08-06-2016: kubler-ross through time dilation

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

i guess it's actually welsh alt rock night here in windsor. ontario. we have a london, too. windsor is basically south detroit. no royal castles, here. except the old al capone mansion....

i go to lots of shows, right. but, a lot of it is stuff i'm just checking out, or have passively explored a couple of times. there's only been a small handful of shows i've been to this year that are bands i'd actively call myself a fan of.

- tortoise
- son lux
- melt banana
- ....& the joy formidable, early next week.

this is going to be the first time i've had the chance to really see them in a dedicated show format. so, i'm a little excited.

they have a new record, and it's plenty good, but this is probably the best starting point. i've been listening to all three of them over the last few days....

an unexpected new recording by the future of the left

this is unexpected, actually. i thought they were done.

wiping down the music facebook page

so, to be clear...

i've concluded that this site is completely useless. i'm going to wipe it down. completely. i will then slowly rebuild it here as a cv and elsewhere as a blog.

what that means is:

1) if you want to follow my recording journal writings, they will appear elsewhere. i will post the blog when i'm done wiping this page down.
2) if you *only* want to know when i've released new music, stay subscribed to this page. that's all that will appear here.
3) as i will need to wipe this page down entirely, because i cannot access the timeline directly, i will also need to reconstruct it. so, when i start posting here again, it will be a rapid reconstruction of 1996-2002 material, posted to the correct places on the timeline (so, that will also be from 2013 on).

on the longterm historical irrelevance of bob dylan

the honest truth is that i don't have an opinion of blonde on blonde because i've never found dylan to be historically interesting enough to bother listening to. of the '66 discs, i'll take revolver and freak out! over the rest of them. sorry.

but, even more accurate is that the historical path forwards to what i listen to doesn't really start until '67, and is actually mostly british. crimson. genesis. floyd. moody blues.

if i was in california in 1966, i wouldn't have been into the doors or the beach boys or any hippie garbage of the sort. i would have been into surf music, mostly. some early punk, no doubt. i probably would have preferred to be in detroit. and, i would have agreed with zappa that the hippie culture was basically the beginning of the collapse of western civilization.

so, don't expect happy retrospectives. that's not my culture. sorry.

plumbing update

the sink has been a little slow the whole time, but it began to slow down a bit more yesterday. we did get some rain, but it wasn't very much. the toilet is not currently clogged, but it is draining a little bit slowly. the sewers outside are a foot higher on marion than they are on cataraqui. i remain convinced that there is a substantial clog under the intersection that will recreate itself until it is removed.

i have been addressing the problem with water pressure - that is, i will fill the sink up to the very top and then let it drain. this is noticeably effective, but only temporarily.

while i am not requesting action at this point, i am taking note of the circumstances as was requested.

j

06-06-2016: day four of detox ends with the realization that facebook has broken it's timeline

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

this is the alter-reality youtube page. youtube comments from this profile will be musically related, and written from the perspective of it being 20 years ago.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXlH5Ds5mqClkdAUFJwQCNQ

yeah. i'll reconstruct this into a cv, like the main page. but, i'll move the journal to blogspot. it's just a question of facebook not having any useful functionality as a journal.

actually...

on second thought, it doesn't make any sense to use facebook at all if they're going to remove the timeline. it was the only thing i liked about it. but, it's going to take a long time for me to get all of the posts off of here. ugh. this site is fucking death.

um. i don't know what i'm doing. i'm going to want a public timeline somewhere or other. but, this page is going to get wiped down, and it's not going to be coming back. i'll probably just build my own at appspot.
for the alter-reality, it makes sense because it's coming in in real-time. but, the interface is just fucking trash. they bring in features, then they remove them. we have no control. it's just a garbage website...

i had a final burst of show activity last week, and then needed the weekend to detox. i was planning on being back at it today, and then with very serious intent tomorrow.

however, unfortunately, facebook has just removed the ability to jump to posts in the past, which is just more of a reason to stop using it. but, it means i'm going to have to strip the page down from the top down rather than the bottom up. so, that's going to set me back at least a few days. i suppose the benefit is that when i rebuild the page, it will be total. it'll be more organized...

in the mean time, i've uploaded some very old pictures of me to the alter-reality page.

https://www.facebook.com/inri-1719120681676528/photos

journeying to third man records, and then around the back way to ufo to see a couple of bands

this was actually somewhat of a long day at the end of a long month of too many shows, too much drinking and too much walking. by the end of it, i was dragging myself home to my couch, where my ankles gave out minutes before i passed out...

--

i'd never been to third man records before, but figured the free show was worth coming down early for. it was a combo thing. i probably wouldn't have gone to either set on their own.

i'm really not sure exactly what i was expecting; maybe, something like a chain store in a mall. i think i realized that it was going to be a little bit plastic. but, i wasn't expecting to be basically walking into the gap. well, they had a couch. with peppermint pillows. and a stage. with excellent sound. yet, it very much felt more like an apparel store than a record store - from the layout down to the staff. if they were going for authentic, they missed it by a very wide mark.

the sound in the store was incredible. i don't think i've ever heard an inside set sound that dynamic outside of a theatre; i don't know who he's got working there, but he knows how to separate the instruments. the drums had an open-air sound. the bass was kept out of the way out of the guitars. and, the result was a really excellently sounding set from a nice spot on the couch.

it turns out that the band got added to the second show, meaning i didn't have to come down there early. but, i don't feel it was a waste of time because i got introduced to the sound system in the building.

i hope that more people take advantage of the sound in the building.  i'm going to guess that capacity is around 100, which is not much smaller than any other rock bar in town.

i walked from third man to the ufo factory, which took me around an area of detroit i hadn't been in before. i actually mostly felt ok along the walk. i'm not sure why it is, but it seems like there's a really long strip between mlk and temple that is sketchy for miles both ways, while it's more or less fine on either side. it might have something to do with the way the highways intersect detroit, which creates these large areas of dead space. poor planning or purposeful sacrifice? i don't know. but, i'm starting to learn that it's mostly cosmetic, or at least is in the day.

it didn't stop a lot of strange looks, both friendly and concerned. i walked by a young black couple that seemed surprised to see a lily-white thing walk through there, but in a good way. i was a pleasant surprise. an older white woman actually slowed down and rolled down her window to ask if i was ok, before she sped off on to the highway, clearly frightened. i got honks from middle-aged black men, followed by fingers pointing in safe directions, and then head shakes. more concerned looks.

it was truly only a few blocks from third to trumble - a very short march up mlk. but, it demonstrated a cross-racial perception: i was insane to walk through there. at 6:30 at night. in broad daylight. whites and blacks agreed. men and women agreed. i can't claim i fully understand, but i *do* think i should take the hint and go around next time, whether i think it's necessary or not.

--

i got to the bar around 7:00. doors were at 9:00. while i nearly tried an artistic hot dog (raspberry sauce? hummus? peppermint?), i was feeling a little bloated from too many dorito-nachos and refrained. next time.

it was a bit of a wait out in the back, but i can't really complain. beautiful weather. cheap beer. ziggy stardust. life seemed good.

eventually, some people showed up and they brought me what i like. there's a public thank you to the scruffy dude in the golf shirt.

--

rabble rabble came on again, and the sound was nowhere near as good. but, i guess that made the set more real, too; they're not normally going to have a jack white funded sound stage to play on. what they're doing is a kind of an update on the concept of alternative rock, taking in bits of punk, psych and metal and swirling it around into something vaguely epic. the musicianship in the band is fairly high, which kind of takes it up a notch. definitely worth the $5.

the second band was a bit noisier than i was expecting, and there were some definite upsides. my solipsism senses went haywire when they did a cover of soundgarden's dusty, as it just came up in the alter-reality. it's only a wild coincidence, slothrop. see, the guitarist tended to get himself stuck in what cornell would call "guitar trances" when describing thayil, which is not inherently bad, it's just that he didn't have the chops to pull it off. there's two options, here: up your game, or tighten up. either is acceptable. but, it's a necessary choice. really. it wasn't at all bad, i wouldn't skip it, but it just dragged a little - and i like me my lengthy post-rock, too, you know that.

here is a full set:

i was already done by the time heron oblivion came on, and it consequently acted as somewhat of an anti-climax. the way i describe this in my day-after video review is that the band is walking a delicate line that the slightest push off balance is bound to instantly unravel. now, this band has two members of comets on fire in it (including the guitarist). it seems to me that he felt like he was getting mildly upstaged by the previous two bands, who both wanted to push their guitars in your face (with varying actual results). this mild push blew the entire thing up. but, what i'm getting across is that it was inherently unstable in the first place.

it's hard to take these loud psych guys and force them to behave while the drummer gets out these kind of delicate, fragile vocals. that's the draw to it - it feels like it's about to explode, but it doesn't. except that it actually did on this night...

the other thing i should point out is the song selection. in hindsight, it's not surprising that the picked the more upbeat tracks to perform. but, it's the darker and slower ones that are actually more compelling to listen to. i've been guilty of this repeatedly: i flip the filler with the substance. well, it's relative, right. but, i show up expecting them to perform what they think of as filler (and what i interpreted as substance), then get kind of bored with what they're calling substance (and i'm interpreting as filler). again, i think this goes back to the reality that this musical configuration is inherently unstable. a bad isotope. the sound of gamma decay.

hey, they got one record out, and that's probably more than should be expected. i think catching this band is going to be hit or miss - if you catch them on a good night, they could be mesmerizing. that wasn't this night, though. overall, it's probably worth the gamble.

i left a few minutes early to catch the bus, only to have the bus come in a half-hour late. see, i don’t want to complain, exactly. i just wish that the schedule was more clear. if i had known the bus was going to be a half-hour late, i would have stayed later…

when i did finally get home, i more or less collapsed. my ankles were not happy with me. at the end of it, i lost my train of thought in mid-sentence and just found myself knocked right out. at least i got some sleep.

here is the day's vlog:

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2016/06/02.html

thoroughly confused by lunch cult

i wasn't able to get footage of the show, and rather than present a narrative (which would not be very interesting), i've decided that it's better to just point out some of the things that confused me to the point where i avoided footage.

to begin with, i really wasn't expecting a keyboard player. the samples suggested that the band was operating roughly somewhere in the space of the pixies, with a bit of an odd sense of humour - think butthole surfers, maybe. there was no hint of keyboards, whatsoever. so, when they came on and started playing some kind of love song, i actually thought it was a different band and nearly went out for a smoke, instead. but, i found the drumming a little bit interesting, so i came back in.

i'm not sure why they played the set they did, but the drumming largely saved it. the drummer had a tendency to go into contextless temper tantrums, like a bad caricature of animal from the muppet show. see, here's the thing: i know my phil collins. well. even when the rest of the band was being ironic or stupid (there was a confluence of ironic into stupid, here), listening to the phil emulation was worthwhile.

otherwise, i wish i would have realized what i was going to see. i would not have paid customs and then brought booze to detroit to see what i actually saw, which was operating on some kind of level of satire in a way that summed to a gigantic waste of time. they did a few tracks that were recognizable, but most of the set was actually done in the form of a parody of a crooner band. the bulk of it was purposefully lame lyrics, sung purposefully out of key over purposefully bad music. you could have told me you were going to do that before hand, guys. i would have saved the cash for something else. jerks.

i would normally say something like "it's worth the $5.". i will very rarely dissuade somebody from seeing something i've taken the time to go to. by trying to be ironic, and just ending up being really stupid, lunch cult have earned my rare ire to the point of an active non-rec. save your money, don't go to the show.

that said, i have to point out that i didn't have a terrible time. i mean, i would not have gone to the show if i know what it was going to be - i've stated that twice now, and i want to be clear of it. but, i'm not easily confused, either, and they managed to spin me around pretty good. is this really them? do two of the bands have the same members? are they combining sets?

it was nothing like that: they were just taking the piss. and, piss taken. but with a consequence: not recommended. at all.

--

the other bands weren't particularly memorable. i barely recall what the beverly tenders sounded like, other than thinking it was a little better than i was expecting due to some thick guitar effects work. the last thing that came on was literally karaoke.

vlog for the day:

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2016/05/31.html

i've explained this in my vlogs, but it's a hard thing to find. i have reasons for posting this here.

i do not monetize show footage, nor do i include it in the vlogs. the reason is that it would give the copyright owner on the footage the ability to steal my vlog.

i think that people "out there" may be a little confused about youtube. youtube is not a system where people can post and make money from whatever they want. facebook video largely is exactly this. but, youtube is actually a very controlled system of content management.

here is one example. i was walking through detroit a few months ago, talking into my camera. i happened to walk by a bar that was playing a michael jackson song for a few seconds. understand that this is incidental audio - neither captured with intent, nor inserted consciously. it's not even "fair use"; i had no intention of even using it at all. it was just random background sound. however, sony was then able to take control of the entire half hour vlog and i had no ability to argue against it. i'm left to conclude that the same thing would happen if i recorded myself talking in a mall, a restaurant or anywhere else with background audio.

is that legal? of course not. but, there's no legal mechanism in place to have this discussion. the system is designed to benefit copyright owners at the expense of content creators, with no exceptions or caveats.

now, as it is, i don't really care about recording your band for the sake of recording your band. there will be some exceptions, but i go to a lot of shows and i'm only really deeply interested in a small fraction of it. rather, i'm recording a vlog. take yourself down a notch. it's not about you. it's about me.

but, what that means is that i have to abide by the rules - which not only do not allow me to monetize songs i didn't make (if i'd want to....but it's not what it's about...), but actually would give the artists i'm recording the ability to claim copyright over my entire vlog.

so, please be cognizant of the actual reality, here: in order to prevent record labels and other rentier capitalists from copyrighting my vlogs, i am required to separate performances out of my vlogs. not only am i not cashing in on their performances, but i need to take steps to prevent them from cashing in on my vlogging!

the system is unsustainable; it will have to be changed to take power away from copyright holders. but, for now, it is what it is.

nor do i claim copyright over material i do not own. should that be discovered, i would face punitive measures. the second picture demonstrates what happens when you upload something by an artist in a relationship with a large rentier: sony claimed ownership of the son lux video, whereas universal claimed ownership of the julia holter one.

02-06-2016: two shows in detroit and a hard crash at the end (last day out for a while)

show footage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pqebb8PH9ac

more footage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsorZklwtpY

review:
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2016/06/02.html

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

31-05-2016: thoroughly confused by lunch cult

review:
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2016/05/31.html

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

first time walking up the cass corridor on a nice night to see a math rock band at marble

the most exciting thing about the day was walking an hour up cass from rosa parks, and trying to time the length of the walk for future use. the weather was finally co-operating in throwing out a nice, hot, humid night. i've been here three years and this was really the first nice night walking through detroit.

palm was on first and they were most notable for being able to actually pull off what they put down on record, which was not obvious walking into the show. i remarked at some point during the night that this is the kind of band that exists for a few years, disappears with little notice and then gets discovered a few years later. you should probably see them the first time, while you have the chance.

here is a full set:

ought was on second, and i wasn't very impressed. i was expecting something generic, in the broad scope of the kind of fruity "indie rock" that has been popular for the last few years. a danceable beat, with some broken chords and some synth stabs. *yawn*. but, they ended up more schlocky than fluffy, navigating through that minimalist-guitars-with-gruff-vocalist post-punk space. it came off as a kind of vanity pick by ian ilavsky. check out new era building, compare and you'll see what i mean.

the walk back in the dark was really not bad at all. you can imagine that this big, collapsing city remains a little bit scary to this shy, polite canadian. but, i'm getting used to it. it was really mostly through campus. apologies to anti-gentrification activists, but it'll feel that much safer when they finish with the hockey arena. that couple of blocks between mlk and temple is really the only creepy part of the walk.

here is the vlog for the day:

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2016/05/26.html

27-05-2016: the final preparation steps for the final build of the aleph-0 disc.

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

unpublishing the bandcamp page

i've cleared this down to almost nothing (those three eps are second period eps and have prior downloads, so i can't set them to private.)

don't worry. it's just so i can organize the finalization process more cleanly. they will come up one by one. and, in fact, i'll post here when they do.

expect an average of one release/day until i catch up around the end of the summer, starting tomorrow. i'll lose a few days due to shows or groceries or whatever. that will push me through, one last time, from 1996 back to 2003, where i stopped last year. it will also let me generate the tree of the content for the alter-reality for the next eight years.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/

i've finally managed to circle myself back around to where i was about this time last year, which was finishing the aleph-0 disc. but i'm feeling that i need to throw myself back to the ground and carefully start from the beginning. that means i'm going to be posting absolutely final updates to the discography as they are completed. that should probably start tomorrow and continue forward for the next two-three months. when it's done, i'll finally be able to start working on the third period material (2003-2007).

starts rock band. cancels tour because he has to work.

so, i went to the trouble of ensuring i had both sufficient intoxicants and a colourful babydoll, and then the band i went to see decided not to show up.

"apparently, the drummer had to work."
"hey, it's a thing that happens."

(pause)

"he had to work?"
"yeah."

(pause)

ahahahahahaha....

ahahahahahahahaha....

--

i had already paid customs, so what would be the use of going home without getting drunk? the reviews will be terse, though.

--

this was the second time i've seen river spirit. last time, i suggested the rhythm section was kind of funky, but the singer wasn't really paying attention and the result was disjointed and discombobulated, but not in a good way. the suggestion was that maybe there's some divergence, there. on this night,  however, the band was actually pretty tight. she often took a step back from the mic to just rock out on the bass, instead. i don't know what changed between november and now, but it's just a more coherent and unified presentation.

--

nokomis were a pleasant, but generic, indie/post-rock thing. they were having fun. it wasn't bad, either. it was just entirely forgettable.

--

i didn't stay for much of the sax & violence set - the first fifteen minutes, or so. there was an electronic violin looking thing and a saxamophone of some variety. they took turns jamming aimlessly over some pre-programmed loops; they were really literally just fucking around. in theory, you could do something with that idea. but, see, you have to write some music first. by playing at the same time. i know. life is complicated.

here is the day's vlog:

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2016/05/23.html

26-05-2016: enjoying the hot summer walk back and forth from palm....then ranting

show footage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9rzmBOunoQ

review:
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2016/05/26.html

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

why not...

jessica
2 attachments — Scan and download all attachments
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cjammd
Hi Jessica,

Is this for the singles club compilation? Are you a Windsor-Detroit based artist?

jessica
yes and yes.

i dunno. i guess it's not really radio music in the traditional sense.

except it kinda is, too, in the fm radio sense.

yet another quick walk to phog and back to see another canadian band

i was planning on this show being an in and out on a holiday weekend in canada that you generally want to avoid cars, and really roads altogether, on. the ideal was to show up halfway through the local band's set in order to catch the math band....and maybe stay for the third set. instead, the math rock band played first and came on a little late, even by phog standards. i ended up catching the first two acts and skipping the third.

this was the second of three lengthy combinations; it happens to have been the least interesting of the three. you can hear plenty of evidence here that these are capable musicians that like to play acrobatic parts. so, why are they retreating into repetition for these long periods?

but, this is kind of a pointless critique, in some ways, too. i mean, there's more than enough going on, here. it's just that if you're accustomed to this hyper-adhd style of math rock, the reliance on repetition comes off as a crux. a faux pas, even.

but, i mean, listen for yourself and see what you think.

 

i wasn't really intending to stay for this set, but i decided i was feeling pretty relaxed and, hey, why not? the output surprised me quite a bit...

the impression i got from their bandcamp page was a kind of poppy post-punk, maybe with gazey leanings. i was expecting something fairly timid that i'd get bored of quite quickly. however, the actual show was fairly noisy and riff-oriented, and seemed to exist somewhere in that nice intersection of grunge and math rock that happened in the mid 90s. think polvo, for example. now, see, i suspect that they were playing mostly new material, or at least mostly material not accessible online, so there wasn't really any way to get a grasp of things ahead of time.

the drawback is that they seem to want to hold to a kind of traditional emo framework. in 2016, you only do this because you never really thought not to. it's just what you've always done, kind of thing. but, the genre is beyond dead, it's already been reincarnated as farce. there's nowhere to go with this. not even with kids, who are nowadays actually mostly going to interpret it as dad rock. they'll be better off if they can drop this. but, they'll probably have to redefine themselves to do it, and unknown bands tend not to survive such a thing.

but, the upshot is that they were legitimately tight and legitimately interesting. the bassist is unusually loud, given the genre, and it's a positive.

so, i guess the honest assessment is that while i wouldn't expect this precise configuration to go anywhere, this band may have the seeds of a successor project that is able to let go of the songwriting formulas they're accustomed to and expand a little more in that polvo-style direction.

dropping or muzzling the vocalist is going to be key in evolving the sound.

and here is the vlog for the day:

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2016/05/22.html

24-05-2016: first alter-reality blog post, a/c nightmare, organizing too many thoughts

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

there's a post up here, now. the other profiles will take some time to catch up - first music releases in september 1996/2016. it gets the point across...

http://therealinri.blogspot.com/1996/05/really-enjoying-new-soundgarden-record.html

first alter-reality post

May 22, 1996

 

really enjoying the new soundgarden record

i guess this is my new blog. wow.

i should be asleep, but it's a saturday night and my parents don't really force me to go to sleep. well, how can they, really? they need to sleep, too. fatalism is actually pretty rational, in context - it's an unresolvable problem. and i'm a bit of a hard-headed little punk rascal.

i just find that i only need a few hours of rest, not something crazy like eight hours. who sleeps that long? wow. i'm ok with four hours, really. so, what should i do for the rest of the night, then? toss darts at the wall? count sheep? lying in bed when you're really not tired is just simply being unproductive. if i'm going to be awake anyways, i'd rather stay up and read something, or listen to some music. i guess it's a good time to do some blogging, too.

i don't have internet access in my room, though, so i need to sneak into the spare computer room when i want to use the internet at night. i do have a computer in my room, but it only has windows 3.1 on it. i need windows 95 to use internet explorer. so, i probably won't be able to do this blog every night.

i've been up all night playing civ2 and listening to this new soundgarden cassette on my walkman. i skipped the afternoon class on tuesday (computer class, and i already know it all, anyways, so it's just a waste of time) to go down to the hmv at st. laurent to pick it up. i get a free bus pass from school, so i can go wherever i want in the city whenever i want, which is actually very liberating. much easier than bicycling. there's a music world at billings, too, but it's always over priced and under stocked. the hmv at st. laurent is only a few minutes up the transitway and always has what i want.

it's a little different than superunknown, a bit poppier, but it's still pretty good. parts of it remind me a lot of the beatles, and i really like the beatles a lot. parts of it are sort of weird, and i like that, too. i always like to hear things that i haven't heard before. i think i'd like to teach myself how to play some of these songs, too, but i'm wondering if maybe they're in weird tunings. i know soundgarden likes weird tunings. my ibanez has a locking bridge so i try to avoid weird tunings. maybe, i can figure out how to play them in normal tunings, anyways. when songs are in weird tunings, it's sometimes helpful to find tabs on the internet, because then i can figure out how to play it with normal tuning. sometimes, that means transposing the song up a key or two but it's all relative so it doesn't matter.

i've been playing civ2 ever since i got home last night. dad says i'm totally addicted, but it's a video game, not a drug, so i think that's a weird thing to say. but, i do sometimes play it all night, until the sun comes up and the dogs come running in and i have to pretend i'm sleeping. i like to change the civilizations i play with so that i can learn the names of the cities in different parts of the world. tonight, i am catherine the great of russia. i always liked to learn about geography, ever since i was very small. i knew all the capital cities in the whole world, almost!

i found a tab for burden in my hand, and it is actually in a weird tuning. i should try and convert it to normal tuning when i wake up tomorrow.

i should sneak back into my room now. shhh. 

http://therealinri.blogspot.com/1996/05/really-enjoying-new-soundgarden-record.html

23-05-2016: starts rock band. cancels tour because he has to work.

review:
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2016/05/23.html

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

j reacts to the ramifications of not being conditioned properly by tv brainwashing

somebody asked me about which saturday morning cartoons i used to watch as a kid last night, and i really drew a bank.

"my parents never had cable."

and, that's true. they didn't. but it's not really the reason - i wouldn't have watched them if i had cable, anyways. see, i do think i can actually draw larger conclusions about my individuality through my disengagement with popular culture so i think this is worth a bit of a rant.

the truth is that i used to sleep in on saturday mornings. the reason is that my parents were divorced and friday night was the time i spent with my dad. he'd often keep me up until well past midnight, even when i was very young. so, i would almost always be asleep on saturday mornings until close to noon.

i guess most parents want to put their kids to bed early on friday nights, so they can get a rest from their kids. for me, it was the opposite: i wasn't allowed to go to sleep.

so, rather than watch early morning cartoons on saturday, i always watched late night movies on fridays. and, i actually remember being isolated from the other kids because of it. they'd be talking about these cartoons, and i'd have no idea what they were talking about, so i'd just end up on the outside. had they seen the new tom hanks film? the star wars trilogy? and, the answer was they hadn't - they weren't allowed to, they wouldn't want to, they weren't able to follow...

so, i found myself unable to relate to the other kids at a pretty young age.

a pattern developed as i grew older. had i seen the new sitcom? no; i was reading a book. had i seen the new action series? i still didn't have cable. had i played the new video game? i didn't have a gaming console, and i didn't really want one - i preferred my guitar.

i've argued in the past that you could probably convert me into a normal dipshit by sitting me down and making me watch every episode of friends for a month, clockwork orange style. the reason is that the reason i'm not a normal dipshit is that i didn't watch every episode of friends. or any episode of friends. i don't know which one i am; i'm not even entirely sure which is which.

what that means is that i never got all the subtle capitalist brainwashing that they cram into television, and i've consequently never really had to reverse it. so, all the left-wing music and political commentary came at me as a tabula rasa; i didn't form myself by reacting against the status quo so much as i formed myself by not knowing what the status quo even was.

there's a lesson for parents. if you keep your kids off tv, they may end up with a higher kind of pure intelligence. but, the functional outcome of this may just end up being a life time of alienation and an inherent inability to understand how to conform.

forced brainwashing aside, i think i'm too far gone. i'm half way to my grave. i'm not worth the energy. and i kind of like myself who i am, anyways. but, in hindsight, i realize the longterm social disadvantages of not being able to relate to the people around me when i was very little and am aware that i'd be very different today had i actually watched those saturday cartoons like the other kids.

22-05-2016: baby labour & blessed at phog in windsor (and primary rants)

show footage:
baby labour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzOmLQGDptI
blessed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTt0ZeuSAZw

review:
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2016/05/22.html

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

season 7 (cropped)

season 7

exploring southwest detroit in the day and the night (to see chelsea wolfe)

stoked by fears of not getting in to see the show due to it selling out, whether conspiratorially worked up by the bar owners or not, i convinced myself of the need to transit to the show relatively early so that i could stop by a record shop on the way there. this, it seems, is somewhat of a useful trick to be put aside for reuse. but, it left me with the need to walk a good distance through an unknown part of detroit (in somewhat girly attire) and arrive at the venue at least an hour before doors.

the walk in was actually a lot less creepy than anticipated. it was ultimately just a fear of the unknown, but i need to assert myself - some apprehension is intelligent when walking through detroit alone. the thing is that huge amounts of the city are virtually empty, so there is literally nobody that is going to hear you yell. yes - nobody will hear your cries. let's not sing this song. see, i've mused before that this implies that wild animals are a more pressing concern than desperate people, but it remains true that the city is a kind of a predator's twisted wet dream, and this simply can't be forgotten. i will not apologize for being careful about where i'm walking and when and fuck you for criticizing me for it.

but, the truth is that the walk up bagley was of minimal concern. it seems that the area directly surrounding the railroad tracks has been left for dead. the abandoned twenty story office buildings would no doubt be useful to the homeless folk huddled around them, even as mere shelter from the rain, but there are barbed wire fences to prevent use. again: i found myself more frightened of the possibility that i was walking through coyote territory, and i truly probably was. but, this took up no more than a few blocks of a half hour walk, which was mostly through a pleasant commercial district populated by ethnic mexican businesses.

i got there eventually and tried to chill in the dog park across the way, hoping i'd bump into somebody with my favourite thing, but instead i found myself looking over my shoulder at pit bulls and dobermans left off their leash to sneak up upon me with intent. first i escaped the coyotes, and now this. is detroit run by shape-shifting canids? well, if the lizard people are truly so ubiquitous, they'd have to have evolved thermoregulation at some point, right? it might explain some things you could never get your head around. nor did i see a bar up the strip that i'd feel safe in, although there were plenty of ice cream stores. and, so, i ended up parked in the front of the venue for upwards of an hour and felt myself start to get slightly cold.

--

i found myself in the smoking section for most of the next two hours, floating from a to b and not really saying much of any value to anyone. but, i did eventually find what i wanted before the show started, and i have to acknowledge that it was more essential than i expected.

--

i had heard some chelsea wolfe years earlier; apokalypsis was in rotation for a little while over 2011 or 2012. i'm going to throw out a comparison i haven't seen before: it reminded me a little of jar of flies period alice in chains, but with a kind of impressionist swirl to it. then, i seem to have forgotten about her. it was less about rejection and more just about overlooking it. this is a thing that does happen when you're a music nerd, and there is really simply no way to avoid it without solving for the very hard problem of mortality.

so, when i saw she was playing here, my mind floated back to memories of that record. the next step was to explore some new material; i both found it surprising and interesting. i had picked up somewhere that she had swung a little more goth, but i wasn't expecting as strong of an embrace of electronics. it was compelling, though - i am a fan of the style from multiple different angles. i mean, i grew up listening to stuff like curve and garbage, not to mention skinny puppy and nine inch nails. while i didn't get a chance to really absorb the disc, i heard more than enough to convince me to attend in the handful of times that i streamed it leading up to the show.

i was surprised a second time by the set, which seemed to meet me halfway by pulling in quite a bit of a heavy grunge aesthetic. it was a return to alice in chains, but the heavy side. a bit of soundgarden, even; there's some swans in there, too. pj harvey. it’s all 90s. the press is going to want to name drop witch whatever, black this and doom that. but, i'm an old grunge kid. i knew what i was listening to. and i rather enjoyed it...

i found myself remembering some of the older tracks, too, which was nice.

the show was strong enough that i'm going to no doubt find myself exploring her last two records more carefully and in the process i may find that i was mentally overcompensating for the electronics at the expense of the guitars - that they were there all along, and i just didn't hear them. but, my immediate impression was that the show was brutal in a way that the record isn't and that may be a little surprising to some. it's ultimately just a mixing decision to make sure the guitars are loud enough and dirty enough to make the output fundamentally guitar-oriented, rather than fundamentally electronic. it's just not what i picked out when i was listening beforehand, rightly or wrongly.

so, i'm torn between suggesting that the live show is an improvement in sound over the record and wondering how i would have reacted to a more electronic set.

but, i will say that if you like the head cave then this is a good one.

here is a full set:

the walk back was a little bit scary, but i need to put it in the perspective of being unfamiliar with the walk. it was again the coyote patch that bothered me most, although it seemed at a few points that slow moving cars with their lights off were trailing me through the abandoned streets, with unknown motives and for unknown lengths. people wanted me to stop to talk to them; i didn't really want to do that. and, etc. but, i ultimately made it home without incident.

my apprehension about repeating that exact route is grounded, but i'm going to need to experiment to determine something more optimal. detours. bus schedules, maybe. or perhaps even just getting used to it....

here is the vlog for the day:

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2016/05/19.html

21-05-2016: organizing media release dates for the alter-reality

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

lastly, there will be a youtube account, but it will only post *samples* of songs rather than entire songs. i'm looking at one minute samples of pretty much every song. i will want to use this profile as a commenting perch, of course. i was going to re-use the dtk profile, but i've decided not to. see, what i've learned is that posting full tracks to youtube makes people think the music is free, and it simply can't be. the point is to push people to bandcamp. fuck streaming. i'll post it when i set it up tomorrow; i'm uploading right now and can't log out. but, this profile won't start working until september, either.

for right now, it's just the blogspot site that will be working.

i'm hitting a math rock show tomorrow night, but i'll be home relatively early and should be able to start realigning the three facebook pages with the period one disc and getting back to finalizing the inri material for good.

this is going to be the new facebook page, because people don't exist outside of facebook, so you need it, even if you hate it. but, it's just going to list links to bandcamp as they come up. all the actual writing will be at the blogspot page. it's really just an obligation.

https://www.facebook.com/inri-1719120681676528

this is going to be the new bandcamp space, which will build itself up from 1996-1999, starting in september 2016. so, it's going to take the full four years to get through this material. but, inri is just period one. i will start a new bandcamp page for deny everything (period 2.1) in the year 2020.

http://jnrj.bandcamp.com/

it turns out that blogger is giving me everything that i want, for now, in a fairly simple interface. all i wanted was a simple journal-style page without heavy scripting and with an rss feed. but, i was hoping i could find a site like this - livejournal or tumblr or something - that gives me what i want because it allows me to post in real time.

i do think that i'll eventually move this to an appspot site, but what that means is that i'll need to upload the whole site every time i make a post. the reality is that it's going to be a while before the site gets more complex, anyways, so this just makes more sense for the moment. i *did* try livejournal, but it looks like it wants to charge me, and i'm not paying. google is always good for free stuff, anyways. in time, i should be able to just copy and paste this page over. really.

so, this is the blog space for the alter-reality. facebook is just a shitty interface, so i'm trying to avoid it - and, actually, get the remaining data that's here off of it. that's going to mean wiping this page down to a cv-type skeleton. the blogspot page will be the most comprehensive thing to follow, the meta level page, where all the links to bandcamp and other comments will come up.

http://therealinri.blogspot.ca/

there's a lot of stuff on that record that doesn't sound much like soundgarden, but is actually extremely well put together. the record continues to get flak for being "unfocused", but that's always missed the point - the late 90s were really a final renaissance of expansive art rock, and the record really fits in perfectly along with other period classics like mcis, aenima and ok computer. i'd argue it's highly underrated, and arguably even their best record. the psychedelic sound that dominates the disc was picked up by cameron & shepherd in the wellwater conspiracy, which seems to suggest that it was actually the rhythm section that had taken over the band in it's twilight phase.

anyways. i'll get to this. but this is another underappreciated track from that disc that i used to listen to quite a bit.

i pull a pretty heavy ty cobb in the climax to the first section of this track:

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/to-spin-inside-dull-aberrations-2

if you're too young to know what i'm talking about:

my records going back to 1996 are not perfect, but, then again, i've been over this before: who has digital records from 1996? the oldest cd list i can find is from 2002. there are records in archives somewhere that are older than this...if i can find them...

but, here is what i can reconstruct.

now, note that this is going to necessarily be mildly revisionist, in the sense that i didn't buy every cd on the day it came out. some of it, i know i did - like the i mother earth disc, or the nin disc. but i didn't get into stuff like labradford or tortoise until 98 or 99. i can remember exactly when i got into labradford - i saw them open for gybe! on the slow riot tour, which was the spring of '99. tortoise is a little more blurry. i remember getting standards on the release date.

the point is that this is going to have to be approximate, whether i like it or not. although, there is a possibility that it could get very, very accurate starting about mid '97, if i can get to those archives.

i don't get online until mid '97 or so, and there's going to be a big gap over that period. i'm comfortable waiting until i get there before i start looking for usenet and listserv archives.

but, we can see where i'm going with this quite clearly. my first post is going to no doubt be about enjoying the new soundgarden record, down on the upside.

hard-headed, fuck you all.
just add it all
to the hot rod death toll.

that mandolin solo, though.

the page will be up soonish.

download  microscopic  1996  ep  jan 9, 1996
radiohead  street spirit  1996  single  jan 22, 1996
limblifter llimblifter  1996  lp  jan 23, 1996
stabbing westward  wither, blister, burn + peel  1996  lp  jan 23rd
the smashing pumpkins  1979  1996  ep  jan 26th
tortoise  millions now living will never die  1996  lp  jan 30
econoline crush  affliction  1996  lp  feb 20
skinny puppy  brap  1996  2xlp  feb 27
the process  1996  lp
charlie's family  1996  lp
gravity kills  gravity kills  1996  lp  mar 5
the smashing pumpkins  1979 mixes  1996  ep  mar 12th
stp  tiny music  1996  ep  mar 26
the tea party  alhambra  1996  ep  mar ?
the smashing pumpkins  tonight, tonight  1996  ep  apr 15
man or astroman?  experiment zero  1996  lp  april 16th
the smashing pumpkins  zero  1996  ep  apr 23
download  sidewinder  1996  ep  april 30, 1996
soundgarden  down on the upside  1996  lp  may 21

***********

download  the eyes of stanley pain  1996  lp  may 28th
nine inch nails  quake soundtrack  1996  lp  june 22
kmfdm  xtort  1996  lp  june 25th
sponge  wax ecstatic  1996  lp  july 2nd
i mother earth  scenery and fish  1996  lp  july 9th
ost  escape from l.a.  1996  lp  july 15
alice in chians  unplugged  1996  lp  july 30
various (charity)  sweet relief ii  1996  lp  aug 6
rhcp  coffee shop  1995  single  aug 12
white zombie  supersexy swingin' sounds  1996  lp  aug 15th
foetus  boil  1996  lp  aug 20
pearl jam  no code  1996  lp  aug 27th
rem  e-bow the letter  1996  ep  aug 27th
rem  new adventures in hifi  1996  lp  sept 9
the smashing pumpkins live at the corel centre in ottawa  sept 13
tool  aenima  1996  lp  sept 17
moby  animal rights  1996  lp  sept 23rd
weezer  pinkerton  1996  lp  sept 24
the tear garden  to be an angel blind, the crippled soul divide  1996  lp  oct 1
garbage  milk  1996  single  oct 7
korn  life is peachy  1996  lp  oct 15th
swans  soundtracks for the blind  1996  2xlp  oct 22
bjork  possibly maybe  1996  single  oct 28
garbage  #1 crush  1996  single  oct 29
aphex twin  rdj album  1996  lp  nov 4
james gorner / billy corgan  ransom  1996  lp  nov 5
the smashing pumpkins  33  1996  ep  nov 11
bowery electric  beat  1996  lp  nov 12
labradford  labradford  1996  lp  nov 12th
barenaked ladies  rock spectacle  1996  ep  nov 19, 1996
bush  razorblade suitcase  1996  lp  nov 19, 1996
our lady peace  superman's dead  1996  single  dec 16, 1996
the offspring  all i want  1996  single  dec 31, 1996

20-05-2016: consolidating archives (and ranting...)

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

i'm still running late on everything, but i should legitimately start building the alter-reality (as in, creating new profiles) either tonight or tomorrow.

i just need to reiterate: i can see the alter-reality, but the alter-reality cannot see me. and, i will be absolutely ruthless in mass blocking anybody that tries to fuck with this.

that said, there will not be large-scale interaction with the alter-reality, either, like there was previously. i'm spinning this off and letting it float on it's own. so, if you're interested in this, please follow it on it's own terms.

it is currently may 20, 1996 in the alter-reality. serious posting will start by july 1, 1996 - at the latest. the alter-reality will have it's own bandcamp, youtube, facebook and appspot spaces. it is those links that will be posted here by the end of the weekend, probably.

19-05-2016: exploring southwest detroit in the day and the night (to see chelsea wolfe)

show footage:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/kOp6AxyO6g8?list=PLrHImg7oLm2aa6hPQlp4A8E8FjYuYnm2t

review:
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2016/05/19.html

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

i was dreaming this morning. and, in case you're curious....

the truth is that i'm actually very content with the life that i live right now. it would be nice if disability could be a bit more, but i'm actually not complaining - there's really no point you could set it at where it wouldn't be nice if it were a bit more. i'm truly well fed and consider myself to have a very high quality of life.

so, if i were to do it all over again, what would i do? well, i'd be moving towards getting to where i am today faster, not trying to get to somewhere else. that may have meant applying for disability at a younger age. or, perhaps i may have focused on investment.

if i had the advantage of foresight, i would have probably studied finance and then not spent the time afterwards working but trying to rip people off on the various markets, until i could approximate the lifestyle i have now. it might mean $3000/month off dividends rather than $1000/month off government assistance. but, that actually doesn't really scale into a substantial difference. less walking, more cabs. more pizza, maybe? buying software instead of pirating it?

i just get the impression sometimes that people think i expected more out of myself. but, what that really means is that they weren't actually listening to what i was saying. i was never about winning the game; i was always about trying to get out of the obligation of having to play it. that's my conception of freedom: walking away.

seasons 001-006 (bd-1) [introducing myself]

06. trying to move forward, but just can't stay awake... (dvd 6)

18-05-2016: sorting through old email (ending season 6, starting the summer)

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

another short night out in windsor to see a distant canadian act stumbling through town

this was another show without a backstory; i left the house at 9:30 and was home by 12:30, not stopping anywhere or interacting with anybody in the process. the venue was actually at capacity for the show, due to the fact that a local band was having an ep release. i did not stay for the ep release. this was actually partly out of altruism; i was the last person they let in, and thought it would be more appropriate to let somebody in from outside that really wanted to be there. but, it was also partly due to disinterest, of course.

i was actually expecting basic nature to play first, but i did end up sitting through an opening set that was some kind of generic white blues. it's the kind of thing that a certain kind of aging white dude may identify with, but i didn't get much from it. it was neither as raw as the white stripes nor as jaded as the hip, and consequently didn't really excel at much of anything. but, it's actually the kind of empty drinking music that goes over well in this venue on off nights.

the basic nature set was quite strong, even if they lost most of the audience throughout it. i said most; they captured a subset, and kept it. i'm pointing this out because they played just a little too quietly to get their effect across. it's no doubt on some level a consequence of being nice polite young women from the western canadian tundra, and that's stated as more truth than empty stereotype, and there's even a certain aspect of their sound that kind of demands they play with a softer touch. yet, acknowledging this truth, there is also a part of what they do that needs a hefty roar of fuzz and reverb to cut through and drown out the chatter. perhaps they simply weren't used to playing in front of crowds. ok. but, the takeaway from the set is that you don't shush a bar, like they tried to - rather, you turn up and drown them out.

ignoring the volume issue, it was a solid set that accurately reflected the recorded material. other things to note include sporadic use of a saxophone player and a cover of a filter song (take a picture). i happen to have been a big fan of their previous record in high school (short bus), which was seen at the time as a nine inch nails side project, so that was a pleasant surprise.

it's worth the $5 if you like the style. they're not really doing anything novel, but they're colouring inside the lines far better than most neo-gaze acts that i've heard over the last few years.

here's a track from their set:

& here's the vlog for the day:

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2016/05/14.html

season 6

whatever

i enjoy pile, and have seen them a couple of times, but i couldn't really identify track names. this does sound familiar, put pile kind of have two settings - overdrive and alt country. so, the fact that it sounds familiar doesn't necessarily mean it's an old song. if somebody can correct me then do so, but i do believe it's a new track.

please see the comments for a review. this was a festival show and a long day for music, with around ten bands to review.

this was my path through the day:

scripps park:
Virginia Violet & The Rays (very end)
ambesaw  [this was chill]
Flowers Bloom [very end]
Devinition  [this was hilarious]
Blakdog  [this was a little face melting, i enjoyed this]
Bronze Mambas  [dude needs a fat strat]
Indigo Black [didn't stay long....]
martez (second half)
market [about half - and i did dance]
the errers [most, and enjoyed it]
pile

phog, in windsor:
bad channels
zones

==

so, i'm writing this review a week after the fact after hoping that a specific site would upload footage from the event that would help jog my memory a little. unfortunately, that site seems to have skipped out on precisely the shows that i attended, so i'm not going to have that resource.

full day shows like this can be a little daunting to narrate, and i was far from sober throughout the day. but, let's see what i can get out. remember: this is merely my experience of the day. ymmv regarding my opinions of the various sets.

--

i was late out of the door, and only really regret it on principle. i would have even been perfectly happy to just show up at 9:00 for pile. but, my logic was that a nice day in the park is worth experiencing - partially for inebriation purposes. so, i was planning to get there for 1:00, but slept in and didn't arrive until close to 5:00. in hindsight, both statements are true: (1) i didn't bring enough alcohol for the whole day and (2) i probably wouldn't have made it through the whole day, if i had.

--

the band that was playing when i got in to the park was virginia and the violet rays, which was a kind of a horn band. i only caught the last few minutes and wasn't really paying attention but it struck me as a literal throwback - a novelty act, really. they may have even been playing standards, or mildly altered standards.

i spent the first half hour or so walking around between the electronic tent [ambesaw] and the rock tent [gray bliss], looking specifically for a specific odour - which was eventually found near the electronic tent in the form of a target delivery apparatus of proportions rarely seen outside 4/20. see, i have to admit that i feel no shame in putting through requests for wealth redistribution when i see somebody with a quantity that could knock a horse over - and i exaggerate only mildly. that's a party platter, my friend - you can't have that all to yourself. you'll hurt yourself, even. i'm doing you a favour. so, we had a pleasant conversation about the quality and "treeishness" of our shared delicacy, while enjoying the act, before i got up to place my empty can in the recycle bin, and faded back into the rock tent for a while.

the music coming out of the electronic tent during my stay there was mostly instrumental hip-hop, of a mildly orchestral and slow motion nature. this is a sound that seems to be trending in hip-hop circles, although i can offer no expertise on the topic. it was legitimately a chill vibe, and a good soundtrack for the moment.

--

the band that was playing when i got back to the rock tent was flowers bloom, and i can in fact be seen transiting if you look at the top right of the following video (@1:15-1:30):

i only caught a few minutes of this act and simply don't have any defined memories of them.

--

i have much clearer memories of devinition, a white rapper that came on and just made me laugh very hard. it no doubt had something to do with my experience over at the electronic tent, but it was built on a legitimate level of accidental self-parody. see, he wasn't really sure if he wanted to be tough like eminem or if he wanted to hit some kind of a beyond cliched hallmark/disney moment. it was partly the juxtaposition that cracked me up, and partly the hokeyness of it, but i was really literally doubled over in uncontrollable fits for a substantial proportion of the set. the peak of hilarity ensued over the following line:

"life is not the same since you've been gone",

which was sung off-key over a sample of a plucked classical guitar that sounded something sort of like "it's a small world after all". i was actually still laughing well into the next set; every time i thought about, it set me off again. in fact, i'm still giggling as i type this up.

--

blakdog, clearly named after the zeppelin tune, were up next - and actually started while devinition was still speaking, indicating the set had gone a little long. i should point out that a part of the hilarity was that he seemed to have a substantial media presence filming and photographing him, although i can't find any of it at the moment.

they weren't doing anything particularly novel, and likely weren't aspiring to, either. however, i managed to find a sweet spot near the front of the stage where the distortion was perfectly saturated. my subsequent enjoyment of the set was really purely on terms of guitar tone geekery, combined with being pleasantly baked - a sweet fuzz pedal through a tube amp can do that to you, if you have ears that can pick it out.

while it may seem sort of trite, the fact is that this was the exact experience i was seeking for the afternoon - floored guitar effects coming at me at high volume, while in an inebriated state. this is when i'm most content. so, i dug the face melt - but only after i found the sweet spot, where the harmonics were appropriately fucked

--

at first, bronze mambas seemed to be carrying on the psych rock vibe, but it quickly became apparent that they just didn't have the roar that they needed. see, the guitarist kept jumping back and forth between a strat sound and a paul sound. the singer was doing some kind of cedric blixler thing, which made it a little more apparent where they were coming from with the latin vibe. but, he didn't seem to know if he wanted to be santana or page, frusciante or thayil. in some ways, that's fine - a little flexibility is a virtue. but, his guitar was set up solely for his strat sound, which just killed the bottom end when he needed it.

now, i need to be clear - his strat actually sounded outstanding, when he wanted it to sound like a strat. it's when he obviously wanted his strat to sound like a paul that the only thing that actually got through was a wall of high end static.

i had a talk with him after, because he really needs to address it if he wants to be taken seriously. like, immediately. he can't possibly go on like this. it's a travesty. what i wanted to get across was that the issue wasn't too much treble. i mean, his strat sounded great. it really did. what he needed was a way to get a thicker fuzz when it was required.

so, i strongly suggested that he look into a fat strat, and i hope he does. it could convert a band that obviously has quite a bit of potential out of a sound spectrum catastrophe and into the real thing.

in hindsight, there is a second option - get a second guitarist, and make sure that person is playing with thicker pickups. whatever it is, he needs to find a way to thicken his sound when he needs to without losing his nice strat tone when he needs it, too.

i found some footage of the set:

 

the next few acts at the rock stage were hip-hop acts, and so i found myself more attracted to the electronic stage - and managed to get in on a pass as it came around to me, once i got there. i was present for at least a few minutes of all the acts that came on next, on all the stages, but the only one i have any real memory of is market. i actually caught the start of market's set, and stayed for most of it. it was a largely ambient/idm set that found itself periodically building into more traditional techno - which allowed for the opportunity to dance. and, dance, i did. but, i must also acknowledge that the set is a little hazy. as with the distorted guitar harmonics, though, what one wants is a hazy electronic set.

i didn't bring a clock with me, and didn't think the event was on time, anyways. so, i had to go back a few times to make sure i wasn't missing pile - which is why i caught bits of everything. i do think the electronic set was mostly on time, so the fact that i was able to catch most of market's set meant i was back at the rock tent very close to 9:00, to catch most of the 8:30 act.

i couldn't find footage, but market does have a bandcamp site:
https://marketdetroit.bandcamp.com/

--

so, i caught most of the erers, who were sufficiently raucous at the time to be enjoyable, but, overall, a little boneheaded for my tastes. i've been over this before with some other acts: it was a nice head cave, but it kind of only works in that precise context. and, frankly, *in* that context it doesn't even matter what you're playing - it's just all about the guitar tone.

i did enjoy it, but what i was thinking through the whole set was that i was really mostly hanging around so i didn't miss the start of the pile set. the other thing i remember about the set was that it was starting to get kind of cold out....

a good part of their set is up here:

pile were what they have been every other time i've seen them - loud, obnoxious and kind of ironically stupid, in a pretty smart way. that's pile. and, i got what i came for.

unfortunately, the set lost a few minutes due to a blackout, which i pick up in the vlog. besides that misstep, it was about what one expects from pile. which is what is actually in the video....

here is a full set from pile:

i wasn't sure if i was going to stay for the idiot kids or not; i figured that if somebody cancelled and things got pushed up then i probably would but was largely planning on skipping them. you also never know what the atmosphere is going to be like when you hit a show like this, or how long you want to stay. i could have been convinced to stay until midnight, if it felt right. it was clear on this night that the place was clearing out. and, while i hadn't brought a clock, i knew it was later than 9:30 (it was actually after 10:00). the real driver, though, was that i was just starting to get a little bit cold.

i warmed up as i was moving, but i do think i made the right choice to leave a little early. i didn't hear anything really interesting on their bandcamp, and the footage i tracked down wasn't particularly compelling.

the event organizers had an after party lined up on the other side of downtown, but i was more interested in catching the bus over early enough to get to a sort of a psychedelic/coldwave show in windsor. the optimistic plan was that if i could get out right at 9:30, i could be back in windsor by 10:30 and probably catch all three bands. as it happened, i got to the bus stop at about 10:45 and into phog around 11:30.

--

the bands that were playing at phog were called zones & bad channels, but i have to admit that i have no clear recollection of either of them - or which order they played in. i was actually mostly hoping to catch the first act, learning, and seem to have read the bill backwards, expecting them to play last (or maybe my logic centers were just broken that night - it does happen). what i remember about the show is consequently actually sitting and waiting for a band that had finished their set before i got there. that's ok - they're local, i'll get another chance.

i do recall that one of the bands had a guitarist and seemed to be having fun jamming over a sequencer; i remember thinking it was a little repetitive at points, and wasn't really accomplishing anything. i think this was "zones". the other band was more interesting, as it featured a live vocalist and a bit of an industrial/goth kind of feel to it [maybe the kids want to use terms that end with house or wave. whatever.]. they did quite the cover of frozen, by madonna, actually. could have and probably should have been a bit spookier, though. i think this was "bad channels".

--

i was surprisingly awake when i hit the 7/11 to get some doritos for some nachos, if not really particularly sober. i suppose that's the combined effect of caffeine, guarana, alcohol, nicotine and thc. see, here's the thing: it's actually exactly where you want to be after ten hours of drinking and smoking various things. significantly damaged, but absolutely wired. the other option is passing out when you get home, and that always sucks as you end up wasting half your intoxicants. it's the caffeine that's key. i do highly recommend ensuring you remain caffeinated when you're drinking. it's a lot more fun.

i finished the night off by watching a stiglitz lecture, and greatly enjoying the clarity of his logic. krugman does make some good points about how the most sparkling logic is not always upheld by the data, but i wasn't having any of that at the moment - i was just enjoying the clarity of thought in the dismantling of classical assumptions.

here is the vlog for the day:

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2016/05/07.html

14-05-2016: taking time between unwanted naps to see basic nature in windsor

concert footage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmTDg-hSLHA

review:
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2016/05/14.html

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

i seem to be getting lots of likes on j^2.

the last few days have been weird. but i do plan on getting something done today.

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10153219866957114&id=41134747113

a quick walk to phog and back to see an indie rock band from calgary

i really do not have a review for this show; it was an 11:00 show and i was only really out of the house between 10:30 and 12:00.

i will say that they played some new material and it is a continuation of their previous record, rather than a repudiation of it. i will also say that what i captured is a b-side that is a little more radio-friendly than their record, which leans more towards a late 90s radiohead sound.

it's worth the $5, if you get the chance. the bar seemed to like it, anyways.

here is the set:

here is the vlog for the day:

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2016/05/10.html

10-05-2016: boreal sons, west virginia & an unexpected early crash

concert footage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfGU586YyVY

review:
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2016/05/10.html

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1