the fifth entry in the music journal series, which is the month of november, 2013 and is 132 pages long. i am not going to summarize the story, but it is available on the web over here: musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/11/.

this is a compilation of written correspondences that occurred around me over november, 2013. it includes facebook posts, google+ posts and emails with acquaintances and family members, in an attempt to document the first reconstruction phase of rebuilding my discography, including remastering and (re)publishing inri001, inri003, inri016, inri027, ini028 and inri029. the contents of this download are the dummy track, a word doc file and a pdf file, both written in a more readable, chronological ordering. i've also added the respective files for my other three blogs, for general interest, as well as 70 separate txt documents (all html files) that are referenced in the journal. the liner notes for inri001, inri003, inri016, inri027, inri028 and inri029 are also included.

the events documented in this journal occurred in november, 2013 and were compiled into a narrative in several stages over the years 2014-2019. journal completed, released and finalized in doc and pdf format on oct 30, 2019. doc201311.

credits

released December 1, 2013

j - editing, participant

mom - participant
the initial landlord - participant
sennheiser technical support - participant

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/11-2013-music-journal

and, just to make a point: i only have two ears, and i only have one brain, and i only have a finite amount of time to process music through those ears and into that brain.

i try to listen, widely.

but, i can only get to whatever i get to when i actually get to it.

i've listened to their last two records a bunch of times now, and i actually kind of like this; it's maybe a more healthy rejection of christianity (or religion, generally) than some of the other things i've been bumping into recently from women of roughly the same age and from roughly the same place. and it's raw, i have to give it that. but..

...see i don't want to call it cringey, in context, because that's usually meant as a disincentive, and usually is, even when it's roughly in the same genre. if you're going to get cringey, you want to do it in a way that evokes some kind of pathos in the listener (and if you're doing this right, you know what i mean when i use fancy greek words like pathos), and the way it's usually done is to produce pity or scorn or even self-deprecating comedy (intentionally or not), so invoking the term "cringey" projects something that takes this down to a point that i'm actually trying to elevate it above. so, i might want to say something like that the records produce a level of discomfort, which is by definition uncomfortable, rather than suggest it's cringey, even if what i mean to say is that it's going to make you cringe. i hope i've got my point across with that.

i'm consequently a little apprehensive about actually showing up. i mean, what kind of debauchery is this, really?

i like it, though. even if i'd rather enjoy it from a healthy distance - both physically and intellectually.

https://bethlehemsteel.bandcamp.com

the new trumbullplex makes sure the shows run on time.

this is more my kind of thing, although it would be better if it was a little less glossy and a bit edgier. decent local support, too. this is the show i'd be at tonight, if i didn't prefer a warm blanket over a fall jacket.

also: strict half hour sets at the new authoritarian-left trumbullplex, tonight. know what you're walking into.

https://alienboys.bandcamp.com/album/night-danger

this is tonight in windsor, and i tried to give it a good listen because i don't want that cafe down the street to fail. but, i didn't get past the first few tracks.

this is something i've been struggling with for years, actually. everything else aside, i just can't handle this vocal style; i get this almost violent knee-jerk reaction to it. i'm just fundamentally a gen x kid that really hates what you could call "millennial rock", in pretty much all of it's various incarnations. this is a vocal style that started appearing in the late 90s or early 00s, and i've simply never been able to deal with.

i'm not going to comment on what appears to be a neo-luddite concept, underlying it. i'm not one of those, either - i'm actually very pro-technology.

if it demonstrated a little more musical abstraction upfront, maybe i could try and break it apart a little more, although i suspect it would just lead to deeper criticism. but, it's kind of tame on that level, as well.

ironically, my dad had a soft-spot for this kind of stuff that i didn't. they're playing a college bar, but this is really dad-rock - both in the sense of it appealing to new dads in their 30s, and older ones in their 60s.

https://atlasempire.bandcamp.com

i just want to add an update to this.

so, i was a little bit dismissive of it. i called it an unoriginal mashup, led by a tone deaf singer, that sounded like it would rather be writing pop songs than making noise. that's pretty harsh.

i don't exactly want to change my analysis, but i do want to add that the potential i initially heard hasn't really been lost. i guess what i was trying to get across was that the record - their second this year - still kind of sounds like a haphazard demo, rather than something finished. you don't expect to be blown away by a good demo, you just want to hear that it has reach, that it's leaning somewhere. after a few more listens, that's ultimately where i'm at with this.

i'm sure the show was fun enough, it just didn't make sense for me to get there last night.

moving forwards, i need to strongly suggest to the band that they need to do something about the singer. you don't want to use autotune in this style. maybe a vocal coach might be useful, though?

the noisy guitars are good. keep with that; maybe try to orchestrate it a little more by building up some more complex harmonies, but don't lose the idea.

however, the tendency to take ideas directly from other acts - and it's not just floyd and sonic youth - is something you need to do with more subtlety than this. every great riff is stolen, sure, but you want to be a sneaky shoplifter, when you do it; this record crashes through the front window of the store in a minivan, chases the staff off with kalashnikovs, orders shoppers to fill the van up and tries to run a police barricade in broad daylight. so, i have to bring in the national guard. busted. hard.

i'd still like to hear new material from them, but they're not done yet - put them back in.

https://paint-thinner.com/album/hagioscope-to-the-heart

it seems like kelly's a bad influence, and you kids should stay away from her.

https://milkbathdet.bandcamp.com/releases

so, this appears to be a mashup of sonic youth and pink floyd, directly taking several riffs from both acts.

what attracted me to this band was the atmospherics and noisy aesthetic they were pushing, so i could put aside concerns about originality (that wouldn't be the point.) if i thought it was sufficiently harsh, and pleasingly chaotic. and, there's points, certainly. but, they seem to be pushing themselves - it seems contrived, like as though they'd actually rather be writing songs. worse, the apparent preference to focus on songs is diminished by the reality that the songs are prodding, and the singer is...calling somebody tone deaf isn't an insult, so much as it's a condition. it's an empirical question. he misses a lot of notes.

i might not care after a beer or two...

so, yeah - i wish it was a little closer to downtown, because it's the kind of thing i'd just grab a beer for without the need for too deep an exploration into it, if it was. like, maybe it's not the most brilliant thing i've ever heard, but maybe i can enjoy the aesthetic in real-time, anyways, even if the record's not really worth coming back to; that happens in this genre, and happens in this genre relatively frequently, even. but, getting to this would be a journey in less than stellar weather and without a lot of cash. so, i dunno.

if a mashup of sonic youth and pink floyd (maybe a pink floyd with ray manzarek instead of richard wright...as though the influence wasn't dominant....) sounds good to you, though, here it is.

https://paint-thinner.com/album/hagioscope-to-the-heart

what this reminds of a little bit is actually early siouxsie, which is probably something nobody wants to hear. but, at least i didn't say patti smith, right? it's interesting how the old new york sound - which was created when the city was an artist's haven, because it was actually cheap to live in - has reasserted itself through the haze of bad indie rock gentrification. and, whether i'm citing siouxsie or branca or sonic youth, the point is that it sounds like late 70s new york - something i'm a fan of, or was a fan of, when i was a little younger.

if it was a little nicer out, and i had a little more cash on hand, i could see myself checking it out. but, again: i'm not braving the cold weather. not this week....

https://golddime.bandcamp.com/album/my-house

the show at the dso this weekend is mahler's 4th, which is kind of beethoven-lite, firmly romantic and yet ultimately still too "classical" for me to really find compelling. i'm going to make the bold claim - and you can label me ridiculous if you insist - that actually claiming you enjoy this at this stage is just ultimately pure pretension. you're not serious.

he neither lays the bottom end down the way ludwig (isn't that such a bassists' name?) does, nor does he ever get into the kind of lush soundscapes that a debussy or ravel (or a schoenberg, to stay austrian) would. he's just basically still writing by-the-book classical music, and throwing a few wrong notes in for colour. maybe it seemed like it had a point at the time, but it hasn't really aged well.

i'm going to argue that if you want to listen to mozart, then you should listen to mozart, although i'm not sure why you'd actually want to. on the other hand, if you want to listen to beethoven....

that said, the long range for the rest of the month looks pretty awful, and i'm thinking about it as a way to get out of the house on saturday night - maybe for the last time in a good while.  i'm just checking the rest of the month, first.

again, this is just...

if you're going to do feedback and building, make it bigger and more cinematic. if you're going to do gaze pop, pick the tempo up. if you want to do ambience, make it deeper. if you want to focus heavily on the lead guitar parts, you need to be better than this, too. as it is, this is kind of more like a country band with a fuzz pedal. they used to call that "cow punk", but, even so, the style would descend into hoe-downs and stuff...

the ambivalent atmospherics have their place, but there's no tension, here. there's no collapse. it's just kind of prodding and sort of boring.

https://diivct.bandcamp.com/

this is a frontloaded record that's caught me a little off guard and i've consequently come back to it a few times in planning the week. who is this, exactly? it seems to be the new project of somebody i should know of, but it's not something i've heard of before, in any way at all.

on it's surface, it initially reminded me a little of caddywhompus, perhaps with a john mcentire production flair. there's a sea and cake vibe to this, and i can get into that. but, as i listened to it a few more times, it exposed some just awfully cringeworthy emo (in the i'm-a-sad-loser-with-a-guitar sense - that word. it's complicated.) songwriting, and also placed itself in the genre that has probably been most prominently presented by speedy ortiz, in the period this band has existed.

so, i took a flip through their back catalog, and it's that emo bent (they use the term 'slowcore') that seems to be dominant, which probably explains why i've had no exposure to this. that's a style that i strenuously avoid.

but, that doesn't negate the interestingness of their new record, or the interestingness of the half of it that doesn't sound like their old material, anyways.

if this is a transition record, there might be something here to check out in a few years, if the idea of john mcentire producing a caddywhompus record has some appeal to you. as it is, i'm not keen on venturing out in the cold, tonight.

i would at least suggest checking out the first couple of tracks, here, though - just the first three would have been a killer ep.

https://peaer.bandcamp.com/album/a-healthy-earth

this is at pj's on thursday, tacked on to what is otherwise a metal show. and, i'm going to kind of "rec" it if you're around - it's certainly more interesting than their early material - if you can handle sitting through bands with names like "orc". i'm just not sure it's exciting enough to get across a border to on a cold thursday. and i'm not sure i can handle sitting through bands with names like "orc"...

https://cortege.bandcamp.com/album/capricorn-2

this is in detroit this week, and it's not bad as a kind of basic post-grunge, but it's a little too compressed and simplistic for me, at my age. if you're going to do something at this tempo, it's better to do make it a little louder and grindier - and make it bigger, more expansive. if you're going to write what are basically pop/punk tracks, i'd rather it be faster and more abrasive.

so, it's kind of....milquetoast. boring.

if you're a little younger, you might still be into this, but i need more than this, in one direction or another.

https://adeerahorse.bandcamp.com/album/everything-rots-that-is-rotten-ep

so, i was out around 17:00, a little earlier maybe, and went straight to my bike. i had a few ounces of vodka left - maybe two shots. but it tasted awful, at that point. i needed mix. so, we put that away for a few minutes...

i didn't notice anything peculiar about my bike at this point; i just unlocked it and started riding north.

i had $17 and change left, out of $120 for the weekend (which is a lot more in cad).

$80 - $15 (sacri moniti) - $15 (beethoven) - $10 (3 beer @ deluxx fluxx) - $2 (1 beer @ pop off) = $38.

$38 + $40 =  $78.

$78 - $18 (smokes + drinks)  - $5 (trumbullplex) - $18 (6 beer @ marble) - $8 (smokes) - $10 (food) - $2 (coffee @ dso) = $17.

nothing was that expensive, it just added up after a long weekend. and, remember: getting to a machine in detroit is hard. i need to deal with what i have.

i didn't budget for that extra pack of smokes, and probably wouldn't have needed it if it wasn't for the fact that i destroyed the previous one. that gets me up to $25, which is more what i was planning for, going into the dso. so, i bought a coffee instead of a beer...

cover at the post-rock show was $10, leaving me $6 + change for mix and beer, and i should say a little bit about the other show that was happening.

the initial plan was not to go to this post-rock show, with bands i was unaware of, with the exception of this local act called torus, which i had missed a few times previously; rather, the initial plan was to see a legendary psych rock act called the legendary pink dots at el club. and, if i had made it through the night with something closer to $40 than $25, i might have done that.

it was really a cost thing, primarily, i'll acknowledge that. the cover at the lpd show was $25 usd, which is about as steep as i'll ever even think about paying. i usually have a hard time, mentally, with $15. i want cover to be less than $10, usually, unless it's something spectacular. then, there's the $8 beer at el club. you'll note the cost of beer elsewhere - it's $2-$3 everywhere else. even considering that the beer at el club is 1.5 beers, you're still looking at over $5, which is like twice as much. with $25 cover, you'd better show up with at least $35 if you want to actually enjoy the night. i just didn't have it on me...

and, might lpd have been spectacular? i'm sure they were in the 80s and 90s and even a good part of the 00s. i'm a little skeptical, nowadays - and i haven't heard anything from them since the last tear garden record. they would be in their late 60s at this point, and no doubt look a lot older; i remember thinking that ka-spel was in his 70s when he was only in his 40s. so, i might have missed an awesome show, but i suspect i was a little too young for it and would have walked out feeling ripped off by a show that was a little slow and prodding for me. that's gen x, for you - always stuck between, in the glut.

i would have loved to see this band in their prime, but i think i missed it and am ok with accepting it.

but, if you do want to check them out, this is as seminal and underground and important a band as you'll ever find: https://legendarypinkdots1.bandcamp.com/album/angel-in-the-detail

they were always mid-tempo, so when i use language like slow and prodding, it's just a question of whether the edge is still there - and maybe i'm wrong, maybe it is.

so, i found this post-rock show for $10 up in hamtramck instead, and it just made more sense, in context. with the $17 i had left after the symphony, there wasn't actually a choice involved, unless i wanted to spend $10 taking out another $20 (which is closer to $30 cdn), and i didn't.

i stopped at the gas station up woodward, first, to get some mix, and was able to find a tall bottle of faygo mt dew clone for $1.20. it said it had caffeine in it; how much, wasn't clear. it did the trick. so, i'm down to $16 + change.

still no issue with the bike, heading up woodward, up grand, up oakland, over clay, past the russell and into hamtramck via the back way, which took me out to the new dodge from the south. i drove by it the first time...

cycling around a few times, i was able to find a wood post to park at, behind the store next door. i didn't check to see what the store was, and didn't think it was important. bike seemed fine when i left it there with my bag, a little before 18:00....

the kids in torus - and these are kids. really. - were out back early, hanging out in their van. they took the tool comparison as a compliment, and claimed their new material sounded like hum, which seemed like shit-talking (and turned out to be). cost of beer at new dodge: $2 on tap. so, i've got three beers left and five bands to see, and i'm hoping this works out...

the first band up was called "rags and riches" and appears to have lost their guitarist somewhere between here and kentucky, instead coming up with two percussionists and a very poppy (like, new kids on the block or backstreet boys style poppy), hip-hop oriented lead singer. there were points were they had three drummers going; the intent was clearly to make the percussion the centre of the act. i'm not sure how compelling it was, but i'd never seen anything quite like it.

i've looked for sound samples, but i can't find anything without the guitarist so you'll need to seek this out on your own.

the second act up was man mountain, and they did a type of slower moving post-rock that's become kind of standard in the genre, since some midwest kids first heard mogwai. it's that very specifically american post-rock sound that my canadian ears thinks is a little too precious and sappy. it's worth checking out as an opening band, but it's exceedingly generic, too, so you shouldn't expect to be surprised or blow away by it.

https://manmountain.bandcamp.com/

au revoir continued on, and were a little heavier, leaning more towards a pelican or caspian sound. the kids outside were talking about caspian. the effects work is maybe leaning a little towards god is an astronaut, with the spacey sweeps, but i didn't catch a synth player.

again: i enjoyed watching this perched from a bar stool after a super long night, but i like the genre, and it is generic. it's good at what it does, but don't expect any surprises out of this.

shy, low then took it up another notch, while essentially carrying on with the same basic idea. again: you pretty much know exactly what you're getting out of this before it starts.

and, torus came on at the end, and played their one 35 minute song, start to finish:

https://torusdetroit.bandcamp.com/releases

so, the sets on this night were...they were what i expected, and both a pleasant and kind of chill way to end a crazy adventure and a reminder of why i tend to avoid seeing this style of music, live. it'd been a while, it was a nice reprieve. it'll probably be a while before the next time.

i first started feeling ill on this night at around 22:00 or so, between my second and third beers at this venue.

it was early when it was done - 23:30. so, i just had to take a nice slow bike ride back to the tunnel, for 00:30. or, so i thought..

i get around the corner to my bike and realize instantly that the tire has been mangled, but i'm not entirely certain, and am still not, what was going on with it. my sweater is still in my bag, as are my empty prescription bottles, my lipstick and a few other pieces of random trash. it seemed clear that the bag had been handled, but there was no apparent effort to take anything out of it. so, what is this, then? is this vandalism? are the cops bothering me (i think they have before.)?

i tried to ride the thing down the block, and couldn't - there wasn't enough air in the tube to keep the tire on the rim. what else can i do but walk home? without rummaging through my pockets, i'm thinking that i have something like $0.50 cents on me, tops. so, i'm expecting a long walk back to the tunnel, and a long night waiting for the bus. but, there's a gas station just past the russell, on clay, maybe i can talk them into letting me try to fill it up...

i finally rummage through my pockets when i get there. the cost of air is $0.75, and i do actually have it on me. score. and, the tube seemed to take it, so i'm hoping it's enough to get home on.

i get around the corner, past grand, and ask somebody for the time: it's not yet midnight. so, as long as the tires hold, i should make it.

it got a little scary moving up woodward past the fountains at the dia, because i could feel it starting to give. but, once i got to campius martius, i knew i'd catch the bus back. and, my stomach was starting to turn on me, too - i really wanted to get home.

customs was easy, although they seem to have been expecting me. i wonder sometimes just how closely the cops are paying attention to me, as they seem to grin at me in weird ways - not unlike my dad used to, when i came home at 4:15, shitfaced, from a friend's house.

did you have a good night?

you can only weakly nod. but, i was actually pretty sober at this point, what i was noticing more was that my stomach was starting to turn. 

i decide to walk my bike home. from here for the night, to ensure i'm avoiding further damage until i can get a look at it, and there's paramedics waiting around the corner. hrmmn. i'm ok, though - i just keep walking. the cops appear to follow me most of the way home, from this point. i actually think they followed me home on friday, too.

i guess they're checking to make sure i don't have any meetings with secret russian spies on the way, there. but, listen - they'd be screwed even if they caught us. we'd use the cone of silence. they wouldn't be able to hear a thing.

i dunno. whatever.

i stopped to get some nachos on the way home, but actually had to wait for my stomach to come down a bit before i could actually eat them. and, by monday night, i was convinced i'd caught strep throat and must have been dealing with the onset of it.

so, what kind of crazy weekend is this? psychedelic rock, kraut rock and noise punk on friday, followed by a grindcore show on saturday that led into a drum 'n' bass party, beethoven's 5th at the detroit symphony orchestra and a post-rock night to close it off. it's a festival weekend every weekend in detroit, if you know where to find it.

at this stage, this appears certain to be the last long weekend of the summer. so, i'm glad i made the best of it.

i left the club at around 9:30 or so, drove by the sound guys (who were setting up at the art of armageddon, apparently), bought some smokes at the gas station, took another swig of that vodka (you don't think i drank all of it, do you? i can't drink 20 ounces of straight vodka, i'll pass out. there was about 5 ounces left.), parked behind the orchestra and stumbled down to the diner to get some eggs. as mentioned, i was there a little after 10:00 - i remember it being 10:14, exactly.

for reference, the symphony started at 15:00. so, i was going to hang out until 13:30-14:00 or something, then go down early, get a coffee and wait for the thing to start.

and, yes, i nodded off, i think for obvious reasons, now that you know the story. but, let's look at the facts here:

1) i intended to be in the diner for around 3-4 hours, on a sunday morning for brunch, from about 10:00-14:00, at the latest. 3-4 hours for brunch on sunday (from 10:00-14:00) might be the most normal thing in the history of normality - if there's something more normal than that, you'll have to be explicit about it, 'cause i can't imagine it.

2) so, i bought eggs and coffee a little after 10:00. let's say it was 10:30. so, let's say it got there about 10:45, which is about right for this place. i bought an extra side of french fries when i was done, probably around 11:30-ish. so, they would have got there about 11:45-ish. i got sleepy when i was eating my fries. i had not yet finished my coffee.

3) so, i must have dozed off - with my fries and coffee in front of me - from around 12:00-13:00.

4) i am in this establishment frequently, and have always bought things when i'm in it. i have, however, experienced some transphobia from the staff that i've largely shrugged off....

so, you can imagine that i was rather baffled when they sent the cook out - pilate-like. he's the messenger. he didn't care. - to tell me i "wasn't wanted here" and would have to leave before they "call the cops".

i'm not sure exactly what they would tell the officers, should they have come in, while i was finishing my fries and drinking my coffee. i'm not homeless. i wasn't asking people for food or money - and i hadn't finished my meal yet. they would essentially have to admit that they were throwing me out because of my gender expression, and i might point out that they're lucky i'm not an american citizen, because that's a lawsuit they'd have lost, if i was. i would have had to leave if it had come to that, surely, but i'd certainly want to get that report and publish it, as well as hand it off to the detroit business association, to let them deal with it.

it woke me up, at least. i ignored the cook, finished my fries, used the bathroom and came back to the front desk.

"can i talk to your manager?"

"what?"

"the cook just came out and told me you were going to call the police. i want to talk to the manager."

"you've been hear since 10:00."

"it's sunday brunch. i. demand. to. speak. to. your. manager."

"ok..."

a few minutes later, this 20-something arab guy comes out. you can put this together, right? he's not the owner here; i know the owner here. so, we've got some transphobic muslim day manager throwing the gays out of a restaurant he doesn't even own. not acceptable, at all. i rightfully gave him shit for overstepping his bounds...

"is that how you treat your customers?"

and i laced into him for a good ten minutes. i had food in front of me. and, yeah, i'm tired, but so what? when you come in and buy something in a restaurant, you get the booth until you're done. i'm not hanging out without buying anything. i'm not staying for a long time after i've finished, either. i'm literally in the middle of finishing a meal, and waiting for the symphony across the street to start.

and, i demanded a fucking apology.

he did give me one. see, and this is the point you actually want to see in this circumstance - you want this person to understand that they're in the wrong, even if it doesn't click immediately, and i think he clearly did realize that, i could see it in his facial expressions. he looked like he was worried he'd lose his job. he didn't lose his arrogance about it, and his apology was clearly coerced and bullshit, but he knew what he did was wrong.

you might expect me to call for a boycott of the detroit coney one on woodward avenue, after that. you might also expect me to stop going in there. i actually think that's the wrong approach, in context - i will continue coming here (and if they call the cops on me for being queer, we can take it the community and let them adjudicate such a thing - they won't win that debate), and i would even like to put out a call for queers throughout detroit to frequent the coney one more often. let's have big, queer parties there every weekend!

there's laws in place that say you can't do what he did, but that's secondary to the general point - you can't let religious groups move in and put down rules and restrictions like this. if the message i got was "i'm a muslim, and i don't like you, and i want you to leave" then my response is "i'm a queer atheist, and i'll go where i please, and if you don't like it then you can leave, yourself.".

so, let's get all the queers to the coney one, let's take this place over; let's make it ours.

when i was done berating him, i went to the symphony a little early, got a coffee and headed in to hear the pre-show program, by the conductor. we're going to split this off, tactically....

i was up late enough in the afternoon on saturday to get my tickets printed before the library closed, but i spent some time writing, and i got something to eat, so i wasn't out of the house until well after 21:00. i was sure i'd miss the show, which was supposed to be over at 23:00. thankfully, it was only the second act playing when i got there....

so, i got to see prissy whip, which is what i was there to see, and who came on somewhere around 23:30, i think. sort of. they were supposed to have a female singer, who was a no-show. i don't think anybody really knew the details except the band, but the rumour floating around was that it had something to do with a possessive boyfriend. she apparently made it the st. louis show on thursday, according to the footage, so something appears to have happened in that 48 hour space. hey, i don't know; i was just at the show, and she wasn't.

so, we got an instrumental set, instead, and it was actually fairly compelling, as it was. they're operating in a pretty syncopated style of noise rock, so removing the vocals just brought out the percussive aspects of the guitars, which you may or may not recall are technically percussion instruments, in a technical and eurocentric sense (i guess the arabs and indians would have a different take on the whole thing, but they're not me, so  they can figure that out on their own). so, they basically banged out this three part drums-guitar-bass percussion set for a few minutes and then abruptly stopped and that was that.

so, i'm hesitant to post something because it wouldn't really be an accurate representation of what i actually saw. but, you can check them out by googling them. they come recommended heavily by deerhoof, and there's reasons for it, even if it's maybe a little closer to melt banana, overall.

i did check out part of the next set, which was by a band called "pig's blood", but it was just screaming and yelling and breaking things and i don't listen to that kind of shit, so i was just back outside within seconds...

i actually spent a lot of time talking to the people outside that night, who were all 30+, and all felt like they were too old to be there, but in fact were exactly the right age. there actually weren't any kids there, and i'm the only one that seems to have actually got their head around this a long time ago: there haven't been any kids at any spaces like this in a long time, now. these kinds of shows are often 40+, let alone 30+. i'm ok with that; i don't want to hang out with kids in their 20s, anyways. but, it seemed to be the first time it clicked for some of these guys.

i also want to make a general point about my social skills when i'm drinking. yes - i'm friendly (in a good way) when i'm drunk. i talk to girls, and i talk to boys, and i talk to people in between, and i don't tend to really think much of it. i didn't used to be this friendly or this confident, though; i didn't used to have the nerve to just stumble into a group of random people of whatever gender and start talking to them, no matter how drunk i was. rather, i used to be a quiet, distant drunk that would sit in the corner and avoid eye contact and only speak meekly when spoken to. so, my confidence is a function of the transition; it wasn't there before, and it won't be there anymore if you take it away. that is, in fact, one of the medical cases for doing it - it gives people better social skills, because they feel more comfortable in their outward presentations. that's one of the things about this that people tend to have a hard time with, because i guess i just come off as having a bit of a swagger sometimes (which is a misinterpretation of the reality).

the actual truth is that i'm actually completely asexual and completely disinterested in romance, and while i do understand that this maybe isn't always as clear as i assume it should be, that doesn't change the truth of it, and shouldn't affect how i'm behaving.

so, i'm talking to what i presume to be a cisfemale about alcohol/caffeine mixtures, mountain dew and rockstar vodka, and she gets bored and walks off when i point out that i don't watch tv, 'cause i guess that had something to do with her perspective on mountain dew. i have heard something about a boycott, but i actually haven't looked into it, and i don't know what it's really about. i don't think i've ever seen a mountain dew commercial, ever. i legitimately didn't ask for her name and don't know it, and don't even actually even care, but am happy to wish her a goodnight, regardless - i'm just about to get up and leave, myself; this is just stage one of a long weekend, for me. this kind of random conversation is something that happens at least a few times for me, every weekend, in detroit - it's nothing special, nothing unusual. but, i look up and there's a dude grinning ear-to-ear on the bench.

"i didn't want to interrupt the conversation, but...."

the implication is clear enough, but it's completely wrong, and as mentioned, i've been through it before. but, i grasp that it's a hard thing to get your head around - you don't see somebody that feels confident in a female identity and is just having a girl-to-girl conversation about beverages, you see a confident guy with an array of pick-up lines that seems to be working, and are impressed by it and feel the need to comment on it. and, maybe you're tickled by the irony of it, given that you might have it in the back of your mind that you'd like to fuck me. but, you're wrong, dammit. every time...

i'm always just looking to hang out, and i'm sorry if i come off as friendly, but you gotta adjust, 'cause i'm not going to tone it down.

anyways..

after i realized the nature of the last band, i decided that i'd finish my spiked lemonade and go ahead on to the club when it was down to a few sips, or mostly done. and, as it was, i was in the process of leaving relatively soon, when somebody handed me a 40 of vodka, and i think you want to imagine a morricone-esque voiceover here, dry and somewhat chapped, just because.

"i don't want it, man. take what you want. i'm done."

we weren't actually in the desert, and the sun wasn't actually beating down (although the weather was pleasant), and he didn't actually spit after he told me to take what i want, and he didn't actually stumble off into the distance, but that is all secondary to the 40 of vodka i've been handed and instructed to do as i will with.

my bottle of mountain dew - 710 ml, or 24 oz - was down to the last fifth or so, at that point. i didn't fill it up, exactly, but i did take a fair amount.

so, i ended up at the club a little bit later and a little bit drunker than i intended to. i am often accused of being drunk when i'm actually not; on saturday, such accusations would have had merit, although i don't actually recall hearing them, which perhaps merely stresses the point.

i remember asking somebody what time it was when i got in. it was 1:15. early enough..

and, i remember quickly buying several drinks. i broke a five, broke a ten, broke the five i got back from the ten and then handed over three crumpled 1's - i remember all of this. did the drum and bass set play late? it seemed that way...

then it's a little blurry. until....

"you can't sleep at the club".

so, i jumped up, checked my pockets. i didn't immediately remember opening my second pack of smokes, and i thought i had an extra three dollars. i felt ok, though. so, i bought another beer and went back to dancing. we're clear, memory-wise, from here until i got to the diner...

what happened? well, you tell me, right. but, i can deduce a few things.

i found my cigarette pack a little later in my other back pocket and was initially confused about it. it had been ripped open the wrong way (from the bottom of the pack) and was half missing, almost as though it got cut up for filter. i was initially kind of baffled by that, but i now actually remember lighting a few cigarettes backwards, taking a few tries to figure it out, and then making an adjustment around it. so, i very specifically recall taking smokes out of my back pocket and flipping them around before i lit them - five or ten times, at least. that's what would happen if you rip your pack open from the bottom. i guess i gave a bunch away, but i do recall smoking out of the pack, on second thought.

in fact, i remember the smell of burning filter, and remember stomping them out, as though they were defective, and the next one would be better, just to have the same thing happen. there must have been a stash of five-ten wasted cigarettes out there, lit from the filter, and otherwise unsmoked.

i actually have a habit of smoking cigarettes backwards when i'm drunk, and only do it when i'm drunk. that's an idiosyncratic giveaway. if you ever see me do this, you know i'm drunk...

i know i was out in the back area when i was pulling the smokes out of my pocket. i wasn't asking around, but that takes me pretty late in the morning.

so, i must have sat down around 5:00-5:30 and nodded off for a few minutes, before somebody woke me up.

as it is, i know i enjoyed dancing to the drum and bass set through the night and through the course of at least the first four beers. i remember thinking "the set is going to end soon", and then it not ending, and kind of putting off having that smoke until it did. the music was good, and the dancing was good, so i kept with it, and avoided going off for that smoke a little longer than i normally would have - a sign i was having fun. and, maybe, the more i think about it, the more i remember buying that fifth beer. maybe? i'm sure i did, anyways...

as mentioned, the sixth beer happened after the nod, and i was able to spend the last hours of the set dancing, as the sun came up - which is the actual point of this sordid exercise. whatever experience i had with that vodka and those cigarettes earlier, i do remember dancing at sunrise. so, i'd argue it was worth it.

of course, it's my fault. i poured it. i drank it. but, i can promise you i'll do the same thing next time, if you give me a 40 of vodka and tell me to have at it, and i don't feel any particular shame about it, either. hey, i don't pretend i'm responsible; i have no responsibility to be responsible. rather, the operative question is this: how often do you get handed a 40 by a stranger and told to go to town with it? so, shouldn't you take advantage of the situation, because it's rare? if it happens again, i'll do the same thing, but what are the chances, right?

the set was done a little early, and the weather was warmer than expected, so i'm outside at roughly 9:00 with some people i think i've partied with before, and they want to roll a joint, but need to get into a car, because they're tired, themselves. so, before i know it, i'm in the car with them. and they're driving....

the driver claims he knows an after hours spot. dude, it's 9:00. you were at the after hours spot. but, we're nonetheless off for a spin, to find an empty spot (of course), before heading back to the bar. but, the puff was well received, just right then.

the audio guys are finishing up, and i had to ask them for a smoke, because i was actually out (or had otherwise destroyed my own pack). so, i'm having a smoke outside the bar when it starts raining, and it passes fairly quick.

"you don't think you're coming back in?", he says. and, this is the only suggestion i received that i may have been a little wilder than i recall...

but, i didn't want to come back in.

"you were on edibles last weekend, you said?"

it was the week before, actually. but, did i tell him that? or did he read it?

well, maybe he can read this, too.

i got to the diner around 10:00, and we'll start a new review for sunday.

it should surprise nobody that i didn't get out of the house until after 16:20 and missed the 16:30 bus by minutes, realizing the inevitability of it only once i got to the bank machine. so, i uncharacteristically bought smokes and headed down to the bus station to drink an untouched, non-alcoholic mountain dew (i decided i should save the little bit of vodka in my bottle until saturday, and that i'd just get an extra beer or two in or near the venue once i got there, early - intending to get there early).

the box office closed at 17:00, you'll recall, so catching the 17:00 bus over would have meant relying on the hope that there was somebody there between 17:00 and 19:00. otherwise, i was going to have to wait for the symphony to start and i was going to miss the prog show...

worse, i found myself in dire need of a bowel movement a few minutes before 17:00. maybe you've been in this situation, where you have to choose between squirming around on the bus and missing it altogether; i reasoned that it might even make sense to miss it at this point (because my chances of catching somebody at the box office were dependent on them being open for the friday night show), so i ran to the tim's, and did in fact miss the bus when i got out. at this point, i was no longer going to catch an early beer, so i ran around the corner to get a couple of shots of jager instead...

when i finally got on to the bus at 17:30, it was uncharacteristically packed, or at least had more people than i'm used to seeing, which meant a lengthy wait through customs that was even further complicated by a distressed transport trailer that didn't want to listen to the border cops in getting around the corner. so, i didn't get on my way until 18:00...

i got to the dso something close to 18:30, and did in fact get my beethoven tickets for sunday at 15:00. fait accompli. so, i'm off to this downtown bar i haven't been to before to see the psych show...

it's in a basement, it turns out, which i wasn't expecting. the floors are fluorescent and appear to glow in the dark; there's an arcade off to one side. beer is on tap and in plastic cups, which i don't like, but cheap, which i do like. the venue is broadly similar in layout to the shelter down the street. i looked around, but there was nobody outside to start, so i caught sacri monti without the aid of cannabis.

i can't be sure exactly, i'm new to the band, but i think they played their new record pretty much from start to finish in the roughly 40 minutes that they were allotted, which is roughly the length of the record. this is a five piece, with a moog/keyboard player and two guitarists in addition to the rhythm section. i mentioned that there's a dramatic mick ronson influence, but this is just the first thing that jumped out at me - it's, overall, a fairly good survey through early 70s british glam and prog, with multiple references to other seminal acts like hawkwind, pink floyd, king crimson and some genesis, too. this kind of thing seems to continue to go over well in california for some reason; there are contemporary california acts like mammatus and eye (well, ok. eye broke up.) that operate well in this space, while acts from pretty much any other place in the world seem to fall flat on it. maybe it's the angle of the sunlight hitting the ocean. i dunno.

this is probably an acquired taste, but if it is then i acquired it in the womb; i'm native to this, it just makes sense to me. i asked around and people were lukewarm about it, which is technically wrong, but not particularly surprising. every single person at the show should have been blown away by this set. if you get a chance to see this, don't miss it.

the next band up was called maggot heart, and i didn't spend a lot of time with them before i came in; i checked their bandcamp site long enough to conclude it was a lot poppier than the other two acts, and kind of left it at that. structure wise, they were essentially a corporate-style pop-punk band, and not particularly exciting, but, whether it was due to the bill or as a consequence of some other thing, they decided to extend the tracks a little bit, at least on this night. the result was a corporate-style pop-punk band with a jam band feel, which one could argue is sort of what the smashing pumpkins were, although the song structures were far more compressed than anything the pumpkins ever did. but, it ended up being some kind of alt. rock in that space, whether on purpose or not.

the songs were really not exciting, but the jamming saved the set. the drummer was especially useful in saving it...

the thing is that i don't know if what i saw was characteristic of them or not. i suspect it wasn't; i suspect that on most nights, you're going to see a more generic corporate pop-punk kind of set, something like nirvana, maybe. if they do the same kind of set they did on this night, though, they're at least worth not skipping. but, it didn't really speak to me, much - it's not a style of music i spend much time with anymore, at my age.

earthless headlined the show relatively early, and while i think the band is overrated, i was stoned enough to enjoy the set. i mean, listen - on some level you can't go wrong with this. you've got a drummer. you've got a bassist. you've got distortion on the guitar. you've got loud amps. so long as you don't try and sing, you can't fuck it up, right? well, if the audience is inebriated enough, anyways...

my technical nitpicking of the sound as less complicated than others might assume, and consequently sort of pretentious, is valid and everything, but it's secondary to the experience of actually listening to loud, instrumental music while baked.

and, yes, they made me laugh a few times with a series of absurd cliches. they just needed their little stonehenge, and it would have been spinal tap. but, that's fine, if you have fun...

i'm not going to see a band like earthless every night, but it's fun once in a while, if the bill has something more substantive on it. so, that's fine.

and, i had fun. i said that, right? maybe you'll have fun seeing them, too...

just don't actually take them seriously. they can do that enough for everyone else.

i was out of the show not much later than 10:00 - this was an early night - so i hoped to get down to another place i'd never been to before, namely the pop off world arcade over top of the checkers, right around the corner from the tunnel, in order to catch a local synthesizer player do a free set. hey, it seemed worth a beer. he said he'd either start at 21:00 or 22:00; i guess he started closer to 21:00, because i only heard 5-10 minutes before he stopped, and it was just kind of generic vintage synth music. i hope this venue does more things along these lines, because a synth bar is kind of unheard of, but perhaps overdue. i just had the one beer, and i guess i was out of there by 22:30-23:00.

i made it back to phog fairly early, with the intent to catch the late show there, which i largely did....

the first band was called 'of the pack', which is a local band that i've seen on a lot of bills around town but haven't actually seen play. and, i could've sworn that they were a bro-ish hardcore act, but it turns out they weren't; they had a kind of reggae-ish feel, on top of a pop-punk crux. i asked, and they claimed they were never hardcore. what can i say? i was more caught off guard than anything else. they did a cover of 1979 that missed the slur, which is a good way to describe them; it wasn't terrible, but they wouldn't bring me back for more, either.

i wanted to see bike thiefs, which were actually a bit more hardcore than i expected. based on the sound samples, i was expecting something roughly sonic youth-ish, but it actually came off more like very, very early thermals, with the kind of ranted vocals over the noise punk song structures. i found myself nodding off a little near the end of the set, and it's less because i was drunk (i wasn't.) and more because the sound was kind of hypnotic; it's more that they got me in a bit of a trance. so, i don't want to say i was disappointed. that's not quite right. but, it wasn't quite what i expected, either. if i were to see them again, i'd get coffee instead of beer....

i spent the rest of the night at phog, right until last call, got trolled by the friday night bartender about the use value of alcohol vs the use value of soda, and we'll talk about that through tomorrow's review, and stumbled out with a smoke at the very last minute. where's the party? nothing at villain's, which i learned earlier in the night was having a dungeons and dragons night (no joke.), but there's a whole lot of people at the strip club across the way....

i think i've mentioned previously that i've never been in a strip club. i certainly am not very interested about going into one at this point; you'd probably have to pay me to sit through it. i'd probably start crying if somebody tried to give me a lap dance. the whole thing's just insane, to me - i can't understand how these things still exist, in this day and age. but, they're around and there's people at them....

i'm actually hoping to bum a smoke from somebody, actually, maybe chat a little. yeah, it's like 3:30 or something - that's not late, for me. so, there's this guy that's like arab or something, and he's talking about how he's a law student. there seems to be an undertone to the conversation that the way we talk about immigrants in this country is backwards - they're largely upper class, in canada, because we screen them to be. it's the white trash that's poor. he's kind of sick of the racist narrative, is what he's trying to get across, and i actually agree with the point. his father's a doctor, his mother's a nurse, and they didn't raise him to be religious. well, he's out at 3:30 smoking at a strip club, i guess not, right? but, he is rich, though - they raised him to be that.

and, i'm finishing my smoke and about to leave, when these angry guys come stumbling out, and they're giving this guy a hard time because of where he's from. they're not drunk - i'm drunk; they're coked out. and, i've seen this before, actually. they blame bar fights on alcohol, but it's often not alcohol that causes these fights. i've seen enough of them. these fights have two primary causes - girls and cocaine. i think we've probably got both, here.

listen - i'm not going to stand up for some bigoted muslim that wants to nail me to a fucking tree because of my clothing decisions if he gets into a fight with an equally bigoted white supremacist. let them slaughter each other - we're better off if they're both dead. but, i'm not going to let these white trash frat boys rip this atheists' balls off just because of his ethnicity, either. i know what side i'm on, and what side i'm willing to fight for, and it's the side of non-believers and atheists and secularists. and i don't fucking care where you're from, or where your parents are from. at all.

so, they're getting up in his face....

"if you really want to get with the red and white.."

really? i don't know exactly what that means, but it was pretty clearly confrontational. so, i stepped in between them and asked:

"hey hey hey. is that really necessary."

see, in a situation like that, i'm white. i'm not always white, and i'm not particularly white, but, in context, i'm white. and, so that worried them, and you could see it in their eyes.

but, they look away, and they keep running their mouths off.

"i said, is that necessary?"

it was enough of a break that the arab guy was able to slip away, and i followed not long after him.

so, i got home after 4:00, made some pasta and crashed at something like 7:00. day two coming up....

we started last week on friday night, and the primary intent was actually to go down early to get some beethoven tickets. everything else kind of developed out of this.

when i first looked at the weekend, i was mostly just turned off by the weather. sub ten degrees on friday night, and rain on saturday night? well, it's october - i might at least get out for a double matinee on sunday, though, with the 5th followed by the lpd. it also looked like i could maybe catch a late show at phog on friday night, if i could stand the weather.

i had a loose plan, though. there was a late party at marble on saturday, and a punk show at trumbullplex on the way there, so maybe i could essentially come down early and dance before the beethoven show, if i could convince myself that the punk show was worthwhile. it ended up working the other way around, when i realized the show at marble was a drum 'n' bass dj, which is rare in detroit; this then became the focus of the weekend.

so, i bought some tickets for the marble show on friday morning, only to initially find myself stonewalled by the dso. sold out? well, it's the fifth, i guess. after changing browsers (and operating systems), i did realize that there were still tickets, but i'd need a credit card to buy them online. i didn't want to wait until sunday morning, or even saturday night. could i get there on friday, then?

i had in fact been looking at a show on friday at a bar i hadn't been to before called delux fluxx, which is right downtown. for all the time i spend in detroit, i only ever really transit through the core. what was the last show i saw in the downtown core? not corktown, not midtown, not the eastern market, but right downtown? it might have been as far back as early 2017...crywolf at the shelter. i think. the only show i've seen at st. andrew's is swans, and the only other show i saw at the shelter is son lux. you might catch me dancing at a few after hours spots right in the core once in a while, but i otherwise am only downtown for as long as it takes to get out of it. there's just not much there for me, generally.

i had initially ruled the show out, because the headliner (earthless) didn't really grab me, on inspection. i'm generally looking for a level of abstraction that just wasn't really present in the sound, which was more of a cliched kind of throwback. neither the drumming nor the guitar playing seemed that impressive, and rumour had it they were starting to sing, too. ack. so, i had scratched that off, only to notice that the opening band was on teepee - and if somebody from teepee comes to your town, you should always at least check to see if they're any good or not. it turns out we've got a prog band here with a big early bowie or spiders/ronson feel to it. score.

still, i wasn't sure i was going to go until the ticket issue came up, at which point i decided i should go down early and do a few things in midtown. for example, maybe i could drop off some recycling at the depot, finally. it's piling up. but, oddly, the depot was closed on fridays, so i resolved to just go down early to get the tickets. according to google, the box closes at 17:00; if i catch the 15:00 bus, i should get there before 17:00 for sure....

yeah. i don't think i've seen lazer/wulf before.

i think i probably was doing research on either the fest they recently did in detroit or the fest they recently did in toronto.

this is the kind of thing i would have checked out at the trumbullplex back in december of last year, under normal circumstances.

hrmmn.

lazur/wulf + war on women is a good show, in itself. i wish it wasn't so far away....somebody tell them to split off and do their own show downtown....

this sounds like fun, though.

i've seen the name before, but i can't entirely place it. i may have even seen them before.

so, we've got two strong opening bands. that's a show, if the weather (and my health) allows for it.

https://retrofuturist.bandcamp.com/album/the-beast-of-left-and-right

so, this band is playing here on friday, and i have to admit i've never heard of them before. again: i was listening mostly to idm and post-rock at the time. i found the punk of the period to be pretty awful, and largely just tuned entirely out.

this is supposed to be their space-rock/post-metal/post-hardcore opus. is it any good?

it's pretty boring pop music, if you ask me. the singer is fucking terrible and largely unnecessary. they sound like they should be doing 80s rush covers or something. not punk; more prog. so, no, i wouldn't have liked it, if i'd have heard of it, and it's not surprising that i've never heard of it.

my interest in the show is actually related to one of the opening acts, war on women, but i'm not going to make it to ferndale to pay $25 for what is probably going to be a short set. tell war on women to play at the ufo or something. why are they opening for this shit? that doesn't make a lot of sense.

https://cavein.bandcamp.com/album/jupiter

it would actually be more like napster, which nobody remembers anymore.

you'd sign into the site and look for music, all of which would be independent. this music would be hosted on the computers of random people, like torrents are. you could then stream the music over the distributed network the same way you use spotify.

if you're an indie artist, you don't get paid by spotify, anyways. it's a waste of time. don't bother.

rather, the benefit of siphoning out a network for indie artists would be to get people out of the system and try to rebuild an underground. think of it more like tape trading...

somebody would have to police this, of course; you wouldn't want copyrighted music in the service, and people that want to share copyrighted music should just use torrents. but, i actually think this would be less difficult than you'd expect.

i wouldn't sign up for spotify, but i might sign up for something like this.

as it is, what we have is bandcamp, and the question as to whether it's sufficient or not is somewhat open.

that wasn't the essay i was looking for, was it? there might be an extended version of it somewhere, or i might be thinking of something else. it is nonetheless the basic truth, though, and i guess i have to extrapolate, myself.

that was what happened in the early 90s - independent labels started to compete with major labels. the precursor to this bernie sanders line about 1% of the wealth, which was maybe more relevant in understanding the way the world actually works, was that there were five major media companies that owned almost everything you consume. each one had a record label, before they tried to merge emi with warner, which was outrageous.

these independent labels mostly came out of the generalized punk scene in the late 70s (generalized punk would absorb industrial, techno and hip-hop - these things all happened around the same time and had very similar operating philosophies) and were built up over the 80s as an....alternative...to the mainstream music scene, which was obsessed with bad pop and worse metal. by the late 80s, the independent labels had begun to diversify in looking at art rock, prog, disco - the side of mainstream rock that wanted more artistic freedom, and less corporate oversight. so, people like peter gabriel (a big rock star, at the time, that did not come out of punk) and sting (a big rock star that sort of did) ended up on indie labels to get out. the result was that some of these indie labels started getting pretty big.

by the early 90s, the gen x kids alive at the time (i was a little young...) just basically all rejected the msm narrative, tout ensemble, which was maybe a little scary for some of the western oligarchs given what was happening in eastern europe. artists signed to major labels were all of a sudden unable to compete with artists signed to smaller labels.

so, the major labels did what you would expect them to do - they started buying out the smaller labels, one by one, and merging them together to form bigger ones, or dissolving them into the bigger ones. this process lasted roughly 15 years, from 1990-2005. it started with the big indies like geffen, but by the mid-90s they were just snapping up everything they could find. there was almost nothing left, by the end of it.

the entire concept of indie rock changed about 2005, and the buyouts were what was underlying it. in 1995, "indie rock" was still just synonymous with "artsy punk rock" and meant a band that sounded like sonic youth, or pavement. by 2005, the term had been co-opted and redeployed to refer to the kind of 80s pop music that indie rock was supposed to be the opposite of. that's not an accident; the genre was destroyed on purpose. meanwhile, the term "punk" got completely redefined to refer to the type of hair metal that was punk's antithesis in the mid 80s, by completely co-opting terms like "emo". this is no accident, either.

since then, we've been living in this backwards, co-opted reality, where we have fake indie labels run by majors and these words mean the opposite of what they're supposed to mean, and rather than push back on it, millennials have largely (not entirely, of course) bought right into it.

that means we're basically back to the same point we were in in 1975. we need the kids to take control of the means of production, somehow. and, by an accident of birth, all i can really do is stand back and watch.

i've ruled out joining a service like spotify; i don't want a better cut, i just don't want to use it at all. but, what if we could create a hybrid streaming/sharing model, where we share files like torrents but stream them like a streaming site? such a site would necessarily be free, and it could cut out the bourgeois layer. it would not be an end point, but it might be a start to get people out of the corporate system.

https://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/

i want to clear up a point, though - i'm actually not arguing that pop music was better in the past.

i mean, you don't think that bohemian rhapsody was a big hit in the 70s, do you? or that hendrix was actually popular?

the pop music of the 60s was truly awful, too - and the 70s were dominated by disco and soul. if anything, 80s pop was actually an improvement over 60s and 70s pop.

what's different today is not that the pop music is awful; that's always been true. what's different is that the underground scene has largely evaporated, that there isn't any non-commercial music being made any more. that's what i'm looking for, that's what i'm hoping the kids can bring back.

courtney love actually write a kind of an important essay on this in the 90s (or early 00s), where she explained the problem as basically being that the major labels just bought out the underground. they just showed up in their bmws and started writing checks, and when they were done everything had been dismantled. i guess this coincided with a generation reared on neo-liberalism, that lost the plot and just bought into it. the underground never really recovered....

it's really up the kids to start from scratch, at this point, and i'm rooting for them and hope that they do.

yeah, i could easily find 200 better records released over the last ten years than this.

the only overlap i can see in this list would be st vincent, bjork, julia holter and aphex twin. i would probably only put st vincent in my actual list, but i can at least see the arguments for these. the aphex record didn't hold up as well as his previous work, and while i found vulnicra to be a better record than anything else by bjork in years, it ultimately didn't get over a bridge in abstraction that her best material does - it's an emotionally draining record, but it's not that abstract of one. regarding julia holter, i would probably pick an earlier record, or perhaps a few of them.

there's a second tier that i could throw arca, julianna barwick, fka twigs, jlin, grouper, burial, tame impala, flying lotus, ema, radiohead, m83, tim hecker, emeralds, opn, fennesz, nicolas jaar and 4tet in. these are maybe best placed in a top 1000 list or something; i could find 200 better records than this, and 200 more important records than this, though, easily. of that list, though, i would pull out arca as representing the decade's artistic flavour, at least.

the rest of this is mostly trash.

https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-2010s/

let's hope that the kids can make america forward-thinking again over the next ten years.

the millennial generation has badly failed, in an artistic sense.

with the boomers dying, and gen x now almost entirely irrelevant, maybe it's time for some younger voices to try to break through the monotony of millennialism.

no pressure, kids. you need to breathe to create. but, a little hope, certainly.

i'm not going to do a best of the '10s list. if i did, it would have very little overlap with the pop music of the period.

the 2010s were not as awful as the 00s, but they weren't a whole lot better, either. the decade was largely defined by bad retro trends, and a broad lack of artistry. at least the 00s had some legacy acts; in the '10s, the boomers started dying off, and any remaining signals of interest coming from gen x almost entirely dried up, leaving this charred and bland millennial landscape that was just not interested in defining itself. this is a generation of kids that appear to have been taught that creating art is a process of emulation, so all they want to do is find ideas from the 70s or 80s and latch on to them.

the defining act of this decade, in the long run, may turn out to be son lux. the last record was a bit of a step down, but i can't think of much else that was forward-thinking and creative throughout the length of the entire decade. there were some other artists - like st. vincent, and perhaps myself, and i'm just scratching a surface, i can think this through if i had to....there was an awesome record by lingouf around 2011.... - that operated in the same broad space of intersecting electronic music with diverse instrumentation. that's perhaps the most interesting musical idea that came out of the last ten years, but it did so as a function of the technology becoming available and usable - it's neither a new idea, nor did it bring itself to any artistic conclusion. this should carry forwards. how will classical music intersect with technology in the 2020s? will we finally get the opuses that people like me have been imagining since stockhausen and kraftwerk and tangerine dream?

there was some interesting art-punk in the early part of the 00s that was a maturation of the previous decade and perhaps belongs more to it. still, you'd have to put these records in any list.

but, most of what you'll find in this decade that is interesting is interesting because it looked backwards, rather than because it looked forwards. if i'm looking forward to anything in the '20s, it's to start looking forwards again.

the decade was middling, at best. there was not the near absence of art that existed in the 00s, but there was a distinct deficit of it. don't let them convince you otherwise.

their lists are going to be awful, so get ready for that...

yeah, i'm doing this.

05/06: 
20:00-23:00 - prissy whip @ trumbullplex. $10
23:30-10:00 - marble show. $13.50 (if you get them soon, they've gone up twice).
11:00-13:00 - eat. $10
15:00-17:00 - beethoven's 5th @ dso. $15.
18:00-23:00 - post-rock show @ new dodge. $10.

that's a lighter night, actually - i'm starting off in the dance club, so i should have tons of energy.

i'll remind you that the last time i was at marble i'd already been out 24 hours before i got there, and i had those edibles, of unknown strength. even so, i wasn't drunk, so much as i was falling asleep.

i'm an empiricist. so, let's look at the data. for those that were eying me, is the following sequence of events not true?

- at a little after 2:00 am, before the vibert set started, i was out smoking in the back back near the portapotties, and somebody was like "vibert is playing", and i said "i want to finish my smoke", and then didn't actually finish it.
- during the set somebody mentioned that i looked "more than a little bit fucked up", which was no doubt true. i didn't have a mirror. i'll take them at their word. but o kept dancing.
- and i did try valiantly to dance, but i really was falling asleep.
- so, i went out back and enjoyed the ambient set, instead. and i did - it was a good set.
- several people gave me water, and i said no.

if i was black out drunk, or even just really shitfaced, i wouldn't have remembered any of that, would i? therefore, i actually wasn't that drunk. qed.

i was smashed. i don't deny it. but it was a lack of sleep combined with edibles. it wasn't the alcohol. i keep telling you i'm actually pretty good with the alcohol, and it's something else when i get spacey.

i should be back to my normal dancing self this week, and am actually going to be looking to make up for lost dancing during the vibert set.

aaaaactually, i have to admit i'd never heard of the dj at marble.

i assumed it was a local house dj; it turns out it's an older british drum 'n' bass dj, which is more my cup of tea.

hrmmn.

i slept much of the day, guess i had to.

i am done the concert run through.

i should for real get a start on the court stuff after i get something to eat, enough that i can make a few calls in the afternoon. 

this is tentative. and, for the rest of the month, there are actually a lot of cheap shows in the corktown area, which is nice beause it means i can get over for quick shows in the week. the problem this summer has been that everything is in hamtramck or ferndale, so everything requires an overnight. pulling this stuff back into downtown is a big deal, for me.

i'm going to listen to all of this stuff more carefully. final decisions will likely be strongly weather-dependant, but being able to get home is also a major factor. for some of this stuff, i could see myself leaving my bike at the tunnel, even.

oct
04:   <-----likely
19:00-21:45 - sacri monti/earthless @ deluxx fluxx. $15.
22:30-01:30 -  bike thiefs @ phog. $5-10.

05:  <------iffy. dependent on trumbullplex show.
20:00-23:00 - prissy whip @ trumbullplex $10.
23:30-10:00 - marble show $10.
11:00-13:00 - eat $10
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------   
06:     <-------------------------------likely
15:00-17:00 - beethoven's 5th @ dso. $15.
18:00-23:00 - post-rock show @ new dodge.  $10.

09:  <------------------highly unlikely
19:00-23:00: caravan palace @ garden theatre. $30.
23:30-02:00: ufo?

10:  <----------unlikely
19:00-23:00 trumbullplex

11:  <-----leaning towards likely
early: war on women @ loving touch
late: operator music band @ outer limits

12: <-----late show?
early: pleasure city @ ufo

13: <-------unlikely
early: meute @ el club
late: the bobby lees @ pj's

14:  <-----unlikely
goblin

now, i'm going to get an email from pharmakon telling me i offended her.

these kids sound like they came straight out of the dark ages....

and, this is an example of some harsh noise that i've written.

note the presence of a process. melodies. harmonies. etc.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/the-crash

does america need an enlightenment?

is that really what i'm learning, here?

in the end, pharmakon may come to terms with the reality that what she's basing her art around is nonsense and that she's actually just a loser - and that the fact that she's actually just a loser is probably genetic.

or, she might not.

most genetic combinations fail.

that's evolution: trial and error.

i'm not breeding any time soon, either. but i'm not confused about why, and i'm not under any illusions that i'm normal.

my parents made a bad decision, and i'm stuck living it out.

i'm an anarchist.

but, i'm not a nihilist.

and, i don't have time for nihilism.

scientifically speaking, this is basically garbage. it comes out of some kind of post-puritanical philosophical space that is entirely devoid of any concept of empiricism. it's what happens when a religious worldview does away with god and seeks to compensate for it somehow, and i guess there's a commonality with lingua ignota on that point. i guess if you're still grappling with these questions - which most of western civilization dealt with in the fucking enlightenment - then this kind of thing might make some sense to you. but, if you're coming at this from a fully atheistic slant then it just comes off as idiotic.

there's not an evolutionary biologist on the planet that would endorse this kind of thinking, and i'll leave it at that other than to assert the point relatively strongly - if you want to understand "human nature", if you want to pretend such a thing even exists at all, then you need to stop asking philosophers and start asking biologists. these are empirical questions that belong in the realm of science, not in the realm of religion or philosophy.

humans are primates. that means we're fundamentally co-operative, and that we have to be in order to prevent predation; we have to rely on each other to avoid getting eaten. so, if we're destructive, it's not due to our "nature" but due to the economic system we exist within. she might accidentally get that right, but that doesn't mean you should take her seriously when she argues that humans are inherently destructive creatures, because the science is pretty clear that we really aren't. we are actually the only species descended from our evolutionary common ancestor that has developed a concept of morality, and while the final biological understanding of morality is likely going to be that that it is altruistic, and therefore self-serving, that doesn't uphold the thesis that we are destructive, but rather contradicts it. we are collaborative, and we seek to build things together to maximize our own survival rates in a universe that is cold and destructive and without morals, because we have to to survive within it.

if you're insistent that you're hard-wired to self-destruct and cannibalize and destroy yourself, then the proper way to make sense of that is to conclude that you actually have broken genes at some point - that you're a genetic mutant that should be removed from the genome. you should probably just kill yourself...

...but the truth is probably closer to the reality that you're just so fucked up from your religious upbringing that you can barely understand what's happening a foot in front of your face. you may just be suffering from permanent, irreversible psychological damage as a consequence of your exposure to religion as a child.

so, take this terrible understanding of humans and separate it from us, and project it into the universe. we might not survive, in the end, but, we're still the protagonists, here - it is the universe around us that is horrible, not us.

what about the sound, though?

it's aimless. i like noise, but it has to actually go somewhere, has to do actually do something. this is pretty pointless, and pretty boring. she needs to learn to anchor herself in some kind of process if she wants to convert this into something compelling...

https://pharmakon.bandcamp.com/

it seems like a throwaway add-on to a metal show, but this sounds like fun. i'd check this out. i guess i still might, but tell them to play a punk show so i don't have to find something else to do for the rest of the night.....

http://citypleasure.bandcamp.com/

...but the weather...

single digits.

ack.

this is why i want to plan the whole month out, first.

but, this is the band opening for earthless and they're far more interesting to me.

hrmmn.

it's an early show. so, the way i'd do this is catch the opening band, stay for earthless until i get bored (or finish my beer) and then head back to windsor to catch a band from toronto called bike thiefs.

https://sacri-monti.bandcamp.com/

i'm not going to take the time to listen to this carefully, but i can immediately hear what she's doing with the overtones, because i've done things like this myself, albeit more in a mathematical or additive synthesis context than in the context of trying to reconstruct sounds heard in a domed or otherwise reverberated space. to be clear: she seems to be trying to orchestrate the feedback by notating it. it's nerdy, but not disinteresting - or at least not disinteresting through headphones, at home.

this is the kind of show that i'd like to see places like trinosophes schedule a little earlier, especially on a friday, so that i could catch it before heading out somewhere else. 23:00 isn't super late or anything, and it might work as a pre-show for a dance party, but i'd rather hit a rock show before a dance party. you hit the culture, then the rock show and then the dance party. so, a 17:00-20:00 show actually makes more sense, allowing you to catch the rock show from 21:00-00:00 and then hit the dance party as late as you can find it.

and, from trinosophes' perspective, it makes more sense, too, because you can catch people right after eating - or even sell them something to eat.

i'm planning on staying in windsor on this night, so it doesn't fit my schedule. but, i kind of wish that it did.

there's not a lot here to actually listen to, but you're supposed to listen to it carefully, i take it. the idea is to listen to the notes rub against each other, both in ways that sound 'right' and in ways that sound 'wrong'. will you get much out of it beyond the curiosity of it? see, i have a bloc here in trying to explain this, because i have a math degree, and i compose in this style; chances are, neither of these things apply to you, and you're just going to hear some blurry slabs of ambient noise.

like i say - it's perhaps better listened to at home, or as a stop on the way to somewhere else, if you want to do it socially.

https://sarahdavachi.bandcamp.com/album/gave-in-rest

"you've never heard of earthless?".

it's not a genre of music i'd normally pay much attention to. sorry.

but, they're playing down the street...

robin who?

i'm actually not familiar with this band; this is the first time i've ever heard of them.

bringing in the 70s aor vocal style, ala robin trower or eric clapton or something, is definitely not my cup of, err, tea. but, that's apparently not their normal style. they're normally instrumental, so i checked out the previous record...

this is just a collection of stale cliches strung together, with a bunch of bland, unimaginative guitar work pasted over top of it. i guess you'd have to call this grandpa rock at this point, because your dad probably wouldn't like it, either.

again: if you don't actually play guitar, you might be mightily impressed by all of the sound coming at you, but the reality is that it's exceedingly boxed in. there are rules to playing blues guitar that have to do with phrasing and notes, and the genius of the player comes out in how they break and bend and skirt around those rules. whether you're talking about a ridiculous, unserious player like hendrix or a stuffy, composer like robert fripp, it's always about the flair that comes with getting out of the box. this appears to make no attempt to do that - it's content to follow the rules to the letter, and more or less perfectly. the result is a record that sounds exactly the way it's supposed to sound, without creating any kind of musical tension, at all.

again: if you just want somebody to play messy pentatonic notes relatively fast (not too fast,though), this should do it for you. but, there's nothing else really to it and, as an abstract guitarist, i will forgive you for finding it boring - because it largely is.

i like the manic energy in the recording, but it's a little flat otherwise, and hard to get to hamtramck for on a thursday. they need to go next level with this, or they're going to be doing the retro circuit into perpetuity.

https://slovenly.bandcamp.com/album/priors-new-pleasure-lp

and, yes, i do listen to and even create music that is similar to bluetech's.

my ambient works vol 2 (so start at disc two in this double disc set) is in the direct same genre.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/ambient-works-vol-1-2

i've bumped into bluetech before and have never been very impressed by it. it reminds me a little bit of the fulber/leeb project, delerium, which released some strong records in the late 90s (specifically, semantic spaces), and had a few hits after that with sarah mclachlan singing on them, but it lacks the intensity and musical depth.

this album apparently made it to billboard, which is even harder to do now than it used to be, so he's doing something right, clearly. but, i've given it an honest listen and i'm getting the same feeling from it that i've always gotten from it - it's very "pretty" in a certain sense, but it lacks musical substance in the form of compelling harmonies or melodies. it just kinds of floats, without any actual purpose. now, i guess if you're just some e-tard that wants to look at the flashing lights, it might be good enough, but it doesn't hold up to actual musical scrutiny, and it never really has.

i don't know what he's really trying to do, here. is this supposed to be a jarre record? because it doesn't work well, on that level. is it supposed to be a deadmaus record? that's a little closer to the truth of it.

i'll take it over the mass of bland dubstep out there, don't get me wrong. but, i'm not sure the set's going to be much fun, unless you're on the kinds of drugs that i don't actually do.

so, i think he needs to focus a little less on the production and a little more on the writing. and, maybe he'll get there, in the end.

https://bluetech.bandcamp.com/album/sci-fi-lullabies