LES GEORGES LENINGRAD were awesome! A breathless urban tribal whirlwind, a sweaty 80s no wave revival, and there was much more 4-to-the-floor energy than on their album (which seems a bit muddled compared to what they play live). Their costumes and absurd announcements spice that up into something more like a live experience than just a show you watch. I’m in love! 🙂
ARIEL PINK seemed to be… hmmm… a bit of a touchy diva on stage which killed most of the potential vibes of his music. There were some beautiful moments but overall his behaviour sadly outweighed those. I really like his record but live… I don’t know. Would be interesting to know if it was the same in other cities.
I put pictures of LES GEORGES LENINGRAD up here.
And here are photos of the SPACEHORSE and DEAD LIKE DALLAS show which Urte took cause her camera didn’t work and she’s the better photographer anyway. Which you might already have seen if you witnessed one of the “More Than Music” exhibitions that took place 2001-2003 in Germany and Denmark. If not you can check the myspace site they now have.
Oh, and I uploaded another mash up: “Tom’s Diner continues” which uses DJ Koze’s “The Geklöppel continues” as backing and Suzanne Vega’s vocals. I cut her singing a bit up to get a little scat singing effect.
With the intenseness of last night’s show still in my bones and on my mind I read an interview with AN ALBATROSS on popmatters.com and these lines seemed quite quoteworthy to me:
“I think the need for community is reflected in the way we live our lives. I think it’s reflected in the Internet and the cubicles we work in. It’s reflected in people living their lives vicariously through reality television, watching American Idol rather than singing in the shower. Our construction of community is a direct antithesis to the hyper-individualism that is sweeping across our culture. I think that everyone is living so compartmentally that if for 15 to 30 minutes per night I can get onto a stage and provoke some sort of group reaction in real time, in real life, where you’re standing next to other people and having an experience as a group, it’s something very different from the direction in which a lot of our world is going. It also correlates very nicely to the ancient tradition of people getting together around music. That is such a beautiful aspect of civilization, and to have that lost in today’s world is such a frightening scenario. It’s a very healthy idea to melt down the barriers between band and audience and force this experience on people. Indifference to it is probably the worst thing that could be expressed.”
They also reminded me of what Michael had written about Big Brother on his “One Body, Some Genders” blog which is always an interesting read.