Concerts, Crowds and Serendipity (some band comes to town and i leave town and vice versa)

I was expecting to go to a lot of concerts in February. Back in December I was already writing down lists of which Toronto concerts I would attend. The list grew from one to two then five and then seven artists: The Decemberists, the Radio Dept., Cold War Kids (March), Yann Tiersen, Hey Rosetta!...and now I am going to none of them because I waited too long and the tickets are all but sold out. Other than the cost of the tickets, which are already an impedance since my income is not that great at this time, I'm asking why I hesitated to buy the tickets and that led into a question of what I expect from concerts.

My first concert was Apocalyptica and it was awesomeness! The crowd was easy-going, I had a great view, there were smoke machines, the band came out sitting on thrones, the opening act got booed off the stage, and the venue in general was good. My first concert set a high standard for what I expect from concerts.

Now that there's Youtube, I feel the value of concertgoing has gone downhill. I find that if I go to a concert that has not met my expectations from the get go, I zone out during the show and waste all my money. So what AM I expecting nowadays when I pay for and go to a concert? I think I'm longing for the serendipity that came with walking into venues without the expectations or anticipation. Maybe I'm expecting too much - the most memorable shows are theatrical and include confetti, props and backdrops. Most of the bands I see again and again interact with the crowd instead of just playing their set and going offstage as if the audience were not even there. The problem with Toronto shows, and I regret to say this because if there's one city that artists go to in Canada then it's here, is that the crowd can be a bit pretentious. And that absolutely ruins the spirit of comaraderie that I've come to expect from great concerts.

At best, music festivals offer a diverse array of good bands in a short amount of time and within a small geographic area. At worst they are a distraction and like film festivals, make you want to throw up.

Arab world

As an aside, what's happening in the Arab world is exciting - the protests in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and elsewhere. It's a really interesting time to be interested in the Arab world right now. Though the Jasmine Revolution is just starting, the only thing in my knowledge that I can relate it to is 1989. Just a couple of years back I learned that the protests that started in Leipzig led to the fall of the Berlin Wall, which led to chain reactions and the end of the Iron Curtain. I remembered listening to these historical events with some doubt, as just stories, as events which I had never lived through. I asked myself how, living in Canada where things move at a snail's pace and going through the motions of elections seem to be like picking different types of $hit off the same plate, revolutions can start and regimes can be toppled. Now there's proof! Living proof!

Tim Burton

Yesterday I went to the TIFF Lightbox theatre in downtown Toronto. As a movie aficionado, when this building opened and I was still in Ottawa I was really curious about it. Yesterday, I was underwhelmed. It's more a theatre than anything museum-like. And the building itself is quite ugly - glass, four floors, no real good spaces.

I also went to the theatre because of the Tim Burton exhibition the set up. The exhibition was initially in New York's MoMA. I've seen a lot of Tim Burton's films but I've never really been a fan of them. At all. Still, I'm interested in his characters and his wacky way of depicting characters. The exhibition had a few props from the films but most were drawings. Most of the sketches were character sketches - they didn't have a story to them and they were grouped together just because they were part of the same movie or project. The best drawings weren't even by him - it was his collaborators who fleshed out the scenarios in which Tim Burton's characters lived. He is hugely influenced by German Expressionism which I find good. If his style were complex but repetitive and vice versa it'd be okay, but his style if both repetitive and not complex. Stick-out hair, bent bodies, sharp angles or round faces over and over again. Okay, I get the point! Now put them into context! Same with the stories that were displayed - his stories are too simple and the words are too simple. Basically, there's no depth in his work. I don't know whether it is because of him or it's the curator's fault.

It was okay, I guess, but I'm saying that because I'm reluctant to part with my money right now and I paid money for this. In fact, I'd say I was a bit disappointed in the exhibition and I would not go again.

Speaking of being a film aficionado, I am doing a sort of pilgrimage to Hollywood in March.

life and debt

The title for this post is a mistake - I was typing it into the imdb search engine when my internet browser switched to this tab. But I think I'll keep it.

I've finished reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Spoilers lie ahead: well, well well. A lot of Scandinavian *shock value* entertainment that I've come across has something to do with incest and this is no exception. Ahem.

The thing I want to point out here is coffee. According to this, coffee is mentioned 92 times. The first thing the protagonist does in each scene is to make a pot of coffee, boil water for coffee, get asked for coffee, walk to get a coffee, wake up and smell the coffee, stay up for a coffee. Holy smackerals. Reminds me of the time I drank coffee every other day.

Here Come the Comedy Troupes

As a child I would go over to my grandmother/aunt's house on Saturdays and after eating dinner, we would watch TVB TV. I would get really bored as the shows on at that time were silly variety shows where slapstick humour was centrestage and where I didn't understand a lot of the humour. But then when we got home, I would stay up until 12 to watch MAD TV. After a while I came to dismiss most Saturday night Chinese tv up to today. Except last Saturday, I watched this show called "Fun With Liz and Gods". It was satirical. It was hilarious. There are three guys and they do sketches parodying many different types of pop culture things. It was probably because of the many references to Western culture that made it so accessible for me.

Then yesterday, Sunday, I watched Monty Python's Meaning of Life and that was also hilarious. I was laughing out loud and then my parents came downstairs towards the end of it and they probably thought nothing of it, or maybe even thought it was distasteful. Which makes me think that humour if culturally bound.

Top 10 "New" Artists of the Year

Ah, the joy of discovery. Do you know the feeling of newly discovering an older band, when everyone else has tired of them but you're so into their stuff? And then you look and it's like, "Oh, they've already got ___insert a ridiculous number here____ other albums!" So it's even better because you don't have to wait until their next album comes out to hear more of their music, yet it's all new to you. Wow, that's wordy.

Anyway, the following are a list of the top 10 bands or artists that I've discovered this year. In no particular order. Thanks goes out to FM4, hypemachine and UTNE Reader monthly music samplers because that's where I discovered most of these artists. Most of them put out a new album this year, so I guess that makes this list a "Top 10 Albums from 'New' Artists of 2010" too.


At first I thought this song was about missing somebody but then I listened more closely to the lyrics...


When I first heard this is was at work in Ottawa. I looked Lone Wolf up on Myspace and noticed that he was coming to Toronto for a show (not even - it was a support act). The show was on a Monday night. I left for Toronto for the weekend and watched the show on Monday, rushing to catch the midnight bus back to Ottawa for work on Tuesday morning at 7.




Yeah, the last two videos? You can tell that I love alt-rock with prominent drums.








I've only heard two songs from them so far but I really like her voice!






Crazy stuff. But I'm afraid their stuff is getting repetitive, as in, the beats are good, and I know it's supposed to be remixed, but they don't know how to end their songs...




Psych-e-de-lia!






This band's name is funny because I tried some capoeira for a while, and whenever I search for the band on a search engine I get some Japanese thing or the capoeira thing.

Okay. That's enough. That's way over ten, isn't it?

Boo for TV

So I had basically no television viewing time over the last few years, because a) I like to watch TV on TVs b) I didn't really get into the whole illegal streaming thing and c) For a while I didn't have internet. So over the last few years I've amassed a list of TV Shows that have gotten great reviews and that I was really really excited to watch. Over these past few months, I've tried to get into a lot of them and all I have to say is that I want those hours of my life back. So-called "great" shows are not that great. With one exception. So I won't listen to people for advice for TV shows now. I think I'll go back to sit-coms.

Show I tried to like but it turned out to be boring
Note: when I say try to like I mean I've watched at least 5 episodes
True Blood
The Wire
Mad Men

Shows that I've watched one episode of but I may or may not like
The Sopranos

New Shows that I love
Archer
The Office

Yup. Comedy it is for me.