Monthly Archives: July 2006

This clip of an independent, suburbanized penguin was so cute, it even made me go “awwww”.

My great loves in music will always be melancholy. Something in my brain, the same part that responded to the fugues in minor key I grew up playing, also responds to the key changes in VNV Nation or Depeche Mode much better than in, say, neo-psychadelic indie rock. I’ve never understood, say, Modest Mouse.

Recently, the boyfriend has been causing me to backtrack through the indie rock I missed while I was still asleep in my classical nerd cocoon in the 1990s. He’s making me Pixies CDs, because he worships the Pixies, and insists that I understand them. He’s also made me a Sonic Youth compilation because they are gods of music. And while we do have many artists in common, he’s far more on the indie side of the spectrum, and I’m more on the melancholy goth side. It works – he burned me the Infadels a couple weeks ago, and I burned him the Birthday Massacre on our first date. We swap his indie/punk background material for my neo-goth.

It’s woken me up as to exactly how much music I missed out on while I was growing up on the Island. I only discovered alt-rock when I moved to Seattle, and it was tough to find out what I’d missed. And I was so busy discovering the artists that were big right then in 1995 – Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, Tori Amos, NIN – that I didn’t start backtracking into the earlier 90s. I could have listened to the four-hour retro show on Sundays on KNDD, I suppose. I could have and should have looked deeper into the less mainstream bands that were big at the time – Liz Phair, Sonic Youth, Pavement, and the Pixies spinoff projects, both Frank Black and the Breeders – but I didn’t. And then I got distracted backtracking through Siouxsie and Depeche Mode, New Order and Joy Division, and then I got sidetracked in New Goth and synthpop, and then there were an awful lot of years where I just didn’t listen to anything because I was Not Exactly Myself.

I think the point to all this is that I’m realizing that there’s this massive gap in my music experience that is Indie/College/Alternative From About 1985 To 1995. I just wasn’t paying attention at the time, or I wasn’t in the headspace. And now, thanks to one indie-obsessed goth nerd, I’ve realized how much there is to catch up on. That the Jesus and Mary Chain had more than that one song with Mazzy Star. That Pavement had more than the one single. That even though I adore their follower, Ulrich Schnauss, I totally missed My Bloody Valentine. I never heard the expression “shoegaze” until about last year, and I never understood it until recently.

I know current music well enough. When Paul sent me the list of bands he was seeing at Coachella, I was able to respond about most of them. And most of them, I had heard of. I’m pretty up on my current indie, and I certainly spend enough time backtracking through the last ten years in gothic/industrial/synthpop for everything I missed. But I’m realizing that there’s a lot of really awesome music out there that I never even started to listen to, that is directly responsible for the music I listen to and like so much today. How could I leave the Pixies out of my music experience when I’ve always adored Nirvana? How could I not backtrack to the Sundays when I really like The Like?

And also, I’m really fascinated by where music as I listen to it came from. I know the roots and descent of anything with electronic bleeps in it. I even know the story of punk, how it appeares and went back and forth across the Atlantic, and how it opened mindsets to create post-punk. What I have never been able to figure out is where indie rock came from, how this radically different form of music could start appearing in 1981. How much of it comes from a John Cage mentality? How much was sheer experiment? Where does punk even come from? How do these styles of music just appear, over the course of a few years, a few bands? How is it that there’s layers and layers of styles of rock music, indie or not, out there that have been simply incubating and influencing others, until, finally, a band makes it into the mainstream, and everything bursts to the surface? I keep getting the image of pre-punk bands, rock-raised kids in sixties garages, or in lofts in New York’s Village, but how did they get from rock’n’roll to pre-punk?

How is it that there are hundreds of musical styles and genres that have appeared in the last thirty years, when there’s so much that went on before – but without the diversity?

Anyways. Regardless of the history, I have an awful lot to catch up on. Curse my boyfriend for inspiring musical curiosity!

Because I want to find out what his life-changing plans are for his prize money, go vote for Kareem’s “How To Drive A Stick Shift” video on VideoAnswer.

Kareem is the LA BarCamp leader, and a fellow Canadian/blogger/friend, so I’d post this even if he wasn’t bribing me.

So there’s an angry goth club song out there that has a very thumpy, growly chorus like:

“dance! and da-da-da
dance! and da-da-da
for a la-la la-la-la
we’ll something la-la till we die”

I KNOW I should know this. I know it’s probably something elemental, like And One or some band I haven’t listened enough to, but can anyone from the gothic/industrial mindset tell me what the hell this is so I can download it, listen to it and get it out of my head?

dream_king, I’m totally looking in your direction here.

Back in Vancouver, nafspeak (August 18th), cracksmurf (August 9th) and I would all celebrate our birthdays together by going to Discontronics. This is the disco dance party at the Commodore in Vancouver. People actually dress up for this event, too, raiding thrift stores to create real 70s style outfits. I always wussed out and wore 70s influenced clothing than the real thing, but I also always had a blast dancing for hours to disco with my friends.

Not to mention watching Senator at Large, Dave Tompkins, performing Boney M’s “Rasputin”.

However, it has been two years since I lived in Vancouver. And last year, I had a fantastic birthday here in L.A., at Bar Sinister. Which is where I would undoubtedly be (especially with Malediction Society returning to Sundays) this year, except for one thing: my birthday is BATS DAY WEEKEND!

I think I’m really too old to be celebrating my birthday by getting stupid drunk. Therefore, I’m celebrating it by going to Disneyland and yelling “ARRRRRR MATEY! HOW BE YER WAFFLES?!?” to the people trying to enjoy breakfast at the Blue Bayou restaurant in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. (It’s a good thing my boyfriend thinks I’m adorable, because I might get away with that)

more info on my birthday weekend behind the cut

FRIDAY: Fright Night! Our friend Paula was debuting her horror short, “Monster Movie Madness”. I laughed, I cried, I cringed at the zombies eating the postman. Fright Night is run by the same guy who does Bats Day, aka Goth Day At Disneyland, aka “Jillian’s 28th Birthday Celebration”. Fright Night is a double feature of bad horror movies – horror and/or scifi – that are usually at least twenty years old, and have become cult hits. There’s a band in the middle, a raffle for a dead body, and the whole thing is held in the C.I.A. (California Institute of Abnormal Arts), which looks like a cross between Ripley’s museum, Pee-Wee’s playhouse, and the patio space at Bar Sinister.

However, because this week’s movie was so terrible, we left early, and ended up helping out a friend whose car had been hit by an asshat. I wrote that one up for b.la, so I won’t repost here.

SATURDAY: Paul and I went to the library. Yes, we’re nerds. This got very evident when I disappeared into the history section, and he went upstairs to the science section. I reappeared with a book on Queen Emma of England, and he was happily reading instructions for alchemy in the middle ages. Both of us chose majors we had a great deal of interest in, so even on summer weekends, we’re still happiest reading in our subject areas.

After selecting books, and going for pho at Golden Deli in Arcadia, we returned to his house in Pasadena to prepare for the evening. Saturday was the last night of Malediction Society on a Saturday. The condensed version seems to be that the Saturday night is not only lukewarm, but is detracting from the Sunday evening as well. It’s a shame, because I like Malediction just a bit better than Bar Sinister, because there is a higher percentage of the music I own and listen to, and I’m more likely to spend a higher percentage of time on the dance floor. And then when I get overheated from dancing in July, I can go outside onto the very open and spacious roof patio and chat with my friends while I cool down.

Anyways, I spent the requisite hour fixing my hair, getting dressed, and applying a half-inch wide border of liquid black eyeliner, and then we headed for the club, where three hours flew by. I think I spent two of the three hours on the dance floor, either on my own, in the sort of whirly goth dancing I can only pull off when half drunk, or dancing with the boyfriend. It was a lot of fun, and we closed the club down…but it will be a long time until I can close down a Malediction evening again. Sundays are not a good night to go out, when I have to be at work at 8am.

Still, it was a wonderful weekend of wearing black and being spooky. I’m counting down to Bats Day now. Fright Night, combined with watching Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark tonight, got me all psyched up for the Haunted Mansion and Indiana Jones rides at Disneyland. But there’s a lot of work between those spooky weekends, and I’d better go get some sleep to prepare for it.

KCET.org, the local PBS station site, has quoth me in their Life and Times blog:
http://www.kcet.org/lifeandtimes/blog/?p=87

It’s perspectives on Venice Beach, because right now, there’s a battle
against chainstores going on. Residents are signing petitions to keep
Venice unique. I’ve been looking to sign one ever since a Coffee Bean
appeared across the street from Windward Cafe. And with the city
trying to regulate the vendors on the boardwalk, there’s also concern
that the character of the area might be altered to make it more bland,
and more, well, mall-esque.

My friend Mack from LAVoice also has some perspective: his is the 2nd
post down, mine is the last.