they told me it was going to snow.

i didn't realize...

i want to get out of the house. i'm feeling couped up. this might get kind of messy...

i don't want to reject the idea of simplifying jazz for the masses off hand, but this is just a little bit too stripped down for me.

also note the blatant floyd rips.

https://themattson2.bandcamp.com/album/paradise

it's been quite a while since i checked out kayo dot, and i'm really not at all interested in the direction they've taken. i was only ever a passive listener in the first place....

so, we can scratch that one off the list, for sure.

my dad would have liked some of this.

https://kayodot.bandcamp.com

i haven't turned the laptop back on yet. i've been dreading it. it should come up out of hibernation, but if it doesn't then i'll have to reimage.

let's hope that i can get the clean-up finished before i crash for a few hours this morning.

i am planning on hitting the grunge show tonight. the damage last night wasn't that bad, because i was able to use the balance on the debit card, and i just avoided buying beer. so, i didn't spend nearly what i said - it was $23 usd for the ticket, $10 usd at the 7/11 and $10 cdn for the bus. yes, it costs me $5 to cross the border and $5 to get back. and, yes, it adds up. it's still cheaper to live here, though.

essentially, my choice to avoid buying expensive beer at el club last night means i'm good to go for cheap beer at ufo tonight. yeah, i didn't set the fucking prices, don't look at me. if it was reasonable, i would have bought at least one..

i'm waiting until i can order last sunday before i do these february reviews all at once. but, there is still a lot of lingering concern regarding the fiasco at el club, with people worrying about crossing boycott lines. personally? i'm a free thinker, i'm not interested in being told what to do by the central committee on ethical consumption in late capitalism, and they can rule on the issue all they want, i don't give a fuck. but, i have to be honest - i didn't find the arguments i heard to be convincing.

and, you can browbeat me on it if you want, i don't really care. what i want is a convincing argument, not a demand that i follow your moral code, which i may or may not agree with.

but, i'll be equally clear that i wouldn't go to a place that i thought was actually horribly sexist or horribly racist. for a bastion of white supremacism, the bar seems to have a lot of black employees (they always did. it's detroit.) and seems to cater disproportionately to the black community. if there was a problem, they made a legitimate attempt to adjust to it.

that said, i don't go there on random nights, either, for the reason that they've largely exited my sphere of interest; this has largely not been much of an issue for me for the reason that the bar no longer caters to my tastes, anyways. so, i haven't been finding myself in this conflicted space, where i'm trying to figure out if i should go or not because i haven't had any interest in what they're booking, anyways.

the bar has a great sound system. it's not likely that random touring acts have any idea what happened, so i'm not going to tar them by association for something they don't know about, whatever the merits of it. so, if a band i like does play the space, i don't see any logical reason why i wouldn't go.

man or astroman formed in the early 90s and have been one of my favourite acts for a very long time. getting to see them was a kind of a bucket list thing. while the sound system at el club really is great, and the band does legitimately have substantive latin influences, i'll also acknowledge that it would have been a lot easier had they played the magic stick, or perhaps delux fluxx. but, for whatever reason, they didn't and i had to make a choice between missing out on a band i've been listening to for most of my life or an empty statement of solidarity with something that i'm not really convinced of the value of.

that's not a hard choice, for me.

i'm sorry if you find that upsetting, but i think you're wrong.

i think everybody wants the temperature to flip over early this year, as we've had crappy springs for a few years in a row. the solar signals are all on our side with that - it looks like we're in for an early spring and should expect to get overrun by tropical air pretty soon. we'll see. if it warms up, i might want to go out and play.

however, i've taken a quick run through the march listings, and i don't see anything obvious, outside of the control top show. what i do see are a lot of iffy shows, stuff i'm going to want to listen to before i make a choice.

that said, it's not a bad month in detroit if you're a fan of generic millennial indie rock. i'm not, though. i'm going to be leaning more towards the jazzier, punkier and more experimental options, as i sort through them. and, i may end up at the dso a few times, as well.

let's try to get this laptop back up and hope it works.