Sdtrk: ‘Bloody Jack’ by Serge Gainsbourg

First of all, I’ve noticed that HaloScan seems to be eating, or otherwise deleting, some of the older comments that readers have made. I was scrolling through some of the previous months, and I spotted a couple of posts that I knew had had comments, that had a count of zero. I’ve no idea what the hell is causing this, and as you suspect, I’m not too happy about it.

Did everyone have a good Bunny Holiday? Mine wasn’t too shabby.. On Sunday, Jeff and I saw The Dears in concert at the Magic stick, making this our third Dears show attended. It was the Dears, so it’s guaranteed Good Music, but it wasn’t as.. explosive.. of a show as the first two times we’d seen them, apart from the fact that Natalia seemed to be having trouble with her keyboard’s effects rack. Jeff reasoned that they might very well have been tired, as they spent the majority of last year on a tour, and as we all know, tours can take a lot out of you.. Nevertheless, it was still a pretty ace show. Now when’s that new album??

The Dears actually weren’t the opening or the headlining act; the opening group was some group we’d never heard of before called American minor. They were shite, pure and simple. You know how the current trend for ‘indie’ kids is to wear trucker ballcaps, in a failed attempt to be ironic? Well, I would suppose due to bands like American minor, they’re also listening to Southern Rock in a failed attempt to be ironic as well. I thought I was at a goddamned Lynrd Skynrd (or however the fuck you spell it) show. Five guys, all with long curly shoulder-length hair parted down the middle, as well as a guitarist with a John Holmesian moustache, playing Seventies-style rock ‘n’ roll. Fucking shite. Before their last song, the porn-‘stache guitarist mentioned to the crowd ‘We had to smoke all of our weed before crossing the border to Canada, so if anyone has any hook-ups, just meet us backstage.’ I shit you not. I should’ve whipped a fucking beer bottle at his head. When will that style of music die??

And the headlining act, The Soundtrack of our Lives was.. dull. Jeff had heard more of them than I had (two tracks to my zero), and I had read a blurb somewhere that they were somewhat Sixties psych-rock, crossed with the Beatles, from Sweden. Or Scandinavia. One of those Nordic countries, at any rate. They weren’t absolute shite, but nothing that we could get into. A lot of the band members sported thick, bushy beards, which I suppose makes sense if you’re from a Nordic country — you gotta keep your face warm. But the lead singer was wearing this black robe with a grey vertical stripe and the band’s logo on the arm, and yet, none of the other members were dressed as he was. You’d think he’d state that they all needed to don robes, for some sense of uniformity, but perhaps his idea was vetoed. Jeff and I split towards the end of their first song..

Now the thing I don’t understand was — what the hell were the Dears doing sandwiched in between two bands that don’t sound anything like them? The Dears, in case you’re unfortunate enough to have never heard them, sound rather like The Smiths, with a bit of Sonic youth-style guitar freak-outery every so often. On the other hand, TSOOL was psych-rock-sounding, and American bullshit sounded like Grand funk railroad (or, at least, how I imagine Grand funk railroad to sound). It was a rather incongruous lineup, is what I’m saying. It was like when we saw Broadcast the last time they rolled through Detroit, and the opening act was Iron and wine. Huh? Stereolab and Hall & Oates? Pulp and Tom Jones?? The Human league and GWAR???!

So since we took off early, we decided to get back round to his, and watch ‘Final episode’, the last fillum in the Yakuza papers series, directed by Kinji ‘Battle royale’ Fukusaku. Eventually, I’m probably gonna end up buying that boxset, as the films are pretty ace. Yakuza members form families and alliances! Duplicity and backstabbing occur! Characters are introduced at the start of a film, and odds are they won’t live to see the end! Shooterings! Stabbenings! It’s got it all!

Monday — that is to say, today — Derek and I went gallivanting around our old ‘alma mater’ of sorts, Wayne state University. He wanted to obtain his past academic records, as he’s looking into some classes, and we decided to wander around campus for a couple of hours. Every third building was new! Well, new to us, anyway. Rather strange.. Good day for it, though, as it was in the low 50s. Despite the fact that neither of us saw any robins, the official herald of Springtime; however, I did spot a couple of lasses wearing sandals. Yum!

And this past Saturday aft, a certain package showed up on my doorstep:

My only nitpick, if you can call it that, is that it’s made out to ‘David’, which is what my PayPal account is under — I guess Tristan missed my Email asking for an autograph made out to Davecat. O well. At some point, I’ll just have to purchase another figure! Yay for Tristan!

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