Last night was my 3rd time seeing SY on tour in support of Rather Ripped this year. Maybe because of that or because I was behind tall people the whole show, I wasn’t entirely blown away.

The openers were way out there. The Skaters played one song for 20 minutes. It seemed like guitar fuzz only to me, but I actually enjoyed it. 16 Bitch Pile-Up was a bit different. They played mostly tape loops and effects boxes. Jeff (a fellow MLIS student that went with me) said he thought they sounded amateurish. He’s a fan of experimental music like I am, but I do see his point. Some of the clicks and pops and scratchy noises didn’t seem like there was much thought put in to them. They did have some really great sounds toward the end of their set though, mostly when the music became full and loud.

The crowd absolutely hated this band. I’ve never heard nastier things being shouted at people on stage before. I wish Sonic Youth knew how the crowd reacted to the noise and then threw the same stuff at them. I’m always up for a half an hour or more of feedback from them. They actually seemed to do a little less of that this time. “Teenage Riot” had a long outro of guitar drones, but there wasn’t much else in the set.

The set with a few annotations:

Candle (great surprise as an opener)
Incinerate
Reena
Eric’s Trip (I would’ve liked to see another Lee song since I’ve seen this 3 times)
Do You Believe in Rapture?
What a Waste
The World Looks Red (what a treat!)
The Neutral
Rats
Jams Run Free
Pink Steam (the best of the new songs played, this song rocks)
Or
———
Turquoise Boy
Teenage Riot (the crowd went wild, it was great to hear)
———
Lights Out
Shaking Hell

technorati tags:sonicyouth, wiltern, losangeles, liveshows, music

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On Saturday I attended the first ever WordCamp. Based on the notification emails going out about it, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Only 15 hours before it was slated to start, Matt sent out a message saying that more than a dozen sessions still needed discussion leaders. It made me wonder what we were in for.

The event actually turned out fairly well I thought. I mostly stayed in the Main Hall for the sessions in there. The Second Room seemed to be discussions for more advanced users.

My only criticism about WordCamp would be the organization of the sessions. It would have been nice to let us know as users which ones were geared towards different experience levels. I heard people say that too much of the technology-speak was over their heads. Next time an effort should be made to distinguish different types of users. Have more sessions for the people who know only the basics–and clearly tell us which sessions are for whom.

Anyway, here is very short synopsis of what I got out of the sessions that I sat in on:

Widgets Showcase, Andy Skelton - Widgets are cool. They make your sidebar easy to configure.

Blog Promotion and Writing a Compelling Blog, Prince Campbell - Write about other people so they will want to come read your blog. People care about themselves the most; play to that.

State of the Word, Matt Mullenweg - WordPress needs help with support. Work on it is constant and enthusiastic.

Blog Architecture, Aaron Brazell - I didn’t get anything out of this session, but it wasn’t necessarily Aaron’s fault. The conversation became dominated by nonsensical audience members’ questions.

WordPress as CMS, Mark Jaquith - This session showed me the potential WordPress has in making all kinds of great sites that are not blogs. I really hadn’t thought about it before.

Blogs and Journalism, Om Malik - He basically said bloggers aren’t journalists unless they put in the effort to do fact-checking and follow-up phone calls. They are separate spheres.

SEO & WordPress, Neil Patel - I learned that SEO means search engine optimization. The worst things you can do are sleazy tricks. Search engines are smart.

Plugin Showcase, Niall Kennedy, et al - I was getting really tired at this point. I didn’t write down the address for the coolest plugin I saw: one that gathers all the info on the web about a commenter on your blog and displays it in a box on a mouseover. Oh well.

After all that I went to dinner with some friends and some people I had just met. I went up with Elea and Melinda, met Lauren, an Internet acquaintance, and her friend Anna, and was good to catch up with Will again. I didn’t take too many photos during the day, but by far the best one was at dinner. I don’t even need to say any more.

technorati tags:wordcamp

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On Sunday I went up to San Francisco again to see Sonic Youth. This time it happened to be at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium because they were opening for Pearl Jam. I went with my friend Capri and we had a pretty good time.

We were a bit late because of my fantastic navigation skills around the streets of SF. Sonic Youth was already playing when we got inside. They sounded great to me, of course. We opted for finding seats in the balcony somewhere because neither of us are particularly huge Pearl Jam fans and we knew sitting would be nicer than standing the whole show. Our view ended up being about even with the right side of the stage. I actually think it was a really cool angle. We could see everything happening on stage from above.

Sonic Youth still played many tracks from their new release even when in the opening slot. They didn’t opt for the popular hits that the crowd may have known. It must be so difficult for a band to be playing with another band who has a huge following when their sounds are not the same at all. There was one guy who shouted out during “Or”: This fucking sucks! Maybe he was drunk already.

Since we were late I didn’t get the whole setlist written down. I haven’t been able to find it online yet, either. That might be a good thing because then I can’t be disappointed by what I might have missed. Here’s what I got:

–
100%
What a Waste
Mote
Do You Believe in Rapture?
Jams Run Free
Pink Steam
Or

Even though it was short for me, it was still a treat.

As for Pearl Jam, they played pretty well. The only stuff I’m familiar with comes from their first three albums and there was a fair amount of it. It was really interesting hearing “Garden” from Ten. I didn’t expect to hear that at all. The highlight for me was probably seeing “Better Man” because Ed didn’t even sing the entire first verse–he left it up to the crowd who filled in very nicely.

I had tickets to the Tuesday night show, but I decided not to go because getting up there on a weeknight would be a hassle, and I had already seen them. I found a friend who needed tickets for his sister so I wasn’t stranded with $120 worth of tickets on my hands either.

technorati tags: sonicyouth, pearljam, music, liveshows, sanfrancisco

Last night I went up to San Francisco to see Sonic Youth at the Fillmore. They snuck in a solo show before the shows with Pearl Jam in the next few days. I was really happy about that. They played for close to two hours–much longer than they probably will play when opening for PJ.

On the Sonic Nurse tour I was pleased to realize that Sonic Youth will never become a touring “Greatest Hits” band. They played all but one track off of that record during that show. Last night they played every new song off of the new record, Rather Ripped. I thought it was quite a treat. The few other songs they played were exciting too. The ending of “Pattern Recognition” was long and furious and quite lovely. “Expressway to Yr Skull” was unexpected but very welcome. I love how they made it just kind of disintegrate on itself.

I started taking note of the setlist about halfway through with memos on my phone. This is what I got down, anyway:

Incinerate
Reena
(I Got a) Catholic Block
Pattern Recognition
Do You Believe in Rapture?
Eric’s Trip
What a Waste
Sleepin’ Around
Jams Run Free
Rats
Turquoise Boy
Pink Steam
Or
–
Lights Out
Shaking Hell
–
The Neutral
Expressway to Yr Skull

technorati tags: sonicyouth, fillmore, sanfrancisco, music, liveshows

A couple nights ago I saw We Are Scientists and Arctic Monkeys at the Warfield with Jessica. (She took all the photos.)

It was quite an adventure just getting there. We got stuck behind a fresh accident on the freeway before we could exit for our usual In-N-Out Burger in Mountain View. After sitting for at least 15 minutes in traffic to go just the 3 miles up the road, we finally exited and got to wait another 10 minutes in the Drive Thru line. Then, traffic was a little thick for another 10 minutes or so back on the freeway, once we started going the right direction. The Northbound on ramp to 101 eluded me after buying our burgers. We actually made it to the city about right at 8:00, when the show was supposed to start. We saw Mike, Jessica’s buddy that we were meeting there, right away. He had snagged a good standing spot on the first level up from the floor.

We Are Scientists came on at 8:30 instead of 8:00 so we did just fine with time. I think they play better when they are an opening band. When Jessica and I first saw them they were opening for Bishop Allen to an almost nonexistent crowd at the Independent more than a year ago. They blew us away at that show.

I thought their playing the other night was at that same level. The crowd was not theirs; they were mostly there for Arctic Monkeys, so We Are Scientists had to play that much harder to make an impression. Most of the songs bled together through waves of distortion and feedback (the kind of stuff I love; reminiscent of Nirvana performances). Keith was at his finest, flailing about and molesting his amplifier with his guitar to produce some wonderful noise. His microphone and stand did not get off scot-free either. By the end of the set they had been abused just as well.

They played every song from With Love and Squalor without branching out to older material or anything else. Still, the songs from The Wolf’s Hour EP are my favorites and so I’m glad that 4 of them are on the new album and are staples of their live set.

As for Arctic Monkeys, I had never even heard their music before the show. I thought they were a pretty good band. Most of their songs are loud and fast paced. They really exploit having two guitarists and it adds quite a bit to the music. Their songs are catchy, but at the same time I think that were I to listen to them frequently they would become tedious and repetitive. The crowd really loved them. Lots of hopping up and down was going on. A pit even broke out once or twice. To me, they put on a good show, but I wasn’t blown away or anything.

[shamelessly cross-posted here, here, and here]

technorati tags: livemusic, warfield, rock, wearescientists, arcticmonkeys

Show Off originally uploaded by mrwilloby.
This was funny. I set my camera to rapidly take photos when holding down the shutter button. Christy saw me skiing by and starts dancing. I guess she was paying more attention to dancing than snowboarding.

I went to see Nada Surf on Thursday night at the Fillmore. Drove Jessica and Judah up there. We had a great time. Ate some Thai food across the street beforehand and got there early enough to be in the second row of people from the stage. Quite close and good for taking photos with our snuck in cameras. I ended up taking 260, but only posted 30 or so of them.

I like the Fillmore because you get cool posters after the show.

technorati tags: nadasurf, music, liveshows, fillmore

Fuckin’ Homerun Pies, Y’All originally uploaded by Malavagma.

And Home Run Pies.

Last Thursday I did nothing all day. When it was time to go out to popscene to see We Are Scientists with Jessica I was feeling weird. At the gas station while filling up, I glanced into the teenie tiny mini mart and saw a gigantic display of Home Run Pies. I love Home Run Pies.

At that moment I realized why I was feeling funny. I had not had any sugar all day. I am used to eating candy all the time. Eating a Home Run Pie would be perfect. I bought two: a chocolate and a cherry. I ate the cherry one immediately. It did the trick. I was in good spirits again.

So we adventured. We had dinner in Chinatown with Jessica’s friend Steve. Then we went and caught up with some other friends at a bar. The band was actually having drinks at that bar before the show too, that was kind of fun. Then Andy joined Jess and me for a little rocking out and ass shaking.

I ate the chocolate Home Run Pie on the drive home. I opened it with my teeth. Rawr.