Rapid-Fire Round-Up
Posted on November 18, 2004 at 4:30 pm | No Comments
So, wanna hazard a guess on how many people have downloaded those live Arcade Fire tracks from here? Go ahead, try. I’ll tell ya in the comments. I’m stunned. I’m also very, very glad that the ‘Nac doesn’t get charged for bandwidth usage. Whew.
Oh, and by the way, that supposed Neil Young (or maybe Leonard Cohen) cover they’re doing this tour? Well, sources say it’s actually a new Arcade Fire song, and that singer Win Butler is just yankin’ our collective chains. Cheeky monkey. But hey, if it really is an original… it’s another bit o’ genius.
Way too many things to mention, but I’m going to give it the old college try. And awaaaaaay we go…
Hey, Exploit Boston! is back in action. A potentially indespensible resource for Boston area readers and their social schedules. Not just that, but they’re providing a streaming radio station filled with Boston-area indie bands. Been listening to it all damn day, and it’s excellent. I’m hoping to contribute to the site’s content, in as much as my own hectic schedule will allow it. Bookmark and visit often.
And if you’ve ever ridden your bicycle in Boston (or are too scared to), then heads up: This Monday, the Boston City Council will hold a public hearing at 5:30pm in the Iannella Chamber on the fifth floor of Boston City Hall to discuss two issues:
Order for a hearing regarding the reinstatment of the bike czar position. Order for a hearing to determine what steps can be taken to increase the safety of bicyclists in the city.
This hearing comes as a result of a previous meeting that was called in the wake of Kirsten Malone’s tragic death while biking in Allston last summer. Boston used to have a point person for biking-related issues, but the job was cut after five years for budgetary reasons. Concerned citizens (myself included) would love to see this position brought back, and to see much more work done with bicycle safety issues in this town. This meeting is another important step towards more bike-friendly streets and intersections.
The meeting is open to the public and anyone can testify in front of the Committee on City & Neighborhood Services. That’s Monday, November 22nd, 5:30pm, on the 5th floor of City Hall. Thanks go to Committee Chair Rob Consalvo for following up the first meeting and pulling this next one together.
A present from outta nowhere: An unreleased track from My Own Sweet, newly mastered from a ton of long-awaited recordings that might, maybe, somehow, eventually see the light of day. For now, check out Easy Life. Thanks, Chris. (oh, and if you never did, be sure to download another one from the My Life or Some Dream compilation.)
I really, really, really want to travel to D.C. in February for the Teenbeat 20th Anniversary bash. Unrest, Versus, Tuscadero, and Eggs all reuniting. Wow. Hey, Chris… got any spare couch space for me?
In the wake of the death of live-music repository Sharing the Groove comes the birth of a new “high quality torrent site” called The Trader’s Den. Worth a look.
My excitement over the long-awaited release of Half Life 2 was quickly squashed when I loaded it up to discover that I was one of thousands to experience a particularly nasty audio-stuttering bug. It renders the game pretty much unplayable (unless you’re up for the HL2 ‘dance remix’ edition), so I’ve put it aside until developer Valve can come up with a fix. Glad I’ve got Halo 2 and GTA : San Andreas on hand… as far as backup games go, not too shabby.
The Steampowered and HalfLife2.net forums are on fire with complaints about the bug, reactions ranging from annoyance to “let’s sue the bastards!”. Some are digitally freaking out that Valve hasn’t even acknowledged the issue after two days and a flood of postings/emails. Easy kids, all in good time. I’d wager the developers are all over this one… unless, of course, they’re still hungover from the game’s release party.
Mini-review from the 10 minutes I played it: One of the most beautiful games I’ve ever seen. The physics are as brilliant as promised. Too bad about the big honkin’ bug.
UPDATE: Fellow gamer Mark McWilliams has pulled together a handy resource page for anyone else running into the Half Life 2 audio stuttering problem.
Casual viewers of tech-geek-news show The Screen Savers over on G4TechTV will notice they’ve been in reruns since last week. The sad reason? Much of the cast and crew got the shiny, sharpened axe.
One of the casualties was new co-host Alex Albrecht (pictured above, on his last day in the office), who was brought in a couple months back after G4 swallowed up TechTV and relocated the show from San Fran to LA. I really think the guy was just finding his TV footing (and mercifully cutting back on calling everything “jank“), so it’s a real bummer that he wasn’t given more time to develop his hosting skills. Also let go was mad modder Yoshi, and phone-number-giver-outer Dan ‘Foo-Foo’ Huard, who never did quite get the hang of things (sloooow doooown), but was still a welcome presence in the nook.
While G4 has now officially screwed with pretty much everything that was ever good about that show, they did make a couple good decisions in keeping co-host Kevin Rose and nook-maven Sarah Lane. They’re super-solid, well-spoken, and just perfect on the show. I’d love to see the new TSS (which will supposedly be back after Thanksgiving) co-hosted by the two of them, but I suppose it’s too much to hope that they’ll ever go back to their more-techy, less-cheesy filling. I mean, “models” in the LAN parties? Interviews with bad band members and c-level tv stars that have nothing to do with Tech? The content took a real nosedive after the merger, and I’d be crazy to think that yet another revamp will bring back the good stuff. Right? Sigh.
Make sure you stop by Alex, Kevin, and Sarah’s blogs for their take on the layoffs.
Not only does it look like mainstream comic book uber-convention Wizard World is coming to Boston next September (something I maaaay just be geeky enough to check out), but we’re also getting the unfortunately named Super MegaFest this weekend. Anthony Daniels (C3PO), Kenny Baker (R2D2), Vern Troyer, and Adrienne Barbeau? Um, think I’ll pass on this one… although I am a big fan of artist and guest-of-honor Jim Steranko, and Top 10 artist Gene Ha. I’d be interested to compare the number of people who ask Adrienne about Swamp Thing to the people who ask her about HBO’s Carniv�le. I’m guessing maybe 10 to 1.
Wil Wheaton has a great new post on his audition for a guest role on Alias. Well worth a read.
Uh oh. Or, rather, woo hoo! Take your pick. Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta is on track for a big screen adaptation. Be excited, or um, be very afraid.
Also in the graphic storytelling (and ‘hella good news’) department, Rick Spears and Rob G’s Teenagers from Mars comic is finally getting collected, and in a gigantic 272 page volume. That’s in February, kids.
Hey, Patton Oswalt has a blog. Love the guy on Best Week Ever, never seen him on King of Queens, and he was sadly underused in the upcoming Blade: Trinity. I kinda wanna check out his recently-released comedy record sometime. Anybody heard it?
While everyone’s reading journalist Kevin Sites‘ excellent Iraq-based blog, they should also stop over to Christopher Allbritton’s always-interesting Back to Iraq. Christopher is an independently funded (via donations through the site) journalist who spends much of his time living and writing in the heart of Baghdad.
Back in late October, however, he was warned to leave due to threats against journalists, and he posted the following…
“…I’m not happy to be out. It’s cutting and running, and it feels like crap. I want to cover the story, as best I can, and I really don’t like leaving my friends and colleagues behind. My fixer and translator have no work now, although I’m trying to find them another journalist to work with while I’m gone. I plan to return after Ramadan or whenever we hear that it’s safe(r) again.”
Someone asked him in him comments why all the journalists stay together in Baghdad, and he answered…
“The journalists are clumped together because we only endanger ourselves that way. Kodia asked me why we didn’t disperse and stay with families:
It’s more difficult to secure their houses (blast walls, guards, etc.);
We can’t trust the neighbors not to rat us out;
I don’t trust any Iraqi I don’t know well;
And most important, we endanger them by staying with them — they would be branded as collaborators.”
Heavy stuff. Looks like he’s still in exile, hanging out in Beirut covering the “Palestinian Refugee angle”. I’m sure he’ll have plenty of words soon on the death of Arafat and the execution of Iraqi aid worker Margaret Hassan.
While you’re surfing various wartime points of view, be sure to check out U.S. soldier Chris Missick’s blog. He hasn’t been updating as much as he used to, but when he does, it’s always good to see. He provides a real on-the-ground perspective that mainstream news can’t deliver.
Just when I start convincing myself that turning 35 doesn’t make me that old, I discover that I’m almost exactly the same age as the Internet, and, um, Sesame Street. I was raised on one, and spend way too much time on the other.
Tomorrow, my take on ILB’s argument-inducing Top 40 American Bands list. For now, read Matt’s.
Live: The Arcade Fire
Posted on November 14, 2004 at 7:45 pm | No Comments
Had I sat down and written about Friday night’s set by Montreal’s The Arcade Fire immediately after coming home from it, you’d be reading a bunch of gushing, over the top gibberish. Seriously… it’d have been a stammering, probably embarrassing, hyperbolic freak-out, struggling for new adjectives, paragraphs that boiled down to ‘Um… Wow!’.
Two days later, I’m still feeling it, still reeling from it, hardly coming down. It was one of those mouth-opening shows, standing there slack-jawed and smiling from beginning to end, feeling sorry for every single other person in the world who isn’t in the room.
At 11:30 on Friday night, 45 minutes before they were due hit the stage, I was actually laying comfortably in bed. I was drained from a long week, from Silkworm the night before, and besides, it was freakin’ cold out. Boston was covered in it’s first (and far too early) snowfall of the year, but at that very moment, openers The Hidden Cameras were probably on stage over at TT the Bears. I have absolutely no idea where I found the motivation to rise, bundle up, clean the damn snow off my car, and get across the river to Cambridge. Actually, yes I do… it came from here. Their debut album, one of the best of the year. I just had to know if they could possibly, even remotely, recreate it live. And boy, uh, did they ever.
The sold-out crowd was equal parts excited fans, hopeful hipsters, and clueless college students who were there because it was ‘the place to be’ on that particular friday night. And every single damn one of ’em was swept up in what happened when the seven people on stage broke into the “Whooooooaaaa…oooohhhh!” vocals of “Wake Up”, the first song. Seven voices yelling out in unison, it just sounded huge. I’ve been to TTs more times than I care to recall, and I have never heard a band sound this good, mixed this perfectly. Seven band members, all playing instruments, at times all singing. Drums, strings, keyboard, vibra-muh-phone, guitar, bass, tamborines, motorcyle helmet, accordian… I could hear every single note, every voice. I was just floored.
They actually introduced that first song with “This is our last song, thanks for coming!”, and I’m sure there are people who still would have thought they got their money’s worth had that been true. Playing and sweating for over an hour, they did mostly songs from Funeral, along with a couple from their self-released debut EP, what may be a brand new one (that’s open for debate), and a well-chosen cover.
Y’know, I’m not one for crowds, and I’m the first guy to run screaming from sold-out shows. We were jam-packed into TTs, and as I suffered through 15 minutes of shoulder-to-shoulder pre-set jostling, I wondered if this could possibly be worth it. If anything could be. After midnight, that’s when the sloppy drunks come out, and TTs was brimming with ’em. Loud talkers, slurring idiots, rude, jockeying louts. Fortunately, that all disappeared when The Arcade Fire started up. Nothing bothered me from that moment on… I swear, someone coulda been punching me in the neck for the whole hour, and I still would have exclaimed “Best show ever!”. Just amazing.
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And I recorded the whole damn thing. At this moment, having listened to it nearly a dozen times this weekend, it’s the crown of my live collection. It seems logically impossible that their sound, the overwhelming hugeness comin’ from that stage, could have been funneled into a little clip-on microphone… but somehow it was. It’s a testament to their soundperson Sharon (who used to work at the Middle East) that you can make out every instrument in a single-mic recording. Just genius.
Live at TT the Bears
Cambridge, MA, Nov. 12th, 2004note: this set was reposted here on 3/6/2007
01. Wake Up
02. Neighborhood #2 (Laika)
03. Une Annee Sans Lumiere
04. Neighborhood #3 (Power Out) / Rebellion (Lies)
05. This Must Be The Place (Talking Heads)
06. Haiti
07. Headlights Look Like Diamonds
08. Burning Bridges (unreleased)
09. Crown of Love
10. Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)
11. No Cars Go
12. In The Backseat
You could hear the shouts of pure joy near the beginning of each song, people just letting out an unfiltered “Yeah!!!”, like we’re at some olde tyme evangelical revival. “Praise The Arcade Fire! Have Mercy!”. I love the moment where some guy yells out a perfectly unrestrained “Holy SHIT!”. We were all caught up in it… the crowd swaying and smiling and jumping and cheering and appreciating everything in front of us.
I could go on, and on, and on some more. Get me talking about this in person and my eyes’ll light up, you’ll understand what this show did for me. Amie could tell, and she’s making me take her along when they come back “in the dead of winter”, as the band said from the stage. A stage they’d already outgrown before they even arrived.
So, yeah, um… Wow!