The Product of Creative Frustration

Category: rock Page 15 of 20

Opening up with a pleasant eargasm

Here’s the way opening acts are supposed to work. You go to a show to see the headliner. That’s who you paid you money to see and the fact of the matter is you could give a rat’s ass about who else is playing. And there is some compassionate part of you that feels a little bad for the opening act(s) because they are up there on stage trying. But usually they suck so bad that all your compassion goes out the window.

Quite a while back Wonder Boy and I went to see the Kings of Leon play. I had reviewed their first album, Youth and Young Manhood, when it came out and was all excited to hear their new one. Until I did. And it sucked. And worse, so they sucked. Which is actually quite an over exaggeration. They played fine. They played live EXACTLY how their album sounded, which is nice, I guess, but then why did I pay money to see them live. I would have been upset, EXCEPT that the opening act rocked so hard.

The Features. I want to marry them. I want them to move into my house and play music for me every night before I go to bed.

So now when Wonder Boy and I go to see a band and we like the opening act better, we refer to show as being Kings of Leon-ed. Last night I saw a concert that got totally Kings of Leon-ed.

In one of more rockstar moments, I had written a preview article for the Clap Your Hands and Say Yeah show and got to interview the lead singer, Alec Ounsworth. So I went to see them play in high anticipation and with big plans to try and go backstage and meet the band. After all, press can do that, right?

The opening act, a band whose name I didn’t even know, played for exactly 10 seconds when I knew I would be buying their album. They were that good. And then I told myself to wait and hear the second song they played before I made any purchases. It didn’t matter. They rocked. The Brunettes, out of New Zealand, will rock your world. Their six-person band with their suite of maybe 20 instruments is an unbelievably quirky onstage eargasm. That good.

The problem is, when your opening act starts out like that, you run the very real risk of being Kings of Leon-ed. And alas, it happened. Clap Your Hands and Say Yeah were good, but they couldn’t measure up to the eargasm that warmed up the stage for them.

This post originally appeared on Kate’s Point of View. © Kate. All rights reserved.

Touched for the very first time


This weekend I entered a whole new world in a way I have only done on a couple rare occasions. The last is when I attended a Phish concert and was surrounded by more pot-smoking hippies than I had seen in all of my previous years combined. This weekend I attended my first ComiCon.

Wonder Boy’s friend, Jesse, who I guess is my friend now too because don’t you basically inherit friends when you start dating someone, was the co-organizer of the Gem City Comic Con. The thing was huge, well-organized and my entrance into the world of comic nerds. Be it known, comic book nerds are much different than computer nerds, although the two categories are not mutually exclusive. Comic book folks dress cool, though they don’t know it and don’t quite don their apparel in the Urban Outfitters cool way.

I was very impressed with the number of collectors who were maniacally organized in their approach to collections books. They approached bothers with long lists detailing every book their collection needed. Some people had lists that were pages long.

Wonder Boy and I arrived at the ComiCon a little early and I was assigned with putting stamps on everyone’s hands who was involved with the show: exhibitors, guests, volunteers. I know, it was a pretty glamorous task and right now you are reading this and seething with jealousy. Well, and this will probably shock you, many of the people manning booths were pale boys. Honest to god there was one who was about 17-years-old and when I touched him he looked downright scared. My belief: I was the first girl to ever have touched him.

I went to the Comic Con intrigued. I left totally a fan. My only disappointment is that no one was there in costume. I said as much to Jesse and he said that if I was willing to wait that the entire 501st Storm Trooper Division was coming IN COSTUME. Later I found out that the Gostbusters came to.

Seriously, why wouldn’t EVERYONE go to Comic Cons?

This post originally appeared on Kate’s Point of View. © Kate. All rights reserved.

Being the cause of an OHMIGOD eye roll

Yesterday, in a successful attempt to avoid all things Super Bowl, I went bowling and to McDonalds with my cousins. These particular cousins belong to my uncle who is the Fun Uncle. Everyone has one of these, I think — the guy who used to pick his nose to fart in front of you when you were little, just to get a laugh.

So I take the three kids, ages 7, 10 and 12, to the bowling alley. The youngest gives unearned love and admiration to anyone, especially any girl who might own make-up or a curling iron she can use. The other two gave me the skepticism that is typical of any tween. We played one game of Bumper Bowl in an alley with really boom-boom bumpers and it turns out I sucked.

While we played, there was Queen and Garth Brooks blaring the whole time. Of course, I sang along. And OHMIGOD apparently that was pretty damn embarrassing because the old two kids looked like they wanted to crawl under a rock the whole time. (The youngest said she thought I was a good singer (which I am not) but I did French braid her hair later so I am pretty sure her opinion was biased.)

And this I discovered why parents and adults embarrass kids. It is not, as I always thought, because they are too dumb to know what they are doing is lame. It turns out, they do it because it is FUN.

This post originally appeared on Kate’s Point of View. © Kate. All rights reserved.

Continuing the celebration of mediocre music

By popular demand, because you know you needed a play list to entertain you throughout today, Spring Break 1998 Tape #2.
Please notice that I was still using my stickers from my collection in college.

This post originally appeared on Kate’s Point of View. © Kate. All rights reserved.

If you thought I was cool before, wait until you see this

I have never thought I have ϋber-cool music taste to qualify as a music snob. That said, I have always defended my musical tastes. And openly mocked others, of course, for bad song selection. (For instance, Miami by Will Smith is NOT a cool song. Sorry.) Until now.

The other day my BF and I were heading out to take advantage of some post-holiday sales at the mall and I had to run up to my apartment to grab something. He asked me to get a CD to listen to in the car. Because I think I am funny, I instead went for my high school spring break mix tape. Upon reaching the car I realized I had accidentally gotten a mix tape from a spring break trip in 1998 where I went on a work trip to Alabama. (Can you tell I was big on mix tapes back in the day?)

Now I remember that Alabama work trip and the reaction my mix tape received from fellow travelers. Their reaction was full of mockery, as a recall. And at the time I was indignant. Indignant, I say! After all, I had out some choice items on the mixes (yes, there were two –- part one and part two) and was willing to share them with the group while we cooked our communal dinners. If you don’t bring music to share, then I don’t think you are in a place to mock other people. Right?

Man oh man. So the BF and I were in the car listening to the tape and wow. I am no position to make fun of mix tapes that always contain at least one instance of Miami. See below for a play list I KNOW you are going to want to steal for your next party.

By the way, I still defend the inclusion of Oochie Coochie. That is a damn good song.

This post originally appeared on Kate’s Point of View. © Kate. All rights reserved.

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