So we went over to The Big Picture in Redmond last night to check out a showing of Rush Time Machine. This is a DVD/Blu-Ray (they simply played it in the theater) of Rush‘s most recent Time Machine tour. As I have never seen them live, it was cool to see a complete show from start to finish, even if not actually in person.

And like other ‘vintage rock‘ shows we have seen recently, they did not disappoint. There is a reason why most bands still would give their eyeteeth to be able to play music like that. Even if they are pretty ‘on in years’ now (at the first intermission they said ‘we’re going to take a break now, because we’re like, ‘100’ – pretty funny) they can still bring the goods. Geddy‘s voice isn’t what it was, he mostly avoids the really high screechy stuff from the past, or sings it an octave lower – but he can still sing, unlike many (Ozzy being the chief culprit there). And as far as musicianship – whether or not you like Rush (and certainly there are many on both sides of THAT equation) you have to admit they can play rings around most bands even in their sleep. It’s simply amazing to watch them rock out. And unlike contemporaries such as The Police, who I would consider definitely equally skilled on guitar and drums, probably not bass though (sorry Sting) Rush’s songs lend themselves well to showcase those talents in song after song (The Police only have a few ‘jam’ songs as they were much more pop-oriented on the last few albums they did, plus they have nowhere near the catalog Rush does anyway).

This DVD is **definitely** worth watching, along with the recent Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage retrospective, which goes way back to the start up until just before the tour of this DVD. All in a good day’s viewing 🙂

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We were lucky enough to see a small screening of the new Fishbone biographical movie, Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone last night. The Central Cinema was hosting movies as part of the currently-running Langston Hughes African American Film Festival.

Having been a *huge* Fishbone fan most of the time I’ve lived in Seattle, I was stoked to hear about this movie several months ago – it came out in a Los Angeles film festival last June, but then only sporadically appeared in very limited showings since. It is now about to debut on DVD, Scarecrow is ordering it, etc. so I’m sure far more people will get to see it as is deserved.

It is a bittersweet tale, and several things are very apparent. Fishbone has been (and remains) a band that really cannot be defined by many/any musical categories. Not only do they combine elements of ska, metal, funk, reggae and other ridiculously diverse influences – but they simply do not compromise in this vision – in many ways to their own detriment. Naturally this works against them as far as Big Money Record Companies go – and there is notable discussion of this throughout the movie as you might expect – but it has also served to limit their audience longer term, unfortunately. As they note several times (directly and indirectly) – it is very weird to be a black band, singing pretty direct lyrics about the black and minority experience in America (beginning in Reagan’s America of the late 80’s when they were all just getting out of high school) and then gaining a predominantly white following? Just another example of the fairly unique (for better or for worse) Fishbone history.

I don’t want to spoil the movie, so I won’t give any more details – even if you don’t know anything about the band or may only vaguely remember them from their earlier approach to (real) stardom – the movie is definitely worth watching and I hope it really serves them to gain more fans because if there’s one band that has paid its dues many hundreds of times over, it’s Fishbone. Not only are they probably THE best band I’ve ever seen live – and I’m not the only one who says that by any means (the concert footage in the movie should help prove THAT – check out YouTube in the meantime) – but they have more talent they’ve forgotten about than most bands will ever understand, let alone come close to having!

There were some minor disappointments in the movie – Laurence Fishburne’s narration is way overbilled – he really doesn’t talk very much on balance and never appears in person – Tim Robbins only says about 2 mins of stuff if that (and John Cusack – WTF?) It was nice to see Flea and the various members of No Doubt pay their respects (because they DO owe Fishbone, big time) but all those bands have made a LOT more money and are predominantly white, pop-heavy bands that really took a lot less risks (and simply had a lot less to risk in the first place)?

I am really glad this movie came out and as noted before, I hope it helps their career, even if Norwood and Angelo are the only two originals left (shout to John Steward – drummer since 1999 – you rule man!) – this is one of the few bands that never compromised and has stayed true through thick and thin. Dr. Madd Vibe – we love ya – keep that Theremin rolling.

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Well, it was a long time in planning, but the big event(s) finally happened this past weekend – Kerewin‘s big 4.0 bday. And I am VERY happy to say everything was a big success and she had a great time. And there were even a few surprises along the way, which is always nice to pull off. Two of karri’s best friends came in from WAY out of town (NYC and AZ) and my sister from Boise, ID. Other friends trekked down from BC and all four corners of the Puget Sound area. For Portland, we had friends coming in from as far away as Hood River as well as the greater Portland area. THANK YOU to all for coming! 🙂 🙂 🙂

We had the first party here in Seattle on Sat. night at Kenyon Hall in West Seattle (great venue if you are looking for one for an event of your own). It was catered by the always-amazing, nearby Buddha Ruksa (best Thai in town!) and the Shiftless Layabout(s) were our band for the night. Hopefully both gained a bunch of new fans – the guests were constantly praising both all night and after.

Sunday am, we all piled in the car and blasted down to OR for the second party Sunday afternoon the 6th.

There are 4 pages of pics here – and even a couple MP4 movies – enjoy!

happy bday, Kerewin – love ya!

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So one of the editors at the local Stranger weekly newspaper has been featuring cool local artists/band posters for the past several months. They are sometimes hard to find in the paper – usually back amid all the weekend band/club ads – but they are usually pretty cool and almost always have links back to the artist who did them. As I’m always jonesin’ for cool backdrops on my computer, I wanted to find these online, and got some help from the Stranger’s webmaster today on lining them up from a search result.

Click here to enjoy!

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So finally was able to watch my library copy of Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage. This is a documentary of the Rush story, from early-70’s beginnings to present (2010). It also has some bonus stuff on the second DVD, deleted scenes, and some rare concert footage from VERY early on (the original three playing at Toronto high schools, which at the time were the ‘tour’ given the band wasn’t 21 so not in bars).

All in all, this is a good show, and has a nice mix of fandom (e.g. other musicians talking about why Rush mattered to them or to music generally), musical history of the band (album histories and capturing a bit of events at each one) and sporadic concert footage spread throughout. While I could have done without Gene Simmons (is that guy in EVERY rock documentary these days or what?) his comments are actually restrained and kind of funny, and Geddy Lee also gives KISS their due in terms of how much they helped Rush early on.

One thing that is also noticeable is how nerdy a band they really are. They even joke about how early on, their fans were nearly all men. Then later on, still nearly all men. Only in more recent years have they seemed to gain female fans of any amount – which is good, but I doubt it had much effect on their musical direction or appeal – still way nerdy compared to most bands. They really don’t sing much, if at all, about the usual rock ‘topics’ – sex and drugs – something that got them a lot of crap from UFO while on tour in the UK/Europe (funny anecdotes from Geddy on that).

It’s also interesting to note how Alex/Geddy were the founders and have the history together all the way back to grade school, whereas despite Neil Peart having now been in the band around 40 years, he is still (jokingly) called ‘the new guy’, because he was the second (and only since) drummer. The sequences with him are somewhat different than the other two – he’s definitely a different breed of cat, much quieter – nice guy, but definitely more intense and a bit ‘brooding’ vs. the other two.

I knew that Neil’s daughter had passed away in a bad car accident while they were on tour many years ago, but didn’t know that his wife had passed on not long after too. What a terrible, sad experience – they relate how they thought it was the end of the band – they really didn’t do anything for almost 5 years before Neil came around and wanted to get things rolling again. I’m glad he came through it, but it sounds like it took a long, long time.

I think a couple additional things might have improved this film a bit, though. For one, I would have liked a closer look at their composition process – how do they sit down and come up with stuff, what does it look like? They talk about this a bit but not in real detail, more high-level.

Second, I know that Geddy and Alex write the music for the most part, and Neil writes the lyrics in many cases. How does his writing process work? He is a voracious reader, and it’s obvious his lyrics come from all that reading – but how was he ‘inspired’, etc.? While he’s a pretty private guy, at least a minimal conversation about it would have been pretty cool.

Also, some anecdotes about specific songs might have been neat – you can see a few in the liner notes on some albums (e.g. Red Barchetta is based on a sci-fi story, etc.) but say, where other songs come from? Some are obvious (LimeLight, Subdivisions, etc.) but others?

At any rate, it’s always interesting to see what the band guys are really like – are they ‘normal’ people, self-absorbed jerks, wankers, or? Rush are definitely the former, and have largely maintained cool heads throughout their long career – cheers to them!

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So we were one of the lucky ones to get to go to the Rally for Sanity and/or Fear this past weekend in Washington, DC. I had some Alaska miles hanging around to cover one of the plane tix, and a great friend in the DC area who put us up.

Rather than rehash all the other articles already out on the Rally (pro/con/etc.) I will just say this – If we hadn’t gone, we would have wished we had. Despite getting fairly sunburned, it was a great time with 215,000+ ‘reasonable’ Americans – we met people from Alaska, MA, and even eastern Oregon – pretty damn cool. And while Jon’s big speech at the end wasn’t say, JFK’s inaugural speech by any means – it was still inspiring and meaningful. And that’s what really matters. 🙂

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Saw the short ‘documentary’ Heavy Metal Parking Lot this evening. This is a very short movie filmed way back in 1986, when ‘heavy metal ruled America’ for a short time (you had to be there :)). The ‘movie’ itself is pretty basic, not a heck of a lot more than the camerman/interviewer going around the parking lot before a Judas Priest show and handing the mike to various burnouts drinking beer and yelling ‘Priest Rules!!’ over and over. Some highlights:

1) Did we really have all that horrible hair? Yep. If it wasn’t a mullet, or ‘she-mullet’ (guess where the hair-metal bands got those long scraggly ‘dos? From the chicks!) – it was an uncombed ‘feathered back’ mess. The last time I saw that many winners in the same space, it was either Monsters of Rock (at the Seattle Kingdome – sporting Dokken, Metallica, Scorpions and ‘Van Hagar’) or even worse, a USFL football game in Portland during high school. Yes Virginia, there are lots of weird people/trolls out there who live under big rocks nearly every day of the year and only come out into the light for crappy semi-pro football or rock concerts.

2) Nearly everyone on camera seems to be drinking beer, even though almost none of them are even 21 (several admit their age on camera between beer chugs) and there was at least one cop seen walking around, to boot! This concert was in Maryland somewhere at what looks like a high school stadium (but I think it was in fact a sports stadium). Even worse, one guy brags about being 20, then his girlfriend says she’s 13(!) – then they start making out – ewwwww! The one saving grace is that he’s wearing aviator-style sunglasses – which proves that those glasses STILL SUCK today too, guys!

3) The one guy who says he likes Scorpions best (they were my fave at the time) is also sporting a ‘f*** you’ tshirt – pretty funny. Like nearly everyone else, he mugs heavily for the camera , yells and then chugs.

there are other ‘extras’ on the DVD but bleh. They include other subject-matter ‘parking lot’ movies (including a Harry Potter one?) and a brief HMPL ‘alumni’ movie – where they talk to some of the people in a ‘where are they now’ style. Watched about 5 mins. of this, but bleh.

Man, watching that was just too weird. And a little TOO real 🙂

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Continuing a two-week-long tradition, we saw our friends’ band – Shiftless Layabout – this past Sunday night at a small bar in Wallingford, Sea Monster.

Notwithstanding the coolness of being in a bar that has *anything* to do with sea monsters generally, SL is a great band to boot! Their sound is funky, but more akin to roots-funk (e.g. The Meters – who were playing over the bar stereo both before and after their set, conveniently enough) than say, The Red Hot Chili Peppers. In part because they have horns (like my boys in Fishbone) but they just have a mellower, more laid back sound. All the better to groove with.

Their next gig is Friday Oct. 22 @ The Scarlet Tree over in Roosevelt area. Check them out before the show by hitting their myspace page linked above, or on YouTube.

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Saw Manooghi Hi at The High Dive last night – another great show! They also played a few new ones that aren’t on CD yet – should be good. It was kind of weird since we got there WAY too early – around 8pm – it looked at first like no one was going to be there – it was us, bartenders and M.H. hanging out.

But then people started filtering in (including the opening band, who seemed to be showing up a wee bit on the late side). The openers – can’t remember their name and they never actually SAID it out loud – played some forgettable stuff for about 45 min-one hour, then M.H. played not long after, getting done around 1130 or so. Despite being a Sunday night show, it was pretty packed out, and it looked like there were more than a few M.H. family members in attendance – veddy cool!

This show came on the heels of eating at Delancey over in Ballard (finally) – also very good, it’s a gourmet pizza joint – basically Seattle’s version of A Pizza Scholls in Portland. While my personal fave here is still the nearby Crash Landing (because ‘grease is the word’) and in portland – Escape from New York – this was damn good. And *this* came on the heels of a wedding the night before that was catered by Via Tribunali! Between friends, family, relatives, music and pizza – it doesn’t get much better than that. 🙂

I will upload some abbreviated, way-too-dark videos from my phone/the show shortly, but in the meantime, SEE THIS BAND!

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There were two concerts (among others I didn’t know about) in Seattle last night: ‘The Chameleons Vox’ (meaning the singer/songwriter Mark Burgess from the ’80s alternative group The Chameleons) and The Cult (likely no explanation required – they lasted beyond the 80s even though they also started back then). On the one hand, TCV was only $10 – The Cult was $30+ (which is more than ‘current’ bands like Ozomatli and others charge these days, making it a hard sell) – we opted for TCV – The Cult just seemed way overpriced for its potential rock value (and if that’s not a lame way to describe even lamer 40-something concert decisionmaking, I don’t know what is :)).

There were three opening bands, we missed the first and the other two were largely forgettable (sorry guys). I give Romance (last opener before TCV) an A for effort and they were definitely good musicians, but not super-distinctive otherwise.

Then, on to TCV. They started with the song ‘Swamp Thing’ – the band was playing several measures of the song intro before Mark Burgess (the main original member/singer) came onstage in a ‘grand entrance’ – Uh….yeah. They powered through several more songs – all played well – but the show got progressively weirder for me the longer it went on. We left before they were done, near the end of the set (I would presume they played a few more songs, maybe an encore, not sure). Some impressions:

1) When MB came out on the stage – the first thing I thought was ‘here’s young Ozzy’ (meaning Ozzy Osbourne). For some reason he just struck me as a younger version of Ozz – maybe the face? Not sure. When he talked a bit between songs, he SOUNDS like Ozzy’s normal speaking accent, although I’m not sure if they are from similar locations in England. He is also sporting a Moe Howard hairdo – not the most complimentary? Finally, I couldn’t help also thinking of many Mike Myers parody characters as he danced around during many of the songs – sorry Mark.

2) There was too much ‘unbalance’ for me between most of the band (20-somethings) and MB’s obvious age. It was like a father playing music with his kids or something? When we saw X, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Queensryche, Living Colour, Madness, etc. over the past several years – whether or not they reach the heights of their glory days (some do, some really do, some are slipping) they all look older – but they also all look ‘correct’, because the band are all the same age. This show just seemed weird to have an older guy playing with such a younger band. I wish he had been the bassist like before, that might have avoided it a bit, but oh well. The band was very good, as far as playing – definitely no issues there.

3) Could there be any MORE delay pedal/voice effects? On albums, fine – I listened again to a few Chameleons songs on the bus this am going to work and yes, delay effects are all over the place – but live, it just seemed to wash everything into mud – and it was distracting (at best, annoying at worst) as regards the voice? It really served to date the music quite a bit for me, unfortunately. Throwing in a few Beatles and Clash verses mid-song on at least a couple occasions didn’t help either – cheese!

4) A positive – Mark B’s voice sounds largely fine. He’s no Boy George, Rob Halford or Bono, but for his historical range he largely achieved it. He was a bit quieter on a couple songs he would have likely belted out years ago, but whatevs. And you don’t need the delay effect to sound good – just be yourself….

5) Another positive – MB was putting himself out there. He was definitely not phoning it in. That counts for a lot, especially when you consider The Cult playing across town in not much bigger a club at 3x the price, and the comparative obscurity of The Chameleons even back in the 80s(?) – MB’s not getting rich on this tour most obviously, but cared to put on a good show, and he seemed to be having a good time.

6) A weird thing – in one of the songs (can’t remember the name) there is a long guitar mellow ‘exit’ at the end – which this time around was modified by actual drums in it, unlike on the album – but MB took the opportunity to head offstage while the band played for several minutes without him. When he came back, it *seemed* (can’t say for sure) if he had taken an 80s ‘coke break’ in the back – he was sniffing it up a bit. Weird, and I could be imagining things, but my buddies noticed it too. There goes the profits on the tour if so….doh!

7) Finally, after the first several songs I just kept increasingly thinking – ‘you can never go back’. I hope the tour works out well for him and the band, and The Croc was pretty full, definitely as full as seeing Manooghi Hi there a month or two ago. But the songs really sounded dated and lacked oomph for me. It seemed like every time they were cranking it up to really ‘rock’ – the sound would kind of smooth out at the top end and they would proceed – kind of like a ’70s Caddy trying to punch it up a hill and then gliding along without incident once there.

By way of comparison, when we saw X at The Showbox last year – they really *rocked* and were one of the tightest bands in recent memory, despite their age. And the fact that all their songs (being a punk band) are only about 2.5 min. long, so they have to play a LOT of them to fill an average show-length set – no ‘coasting’ allowed there, to be sure.

Here is another review of the show, from Glen Boyd – he obviously saw a much different show than I did. I’m glad he enjoyed it – but I really don’t think TCV were ever in danger of tearing the roof off at any point. Now…..had the mighty Fishbone made a surprise appearance….hmm…. 🙂

If you were there, feel free to comment/agree/disagree/etc. I guess the show left me with mixed feelings, but I don’t regret going (despite being all but asleep in my cube today for lack of sleep).

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