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2008:04:30:08:00. Wednesday. NO!: NORTHERN ROOM (#390, APR 21 2008).
So there was this dude at the show, Sully, who's pointed out at the beginning of this clip. Sully appeared to be Northern Room's number one fan, and also a big fan of Jack Daniel's. After a lot of shouting and jumping around during their set he got himself escorted from the venue during the intermission for something or other, possibly his constant attempts to get on the stage. Cheers, Sully! This is a new tune, and it continues to cue the main thought I have when I listen to these guys -- they sound a ton like Mute Math. That may have colored my perception of their stage show, too, since what they were reaching for reminded me a lot of the Mute Math show I saw last fall. It was interesting seeing this kind of thing at the High Noon, since it's usually such a low-key place at the shows I go to.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2008:04:29:08:00. Tuesday. NO!: NORTHERN ROOM (#389, APR 21 2008).
Last year's free Jack Daniel's show with OK Go was a lot of fun, but I was somewhat skeptical about this year's show featuring the Bravery. As much as I liked their first album, their second left me completely cold. But, it's a free show, and the opening act is a Milwaukee band I'd been hoping for the chance to see, and it was certainly worth a few hours of my time. If nothing else, we got some free Jack-branded drumsticks just in case our Rock Band sticks break. Opening the show was Northern Room, who were way too big for the venue. That is to say, their approach seemed like it was from a theater- or arena-style show, and a headlining gig at that. I think it worked for some of the crowd, but other seemed taken aback by the notion that they ought to know the songs or be singing along. I like their album well enough, and this was one of the tunes I was really interested in hearing (the other, "We're on Fire," was held for the closer).
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2008:04:25:08:00. Friday. NO!: KARMELLA'S GAME (#388, APR 20 2008).
I imagine that some of the biggish crowd that was on hand for this set was there, like me, to see Karmella's Game, but the rest of the bill was pretty attractive too -- local indie pop recluses His & Her Vanities, and well-liked touring electro-popsters Enon. On balance it would've been nice to see both of them, but Sunday night shows are poorly timed for me this semester. On top of that, this supposedly 8:00 show didn't even open it's doors until about 8:30. I thought about sticking around for just HHV, but as I often do with local bands, decided I could see them again later. Emily was home not feeling well, and I was getting tired after another long weekend, so I bugged out after KG got done one song after this one. They got a terrific reception, but for the new stuff and the old, and hopefully they're back soon touring a new record with all these songs on it.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2008:04:24:08:00. Thursday. NO!: KARMELLA'S GAME (#387, APR 20 2008).
Now that I've finally recorded Karmella's Game, my lone white whale is ...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, whom I've failed to record twice. Throughout the KG set I actually found myself really worried that the battery in my mic pack would die, or some other disruption would happen to complete a trifecta of failure, but everything went smoothly. The audio for the new songs even came out decent enough to listen to on my iPod, though as an OCD ID3-tagger I'm loathe to mark something as "unknown new song."
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2008:04:23:08:00. Wednesday. NO!: KARMELLA'S GAME (#386, APR 20 2008).
More new stuff, with no title. It occurs to me that each time I've seen Karmella's Game they played a lot of new material. The first time the stuff I didn't know were probably the song that wound up on The Art of Distraction; last time about half their set was new, and could've been some of these same new songs. Either way, I'm really primed for a new record to come out now.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2008:04:22:08:00. Tuesday. NO!: KARMELLA'S GAME (#385, APR 20 2008).
In their eight-song set, Karmella's Game had five new tunes, of which this was the second. They've posted on their MySpace that they have six new demos done, so I'm hopeful this means a new album is on the way soon. The reception was good -- and who knows how much of the crowd was familiar with them to start with -- and I'm eager to hear how they sound on record.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2008:04:21:08:00. Monday. NO!: KARMELLA'S GAME (#384, APR 20 2008).
It took about a year and a half, but I've finally got some clips of one of my favorite bands, Karmella's Game. Both previous times I saw them something kept me from recording, but thankfully nothing weird happened at this show, unless an advertised 8:00 show not being open until 8:30 is "weird." With Enon and His & Her Vanities appearing later on the bill, I expected this to be a better attended show than the set KG played last August, which only four people showed up to. It was -- there were probably 30-40 people in the stage and bar areas, including a noticeable number who were really into songs like this one from their debut LP.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2008:04:17:08:00. Thursday. NO!: JAIL (#383, APR 4 2008).
I wasn't that surprised that I was able to lighten up the picture on these clips, but I was kind of surprised that the sound came out so well. The Corral Room is basically a bomb shelter underneath a downtown Madison steakhouse and I stood about 4-5 feet from the PA while recording -- I figured there'd be some significant wash-out issues, but since there's no stage it was the only way to get a decent show. The sound came out pretty good, though, I suppose due to the smaller power of the PA compared to bigger venues. I'm particularly glad because these are both new songs, and I hate posting new stuff that winds up being nothing but garble.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2008:04:14:08:00. Monday. NO!: JAIL (#382, APR 4 2008).
Time for a slight change. When I started shooting in widescreen at the beginning of 2007, there were no widescreen iPods and YouTube didn't properly support the 16:9 aspect ratio. Those things have both since changed (YT still doesn't actually support 16:9, but it does automatically letterbox now). So, as of this clip, I've moved from pre-letterboxed 320x240 to native widescreen at 480x270. I chose that size because I was pretty sure it would play on the iPod Video, but I'll be doing some testing to see if I can go a little bigger. You should notice somewhat better picture quality at this resolution, but any changes should be transparent if you're not watching on a widescreen display. So, this show. We zoomed over from the High Noon as soon as Vampire Weekend finished, and got to the Corral Room just as the band before Jail was tearing down. My only previous Corral Room experience was my first Karmella's Game show a few years ago, which I failed to record because it was so dark. Nothing's changed since then, except that now I know how to lighten up a dark image without losing too much detail. Case in point, this clip has been lightened up considerably and, despite the occasional weird color shift, it looks pretty much fine. There's a new Jail record out soon, and presumably the songs from this show will be on it. For the most part they're more insistent than the earlier material, with a generally fuzzier sound. The crowd -- I'd guess a mix of Madisonians and transplanted Milwaukeeans -- seemed to dig it, so hopefully it won't be years again before they're back.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2008:04:11:08:00. Friday. NO!: VAMPIRE WEEKEND (#381, APR 4 2008).
The fact that there was so much enthusiasm for these guys was kind of surprising, but even more surprising was the number of people who were literally falling down drunk at this show. It was almost certainly the drunkenest show I've ever seen at the High Noon, and I can't imagine those folks felt too good about this song. Before launching into it, the band asked us all to dance and challenged us to be better than the previous night's Minneapolis crowd. The resulting explosion of crowd movement was enjoying by most and I'd guess cursed by a few.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2008:04:10:16:49. Thursday. A SUGGESTION. I assume we ought to be seeing some sort of genre-focused Rock Band off-shoot at some point, in the spirit of Guitar Hero: Rock the 80's and the upcoming Aerosmith version of GH. I would like to suggest an indie rock set. Imagine rocking through these with two or three of your hipster friends:
Minneapolis:
Montreal:
Washington, DC:
Austin:
It would be the awesomest thing ever, I suspect.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2008:04:10:08:00. NO!: VAMPIRE WEEKEND (#380, APR 4 2008).
I always find myself a little frustrated with this song. The last few tracks on the record all have kind of similar intros, and every time it comes on I find myself thinking this is the next one, "Walcott," which is my favorite track on the album. Then it turns out not to be, and half the time I just skip forward. But when you can't skip forward, it's kind of a nice tune. Sounds kind of crummy in places, since I was a little close to the stage and it's bass-heavy, but most of it's OK.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2008:04:09:22:08. Wednesday. TEASE. Dear Brett Favre, Please stop it:
"I guess the best response would be, right now no," he said of a possible return to the game.
Favre added he would not return unless he was in shape.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2008:04:09:08:00. NO!: VAMPIRE WEEKEND (#379, APR 4 2008).
This is probably the last time we'll see Vampire Weekend, and I'm sure it's the last time in Madison. They're already too big to be playing the High Noon, frankly, but the show was booked a while back; next time they're out it's likely to be the Barrymore, or skipping Madison entirely. So with that in mind, this was a fun show. We skipped most of the opening act, but the sell-out crowd was mostly all there by the time we arrived. This tune was only the second in the set, but everybody got revved up pretty quickly. The high energy is one of things that makes me think they're on their way out of the level of shows I tend to go to -- they've only been in the spotlight for a few months and they've already got 400 Madisonians going nuts.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2008:04:08:08:00. Tuesday. NO!: HELIGOATS (#378, MAR 27 2008).
This was one of the songs that I recognized from the last Heligoats show, though I recognized it as much for the introductory description of it than for the song itself. It's about some older folks trying to relive their glory days by raiding their kids' medicine cabinet, which is kind of hard to forget. It's also one of many songs that have been posted on MySpace over the past few years, which hopefully will see some real release sometime soon.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2008:04:07:08:00. Monday. NO!: HELIGOATS (#377, MAR 27 2008). (Fixed? Seems that way. Hey Apple, Compressor still doesn't work right with Leopard, and it's been like six months. Hint, hint.) When we leave Madison -- even if we wind up in Chicago -- these Heligoats shows will be one of the things I miss the most. A couple times a year Chris Otepka comes to Indie Coffee with an acoustic guitar and plays through a bunch of mostly new material for an audience that's nothing but music-lovers. It's mostly the same bunch of us each time, I think, but it doesn't get old. This time Chris almost had a full band with him. He was accompanied by a violinist friend named Kara and would have had a drum-brusher, except he got caught by the bad whether between here and Chicago. They were stopping by on their way up to Michigan Tech of all places, where they had a show scheduled the next night in the black box theater where I played a number of shows as an undergrad. Hopefully it went well -- nobody ever came up there while I was in school, and it'd be nice to see it become something of a regional destination. Anyway, apropos of nothing, this is, I think, a new tune about a marathon-runner, which Chris introduced with a story somebody dying during the Chicago Marathon. Cheery stuff! But on the whole, the show was quite fun, as usual. Also, this was the first of these shows that we ate at instead of just getting coffee, and the waffles are great!
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2008:04:03:11:49. Thursday. POD PROBLEMS. In between the Gutter Twins show and last week's Heligoats show I upgraded to Leopard; now Final Cut insists on putting a thick black border around every video I export. Hopefully I'll get this figured out soon-ish -- I've got Heligoats clips, stuff from last night's Headlights/Evangelicals show, and two shows to go to tomorrow night.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2008:04:02:11:34. Wednesday. REVISITING BUFFY SEASON 4 AND ANGEL SEASON 1. During the strike we started working through the complete DVD set of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which Emily had never seen before, and most of which I hadn't seen since the show ended almost five years ago. We're at about the halfway point now -- just done with season four of Buffy and season one of the Angel spin-off -- and I find myself changing a lot of my thoughts about this particular double-season, which I'd sort of written off as a misstep at the time. I'll go into detail, but spoilers ahoy, of course. |
