't seem like anybody else in line recognized him, which is weird, considering that we spotted him from the other end of the block and the man can grow the kind of beard that should be recognizable from at least a continent away.

i'm the kind of person who loses the ability to talk when confronted with even the least famous of famous people. or any kind of people, for that matter. so even though i had a good five minutes to think of something cool to say to doug, i just stood there the whole time and watched him walk away. what a loser.

the show opened with car, which doug dedicated to the late andy capps, the band's former drummer. this was followed by goin' against your mind. other songs they played from you in reverse were traces, wherever you go and conventional wisdom.

throughout the concert they projected artwork by mike scheer (the guy responsible for the art on the new album) on a large screen in the background. kind of cool, sometimes creepy. at one point they replaced the art slides with a video of calvin johnson (of the halo benders and k records) talking about terrorism and the government, while playing a halo benders instrumental called bomb shelter. a little before that, they played a gladiator cover, an anti-war song called rearrange. (although I never really got a political vibe from built to spill in the past, doug did say in a recent article in paste that some parts of you in reverse are "about the administration, Republicans, right-wingers, people who spend all their time trying to deceive people.")

they included three new songs in their set, plus a good mix of old songs: sidewalk, carry the zero, kicked it in the sun, and made-up dreams, with broken chairs and an awesome extended version of untrustable saved for the encore.

the show was great as always. built to spill probably has the cleanest, most technically precise sound in a live setting than any other band i've heard. they're currently touring through the end of october, so make sure to catch them in a city near you.