Concert Reviews

Here are the concerts I went to two weekends ago:

Saturday: The Blood Arm, some opener I forgot the name of (Mulowok or something like that) @ Lido
Sunday: Laura Veirs and the Saltbreakers, Your Heart Breaks @ Cafe Zapata
Monday: !!!, Fujiya & Miyagi, The Blow @ Maria

Fortunately, these are all venues I've already described, in one way or another, so that saves me some time. I haven't technically described Cafe Zapata, but it's in the awesome Tacheles thing I've already talked about. That's the place that's like a bombed-out building that's been converted into art spaces, bars and music venues. Zapata is pretty small. The most notable feature is the dragon sculpture that shoots fire out of its mouth occasionally. As I write that, I realize that Zapata is really awesome and I'm sort of playing it down... At one point, we went there on like a Saturday afternoon and hung out on their back patio, which is part of the outdoor sitting area behind Tacheles. There are giant metal letters you can sit on.

Okay, so on with the bands.

Blood Arm opener (Mulowok or whatever):
If one were really into finding obscure bands that sound sort of like crappy Gin Blossoms or something, he or she would have been really happy to discover this band. They were really competent at producing music that sounds "Adult Alternative" in the lame radio station sense. The fact that they were pretty good just highlights how arbitrary Adult Alternative music like that is. It's a genre shaped entirely by record labels and sold-out radio DJs, that exists for an audience that actually sort of wants it to be more real than that, but for a long time (before the Internet really took off) didn't have the time or know-how to get involved in deciding what they like. As a result, everything had sort of smooth corners for mass consumption. And now that "Indie Rock" has nudged "Alt Rock" out of the way and become the default type of music that most people like, stuff that sounds like "Alt Rock" just sounds that much more lame, juxtaposed by the more open-ended, diverse "Indie Rock." Stuff is just generally a lot more interesting now, even in the mainstream, in my opinion. I think it's largely because there's more foot room for bands to do weird stuff that you wouldn't think everyone would like. But then sometimes everyone does like it. Like, I don't think anyone expected the Decemberists to be as popular as they are. You wouldn't have gotten anything resembling a shanty on the radio in the 90's, except as a joke. Enough about these guys.

The Blood Arm
There are several main points to hit about the Blood Arm. First, they are the band that sings that song ("Suspicious Character") that goes, "I like all the girls and all the girls like me." They play that song at clubs and stuff out here. In fact, the DJ even played it at Lido about an hour after it had just been performed. Dancing to it involves a lot of jumping up and down. And they have other good songs too. Musically, I enjoyed the concert pretty well. Not earth-shattering or anything, but fun and up-beat. Like, if you were hiring a band to play at a party just to "be fun," they'd be a good band in a way that some really great acts (like Deerhoof or Built to Spill or something) would be absolutely terrible. What I'm saying is that they're very accessible. And fun.

The second thing to note is that they're all about showmanship. Like, the lead singer dude is pretty into himself. And they had an announcer guy (called "Ben Lee Handler") who came out before they started and made a big deal out of the fact that the Blood Arm was about to come out. I think if they went 30% less far with it, I would have been sort of annoyed, but instead, it was over-the-top enough to just be entertaining. About Ben Lee Handler, I have no idea if his name has anything to do with handling Ben Lee. It seems unlikely. I'm reserving further discussion of "human props" for when I describe the Superfamily performance I saw this past Friday.

At one point, the lead singer (Nathaniel Fregoso) made everyone sit down for a song. Also, he kept singling out people in the crowd and saying he was in love with them or whatever. Both girls and dudes. The first dude he pointed out was this super tall blond dude named "Jan." I remember his name because Jan was travelling with two lovely female companions, one of which my ballsier, more outgoing friend at the concert had asked if she knew the name of the first band (she didn't). Anyway, once the concert ended and evolved into a dance party (as concerts here so often do), we ended up sort-of dancing with Jan and his ladies.

It's taken me a little while to figure out how to tell when I'm dancing with people at clubs. Because it's not like you ask them to dance or talk to them or anything. Rather, you just suddenly are dancing a little more in their proximity than you were before. And in many cases, you're not sure if you are just being optimistic and it's really just you who is exclusively responsible for the closer proximity. That was the case here, and I wasn't really sure how to size up the situation until now, with a little more European club experience under my belt. (Does anyone know where the idiom "Under my belt" comes from? Is it referring to genitals?) Anyway, valid signs that you are dancing with someone are a) you're still dancing with them at least one song after it occurred to you to wonder whether or not you were dancing with them b) they're not dancing with someone else, unless it's a girl c) when you go to another room, they end up in that room pretty soon after d) they get tired of dancing and stand or sit like 5 feet away from you, waiting for you to talk to them e) they get so mad that you're not talking to them that they give you a sort of angry questioning look, get their jacket from the coat check and leave. Of course, it's usually probably better to just assume they're dancing with you around b or c. I think irreversible damage happens about half way through d.

Of the three shows, The Blood Arm was the most fun. So it gets really boring from here.

Laura Veirs (and the Saltbreakers)
It's okay that the description of Laura Veirs is pretty boring. I'm really into her music, but it's the stuff you listen to when you're trying to get in touch with nature or something. Like, I enjoy it on an evening boat ride, or a drive in the mountains. Laura Veirs and the Saltbreakers, as her band is now called, live in the Pacific Northwest. So, they're into that sort of thing. Nature. Musically, she's really excellent live. But she doesn't bring the party like The Blood Arm. Instead, she brings old people. So many old people. I could barely move because I was packed between so many olds. If oldness is measured as "number of years older than 20," I'd say this crowd was easily twice as old as the crowd at the Hold Steady show. The one good thing about old people is watching their interpretation of what you're supposed to do at a concert. Most of them are reasonably cool and just sort of stand there, but there is always a handful who have some image in their mind of head-banging and active cheering. At this show, there was a dude wearing one of those "band tour" t-shirts that lists all the locations some band played, and he would dance a lot harder than was appropriate, especially when recognizable songs came on. He'd also gesture to his old friends and nod, as if to say, "How about this?" "Isn't this great?" "Laura Veirs ROOOCKS!!!"

But the most aggressive dancer by far was this punk dude in a tank-top. He was all the way up in the front, and was dancing in a way that just fundamentally made no sense with Laura Veirs' music. All I could think was that maybe he was raised as a punk in East Berlin or something and can only understand things in punk terms. But really he just likes soft, gentle melodies about nature. Like, he loves to pet kittens, but as a result, he feels compelled to shave the kittens fur into a mohawk.

Skip this section if you already think Pitchfork is wrong a lot (or don't care what Pitchfork is):
Pitchfork gave this album a 4.7. The reviewer describes an incident where he saw them performing live, and the band put on hard-hats for a song about spelunking. At this concert, they had goofy outfits with animals and stuff sewn on them. Neither of these are particularly cool things for a band to do at a concert. But the real question is whether or not they are anti-cool in a cool way. Like, are they doing it because they think it's cool to do stuff that's lame? Or are they doing it because they think that it's a good thing to do at a concert and legitimately don't know any better? In my opinion, the latter is okay and can be charming, whereas the former is generally not okay and is pretty much always a little annoying. Having seen Laura Veirs and the Decemberists both show up in matching quirky outfits at concerts, I feel pretty confident saying that Laura Veirs' efforts seem a lot less deliberate. It's more for them than for us. So, I don't think that stuff actually spoils the act in this case.

It's like how all the songs are about nature and water and stuff. Is she doing that because she thinks an album all about nature and water is a good idea, or is she doing it because she legitimately really likes water and nature. My best guess is that it's again the latter. And on top of that, I like the music and the vocals, apart from the lyrics. Maybe the Pitchfork dude is just never around water and doesn't get it? Like, when I listen to "Lake Swimming" from the last album, I think about swimming in a lake and it makes me happy. I imagine Laura Veirs probably thinks about swimming in a lake too, while she's singing. Unless, of course, she has to focus too much on singing.

That being said, I haven't actually listened to the new album so I can't definitively say whether a 4.7 is unfair. But I'll be surprised if, after listening to it, I come away thinking anything less than a 5.5 is fair. Hopefully, I'll want to draw the line closer to 6. The album has a 78 right now on Metacritic (which is like a 7.8 in Pitchfork numbers). Meteors (for which I'd draw the line at 6.5) ended up with an 80.

Your Heart Breaks
This band opened for Laura Veirs, but the drummer was just Laura Veirs' bassist (Karl Blau, who was really awesome, incidentally), and the keyboardist was just Laura Veirs' keyboardist (also good). I can easily imagine the singer, Clyde Petersen, being a special guest speaker at an elementary school assembly, who asks you to "Close your eyes, sit back and imagine you're on a spaceship." This is probably because one of their songs ("God Speed John Glen") is about imagining you're on a spaceship. And before it, Clyde was like, "Who wants to go to space? Remember when you were kids, and you used to pretend you were on a spaceship?" Apparently, Your Heart Breaks is some sort of "collective music project," and falls in the genre category of "queercore." So, just like so many special guest speakers at elementary school assemblies, there's something a little dark and subversive about Your Heart Breaks... Not really. Musically, it's a little like listening to a slightly less messed up Daniel Johnston. I.e., I don't like them as much as Daniel Johnston. Not by a long shot. But it was a pretty reasonable opening act.

The Blow
Worst performance I've seen so far. If you read my earlier post, you know that when I saw The Blow open for Deerhoof, it was basically fine, but all the musical backing was pre-recorded. This was the same deal. But, poor Khaela Maricich had a cold. And the smoke was bothering her. And her microphone kept breaking. And it turns out that the story about her life that she told at the Deerhoof show is the same story about her life that she tells at every show, except at this show, for fear of boring people like me who had been just seen her a week before, she told the story out of order. Which meant it didn't make any sense. And unfortunately, Khaela seems to be under the impression that the songs actually require this story to be told. So, the whole audience was just like, "Why is this woman telling us so much nonsense in between songs that aren't that great?" The two songs I'd liked best from the previous show were the last two she played. This was a mistake, as the crowd was pretty much checked out by the time she got to them, and it was too late to win anyone over.

Basically, watching this show was like watching your friend pitch a baseball game or something, and seeing him give up a whole bunch of runs. It's just sort of sad to watch, and all you can do is hope that they won't be too upset about it afterwards. It's pretty reasonable to have a bad concert, especially when all the stuff I mentioned above is going against you. All the same, this concert made it abundantly clear that Khaela Maricich is probably too hung up on being some sort of poetic storyteller, and would probably do well to focus more on just trying to make some more songs like "Parentheses" and "True Affection." Save the stories about your life, and psychoanalysis for special occasions.

Fujiya & Miyagi
Exactly the same as the previous performance. Excellent, clean and cool. I feel cooler for having listened to them a second time. At one point, the singer made some sort of imperceptible mistake, and had a visible reaction. So I think it's safe to assume that for the entire rest of the show, he was never making any mistakes. Perfection. I love these guys. If you want, you can chant "Fujiya. Miyagi. Fujiya. Miyagi." through the whole concert, and it would sort of work with the beats.

!!!
I can only ever get like 40% on board with !!!. I don't know why. My friends (same dude from Blood Arm, plus some girl he met) had the same reaction, and we actually left before the encore. Not so much because we didn't want to hear any more, but because they had played forever already, and we had to get up in the morning for work. I think the reason I can only get 40% into them is that everyone else at the concert was 250% on board with them. So what would be 100% felt like 40. People can't get enough !!!. We were really excited to see them after the awesome F&M performance, and actually made our way pretty close to the front. This proved to be our undoing, however, as once the concert started, people pretty much packed themselves around us and went crazy. This was too much for me to handle, so I had to duck out to the back. And once you've done that at a hyperactive !!! show, you're pretty much out of the equation.

An interesting thing about !!! is that dorky dudes apparently love them. At least in Germany. When I saw them at Coachella, I remember there being a lot of pretty girls dancing in the audience. But here, it was just nerds with backpacks. This obviously didn't help with the whole over-crowding situation. At Coachella, I'd gotten a sort of "band geek" vibe from !!! themselves, as they seem to really enjoy indulging in instrumentation in a way that only band kids would. And the lead singer guy was sort of lame in his effortful coolness. I think both of these things are still true. And now they have the crowd to match. Like, an example of the lame effortful coolness is when the singer guy poured water on himself, then took his shirt off and wrung it out. He's not fat, but he's got sort of a pot-belly, and you get the sense that he's in denial about having it and thinks that he looks good with his shirt off.

But there's a very good reason to like !!!, which is that they play really hard and really well. Just like band geeks, no matter what you may think about them, they play music really really well. Ultimately, if I only 40% like it, it's my problem, not theirs. To continue the baseball analogy, it's like they're pitching a really good game, but I just don't care about baseball. But I can still tell that they're pitching a great game.

Upcoming concert posts:
Jeans Team, The Pipettes (they had new songs that I liked pretty well. Still in love with the brunette one), Klee
Malcolm Middleton with Strike the Colours (loved this)
Superfamily (interesting), Prototypes (super French)

Upcoming shows this week that haven't happened yet:
Of Montreal -- that's tomorrow
Rooney?

Upcoming posts about things I've done in Germany:
Swimming in the Badeschiff ("Bathing ship")
...and more

Switzerland

For a little while, there was a possibility of us using this amazing piece of hydraulic equipment from a company in Switzerland. Fortunately for me, this meant that I got to go to Switzerland for an afternoon (sort of like my trip to London) and check it out in person.

I think the best way I can describe Switzerland is that it's like an awesome model train set. For starters, this is true because there are lots of trains, and also I was travelling by train (Berlin -Plane-> Zurich -Train-> Rotkreuz -Automobile-> Ebikon). So of course there was a train present at all times. But beyond the obvious train abundance, the place is also arranged in the sort of idyllic way that a train set is, where, for example, there will be a line of farms with awesome sheep in between the train tracks and a pristine lake. And on the other side of the train tracks, there are beautiful mountains with dandelions. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about dandelions:

'In German, the dandelion is called Löwenzahn, which is also translated as "lion's tooth." In modern French the plant is called pissenlit, which means "urinate in bed", apparently referring to its diuretic properties. Likewise, "pissabeds" is an English folkname for this plant, and "piscialletto" is one of its folknames in Italian (with "dente di leone", meaning "lion's tooth"). Similarly in Spanish, it is known as the "meacamas", but also commonly "diente de león"'

Who knew? Anyway, in the background of the hills next to you are the Alps, which look like they've been painted onto the sky. It's the prettiest place I've ever been. It's like God built a country for his daughter's wedding or something.

One awesome thing was that as we were leaving the train station in Rotkreuz, we had to stop for a man to cross the street. Four hours later, when we went to catch our train back to Zurich, we found the same man drinking by himself at the little cafe near the station. He got up and was extremely wobbly. I feel like this incident sort of sums up the size of the town. I.e., it's small enough that you would recognize a man who crossed the street, but not so small that going to the cafe and getting drunk by yourself makes you the "town drunk." I mean, maybe they wouldn't even think that way over here anyway, but if they did, the town would still be a little too big for those sorts of roles. From what I could tell, Switzerland is a couple of bigger cities, connected by a sort of continuous chain of little towns.

The company we looked at was Hagenbuch Oelhydraulic. As you can see, the factory had a very "Swiss Army Knife" aesthetic, with lots of things painted red, and the whole thing seeming exceptional in its precision. I was nothing but impressed by the machinery and the professionalism there, and am now really sad that we're not getting to use their equipment for our production. If we'd done it, we would have probably had the fastest, most accurate hydraulic motion base ever used in the film industry. Admittedly, it was a little small, but they would have been willing to build us a bigger one if there had been more time.

The other way to describe Switzerland is that it looks like a touched-up photo of itself. Like, when you see it with your own eyes, it's as if the saturation has been boosted a little bit, and some additional noise and bits of trash on the ground have been filtered out and removed. My Swiss friend had told me it was really clean, but I still surprised at just how clean it was.

Sadly, all I really got to see was the train station, the train, the factory, and whatever scenery was visible from the car and train on the way between Ebikon and Zurich. I think someday we should plan a big ski trip in the Alps. I can talk to my Swiss friend about where and when to go...

Laufender Weg

Here's my basic running route. I've been doing some variation of this run about 2.5 times per week. The goal is of course more like 3 times per week, but it's tricky with all the concerts and odd work hours. I almost never do this exact route, as there are lots of interesting trails through the Tiergarten. On my last run, I came across a restaurant in the Tiergarten that smelled like delicious fish. There's also a restaurant at the Western end of the Tiergarten where they seat you on a boat of some sort.

Tiergarten, by the way, means "animal garden." I just found that out. I haven't actually seen that many animals. Some rabits. One time a dog ran with me for a really long time. There are occasionally little packs of prostitutes towards the western end of the run.

So Many Konzerten

In the week before last, I went to see:

Thursday night: CSS, Tilly And The Wall, The Holloways
Friday night: Yuksek, Monochrome, Iskra
Saturday night: The Hold Steady
Sunday night: Deerhoof, The Blow, The Noisy Pig

Will I now provide reviews of all these bands? Of course I will. I'm particularly looking forward to panning Monochrome.

Okay, so let's go chronologically:

CSS was playing at Maria. Going to see CSS was a no-brainer, despite the fact that I had to catch a 5:45 bus to the airport the next morning to go to Switzerland (the most beautiful place on earth, but screw that -- let's talk about bands you already know about!!!).

Venue - Maria
To get to Maria, I had to take my first ride on the S-Bahn, which is Berlin's above-ground subway. Not to be confused with the U-Bahn, Berlin's below-ground subway, which also goes above ground a lot. To get down to the club, you have to go through a weird gate that looks like it should be keeping people out of a sketchy warehouse or something. Whereas Magnet and Knaack are both divided into distinct spaces, Maria is one big continuous space. And the stage there is probably at least twice the size. Magnet = Echo, Knaack = just the floor portion of the Troubadour, Maria = The El Rey?, and Festsaal (where I saw Deerhoof) = the crappy gym where I used to attend Boy Scout meetings.

The Holloways
Listening to the Holloways, the natural reaction, at least for me, was to start asking yourself, "Do these guys actually sound too much like the Arctic Monkeys, or do they just have the same accent?" I think the answer is that they don't actually sound too much like the Arctic Monkeys, but they do sound sort of like a bunch of other Brittish bands, sort of including the Arctic Monkeys. I'm not going to pretend to be qualified to decide which ones among this Brittish bands are actually being original, so instead, I'll just say that if no other bands sounded like these guys, I'd probably be claiming to have discovered the best band ever or something. But since other bands do sound like them, they're not really that big of a deal. But definintely check out the track "Generator," which is the song that The Grates would have written if they were a bunch of Brittish dudes writing songs for the bus ride to summer camp. And check out the track "Dance Floor" to decide if you think there's any hope of you wading through the whole album (a thing I still haven't actually done yet, but plan to do).

Tilly and the Wall
I'll get right to the point. Instead of a drummer, they have a tap-dancer who dances on something that makes it sound sort of like there are drums. In fact, at one point early in the concert, I was like, "Wait, where is the drummer?" Then I figured it out. I'd say maybe it's worth seeing them live if you have the chance, especially since they'll probably be opening for someone cool or the tickets will be pretty cheap. The one missing ingredient in their formula? Good songs. Until they get some of these, they'll be a bit of a side-show, I think. I'm not saying it couldn't happen, though. And the songs they have now are fine. None of them stuck out as being particularly memorable, though. They're from Nebraska, so they have sort of a "neo-farmhouse-porch" vibe. There are moments when it feels a little like a ho-down or a church group sing along. Like the moment when you notice that the guitarist's guitar is sort of a beat up accoustic and that his shirt has seen better days. Some members of the band have lots of tatoos.

CSS
I'm not sure whether to be charmed or bored by the fact that I remembered most of Lovefoxxx's banter pretty much verbatim from the previous time I saw them at the Echo ("This is our rap song...", "This is our R&B song", etc.). I guess I'm pretty sure it's more charmed than bored. One of the things I really like about CSS is that they're slightly unprofessional. Like, Lovefoxxx bounces around to the point that she drops stuff and knocks over microphone stands. Or she'll try to do a weird somersault that doesn't quite work. And in the middle of Ladytron's set, the dude in the band sometimes hucks a beer bottle into the crowd. They don't teach that kind of charm in band school. In a similar way, there are probably critiques one could make about CSS's music, but it doesn't matter because it just makes me happy to listen to it. For people who are out of the CSS loop, I guess a good song to listen to is "Let's Make Love And Listen To Death From Above," right? Or "Off the Hook" or something. I don't know. I like all of it. Maybe "Art Bitch" is not a good one to start with, but once you work your way into it, it's a very charming song and a crowd favorite. When I played CSS at work one time, that was the song that finally turned heads and made people ask me what the hell we were listening to.

So, the concert wrapped up, I hopped on the S-Bahn, then got stranded at Alexanderplatz, as the U2 line was out of service at that point. (A huge bummer about Berlin is that the subways close a little after 12 on weeknights.) So, I walked back to the hotel. 19 hours later, I'd been to Switzerland and was at Magnet for my second installment of "Aargh Club" which I guess is what they call it when there's a dj-like headliner? I don't really know how the konzert/party naming scheme works yet. In general, when you go to a venue, it's either a konzert or a party, and it will be listed as such in 030 magazine. (This is a free print magazine. I haven't actually been able to find the concert listings on their site).

Iskra
One way to describe Iskra is that Andrea Zollo (of Pretty Girls Make Graves) placed a clone of herself in a cryo-freeze chamber when she was like 18, and waited until early 2006 to thaw it out and start feeding it Weight Watcher's meals. After a year or so of training, diet and exercise, the lovely (but still edgy-looking) young Zollo clone is finally ready to release a demo that sounds sort of like what you'd imagine a 2007 Pretty Girls Make Graves demo might sound like. Unfortunately, the band that Zollo surrounded her young protege with didn't practice enough. So, when you go to www.myspace.com/iskra3, don't expect it to be that great. It's not. But they sounded way better live than they do on MySpace. And Flicke, the Andrea Zollo clone was particularly good, I thought. Sadly, they're from Hamburg, so we may never hear from her/them again, and we will be left to assume that she was killed in one of those stand-offs where some sort of law enforcer has to kill the clone and isn't sure which one is the real Zollo. If I am there, I will tell him: "The skinny one." That way he'll mistakenly shoot the real Andrea Zollo, thereby paying her back for letting "Elan Vital" and the PGMG in general be such a disappointment. I like PGMG and "Elan Vital" fine, but I was hoping I'd end up liking them way more. Here's a picture of clone Zollo.

Monochrome
There's no way for me to do my hatred of these guys justice. I mean, I've seen plenty of bad bands and usually just let it pass because I don't really have a problem with bands being bad. At least they're having a good time, and maybe one day they'll be good. For some reason, Monochrome pushed my buttons, though, and seems worthy of pure hatred.

Perhaps another picture is worth a thousand mean words. That picture pretty much sums up everything that's wrong with this band. The points it leaves out are covered here. First off, only a band as full of itself as Monchrome would post carefully-posed pictures of themselves at this resolution. What a bunch of dicks! Oh, and guess what they chose to do in Photoshop? Desaturate. Wait, but the name of the band is "Monochrome." Oh, now I get it! Five bucks says that for at least a few minutes, they were planning to just make the images gray-scale.

After these digital offenses, there's the deliberate fashion statements. Clearly, they sat down and were like, "Okay, how should our band dress?" Then they brainstormed for ideas and went with all of the hackiest bad ones. And I should point out that the band was dressed exactly like the second photograph at the concert. If they were actually stylish, they would have worn different clothes in the same style. Not the exact same outfits.

But frankly, I find it hard to believe that a group of people can all be as lame as this band is. Instead, I have to believe that at least 95% of the lameness is originating from the lead singer dude. Evidence: 1) He dances around over-emotively and has no sense of what's going on with the rest of the band. 2) He sings loudly, but really badly, which is what un-self-aware jerks do. (Whereas the girl sings quietly, but well. Really the band should be all about her.) 3) He just generally seems like an asshole. Like if Santino from Project Runway started a band, but wasn't aweseome in any of the ways that Santino is awesome.

Here is a little sketch I wrote in my head while listening to them:
Dude from Monochrome: Hey, Girl from Monochrome, look at this necktie I found! You absolutely have to wear this necktie.
Girl from Monochrome: Yeah, that's pretty cool. I guess I should get like a button-down blouse or something then, huh?
Dude from Monochrome: What?!? No! You just drape it over yourself. Like this!
Girl from Monochrome: Oh, okay? Like this?
Dude from Monochrome: No!!! This is a rock tie! So you have to wear it like a rock tie!
Girl from Monochrome: So, like, put the thick side on the left?
Dude from Monochrome: Ugh. I can't even deal. Here.
Girl from Monochrome: Oh, so the tip should be a cm lower. I see. I think I'm starting to understand your aesthetic.
Dude from Monochrome: Hey, check out the band logo I made. It's the word MONOCHROME saved as a 4252 pixel wide jpeg.
Girl from Monochrome: Couldn't we just send people the font you used? Or maybe we don't even have to. I mean, that's basically just Arial Black in all caps.
Dude from Monochrome: You so don't get my aesthetic. Can't you see that the M's are pointy!?!

Musically, that one dude really pretty much ruins everything. On most of the songs, he does a lot of the singing and the girl sort of just backs him up. Go to their myspace page and listen to the song "Gegenstuck." For like 30 seconds you're like, "Hmm... this isn't so bad." And then the dude starts singing and just completely ruins the song. On the song "Who Me," the female vocal is even more prominent. And that song is fine, I'd say. At the very least, it's not super annoying in the way that any songs with the dude singing are super annoying. But when he does sing for the little back-up parts he has in that song, he's sort of off-key and sounds like crap. Listen for the part where he sings "We're better off alone" by himself. Bad.

Yuksek
I don't know DJ stuff at all, so this is all new territory. But this guy was the reason I decided to go to Magnet in the first place. And I'd say he totally delivered. The mixing was danceable, but not overly simple and boring the way so much house musik is. I liked it a lot. The next time I have to pretend I know a lot obout DJ stuff, I'm going to talk about Yuksek. I mean, it's probably not something I'd listen to in my car, but when you're at a club or you're throwing a dance party, this is probably good stuff to have on.

The Hold Steady
I almost missed this concert because they started so early. I'd read that they were staring at 10, which I assumed meant that an opening band would start at like 10:30, and The Hold Steady would start at like 11:30 or something. Instead, there was no opening band and they started at 9:45. Also, I was probably the youngest person there by as much as 8 years. I.e., everyone else looked like they were at least 35. And it was pretty easy to size up the crowd because there weren't really a lot of people there in the first place. I guess The Hold Steady has only just recently released "Boys And Girls In America" over here, and they haven't released any of their previous albums yet. So, maybe that's why nobody knows about them? Or, maybe Germans don't like music that's about Americana. But somehow that seems really unlikely.

The performance itself was really great. Craig Finn makes a lot of weird gestures and says words that you can't hear when he's not singing. And at the end, they pulled a bunch of people up on stage and were like, "You're the Hold Steady. We're all the Hold Steady." It made you feel warm and fuzzy inside. The feeling lasted all the way until they didn't have my size in the shirt that I wanted. One thing about their live performance is that I found the backup vocals to be a little off. They have this pretty awesome keyboard dude, Franz Nicolay, who looks sort of like "La Bamba" from the Max Weinberg 7. He was good in general, but his backup vocals were a little jarring. A little too much vibrato or something. Anyway, if you're not already into The Hold Steady, you'd have to be sort of a jerk not to be sucked in by songs like Chips Ahoy! or Chillout Tents. Since the concert wrapped up so early, I made may way up to the karaoke section of Knaack and sang Editors - Bullets. Afterwards, a German dude tried to ask me who the artist was in German. People like Editors, it seems.

Venue - Festsaal
Whereas a lot of the other venues I've been to have been sort of elaborate with multiple spaces, Festsaal is a lot simpler. It's basically one space, with a courtyard in the front. There's a very minimal stage inside, that stayed pretty well lit through all of the performances. (Though at one point, Greg Saunier, the Deerhoof drummer, put out one red stage light, pointing up along the back of the wall.) Around the stage, there's a balcony. And there are a few chairs and couches around. When I first arrived, I was pretty sure I saw Hold Steady lead singer, Craig Finn. But I'm not 100% sure. It could have just been a dude that looks like him. I definitely didn't see anyone who looked like La Bamba.

The Noisy Pig
Man. I really don't know where Deerhoof found this guy. He basically just stood on a box with a bike helmet decorated with papier mache to look like a pig head and made weird noises for 3 minute spurts. The quote on his myspace page is "i am a riot grrrl but i like cock rock!" He wore some sort of crazy clown pajamas that looked like they were supposed to be overalls or something. Jesus, Deerhoof. Jesus.

The Blow
We got gyped a little bit, as only the singing half of The Blow was there, Khaela Maricich. So, all the beats and instrumentation were pre-recorded. I think sometimes it's sort of more interesting to see a band out of its element, though, even if it means the music won't be quite as real or as good. For example, it was really interesting to see The Unicorns/Islands side project, "The Corn Gang," even though the music was pretty terrible. And then it was really gratifying to see the formula they had started finally come together with Islands' track "Where There's a Will There's a Whalebone."

I haven't been to an actual "The Blow" concert before (though I will Monday), but I'm guessing that this concert probably had a little more storytelling than a normal concert. The whole set was mapped out as a story from Khaela Maricich's life. Pretty interesting. And the atmosphere was extremely intimate. Parentheses is still the best "The Blow" song by a pretty large margin, but I also really enjoyed "True Affection." I liked the rest of the songs too, but those two still stood out as being more catchy.

Deerhoof
The Deerhoof drummer did most of the talking, and did so in German. But it was the type of German you speak 10 years after you took a little German in high school. That was good, though, as it meant I could understand what he was saying. Mostly, he'd say "Danke." Also, at one point, they explained that the wine bottles they were drinking from were "wasser" not "wein."

I don't know what else to say, except "Deerhoof is really awesome." Does anyone know what the deal is with the drummer's high hat? It's all gnarled and broken. I assume they intentionally don't replace it, but for a while it really looked like a huge chunk of it was just going to break off. According to this guy, the story is that he found it next to a garbage can. Somehow, this still leaves me wanting some further explanation.

If you're the sort of person who doesn't like Deerhoof's music, perhaps you can appreciate that they posted signs all over the venue saying "Deerhoof Request - No Smoking." If I haven't mentioned it already, Germans smoke a ton. So going to concerts and other crowded places is always a little bit miserable. This was the first time I could comfortably breathe through an entire concert. I saw plenty of Germans point at the signs and shake their heads, sadly. Kudos on the bold move, Deerhoof. My lungs and ears thank you.

Easter Holiday Fun Times

I went to a total of three club-like things this weekend. Thursday night was basically a bust -- didn't really do anything. Friday night, I went back to Magnet for Pop Levi, Camp and Mit. It turns out Magnet does have an outdoor area, which is good to know. Still a little cold for it here, but it's a nice way to get away from the unbearable German cigarette smoke. On the music front, I basically missed Camp, but the one song I did hear reminded me a little bit of Stellastarr*, which for me, is a good thing. I plan to obtain some of their music at some point.

Mit
After Camp came Mit. I thought Mit was awesome, but they're maybe not for everybody? For example, one guy we were with immediately left after they started playing. Jeff? Thoughts? It's basically a guy on a Moog, a good drummer, and a guy on guitar who sings/yells. If you are musically adventurous, check them out. Otherwise, maybe don't bother.

Pop Levi
Third was Pop Levi. Allow me to describe Pop Levi: First, imagine that an eccentric billionaire has decided to pay Prince to try to come up with what Led Zeppelin would sound like if they were still around today. Second, imagine that Prince agreed to perform a concert in the style of hypothetical modern Led Zeppelin, but the only date available for the concert is Halloween. Third, imagine that Prince's Halloween costume is a pretty compelling Ringo Starr outfit. Fourth, imagine that the eccentric billionaire has now forgotten why he even got Prince involved in the first place. That is my description of Pop Levi. Aside from being a fascinating guy to attempt to describe, the music was not really my favorite. Specifically, it got a little boring because they were all "sound" and no "music." There were good moments, but every time I'd start to get into what they were doing, they'd drag it out too long. Lots of repetition of single chords, these guys. I'd say what they're doing is a certain type of musical achievement, worthy of praise, but just not as fun to listen to as, say, Mit. At least not this set.

After the performances, there was a lot of dancing. I danced for quite some time. Didn't leave until around 4:30. At one point, a German dude pointed at my feet and nodded, which could either mean, "Das ist gut dancing!" or "Das ist weird American dancing!!!" Dans Le Rock DJ'ed in the concert floor while the house DJ played their standard mixed-up Indie rock.


Knaack
Saturday, I decided to try out a new club. Knaack was already on my list as a) I've had to walk past it twice to get to Magnet and b) The Hold Steady are playing there on Saturday. Much like my original Magnet experience, Knaack also has a sort of "hidden" concert floor. Like, you walk straight in, up a flight of stairs, past the coat check, and you might never notice that there's a whole other building across the outdoor patio where the concerts are. So, the second floor of Knaack is a club, which looks a lot like some club we went to one time in Hollywood. On Saturday, they were playing a mix of stuff from the 60's onward. The crowd here was a little dorkier than the crowd at Magnet, I'd say. A little older, and a little more paired-up, too. I pretty much skipped this scene and went on up to the Dizzy Lounge on the third floor, which was dedicated to karaoke. I made a long post about this at loseyourselfawareness. The one detail I left out of that post is that after I sang Mr. Brightside, a German guy in a Johnny Cash t-shirt said, "Very gut." So, pretty successful night. On my way out, I finally found the concert floor and checked that out for a little while. I'd already un-checked my jacket so I couldn't really dance. But it was a pretty solid scene in there, and they were playing good stuff. Similar mixed Indie rock playlist. An example of a song they play a lot is Franz Ferdinand - "This Fire."

Lido
Another place that likes to play Franz Ferdinand - "This Fire" is Lido. This is the club I went to in Kreuzberg near Schlesisches Tor. You just go to that stop on the subway, walk East a bit, and it's right there on the southeast corner of Cuvrystrasse. I guess I'd compare Lido to the El Rey in LA (Whereas Magnet is probably most like the Echo, but more fully functional). One main stage, with a pretty big standing area, and a bar in the back. Then, there's another room off to the side with a pinball machine and a coat check.

Smashing Pumpkins?
My main reason for going was to see Camera Obscura. But first, I got to listen to disk 1 of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, which served as the pre-concert playlist. This of course warmed my heart considerably and gave me something to mouth the lyrics to while I waited for the concert to start.

Lily Electric
The opening band was Lily Electric. They were okay, but not amazing. It was two guys with precisely matching guitars, a third guy with a bass plus a drummer. The two guitars of course sounded exactly the same, which left things a little empty, I thought, especially given how clean their sound was. It was as if they had a bass, drums and one really really good guitarist playing a guitar with not enough effects. They had some okay hooks, but I just found myself wishing for a fuller sound. The 3-part harmonizing on top of the overly clean sound also just forces you to compare all of their songs to Beatles songs, which generally doesn't work out so well for unknown bands from Copenhagen.

Camera Obscura
Have people heard of these guys? In retrospect, I can't remember if I had heard of them before or not. I think I had, but maybe I'd never listened to their music. Although it's apparently been said and unsaid before, they're sort of like Belle and Sebastian. One way in which this is definitively true is that both bands were started in Glasgow, Scotland in 1996. Another way in which it's true is that they sound sort of the same. But they're different enough that Belle and Sebastian is still more massively appealing, while Camera Obscura tends to keep things a little more brooding with folksier tempos and Appalachian instrumentation, and therefore carves out their own niche. They definitely have some upbeat numbers, but the vocals all have a sort of old-fashioned-sounding sadness to them. I thought they were absolutely terrific. I really like these guys. The crowd did too. People tried really really hard to get them to play a second encore. I think if the stage dude hadn't taken the microphones away, they would have had no choice but to come back out. In the first encore, they performed a nice cover of ABBA's Super Trooper, then some really good song of theirs. Maybe listen to "The False Contender" (a waltz, which is always nice), and "Lloyd, I'm Ready To Be Heartbroken." Then, if you like the slower one, try "Books Written For Girls." If you like the faster one, maybe try "I Need All The Friends I Can Get."

After the set was over, Lido transformed into Karerra Klub, and they started playing music and pumping out some serious fog, such that at times you could only see like four or five people around you. Songs they played included Franz Ferdinand - "This Fire" as I mentioned before, B&S - "Boy With The Arab Strap," Shins - "So Says I," Arcade Fire - "Rebellion (lies)," Editors - "Blood," etc. I danced a bit, then checked out around 2-2:30. Grabbed a Doner Kebab and rode the subway back to Stadtmitte.

Go-Karts
Today (Monday) a bunch of us went and drove go-karts. To get there, we took the subway to Haselhorst, with an exchange at Bismarckstrasse. The excursion was super fun, but I came back smelling like fuel. One thing I didn't realize is that we were racing for best lap time. So instead of playing it clean and cool, I kept trying to pass people. That was probably more fun than doing time trials, though. I think maybe I was a little more aggressive than the go-kart people wanted me to be... I got at least one really stern look.

Easter Holiday Shopping

This past weekend was Easter holiday. So, we got Friday and today (Monday) off from work. It was great, because I've finally had a chance to really get myself settled in. For instance, I did a bunch of shopping on Saturday. I bought a bunch of groceries and finally tried the weird banana milk drink I kept seeing everywhere (turns out it is bad).

Immediately after buying the groceries, I discovered a much better (i.e., about 5 times bigger, with two floors) grocery store. And it's equally close to my hotel room, so I'm pretty excited about it. While I was there, I bought myself a water filter (the pitcher kind), which should come in very handy since the tap water here tastes like dirt.

After the two grocery stores, I made my way over to Potsdamer Platz to the mall. Most importantly, I needed to buy either a step-down voltage transformer or hair clippers that can take 220V (which is the AC voltage in Europe). I ended up going the transformer route (despite being tempted by about 20 varieties of hair clippers, each more impressive than the last). This may have been a mistake, as when I later clipped my hair, my old US clipper (which was actually one of the first things I bought in LA, incidentally) sounded like it was about to explode, and my ears were ringing by the time I finished. So maybe the voltage only made it down to about 140 or something... The electronics stores out here are called "Saturn Electronics." This was confusing to me the first time I rode past one, because there are lots of retail stores for different car brands out here, and I drive a Saturn.

While at the mall, I went into pretty much every clothing store and looked at what a Berlin mall has to offer. Of course there's H&M (and in fact there are 2 H&M's about 200 feet apart from each other in Stadtmitte, where I'm staying). There was a store called We that had decent looking stuff. And there was Whorl, which was really big and had a lot of different brands. The complete listing of what's in the mall is here.

There are a bunch of Esprit stores in Germany, apparently. I remember my sister having Esprit stuff a long time ago, and I had always just assumed they'd disappeared. My impression of them now is the same as when I was 5: "Esprit is for girls." There was also United Colors of Benneton, which I actually have seen in the US. Whereas Esprit is too pastel-centric for a guy to wear, Benetton is too rainbow-centric for a straight guy to wear. I think this is probably why my mom stopped buying me Benetton clothes right around when she heard about what rainbows meant sometime in the 80's. (I have a reference for when this happened, because for a long time, my parents wanted to name their sailboat "The Rainbow Connection" and at some point they finally realized that was a really bad idea.)

The one article of clothing I bought was a pair of shoes. They're brown leather, with two shades on the toe, a white stripey thing down the side (with vestigial half-buttons) and a bit of green trim on the back. So they match the leather jacket I have been wearing a lot out here (because everyone wears crazy leather jackets in Berlin), but the green is usually hidden under my jeans, so they don't match too obviously... There are two problems with the shoes. First, they're not super comfortable. I mostly resolved this by putting better insoles in. Second, the brand of these shoes is "Doo Dogs," which is pretty obviously the worst name ever for a brand of shoes. I'm trying really hard, but can't find them on the internet. "Doo Dogs."

While at the mall, I bought a kiwi-based juice drink from a juice bar. The drink was called "African Queen." It was fine, I guess. When I first got to my hotel room, there was a bunch of fruit, including a kiwi. After about two days of being too afraid for no good reason, I finally ate some of the fruit. When I got to the kiwi, I ate it with the skin on, and somehow, it still tasted great. So on Thursday, when I was in the business class lounge waiting for my flight back to Berlin, I grabbed a kiwi and started eating it with the skin on. This time, it was horrible. But there was a German guy there from work, so when he asked me in slightly broken English, "You eat kiwi with skin?" I just had to go with it. So, in his mind now, all Americans love kiwi skin. Or I'm just a particularly weird American.

I'm going to cram this into the shopping post, since I already had a food post, but last night after the concert I went to, I finally tried a Turkish Doner Kebab. This is the food everyone has been sort of raving about. Like, it was mentioned on Chow Hound as a thing you have to try in Berlin (Kreuzberg, specifically, which is where I was). I got the lamb one, with all three types of sauce (not because I wanted 3 types of sauce, but because the Turkish guy couldn't understand what I meant by "give me whatever sauce you think is best.") It looked pretty much exactly like the "German-style" kebab on Wikipedia , but with WAY more sauce. I was actually pretty disappointed, but I think that's just because I don't like things that are similar to fast food hamburgers. If you like fast food hamburgers, you might be pretty into Doner Kebabs. Basically, it's a lot like a gyro wrap.

Foods You May Not Know About

I imagine this will be a recurring series of posts.

1) Bavarian style mustard. Basically, this is the mustard of my dreams. It's like a stone-ground mustard (with the mustard seed chunks and extra "bite" I love so much), but it's infused with sugar. So it tastes like a really sharp honey mustard. The brand I ate last night (and today on the sandwich I had for lunch, using some packets I stole from the restaurant) is Johann Conrad "Develey" Bayerisch' susser Hausmachersenf. And the date 1854 is printed on the packet. On the back, it's translated to Johann Conrad's Sweet Mustard. The great thing about finding a new mustard is that it's something you can use practically every day. I mean, I eat a sandwich every day at work, so I expect this mustard will have a huge impact on my life.

2) Schweppes Bitter Lemon. I and all the other guys I'm working with are pretty much addicted to this stuff. I was actually getting worried about my developing bitter lemon habbit, because I generally try to avoid excessive sugar in my beverages. But yesterady at the grocery store I found "Bitter Lemon Light." I think this is probably something you can find in The States pretty easily. Oh, and also, I've started calling the US "The States." I keep thinking maybe I'm supposed to hate myself for doing that, but I'm not totally sure? You tell me. Is saying things like, "I do a lot of karaoke back in The States" lame (for reasons aside from any lameness you incorrectly attribute to karaoke)?

3) Nutella. Just kidding. Everyone already knows about Nutella.

4) This weird fruit-infused jello with vanilla cream sauce. There's actually a series of little German desserts that come in what is basically a pudding cup. In this case, the pudding cup is divided down the middle, such that there is a small bin of cream sauce off to the side of the larger bin of jello. The jello is whatever. But the cream sauce...

London and Some Museums

Yesterday, I traveled to London for business reasons (robot shopping). Not really a particularly glamorous voyage, but the flight (British Airlines) was nice. This is a really obvious thing to say, but driving on the wrong side of the street was weird. My brain kept trying to explain it by assuming that the roads were one-way, but then a car would come and I'd have to just look away to avoid having a panic attack. We ate at some not-so-great pub thing. I ordered fish and chips, thinking that this was the appropriate thing to do in London, and I was greeted with something that was way more "chip" than "fish." Basically, there was a little bit of cod, surrounded by a brick of fried batter. One of the other guys with us got the same thing, and his was even worse than mine. Like a fish brick. So, my advice is, if you travel to London, don't eat.

The other thing about London is that everything costs about the same number of pounds as you'd expect to pay for things in dollars. But a pound is worth two dollars. So, basically, everything costs twice as much as it should. So again, my advice is, if you travel to London, don't eat. Or buy anything else.

So, that was London. I was only there for the day and we were driving from robot warehouse to robot warehouse, so there wasn't really time to see much.

Today, we went to some museums. The German History Museum and the Pergamon Museum. Both were great. To me, the coolest thing was probably the reconstructed Ishtar Gate in the Pergamon Museum. There were other similarly impressive reconstructed structures as well. Some from Greece and others from early Islamic civilizations. The history museum was fine. Basically, it was like all other history museums, but with about 30% more suits of armor. I find that every time I walk through a history museum, the same thought always occurs to me: If there was an apocalypse and all the books and other people in the world were destroyed, such that there was no source of information other than what's in my head, how would I go about making anything out of metal? We always laugh about how primitive things were back in the middle ages or whatever, but I think if you ask any random passer-by today how to make, say, a shovel, they'd have no idea. I know it has something to do with heating up the metal and banging it into shape, but where the heck does metal come from in the first place? Mines? Would I have to go mining before I could build myself a shovel? If so, how the hell am I supposed to dig a mine without a shovel?

Tonight I'm going to try to make it back to Magnet Club to see Pop Levi. I haven't really listened to his music much, but he has an 80 on Metacritic, so I figure it's something to do.

Oh, and I found out what that awesome bombed-out place is called. It's called Tacheles. Here's a picture. The bar we went into is in the upper right part of the photo, where the two sloped openings to the outside are -- the top floor. There were old computer monitors everywhere. Very cool.