highfireDANGER!

incendiary wit from a perpetually curious techfemme... and the crap I find on the interwebs.

band geek for LIFE!

according to the nine inch nails hotline, the la salle high school marching band in pasadena, ca is going to do an arrangement of 'the hand that feeds' by nine inch nails at halftime tomorrow!

holy awesomeness, batman!

maybe it will sound like this?

the original hand that feeds video:


the actual la salle video as soon as it hits youtube because how cool are those kids!?!

ticketsbest.

a. today i got my tickets in the mail for the october 12th ken andrews/charlotte martin show in denver!

b. YAY. i am so glad to be able to see them. they are two of my favorite artists in the world. i thought a wedding i was going to was that weekend, but i marked my calendar incorrectly so *ZING* i can go!

c. how in the world were they $12? i'm obviously not complaining.

d. why can't all tickets be that cheap?

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ken andrews.
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charlotte martin's album cover for 'stromata'.


e. i am going to get to the bottom of how tickets west could offer this show for so little money...

f. the rest of you distributors? no excuses!!

a license to snub?


i have this friend.

he's lovely. and charming. and that's not sarcasm, because he really is my friend.

but, as with all people including myself, he has faults:

when it comes to music, he compltely forgets subjectivity.

for instance, when muse came out with black holes and revelations, i thought it was great, and comparable in quality to previous albums, such as my former fave, absolution. i imagine, if they released it, they thought it was as good as, if not an improvement upon, their past work. i would think this is what most bands believe when they release new material.

this friend, however, said about black holes and revelations:

"oh, no. i don't like the new one. it's clearly inferior to their former releases."

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yeah, i brought the owl.
clear to everyone or just to you?

so: at which point does someone's opinion count as THE opinion?

this is why i have trouble believing negative reviews about albums. i really don't put much stock into them because sometimes i really like stuff that no one else does.

and you know what?

i am okay with that.

call me miss positive contrarian, but i like it this way.

march to your own 'crappy' beat, darnit.

even if it's mel c. ;)
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close your eyes and guess this artist...


yeah. i wouldn't have been able to, either.
it's sporty spice! melanie c!
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i can't say it's my style, but it's not too bad.
what do you think?

"someone rescue that dog" or, the award for creepiest myspace band photo.

The winner?!
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MENOMENA!
http://www.myspace.com/menomena

show love: muse @ red rocks, sept 18 2007



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matthew bellamy (vocals, guitar, piano); chris wolstenholme (bass, vocals);
dominic howard (drums).


not church. or cds. or therapy. nothing!
i like them better than i did before. i am inspired to behave erratically: i need to see them again. soon. i might fly to vegas to see them at vegoose in october. this would be a substantial cost but it proves my point:

muse + live = addiction.

set under the clear colorado stars, it was a perfect night for perfect performances.

okay, so it wasn't all perfect...

nicolle and i bought these tickets long ago, and when printed they said 8th row! um, ecstasy!
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not this kind. i hate drugs.

so, as is usual with assigned seats, we took our time getting there. nicolle had class, after all, so we ate some good time burgers, drove behind the slowest people ever, and ambled downward toward our seats. joyfully, we approached row eight, seats 29 and 30, only to find some people were sitting in them. ever the polite person i am, i told them nicely that they are in our seats.

the hipster sneered at us "we're not in your seats, this is general admission."

oh man! FAIL!

shocked out of our reveries, nicolle and i scooted to the end of the row, embarassed and upset; what were we going to do?! we didn't want to sit ALL THE WAY UP THERE (oh, the travesty!). we stammered incoherently between the two of us, scanning the crowd to find a place to sit. we were there pretty late, so we weren't going to be shown any mercy if we tried to squeeze somewhere.

THERE!

there was a small space all the way at the end of the fourth row. why wasn't it taken? it had to be taken! as the security guard started to yell at us to FIND A SEAT we made our dash. we plopped down and waited to be shooed by the guy next to us. he only smiled. sweet! it wasn't taken and our formerly sad little behinds felt loved and accepted! phew.

now came the next hardest part of the evening: sitting through the openers. i did like the first band: immigrant. they reminded me a little bit of cave in (on 'antenna'), crossed with bono's vocals. but i don't like to watch bands i am not excited about, especially if they stand in between my muse and i. but i will probably buy their music, and that says a lot since i am rarely converted to fandom from a live performance.

they finished and i waited out the silence: is muse coming out soon? are they? ARE THEY?! we'd run into some people we knew, and while we chatted them up the second opener came on. i didn't realize there was a second opener.

i could have done without them, too. frankly.

i had no clue who they were as they took the stage. a familiar-sounding janis joplin-esque female voice started winding its way through the crowd. i couldn't place the vocals... and she looked familiar, too...

WAIT.
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is that juliette lewis? as in, oliver stone natural born killers juliette lewis?? and what is she wearing?

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i texted a few of my friends: "you'll never believe who's in this band..."

aaaaand once i overcame the excitement of it being juliette lewis, i was no longer interested. i don't think it was the fault of juliette and the licks, i just didn't like the style. it was too rolling stones. yes, i know that's like kicking a puppy to some of you, but i don't like the rolling stones. try not to judge me too harshly! ;)

SO OMG MUSE!

they FINALLY came on stage.

every negative experience of that night, plus a few hundred nights previous, was instantaneosly erased. i have never heard any band this good live (except for nine inch nails. from now on, just assume that i leave them out of it since they are above everyone else). but SERIOUSLY.

it was a great show for lots of reasons. the following is an informal list.

1. matthew bellamy's vocals are flawless.
2. matthew bellamy's falsetto is flawless.
3. matthew bellamy's piano and guitar skills are flawless.
4. chris wolstenholme's vocals are the perfect compliment; his bass lines are dense and tight.
5. dominic howard's fearless drumming is what i want in every band i listen to.
6. did i mention matthew bellamy's vocals were flawless?

i make such a huge deal out of the vocals because that's what hooks me or repels me when it comes to bands. if i can't deal with their singer, i just can't listen to it.

thank you, matthew bellamy.
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'you're welcome.'

there needs to be more bands like muse. muse is three people for goodness sake's, and they made more perfectly honed noise than a full orchestra. there also needs to be more bands who use full-size grand pianos onstage.

so, beside the requisite beer soak of nicolle's bag, juliette, and the seat misunderstanding, the show was incredible.

vegoose here i come!

here is 'map of the problematique' from the show itself, pointed out to me by aaroneous stoneous:



'take a bow' from another show :



muse official site

on profundity.


i've been thinking. how dangerous.

it's obnoxious at times, because i often do it best in the car, in the shower, or right before i go to bed, all of which aren't too convenient. but sometimes, sometimes it comes out right. this might be one of those times.

on profundity:

a. one doesn't have to be inscrutable in order to be deep, they don't have to be inaccessable to be fully actualized. my life's not a contest to see who can be more impenetrable. i like to make sense.

b. a difficult part of being a social animal, as we undeniably are, is to be understood. to translate yourself into someone others can touch and be touched by is challenging and i commend people who take time to understand and to be understood. it is work, but my personality requires it and i do my fallible best.

c. emotional, mental, spiritual, and social tangibility doesn't always imply cursory simplicity. you are not less of a person if you are more understandable.

d. being able to describe yourself in ten sentences or less doesn't mean that's all you are, and people should know better than to limit others like that.

e. one does not have to be intelligent, remarkable, or perfect to be worthwhile and valuable. although, it does help to be kind and generous. people generally like you better that way.

f. is someone less of a person because they smile more than not? does it mean they are simple minded and don't understand the human condition, or is it the opposite: that they recognize that life can be a mess and that happiness is often deliberate? not that i can blame anyone for being sad for most of the time, though!

g. if i listen to britney spears or pop music in general, does this automatically make me a person not worthy of your serious consideration? for the first half of that sentence you may also subsitute things like "if i am 'blond,' or 'black,' or 'chicano,' or 'female,' or 'liberal,' or 'gay' or 'tattooed', or 'republican,' etc..."

h. a sense of, even a love for, yourself does not always lessen your ability to love others. i would argue that self-loathing is counterproductive, however, humility is healthy.

finally, i still love you if you don't agree with this at all!

xoxo ya'll.

i bungled it, alright.


i recently discovered mr bungle. they are a glorious mess of noise and i can't get enough. mike patton is god-like in his musical and creative abilities, and i am so sad they are no longer together and i will not have the privy of seeing them live.

so um, this is a great live video of the song ars moriendi ('the art of dying' in latin), what i am pissed to have missed.



mike "god" patton is the lead singer. for listening, i suggest their final album, california, as it is my fave.

you would probably be most famliar with patton from faith no more; he also has fronted tomahawk, fantomas, did a great collaboration with the dillinger escape plan, and is currently at the helm of peeping tom, a link to which you can find to the right of this post. i saw the latter live, but at the time i wasn't as big a fan as i am right now; a big, fatty shame!

i will see them again. i will.


I WILL.

my favorite vintage collaboration by two living musical legends



"I'm Afraid of Americans" by David Bowie, featuring Trent Reznor, 1997

the only thing r. kelly's "trapped in the closet" is good for...

as part of a spoof on the daily show, of course!

gimme gimme more... sound medical advice.


the speed at which I sought to watch the Britney VMA video was as lethargic as her dancing, but i finally sashayed my way toward viewing it online, days later. kids, I didn't think it was that bad. seriously.

it was good for a woman who is so desperately self medicating to hide the mental health issues she is so publicly struggling with! she was probably messed up on pills that she got from the back alley, while she should be on pills that come from her doctor, because you can still dance and see straight on the latter.

and all of this really isn't something i say to relegate her to second-class status, because mental health is complicated and this isn't the middle ages (right?), so saying that someone has a an issue and may benefit from treatment is not defamatory. after all, many of the people i love the most have issues that merit medication and they are getting the help they need, which benefits everyone around them.

i am saying seriously and with sympathy that Britney should be on that list of successes, too.

this leads me to the next question, do they have actual doctors at these rehab facilities? or just people who take money and wait for public failure, leading inevitably to more lucrative, more extended stays?

if i didn't have a soul, i'd say i was in the wrong business...

i would hate to be going through the breakdown she is having with everyone watching as closely as they are.

i never loved her music (alright, toxic is in my iTunes), but i hate to see her go down like this.

good luck, brit!

strange fruit is the best fruit of all.


Here's some original label subversion/badassery by the legendary Billie Holiday, via moby's blog.

"In 1939 billie holiday was a huge pop star and she wanted to record 'strange fruit', a song about racism and lynching, and her label wouldn't let her.
so she recorded it for a tiny indie label and it went on to become her biggest selling record.
it's regarded as the first recorded protest song, and this performance of it is one of the best things i've ever seen.
moby"



This is a great example of the lack of intuition that labels can be guilty of. Thought it was going to be too unsavory to be popular?? Obviously untrue. When something affects thousands of people, um, it's going to sell. At least, it should, and in this case, it sure did.

Finally: whyyyyy do some women still look up to Paris Hilton? Hmm?


original post.