Take it like a mun

Post Post “Drafts” from Post Post on Vimeo. (That’s Post Post back in December 2009 at Lunt Basement.)

Post Post/A Place to Bury Strangers/The Big Pink
North Star Bar, March 31, 2010

You walk into the room
With your pencil in your hand
You see somebody naked
And you say, “Who is that man?”
You try so hard
But you don’t understand
Just what you’ll say
When you get home

Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

Dylan pretty much describes my experience of seeing Post Post at North Star Bar last night. Don’t get me wrong, they were great. And tiny. And skinny. And had little tiny amps. And I was old and Mike said “So, that’s what the kids are into these days. Cool.” And I said, “If they’re under 19, then ‘Fuck you.’ ”

Turns out they’re college juniors, or were when they formed. So they’re probably only slightly less than half my age. Fuckers. Good on ya. Their singer/guitarist, Michelle, is like a Norwegian pixie with a voice somewhere between Joanna Newsom and Corin Tucker. Post Post write catchy intricate treble-y pop with melodies that layer on each other and build into glittering messes like shattered glass in treacle. They were good on this bill which tended toward darker/heavier.

Here’s a link to an mp3 off their ep, “Say When.”

Worth seeing live, and if you’re around Philly you have no excuse.

Post Post at Awkward Core

Post Post myspace

This show with A Place to Bury Strangers and The Big Pink was originally slated for TLA—a much larger room than North Star. I’m sure it was disappointing that the show was moved—I’m guessing not enough advance ticket sales as the recession takes its toll on entertainment—but despite that the bands played well and the sound was great. I like the room at North Star, with the brick and the tapestry on the back wall.

APTBS lived up to their noisy rep, generating tremendous breaking waves of reverb-drenched feedback. It took about 30 seconds to get my earplugs in. Let’s just say even with ear plugs it was so loud I’m certain I’ve made a decade of progress toward the final total deafness that is my fate. Lots of smoke. Lots of strobe lights. An atmosphere of disorientation I find comforting. If you haven’t heard them, check these out:

APTBS - Ego Death

In Your Heart on You Tube (embedding disabled)

APTBS official site

I snagged the set list. Unrepentant fan boy.

APTBS set North Star, 3/31/10

The Big Pink are a band I only knew one song of before this show:

I find that chorus irritating, though I like the sounds in the song. That was definitely the “hit” of the evening. But overall, I liked their other songs better. The band was polished, loud, and good. The beats and tones mix slightly uptempo trip hop grooves with shoegaze guitar/bass work and inventive noisy synth/dj work.

The Big Pink on 4AD

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This is an attempt to document my live music history. After investing about three hours in this (last night and this morning), it may become an ongoing project with its own “page” here at PDB.

I started this list because I kept getting tagged in that Facebook note “50 Bands/Concerts,” list note thingy.* When I noticed some people were calling it “99 Bands/Concerts,” and extending the original number, I knew it was time for me to jump in and go for the overkill. I’m hesitant to post, because this must be evidence of mental illness, lack of a real life, or having missed my calling as a librarian.

It’s far from complete. And in evidence is just what a lousy concertgoer I am. All the shows I’ve missed. All the bands I wish I’d seen. (There’s another list to work on.) I know there were plenty of nights where I could have been out seeing something memorable and the only thing that kept me from going was a failure to check the listings. Now I’m old and married and have kids and a mortgage—the full catastrophe. I don’t get out much. I know, some of my friends in a similar position still manage to make the scene. I guess I’m just lazy and my feet hurt.

Thanks to my friends whose Facebook lists were invaluable in jogging my middle-aged memory: Lisa, Carl, Walter.

I excluded bands I played in: Twig, Mayfirst, Hex 49, ExVegas, Prosolar Mechanics, The Evolutionaries. Some of these bands I was on bills with, but I’m going to pretend to be less conceited and not name them out of false modesty. But I’m calling myself out here. So maybe I should just go and do it. No, it may make me look even lamer when you see that list. Nothing personal, bands I’ve shared bills with. Shit, this hole is getting really deep.

A great many of these bands I saw multiple times, especially in the 1990s when I was active in bands and on bills or out at a show to support friends at least one night a week, if not three or four. I’ve forgotten more bands off those bills than make up this list. If I saw you and you’re not here, it’s because you weren’t memorable. If you were, then my memory must suck, as you can tell from all the bands I don’t list.

I’m posting this nightmare now so I can go do something worthwhile. I may come back later and work on it some more.

If you like the idea of anally keeping track of this sort of trivia, check out the concert history tool at: http://songkick.com

Also, this is barely in any kind of order. Chronological only by decade. Sort of. I’ll work on it. And you don’t really care, so piss off.

The List

1970s

1. Bruce Springsteen – Jadwin Gymnasium, 1 November 1978 tour for Darkness on the Edge of Town. My first real concert, and though I’m not a huge Springsteen fan, this was an amazing show. Still ranks as one of the best concerts I’ve seen. Top 10 for certain. Thanks to my friend Peter for inviting me to to go along for his 14th birthday.
   

The rest after the jump.

[click to continue…]

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For a long time, I thought “top” lists sucked. Who can actually come up with a top five or top ten anything that they are solid about? It’s always open to debate, even between me and my other me. Those scenes in High Fidelity are irritating. I want to climb into the screen and start screaming in Jack Black’s face or tell Cusack that he has no taste in music (and the film song picks are way better than in the novel, though I do like the book).

Then I realized such lists aren’t really meant to be definitive. (Sometimes I’m a bit rigid, but I come around. Usually.) They’re conversation starters, like Jack Black’s Top Five Monday Morning Songs. So this post marks the kick-off of a semi-regular posting at PDB of not just the same old lists. (And that means I’ll probably never post another list here again.)

Top Five Top Five Lists I’d like to see:

1. Top Five Top Five Lists I Hate
2. Top Five Top Five Lists
3. Top Five Internet Timewasters
4. Top Five items for your Mars Exploration Kit
5. Top Five Ways to Self-induce Sleep
Bonus list: Top Five Foods to Eat in the Car that you Shouldn’t But Do Anyway

What do you love or hate about lists? Which ones are you favorites? Which ones would you like to see from other people but not have to participate? Which ones do you hope you never see?

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You meet him at the resort in 1981 while your boyfriend mails you joints from eight thousand miles away. He smiles at you on a Nile houseboat and over brunch in the delta, milk charred in clay pots, the rice is sweet, and wet. You pretend you are older and from an older people still. I watch and imagine I am also descended from the jackal. The world is an afternoon by a canal in a wheat field. We do white lines the following summer in the city, but not the same one. You stop writing after you go away to school. I never get closer to the sun than on the back of that donkey.

If you’re not familiar with this 12” from Liquid Liquid on 99 Records (pronounced nine nine), “Cavern” is where Grandmaster Flash got the bass line for “White Lines,” and “This record is what ultimately destroyed 99 Records.” (Scroll down at that link if you don’t want to read about other 99 Records releases.)

Listening to this you can hear the same sensibilities happening in the nascent hip hop scene that influenced Gang of Four, PiL, and A Certain Ratio in the post-punk world, a groove still copped today !!!

The whole 12” is worth listening to. These mp3s are ripped from my so-so copy, decent, but the tracks are not without their pops and tics. Here for your perusal at 320 kbps.

Liquid Liquid
Optimo/Cavern/Scraper/Out 12” 99 Records (1983)

Optimo
Cavern
Scraper
Out

And because it’s Monday:

PiL
Swan Lake

A Certain Ratio
Shack Up

Gang of Four
He’d Send in the Army

!!!
Shit Schiesse Merde, Pt. 1

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or more precisely, Les Concerts a Emporter from La Blogotheque. Yeah, it’s en français mes amis Américains but just put down your fritures de liberté for a couple of nanoseconds and get this: You know you love live music, but you’ve got a trick knee, a bum hip, sciatica, glaucoma, gout–you name it–and not to put too blunt a point on it but you’re tired of the scene and the hipsters and the smell of stale beer and vomit now that smoking is a felony–if this resembles you slightly or not at all then imagine

the national at your dinner table
vampire weekend in an empty courtyard
pattern is movement in a van

well over a hundred song-long performances. And you can brush up on your french.

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Ex-Blake Babies and one-time Lemonhead John Strohm has released all of his solo material for free download at Musical Family Tree. Well worth a listen and not to be missed for completists. Thanks to eskimo kiss for the heads up.

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Welcome to the PDB restart. The original can be found here. Jon and I were going to move that blog, archives and all, here to takeitlikeamun. But MyPHPAdmin is so borked at the old host that a successful exodus proved impossible. Pharaoh’s army caught us at the Red Sea while Moses ate hot pastrami on rye at Katz’s. The original PDB will remain up for a short time, then disappear as we have stopped paying the hosting fee. We’ll bring you our greatest hits from v.1 occasionally. It is our sincere hope that reposting them will make us appear more productive than we are.

As far as the new, improved, PDB (now with 53% more zest!), expect the same great music conversation, downloads, and appreciation, along with a whole lot more nonsense, rumination, expostulation, and holding forth. And now, let the wild rumpus (re)start!

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