Mitch Hedberg and Bass Wolf in the same day.

Today sucks.

So was I the only one who was massively disappointed by Boris last night? It was certainly far from the crushingly heavy festival of death I was hoping for. It was all high-end and cymbals and spangly guitar, with no real beef to the sound whatsoever. Granted this possibly wasn’t their fault, but no band with an album called Amplifier Worship should ever sound like that.

INTERVIEWER: And finally what can people expect musically from the performance that they are about to hear very shortly?

DOM: It’s gonna be a big rocking set, with one or two new songs thrown in.

MATT: Check out the lightning bolt cover song. It’s a new style of music coming out of weird abandoned art galleries in Boston, called Skronk music which is like insane punk, simplistic sort of gamma metal. Dom and Chris are gonna do a cover at the beginning of the gig tonight, of one of the bands that does that.

Jesus.

Muse cover Lightning Bolt

Went to see Panda Bear and pals last night, and it were right good. More exciting than any of the bands though, was the fact that it SOLD OUT. Like, it was RAMMED and there were people outside who couldn’t get in! Anyone who’s ever visited or played at Cambridge’s illustrious Portland Arms will know how insane this is, in fact in all the years I’ve been going to gigs there this is the first time I’ve known it to happen. The apocalypse is surely upon us.

Comets on Fire and Kid Commando this evening, lovely stuff. Also, please check out my pal’s blog. Lots of random MP3 goodness.

As well as a “log”, this can also be a handy way to communicate. Chris! Don’t buy a Playstation you fool! Get a Gamecube, or a Gameboy Advance, or something else that is made by Nintendo and not by some bunch of Nazis. Get a SNES! They’re cheap on eBay and just as amazing as they were in 1992.

We have a Mac and iPods. We’re going to hell, but in a very nice, flashy, and distinctly non-Microsoft kind of way. We also just got fast internet for the first time, which has made for some very exciting Soulseek experiences. Thanks to Mister Stockwell, Charalambides have also been on my “Why Was I Not Listening To This Band Years Ago” list. Other recent favourites have been Wolf Eyes and anything to do with them, anything on the Siltbreeze or Blackbean and Placenta labels, and in a fit of 6th Form nostalgia, the Super Furry Animals. Them were the days. I also have a part time job in a record store, which pays worse than you could ever imagine, but at this point, I’m in no position to complain. Discounts galore, so I guess it works out. Lastly, we saw Kill Bill Vol. 1, and it was far, far better then either of us were expecting. Quite looking forward to the new one, which I believe is out tomorrow.

glad to hear people had fun at atp (although not entirely surprised). i won’t dwell on that too much in an attempt to cheer myself up for having missed so much fun recently, but one thing; stu! that was two years ago! time is indeed flying by though, i will turn 40 next year etc.

some considerable time after everyone else, we have finally come to appreciate the joys of curb your enthusiasm. having heard many people rave on about it, we finally caught bits of a couple of episodes on tv, and it seemed ok, but not really anything astounding. then, gradually, we saw more and more of it, and it seemed to get a little funnier each time. then last week we bought season one on dvd, which has finally caused us to share the common opinion that this show is a work of fucking genius. last night we watched the dermatologist one, and by the time larry was doing his “norman! not on the weekend!” speech in the car, we were both verging on delirious. lovely stuff.

i’m still half kidding myself that we could go to atp next weekend, despite the fact that a) it’s 3000 miles away, b) we don’t have any money and c) it’s sold out. a boy can hope though. failing that, there is the prospect of sun city girls in louisville next month, or possibly hair police/prurient/kites/wolf eyes in michigan, although on the way back from there last week i lead us on a somewhat unnecessary 120 mile detour, so i’m not even sure kim will ever let me be in a car with her again, let alone drive us back there. we were there to see the ever horrible khanate, who were spectacular as you would expect. i was very drunk which didn’t help with the whole “GGGRRRUUUUUURRGGGHHHHH-CCZZZZKKKKKIIIIINNNNNNTTTHHHHH-RRRRAAAAAAAAGGAAAWWWWWWAAAAAAA” aspect of the evening, in fact by the time khanate had played i could feel the fear rapidly approaching, but thankfully i managed to keep it together till the end. bought a fucking amazing shirt, so nice that i feel the need to show it off.

hi gang, been doing things recently (in a roundabout way). best of all was a rather wonderful trip to san francisco where we saw hella, walked up some massive fuck off hills and ate crazy new food. thanks mainly to the insane amoeba records, we are now up to our eyeballs in new music too, which is pretty great. in another thinly veiled excuse for a band list, here are some recent purchase highlights:

alvarius b/dylan nyoukis – sugar: the other white meat lp

dylan nyoukis – with hicks in the sudan cassette

friends forever/gang wizard – split 9″ (lathe cut too, no less)

ashtray navigations/gang wizard – split 7″

amon duul ii – yeti cd

amon duul ii – phallus dei cd

sunroof! – bliss 2cd

wolf eyes & smegma – the beast lp

wolf eyes & black dice – collaboration lp

riveting, i’m sure you’ll agree. buying stupid records and then showing them off as shamefully as possible is one of the best pastimes a man can have if you ask me. the live circuit is still fairly quiet, but we are hopefully seeing KHANATE!!!!! next thursday. judging by the live photos circulating from the shows they’ve been playing, they look insane and should be nothing short of excellent. just after that, cheer accident are playing in town with a band featuring ex-members of sweep (remember them?!) which i’m kind of in two minds over. all this activity of course in no way makes up for the fact that we’re missing atp this year (and all the various gigs that the bands are playing around the same time). i for one am also insanely jealous that mister younger is getting to go to no fun fest in nyc! jammy tyke. and as if that weren’t enough, radio playing excitement to boot? how does he do it?

on a slightly sadder note, a tiny little part of my soul finally died yesterday, as we gave up on the endless struggle against all of society, and bought mobile phones. fancy ones too, with cameras and email and all kinds of crap. we’ll be eating tapas and ending loud and irritating public conversations with “ciao” before you know it.

other recent things include: long overdue haircuts, the surprisingly good dawn of the dead remake, final fantasy:crystal chronicles, vague plans to move to various different places which usually last about an hour, kickass new tape deck with flashy lights and things, and of course, a constant state of anarchic joblessness. when will the excitement end?

kudos must go to chris s. for his saab purchasing. after a big clanky late 80s volvo, a saab would definitely be my car of choice (if i could drive, this is). i think though, if he mentions the slint thing to anyone else, his saab should become THE saab from tweez, it would make for a much better story, especially since it would be coming from chris summerlin, master of rock, and would therefore be entirely believable.

lastly, down there on the left just above the blogger button, you can now see what each of us have been listening to. well, currently it’s just marceline and i *coughSTAFFcough*, but hopefully it will provide you with some insight into, er, something or other. this somewhat miraculous feat of technology (by my standards) is provided by listen-to.com. clever stuff.

Some of them were even at the cinema and everything. Along Came Polly was about as funny as you would expect really. That’s the thing with Ben Stiller films, they’re always precisely as funny as the last one (which means the odd chuckle here and there, and a general feeling of indifference once it’s over). Phillip Seymour Hoffman was the best thing about it unsurprisingly.

Monster was a weird one. What could have been an interesting tale of a female prostitute turned man-hating serial killer was told in a pretty boring and lacklustre way, which is saying something considering the often graphic violence. Christina Ricci was fucking dreadful as always, how does she have a career? By far the best thing about this one was Charlize Theron’s astonishing transformation into a real skank, which was very convincing, and probably worthy of an Oscar (if anything really is).

A recent trip to Blockbuster yielded some interesting results. Versus was a crazy tale indeed. Clearly very low budget, it looked like some film students got together and said “Lets film a bunch of people chasing each other round a forest. We’ll give them guns and there will be some Kung Fu. We’ll also throw in some zombies, and give them guns also. There definitely needs to some samurai fighting action too. Ooh, and we should probably do something with dark magical powers and trans-dimensional weirdness too. Fuck storyline, let’s make a fucking MOVIE!” That’s what they said (word for word) and it worked very well indeed. Frequently absurd, often cool, and always a lot of fun. There wasn’t an original idea in there and it didn’t matter, it was just made by people who enjoy film and don’t mind completely disregarding The Rules.

Not quite as fun was Naqoyqatsi. I mistakenly picked this out thinking it was one of the earlier films of the series, Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi, which I’ve always meant to see. Unfortunately the one we got came out in 2002 and was lame. I guess some people enjoy watching an hour and a half of terrible CGI of mathmatical equations floating in space, and slow motion footage of the sea, but I don’t. I guess some people see this kind of thing as avant-garde since it comes from Hollywood, but I thought it was about as avant-garde as a Scottish Widows commercial. Tripe masquerading as subtlety and insight, avoid.

Happy birthday to John for last Saturday. I agree that the way birthday cash slopes off is highly depressing. It seemed to happen far more abruptly for me, I swear one year, maybe 18 or 19, they just didn’t come any more. Granted, I hadn’t seen most of the parties in question for a number of years, let alone remembered their birthdays, but it’s just something you come to expect from childhood, birthdays=money. And John, you should count yourself lucky, I’m younger than you and I got about 3 cards last birthday. Oh, the pain!

We finally got to see Lost In Translation tonight and it didn’t disappoint. Powerful and understated. Bill Murray is truly the man. Miles better than The Virgin Suicides if you ask me, if only for the lack of Josh Hartnet. We also rented Ichi The Killer which is sure to be crazy as hell.

Chris had a good point about the cheap records thing. I hit a jackpot (by my standards) the other day when we stumbled across a sackload of cheapo vinyl at a store down the road. I got two GodheadSilos, a Blind Idiot God and a Mick Turner for $1.99 each (all new) and a Clikitat Ikatowi and a JAMS/Timelords for 99c each. I was beside myself with glee, especially at the GodheadSilo, a band who had been on my list of stuff I should own for years. They rock too, especially their Scientific Supercake LP, which is superb. The JAMS 12″ is shit obviously, but I’m unable to resist anything vaguely connected with The KLF. Side note: I discovered recently that my mum went to school with the guy who sang the chorus on their 1992 hit ‘America: What Time Is Love?’. He was also in Black Sabbath and Deep Purple, but neither of these points impressed me nearly as much as the KLF thing.

Apart from that, record buying has been infrequent for some months. Having said that, I did receive copies of Sunn 0))) – Veils It White and Harvey Milk – Courtesy And Good Will Toward Men in the post the other day. Two exquisitely packaged records which didn’t cost an arm and a leg, which makes a change.

[Did you like the amount of bold titles in this blog? Hopefully it will now become a contest.]

my two cents: i thought punch drunk love was okay, pretty decent perhaps, but that was about it. my main problem was that i really couldn’t take adam sandler seriously. i know that’s kind of lame, but you can only forgive the guy so much for making so many films that consist of nothing but silly voices and fart jokes. i thought the main redeeming factor was the appearance of phillip seymour hoffman who is undeniably an incredible actor, and who always brings something special to every film he’s in. hey, there’s a handy excuse to do my current favourite actors list:

01 vincent cassel (always)
02 phillip seymour hoffman
03 bill murray
04 william h. macy
05 steve buscemi

any one of those names are more than enough to make me see a film, and usually, in my opinion, enough to make the film great. hey, new blog idea; actors we like. go on.