Pinheads and Noise Pop

It's Noise Pop, all the time this week. Last night, I decided to skip the festival for the first time in days, and I actually dreamt that John Vanderslice was popping all around me.

Okay, not really. But it wouldn't have surprised me.


Tuesday at Mezzanine w/ Freedm:

Freedm is just another word for nothing left to lose, and, um, Doc Martens. Really, this '90s revival is getting out of hand. What's next, free flannel shirts at shows? At least Doc M brought along a free photo booth, which I took part with two loverly former editors from West Coast Performer.


David Cross: I couldn't hear him when he was MCing. He djed a very Three Kinds of Stupid set though - highlighted by "Jet Boy Jet Girl" - and came upstairs to stand next to me for about an hour while he chatted up some girl he'd met at All Tomorrow's Parties.

Extra Action Marching Band: This was one of their more sedate performances, which made me want to go see them tonight at Balazo Gallery, where they'd get really sweaty and freaky. They seem like old friends now, even though I don't know any of them. Remember that Thanksgiving dinner show where they zapped a turkey with one of those orb things? And the trapezee artists were all on mushrooms and suddenly Brent was holding hands with a strange woman? Good times.

Har Mar Superstar: He seems fatter from the balcony.

Tapes n Tapes: Don't recall, much at all.


Wednesday at Swedish Music Hall:

It still smells like cat pee, and $3 for a cup of hot chocolate mix with water is annoying, but what great acoustics!

Laura Gibson: Dynomite! Is it wussy if I say I had shivers several times? I did! I know I've ranted about her before, but she was just as fantastic live as on record. What a freaking voice! And she told little anecdotes in an adorably nervous way, and played that beat up guitar like it was a Stradivarius.

Etienne: When good he's real good; when bad he's real boring. Funnier than expected, tho, especially that song about the Brain that's a Bro.

Josh Ritter: I thought he was very talented and very un-San Francisco in that he didn't hide behind irony or floppy hair. But I'm not so into poetic songwriters who turn great phrases that mean nothing to me and maybe everything to him or maybe nothing to him but a pretty phrase. When he did a John Prine song, I thought, 'Yeah, that's the kind of songwriter I like.'


Tonight, maybe some NP happy hour action, but then off to Rickshaw for Club Loaded with German DJs and one of the dudes from Junior Senior. And tomorrow: the Spinto Band! Oh Mandy.

If you can't tell, I got a new computer with one of those cameras where you can distort the view. Chris came over and we tried it out. Here he looks like one of those knights that go "nih!" or a villian from Flash Gordon.