If you love something let it go, it was once said.

So I have this little 4x6 index card. It is my little sandbag dam against the overwhelming force of panic in the face of overstimulation. Every time I went into a record store, Pow! there were too many racks. All I could do was browse alphabetically. I had a majority of A- and B- bands in my collection for awhile. Every time I went to rent a movie, Augh! what was I looking for again? If only I could remember that review I read in The Reader... So I started a list. Over the course of the last several years (and new lists) it has not only saved me from the head-spinning oblivion of the too much, it has also saved an album or two from the obscurity of the overcrowded M- and T- racks as well as an early morning from the absolute silence of nothing new to listen to. You can only imagine my dismay when last week, I lost it on Alberta St. somewhere between Videorama and home. The panic of having to start over again mixed with something that should have probably felt like freedom, but more closely resembled nausea, swept over me. I called Videorama as soon as we got home, hoping against hope that they could not only locate the list, but would hold it for me without reading it. Imagine it! the naked soul of your worldly desires exposed before a video clerk that was like someone out of High Fidelity, helpful, but eh, a bit over-knowledgable, detached, intimidating. They hadn't seen it the clerk said, but if they found it, they would put it in the lost and found. Without looking at it? I added silently. I gave it up for lost and began to plot a new list, attempting to mentally recall all the items and reasons I had a written list in the first place.

We were Concordia Coffee House probably a week later playing speed Scrabble and drinking what tasted like melted chocolate when Rachel dropped the list in my lap. WTF!? It was on the counter next to the coffee station she said. Amazed to see my list again, I wondered that it hadn't yet been submitted to Found Magazine with some ridiculing comment and gazed at the items that had seemed so precious when lost, but now seemed so commonplace and pedestrian once back in my hands. What is the moral?

Show at the Hawthorne Wednesday

Have you ever heard Bedlam Massacre ? Neither have I. I think. Maybe I have. It's just so bassy and sloppy that I can't tell one song from another until the band stops to announce a new song title. And how could you go wrong with such big hits as Bathed in Blood, Let it Be Known, Off Limits, and Idle Disease? At one point the singer from the (now dissolved) band Inflkt shambled out on stage to do some back and forth screaming at the crowd. Rachel hated it. I laughed the whole time. This band was comically everything that amateur garage metal was. No timing, mismatched sense of style, neon green instrument here and there, indiscriminate sound, etc. Classic. The kind of band it would be fun to be in. The kind of band you could easily find in any small city.

Firewind
This is some band from Greece. They did some awesome songs. I didn't know any prior to this, but lessee, there was Fall to Pieces, Till the End of Time, and some very silly instrumental which I think they called the Firewind theme song. Love theme songs for bands. Except maybe the Unicorns. This singer sounded like Sammy Hagar channeling a rather mischievous Chris Cornell. Rachel gave this one the thumbs up, I felt like this was a lot like what seeing Soundgarden would have been like circa 1989. Um, if Soundgarden had two soloing guitarists and a keyboardist and double bass. nevermind.

Divine Heresy
Wow, is that guy fat. Of course he is, he's Dino Cazares from Fear Factory. He's allowed to be monstrous. Somehow he's put together this bizarre metal super-group including former members of Vital Remains and Nile, with prior involvement from members of Machinehead and Static-X. Does that make it good? No. The singer that could have been some sort of Henry Rollins, if you ever got Rollins really really, really angry, does. They sang some little ditties like Impossible is Nothing (ad slogan from somewhere?), Savior Self, This Threat is Real, and some song they were particularly proud of called Failed Creation; I think there is a video floating around of it somewhere on this inter-web thing. Note: I have never seen a drummer windmill before. Seems kind of dangerous doesn't it?

Dark Tranquillity
By the time this band came out on stage, there were maybe two hundred people left in the venue. Which is both a cool thing and also kind of sad. They probably won't come back with response like that. Singer Mikael Stanne reminded me of a lot of old Zepp shows I've seen films of. At least if Robert Plant screamed death metal at you. Equally intense and involving was bassist Michael Nicklasson, who seemed to know all the words and dared anyone in the audience implicitly not to know them as well and scream along. It was cool to know most of the songs, as they tended to come from the last two albums with a few of their elders thrown in to keep it interesting. The band played Terminus, The Lesser Faith, Inside the Particle Storm, Focus Shift, Icipher, and Misery's Crown from 2007's Fiction as well as Lost to Apathy, My Negation, and the ridiculous thrash closer The New Build from 2005's Character. Stanne was excited to find that quite a bit of the audience remembered "some of our older stuff" such as Damage Done and The Treason Wall, though the songs were released on 2002's Damage Done. I think Rachel really enjoyed this set. It was the high point of the evening for me. Now I want something to explode!

Worst Sound Ever

High on Fire
Totally missed this set due to the .75 mile long line in the parking lot. Seriously, longest line I've ever stood in (ever).

Job for a Cowboy
Job for a cookie monster growl + shriek does not equal dynamic shift. All double bass is a major problem in an auditorium made of unbaffled concrete. Enough said.

Children of Bodom
The sound guys from this point on seemed to be pretty impressed with themselves. They would come out and pretend not to notice the audience while playing some tired palm-mute riff on someone else's guitar. Tired of guitar techs doing this. Just do your job, quit posturing. Quit it. Children of Bodom had the best showing of all the bands in the line-up. Their set was short but not without time for a little humor from singer Alexi Laiho. Starting the set off with Sixpounder, immediately had the crowd circling in the pit and squeeze tight in the crush. Other favorites from the set included Bodom After Midnight, Angels Don't Kill and a bizarre sing-along to Journey's Don't Stop Believin'.

In Flames Upstaged by their own gigantic stage lighting, In Flames put on a well-intentioned set of mid-range to new music from their extensive catalogue. Opening with the Mtv-hit Cloud Connected, the band continued its bass-heavy thrashing about through several new and newer songs including The Quiet Place, Disconnected, and Take This Life. During this set, I had the unfortunate experience of being caught between two separate pits. Since momentum often carried people from one straight through me to the other, it would be more realistic to imagine a figure-8 shaped pit. Or maybe a Venn diagram. (perhaps Lee can tell me what the point between the two would be called, the overlap maybe?) I love In Flames, but I guess I really only love old In Flames from Lunar Strain through Jester Race to Whoracle and the only track featured from this era was JR's Graveland. Couple this disappointment with some sort of ballad near the end of the show, and you'd have my impression of the band's set as a whole.

Megadeth Wow, the sound was so bad during this set, I couldn't tell where one song left off and another started. This could also be due to sound guys with zero skill. Turn the drums down! Shit! The double bass was reverberating all over the walls. Keep in mind, the Salem Armory is an old basketball gym. Large and irregularly shaped and walled with concrete. I would disadvise anyone from seeing a show there that is expected to be louder than, say, Ottmar Liebert. Megadeth played a set of what could have been twelve, or could have been fourteen songs I didn't know including Washington is Next! and Burnt Ice, showcasing the dueling guitar skills of Chris Broderick and frontman and staple member Dave Mustaine before delving into more familiar and popular territory with Sweating Bullets, Symphony of Destruction, Trust, Peace Sells (But Who's Buying?), and the standard Megadeth closer/encore Holy Wars. Through the first two-thirds of the set, I was feeling pretty low, like this band I thought I knew some stuff from was going to play an epic set that I had never heard before with all this guitar wankery from this new guy that can only channel some soul to his playing when he's playing an old Marty Friedman solo. Fortunately, they covered some 90's radio fodder, which if you know me, you probably already know my feelings about.

Addendum
Last night we went to a show at the Roseland downtown and saw this new band, Baroness. Very impressed. Lots of long instrumental passages heavy on delay interspersed with some sweet hollering and enough heavy parts to keep me from shaking a stick. We stayed long enough to buy shirts and run into some guy I know from work before walking out on Coheed and Cambria, a band I've disliked for some time, possibly because the singer sounds like Dream Theater's James LaBrie, possibly for other reasons.
What I'm trying to say is, man, I paid $9.50 for this show, drove there in 20 minutes, saw one unknown band and had a heck of a better time than at a show where I paid $45, drove for an hour and a half, and knew at least half the songs from the bands. Live and learn. Or don't.

Opeth show last night

negligible opening band
This was a pretty metal looking band except for the auxiliary percussionist who was muscular, bald, and wearing a polo shirt. He was very into hitting tiny cymbals though. The band only showcased about 20 seconds of good-times headbanging while the rest sounded like some heavy Craig Chaquico (seriously just google him a minute for this to make sense). This is fine, but seriously, at a metal show!?

Between the Buried and Me
This band was proud to showcase lots of prog and they seemed to be big fans of "no-no" headbanging. The vocals were too quiet though and you could only hear yelling. Or maybe there was only yelling. I don't know. It was during this show that we were immediately behind the mosh pit, which is an extremely dangerous place to headbang, often leading to a succinct chiropractic adjustment, nearly free of charge if you didn't pay for your ticket.

Opeth
Amazing of course, Mikael Åkerfeldt is a funny guy. But pretty metal. The set list included songs from 6 different albums, with song lengths being such that only song made it from each (excluding the Damnation album). The set list follows:
Demon of the Fall from My Arms Your Hearse
unknown song - could be really old, but possibly just noise and being squished in the mosh pit kept me from recognizing it. By the time Opeth started, we had worked our way up to about 3 people from the front, which is to say about 2 feet. It was seriously like sardines. I haven't been in a crowd that tightly packed since high school punk shows in little gyms.
The Baying of the Hounds from Ghost Reveries
In My Time of Need from Damnation
Serenity Painted Death from Still Life
Wreath from Deliverance
To Rid the Disease from Damnation
Heir Apparent from Watershed (coming out in June)
The Drapery Falls from Blackwater Park

PS wear earplugs to shows, best 29 cents I have ever spent.

Eels show last night

Set list:
Roughly one hour presentation on Quantum Mechanics/Alternate Universes
- from BBC4 "Parallel Universes, Parallel Lives"
Grace Kelly Blues
Ugly Love
Strawberry Blonde
Packing Blankets
Fucker
Souljacker, Part I
Elizabeth on the Bathroom Floor
Dog's Life
My Beloved Monster
I Like Birds
I Need Some Sleep
The Sound of Fear
Last Stop: This Town
I Want to Protect You
Flyswatter (+)
Bus Stop Boxer
Novocaine For the Soul
Good Times, Bad Times
Somebody Loves You
Souljacker, Part II
-- Encore --
I'm Going to Stop Pretending That I Didn't Break Your Heart
-- Encore #2 --
Blinking Lights (For Me) 

This set list covered all 6 Eels releases as well as a soundtrack release, two rarity tracks and two tracks released only on singles, one before the band's inception. Which is of course a moot point since musicians on stage were vastly outnumbered by their instruments. Mark Oliver Everett or "E" moved from piano to guitar and occasionally to drums as on an extended jam at the end of Flyswatter and also on the only cover in the set, Led Zeppelin's Good Times, Bad Times. The only other musician on stage was jack-of-all-trades "The Chet" supposedly hailing from our very own Portland, OR. The Chet covered musical duties from drums to harmonium to lead guitar to mandolin to musical saw to piano to reading excerpts from E's autobiography. The show wouldn't have been complete without disembodied voices from the speakers, reading fan mail and concert reviews onstage, and the crowd wasn't disappointed. The show had been rumored to be acoustic only, but E's cycle of three Danelectro guitars quickly dispelled this thought. Early reports indicate a good time had by all (though for some reason, the only real crowd sing-along was I Like Birds)

the angry, the empty, the lonely, the
tricked.

we are all
museums of fear.


movies
by continuing to attend we make many of those
producers, directors, and actors
very rich.
they make millions of dollars, marry one another,
live in mansions, and once a year at the Academy Awards
they heap praise upon
themselves. All this causes them to believe that
they have actually done something important but
it's only the mindless public which watches and
swallows their tasteless pap, which makes
them rich, which turns some of them into so-
called legends, which then exaggerates their pitiful
talent.

fools turn other fools into idols

the people waste their lives and their minds
sitting in the dark

as more and more movies are made.

- charles bukowski 1992

Finally Got Around to It 24+ hour days for 2007

01-07-07 01-08-07 01-12-07 01-17-07 01-25-07 01-30-07 02-09-07 02-10-07 03-06-07 03-13-07 03-18-07 05-18-07 05-19-07 08-03-07 10-14-07 11-17-07 12-05-07 12-30-07	25 hours 27 hours 24 hours 26 hours 25 hours 24 hours 25 hours 32 hours 24 hours 25 hours 26 hours 24 hours 33 hours 26 hours 27 hours 27 hours 24 hours 27 hours	downtown + work work + the Office marathon reading + work work + downtown reading + work reading + work oil change + reading + work work + Mom + Demotte can't sleep + Threshold + dentist + Rachel Rachel + reading + work downtown + reading + work Rachel + work work + graduation + moving + dinner work + shopping work + church + lunch work + breakfast + realtor + stereo + groceries houses + work work + church
A mind of machines and metal.