sorry blogulator readers, i was too busy being a hypester.

qualler and i live arduous lives. we get up bright and early, put on our respective track jackets and say, "hello world!" this remark is only mildly sarcastic, as a mixture of sincerity and sarcasm is the new sarcasm, or so i have read on pitchfork.

we go to work/class and ACTUALLY work/learn/teach instead of blog. i manage the music department of a slightly well-respected college radio station or go to school to learn how to teach jackass teenagers the english language. qualler crunches numbers for the man or goes to school learning how to crunch said numbers more efficiently. (i actually don't have a mental capacity large enough to comprehend what qualler actually does during the day).

so what in the world would bring us together after a long hard day of the aforementioned?


LCD SOUNDSYSTEM: jackasses like this guy. it was either go see this show courtesy of radio k or go see a showing of shopgirl courtesy of radio k. we decided to choose the option that would remind us most of the fine 1995 johnny lee miller vehicle HACKERS. opening act the juan maclean put out a great record called less than human but he/they really sucked it up on stage. they tried so hard to make a DJ into a full band, with glow sticks hitting cymbals and everything, but it made me more ashamed than ever to be white. just because we can make danceable music does not mean we should be showing our faces/bodies/dance moves in conjunction with it. speaking of glow sticks, according to some faux-raver, the light of one's cell phone screen is the new glow stick - he twirled it around while he busted some killer moves and everything. HOTT. lcd was good but not great. they almost sounded too together and crisp. pretty much exactly like the record, with less bass. and the hyped up "visual aspect" that they needed playstation to sponsor the show in order to obtain, was just like watching those transitions between scenes on that 70s show over and over again. snooze alert. oh and apparently lansky saw prince when the show got out. that's about it. decent show, but mostly disappointing. qualler and i agreed we wanted to just go home and listen to out hud.


JOHN VANDERSLICE: sad guy with a guitar? qualler, grab your pre-squeezed teardrops, we got a show to go to! thankfully he got rid of that ridiculous early-pfeiffer-esque haircut seen in the adjacent photo. qualler calls him THE SLICE and i call him VANDYPANTS, but whatever you call him, he is a master of sound. not the most rousing or even memorable of shows, but that's just it - it didn't seem too devastatingly important to him either, but he managed to very lackadaisically execute his songs perfectly. his band was equally flawless and made the songs even fuller than how they sound on the new album pixel revolt (which unfortunately for me has become not as good every additional listen). but this was a solid show, even if john vanderslice isn't a revolutionary experimental musician. and the songs that did not come from pixel revolt came from my fave vandy record, time travel is lonely. "Keep the Dream Alive" was probably one of my most rewound songs on a mixtape in high school. I MISS MY BUICK.


WOLF PARADE: this record is damn near perfect. i hate isaac so much as a human being, but he's just as capable a producer as he is a coked-up songwriter. that pisses me off so much, yet i cannot deny the rock. and yet like modest mouse, wolf parade cannot deny being disappointing live. don't get me wrong, i enjoyed myself because i love the songs, but there was no pizzazz and they obviously have yet to figure out to efficiently use their abundance of keyboards and programming equipment. once they do that, as long as isaac doesn't get them hooked on coke (which looks like it may be too late as the attached photo implies), they could create a visceral and unrelenting live show with the songs they wrote for their debut apologies to the queen mary. keep on trekking, you hypester wolves.


WHY?: now here's the cream of the crop (wouldn't a creamy substance in the soil be undesired to the farmer?). i cannot put into words how crazily wonderful this band, record and live show is. i know that's kind of the point of the blogulator, to convey to you using the english language the best and worst of pop culture, but it honestly is incredibly difficult with a band like why?. it's like if ben folds actually read books or if stepehen malkmus actually cared about stuff, or if your favorite twee band weren't such jackasses. they are making perfect pop music and not just taking it new directions, but making it genuine and amplifying the general intensity of it in all possible ways. the cedar cultural center is one of the most underused venues in the cities for hypester music, but when a band like why? takes advantage of this, it makes the showgoing experience that much more immaculate. did no other venue attempt to mix a band in a way that won't blow the kids' ears out but still make it the centerpiece of the room? it was unbelievable how a simple element like volume can personalize a show so much. i could go on about the guitarist's ability to showboat his mad riffage skills while simultaneously modestly floating in the middle range of the songs' presence or all of the band's miraculous ability to trade off vocal harmonies without ever making me feel that beach boys bitterness on my earbuds, but really i just want you to go listen to elephant eyelash.

ON DECK FOR THE BLOGULATOR: reviews of the movies STAY and THE WEATHER MAN, reviews of concerts by THE MOST SERENE REPUBLIC and AMERICAN ANALOG SET.

This entry was posted by chris, on Tuesday, October 25, 2005. You can leave your response.