Hulk Smash box office competition!

Tomorrow's the Hulk ladies and gents...hurrah hurrah! Sorry for the lack of posts today, I was busy with some stuff.

Tomorrow we will start fresh, I promise.

Insert Witty Title Here

I have a friend who loves Taking Back Sunday. Needless to say, he has no knowledge that this poll exists. Oh wait, I gave him a link to this blog once...maybe he does know! Well, anyway, vote for Hey Mercedes.

Vote Hey Mercedes

Yes, do what Brock says! The other bands pretty much suck; take my word for it if you don't already know. Taking Back Sunday is a pretty popular band on there, however. The masses of teenie bopper pop-punks may overtake us. Please, nooooo!

Hulk getting good reviews. Hulk happy.

Mission: do what Brock says

Ok Eyes Like Static fans (both of you), I've got a mission for ya. You see, there's this AMP Band Brawl going on, and in this brawl several bands go head to head to win a chance to have their own music video recorded free of charge. One of the groups entered in this contest is Hey Mercedes. (They are in the link on your right, under the Wire) I want you to go to the Brawl site and vote for Mercedes so they can get a free music video. Hey Mercedes has never done a music video before, and I think if they got the chance, it'd be great. All of their Vargrant friends have music videos...Saves the Day, Reggie and the Full Effect, the Get Up Kids, Face to Face...let's let Bob Nanna and his crew to take a crack at it.

In other news, looks like Gabe and I are going tour crazy over the Radiohead news. Hopefully, we'll both get a chance to see them in California, and maybe Gabe will get to see them in his home state of Colorado. It also seems that The Casket Lottery is going to be playing in California in July, so it's a given that we'll be going there as well. Unfortunately it looks like I'll be missing the Reggie and the Full Effect show here in Phoenix due to me being out of town. Oh well...between The Casket Lottery and Radiohead, I'm happy.

I can't wait to see the free shirt Gabe got from Nathan; it sounds like they had an awesome time in Chicago. I agree with the fact that Nathan is a great guitarist...I think that often goes unnoticed. Speaking of Rocky Votolato, I'm really into the song that Gabe stuck on that mix CD. I'll have to shell out some cash for some of Rocky's albums.

Well, that's all from me for today. Remember to vote in the band brawl kiddies!

-Brock

Gracious

Good restaurant review Gabe! It sounds tasty...

Beckah is over here hanging out, she says your posts are too long. Heh heh.

Intensity

Well, I made it back alive from Chicago, the “Windy City!” The hotel I stayed at had a computer with Internet access, but it was $15.00 for an hour or $5.00 for 15 minutes. Screw that! So I had to wait until I got back to blog.

First of all, good review on Hail to the Thief by Brock. Maybe mine should be something to the affect of: “what Brock said.” No, I’ll post a little something.

Let me start off on my post of Chicago with a restaurant review. The place – Sal & Carvao. This was a random pick from the local area guide that’s placed in hotel rooms. It was described as a “Brazilian Steakhouse”. That alone perked my curiosity. They have a fixed price for dining, then there’s drinks and dessert. It was meat heaven! You get a salad bar that is loaded with many different vegetables, including a few that may have been native to Brazil (all I know is that I’ve never seen them before). The place slow cooks fourteen different meats on skewers, all flavored with delicious spices. Each diner gets a coin with a green and red side. You flip it to green when you’re ready to gorge and to red when you need a break. Waiters dressed in authentic Brazilian garb come around with meat and carve it right on the table. I’m guessing I had twelve of the fourteen meats they had! My favorite was the garlic steak – tender, juicy, and full of flavor! I ate until I was ready to burst. You have to at $38 a plate. I guess that’s the only restaurant, so if you want to go, you’ll have to make a trip to Chicago.

The next day we visited the downtown area. What a cool city! We did the Sears Tower, going up the 103rd floor! I took some pictures from there. If they come out, I’ll post them.

Saturday night was the Small Brown Bike/Casket Lottery show. First off was Charlevoix, whom we happened to see here in Phoenix when Brock and I saw Small Brown Bike here. Then Rocky Votolato went on. He’s good friends with The Casket Lottery and also opened for them when we saw TCL here in Phoenix. He did a very good set, despite being very tired from having just flown in from L.A.

The Casket Lottery did an awesome set also, though it was a bit short. They did a new song, which sounds very awesome, and a couple classics. They seemed very into it and sounded the best I’ve heard them. I think they play too loud, though, as it gets very distorted at times. When they were doing quiet parts, you could hear how good of a guitarist Nathan is. They also played a couple from the SBB/TCL EP on their own.

Small Brown Bike was intense. The crowd was big and energetic for both bands. It was nice to finally be part of a crowd like that. Phoenix is lame in that category, though they did have a decent crowd size for SBB. They also played a song from the EP and then did “Wrong Hometown” with Nathan and Stacey from TCL. The crowd loved it! Nathan had that nervous look – “I hope I don’t screw up the lyrics because I haven’t sung in it in a while.” He did mess up a bit on the last line but no one noticed and all was happy.

I spoke with Nathan before the show and he was ultra-impressed that my wife and I came all the way up from Phoenix to see them. So much so that he gave us both free shirts! We tried to pay for them (knowing they don’t make much money) but he wouldn’t have it. Also, apparently they were going to do “Under Pressure” with SBB but SBB arrived too late for them to practice it. Dang nabit!! Oh, well.

I think this post got too long. I taped the show and think it came out good. Perhaps I’ll post an mp3 or two from it. It was also cool to be at the The Fireside Bowl, knowing Braid had played many a show there, including one of their last. A piece of history.

Woo hoo!

Radiohead just confirmed more American tour dates, and they're hitting California...several times over. I'm going, for sure.

woo hoo!

To myself

Looks like we've got the blog to ourselves until Sunday...we'll have to make the most of it. *Lights the carpet on fire*

Ok, maybe not that far...

So that was my massive, big, drawn-out Radiohead review. Actually, I'm quite proud of myself. I usually write 5 or 7 pages.

Today was pretty good. I watched the Blur video "Coffee and TV", visited the comic shop and posted my review. Also, I saw Radiohead's plans for the first month of their United States tour in August. I won't be able to go to the other dates, but I'm strongly considering the 28th in Seattle. It'd be cool if I could wrangle someone in on it, but we'll see. The thing is, that's just the August dates. Who knows what they'll do in September? Perhaps Cali, maybe even Zona. At the same time, if I miss out on the Seattle date, I could miss out on my chance to see them. Choices, choices. At least I've got two weeks to decide before tickets go on sale.

See you tomorrow,

-Brock

Radiohead in its right place

When the music industry last saw Radiohead, the band had unleashed 2001’s sister album to 2000’s Kid A, the jumbled Amnesiac. Amnesiac and Kid A both fared very well critically and commercially (Kid A took the number one spot on the U.S. charts) and both albums spawned a new legion of fans. However, there was one drawback: Many of the band’s older fans felt turned off by the new synthesized sound. Perhaps after the fantastic presence exhibited by OK Computer some felt that Radiohead had simply reached their peak. Meanwhile others discarded the electronic movement as artistic inspiration, similar to the fate that assaulted U2 at one time. Whatever the reason, Kid A and Amnesiac made an impact (for the record, I love both albums) and Radiohead continued to foster themselves as one of the next great rock bands. In the period after Amnesiac though a new climate entered the music scene, a reemergence of electric guitars in favor of electric keyboards. Bands like the White Stripes and the Strokes popularized the sketchy, rock sound of heavy guitar-work, something that had been absent from Kid A and Amnesiac. Other bands were outright bastardizations of Radiohead (Coldplay gets the gold here).
Just as the music industry was vastly changing, so too was the political climate of the world. Terrorism, rising oil prices, controversial elections and congruent wars littered the landscape and fueled CNN. Finally, after two years, Radiohead returns, shaped and molded by these subsequent events, to release their sixth studio album, Hail to the Thief.

Hail to the Thief, despite popular belief, isn’t OK Computer 2. For that matter, it isn’t Kid C, or Amnesiac version 2.0. One listen to Hail to the Thief reveals the workings of a band that has learned their lesions from OK Computer and the duet of Kid Amnesiac. Likewise, Thief calls to mind the earlier examples of Pablo Honey and The Bends. All of these influences and unique sounds blend together and interlace to create the ultimate result of Radiohead’s years of recording: The mastery of their sound.
This mastery is present in nearly all of the songs, jutting out from the record like jagged icicles raging between one another. On one hand Radiohead has their electronic experimentation, and on the other their precision guitar-work. Weaving the two together, Radiohead makes Thief an enjoyable, almost catchy album. 2+2=5 starts off with Johnny Greenwood plugging his guitar into an amplifier, quite obviously a sheer tease directed to the band’s guitar fans. Frothing forth with a mellow pace, 2+2=5 seems to surge with underlying energy and anger. The subtle guitar-work mocks the listener, reminding them of what Radiohead was capable of during the Bends, what they can do. And then they do it. 2+2=5 explodes in a furry of Yorke’s anger and the band’s edgy resonance. Immediately after the song implodes upon itself, the album shifts to the electronic tinged beats of Sit Down, Stand Up, a piano laden venture that calls to mind some of Radiohead’s earlier experimentation. Clashes like this are prominent on Hail to the Thief; Sail to the Moon is followed by Backdrifts while the Gloaming leads into the tribal There, There. It’s a real battlefield on Radiohead’s sixth album, a place where the mastery of Radiohead’s soaring guitars brushes up against the bitter self-loathing of inspired electronics. In this battlefield the only thing that keeps all of Radiohead’s subsequent styles in check is Yorke’s beautifully haunting voice. Thankfully, unlike Radiohead’s last two ventures, Yorke’s voice is for the most part unhindered by electronic abstracting (although, that isn’t to say that I disproved of it for Kid A and Amnesiac). Amidst the war between electronica and rock one thing becomes abundantly clear through Yorke’s howling din: Hail to the Thief is a product of its timeline, a commentary on the world we live in. But you knew that already, didn’t you? Still, there are some moments on the album that are entirely unique while at the same time remaining connected to Yorke’s feelings of doom and gloom. One such song is the amazingly ethereal track “Sail to the Moon”. Here, Yorke isn’t berating his listeners for choosing undemocratic world leaders, nor is he pondering the impending fate that rests upon the world’s shoulders. Rather, he looks forth into the future of his son’s life with an air of wonderment. “Maybe you’ll be president, but know right from wrong” he asks. “Or in the flood, you’ll build an ark, and sail us to the moon” his darker connotations shine through.
Here, in the doom, the gloom and Yorke’s hopeful wishes, one other thing becomes abundantly clear: Out of every other Radiohead album, this one is the most fun to listen to. Hail to the Thief is truly a mastery of Radiohead’s style, the band sitting back and doing what they do best. It radiates the boundless energy of Pablo Honey without all of the grunge album’s naivety. It deplores the dehumanization of society and the greater evil lurking in the world, like OK Computer. It demonstrates the feelings of alienation given in the Bends, and it extends the introverted glance at one’s self that Kid A and Amnesiac provided. It’s experimentation under restriction. It’s alternative rock without the convulsions. It’s Radiohead having fun. Good thing, because it’s fun to listen to.

It’s better to spend a night with Thom Yorke in a bunker than with Chris Martin and Gwyneth after all!

Favorite tracks:

I Will: Fans will remember this song as a previously unreleased track that emerged around the period of OK Computer. In the inspired vein of Nude and Big Boots, I Will seems to be a sheer Yorke track. It’s kind of short though…
Myxamatosis: It’s like a kick in the jimmies!
Sail to the Moon: Move over Pyramid Song, Sail to the Moon is another one of Radiohead’s epic piano masterpieces. With Yorke’s crooning voice at the helm, the song features an electric guitar that seems to mold itself around the prominent piano.
A Wolf at the Door: Quite possibly the best track on Hail to the Thief, and easily one of the best tracks Radiohead has written in years. A Wolf at the Door seems to picture Thom Yorke pushing up against the door to his house in distress as the elements of a troubled world close in on him. One interesting tidbit to keep in mind is the fact that this track is completely written by Johnny Greenwood, Radiohead’s guitarist. He also wrote several other tracks on Thief.

Windy City

Glad you like the mix, Brock! Well, I'm off to Chicago! Bu-Bye!

The Late Post Strikes Back

Radiohead review. Tomorrow. I promise.

I can't write the darned thing forever. Besides, I want it to be extra good. Also, I might put a goodie up this weekend.

I'm just checking in to let you guys know that I just finished listening to Gabe's mix CD. All I can say: wow.

Slammed

Man, I've been slammed at work! I'll be pretty busy tomorrow and the beginning of next week. Pretty unusual for me.

Well, I listened to my taping of the Jets to Brazil show. It came out pretty decent. I messed up when it first started. It was my first time, so, cut me a break. The obnoxiously loud people didn't stand out too bad on the recording. When I get back from Chicago (and get a bigger hard drive) I'll put that show on CD.

I've been listening to Radiohead's Hail to the Thief like crazy! I would like to put up a review soon too. For now I'll just say that my two favorite songs are "Where I End and You Begin" and "A Wolf at the Door". As a friend at work put it "there so good I want to weep."

Radiohead returns

I'll have a review up soon...tonight or tomorrow...but here's a preview:

Thom Yorke speaking with Coldplay: We can wipe you out anytime.

Till then,

-Brock

Late Post

Let it be know that this is my latest post ever! 10:00 p.m. I just couldn't let the day go by without one. The meat will be served tomorrow.

All Things Good and Nice

Above the earth, beneath the sky, with eyes like static...

Last night was fantastic: Gabe, myself and our friend Alex joined up to go see Jets to Brazil at the new Nita’s Hideaway, and the show didn’t disappoint. From the get go it was an energetic and lively performance. The guitar work, the new drummer and the keyboarding all came together to create an invigorating experience. Reaming with the energy (and subtle grandeur) found on their albums, Jets churned out a cool set with some coveted classics. Part of the magic though came from the fact that this was the first time I’d seen Jets to Brazil live. Gabe mentioned in passing that they put on a good show and as a result I had coveted such a concert for a long time. I couldn’t help but smile to anyone and everyone when they played live versions of infamous tracks like “Sea Anemone” and “Chinatown”. Their music is one of my lesser-spoken tastes; ultimately they get lost in my torrent of praise for groups like Radiohead or The Casket Lottery. Nevertheless, their music made a giant impression upon me. As you may have noticed, our blog is even named after a lyric in their song “I Typed for Miles”. (I got it off a list of potential band names Gabe sent me) Regretfully, they didn’t play that song last night, although plenty of people spouted out requests for it.

I think Gabe’s recording went over well too. He hasn’t said anything about it, but I think it should turn out ok. Thankfully, no one patted us down.

P.S. I owe Gabe some moolah, (he got me Hail to the Thief: Limited Edition).

Slip into the Vortex

That is indeed strange, Brock. Freaky deaky! That was a wierd saying. May I never use it again. I failed to post Friday because I took the day off from work and spent the day painting a wall at home. If you didn't already know, I blog most of the time from work. It's a vortex in itself, that I can't seem to get out of! Help! Yep, so blogging is one of the highlights of my work day. Woo hoo!

Jets to Brazil will be awesome! They were last time I saw them. I may be taping the show tonight if a friend can come over with his stuff. Want a copy? Email me!

Hail to the Thief! Can't wait!

Friday I'm off to Chicago. I'll be seeing the Casket Lottery, Small Brown Bike, Rocky Votolato show there. If I happen to run into a public computer with Internet access, I'll blog from the Windy City. If not, I'll blog all about it when I get back!

There are stories of coincidence and chance, of intersections and strange things told

Well folks, I seem to have crawled out of the social lethargy that held a grip on me over the weekend, and as a result, I’m now primed and ready for a week of blogging. Good thing too, because this is going to be a crazy week. For starters, we have the Jets to Brazil show tonight; a group Gabe and I never got to review here on the blog due to their Phoenix cancellation. We’ll be sure to tell you how it goes tonight. I’m expecting it to be fantastic, but we’ll give you the lowdown regardless. Second, we have the release of Radiohead’s sixth studio album tomorrow, Hail to the Thief. If you’ve been following our posts for the past few weeks you’ve probably noticed that Gabe and I have been discussing this new album rather frequently. I’m very excited to get it in my palms and I know that from the pirated tracks floating around the net that it’s going to be well worth the wait. I’m sure that I’ll have plenty to say in the coming days about Thief.

Let’s talk about the here and the now though, particularly my newfound ability to manipulate coincidence. Take Gabe’s mix for example: He put Golden on the first draft of the mix, a Failure song that I had discovered just a few days earlier. Last week though, the coincidences seemed to extend beyond the realm of mix tapes and into chance encounters. For instance, I went to the mall on Wednesday to window-shop and eat lunch. It was nice, and I un-expectantly ran into a friend from my previous communications class. Matt was his name, and he was an all around nice person. It was good to see him and catch up on how things have been since the communications class. However, chance encounters are fun, but they soon became freaky. Fast forward to the next day when I was in Best Buy purchasing some music, namely The White Stripes and Modest Mouse, when suddenly I’m tapped on the shoulder by the person behind me in line. I turn around and see Matt…again. Two days, two chance encounters, I felt like I had crossed over from my life into some weird Paul Thomas Anderson film.

Still, I let it go, and I went about my usual business. Fast forward a few more days and I was in the waiting room of the doctor’s office, reading, when all of a sudden I hear a familiar voice. Turns out it was another classmate from the same damned communication class, Hector. Now I was freaked out. These chance encounters have moved beyond a few instances in Best Buy to my doctor’s office. Next thing you know I’ll wake up and find that the teacher moved in next-door or some horrible twist of fate.

Now if only I could figure out how to use this anomaly for my own ends…

Haze

So tired and lazy...I'll blog later.

-Brock

Barrage

Well, after a barrage of posts Tuesday, there were none yesterday. Oh, well. We must've been blogged out.

While it is depressing that Green Plastic has removed lyrics and tabs, it's promising to hear that Radiohead is aware of the situation and none too pleased. Hopefully that gets resolved soon! At least Follow Me Around still has their lyrics up.

Batman and Leonard

Ok, I signed it! I urge everyone else to sign it too. If these Radiohead sites get this kind of a blow then chances are the Radiohead fans will be sad. And if they're sad then I'm mad...and if I'm mad...Brock Smash!
No, seriously, I won't smash...I'll just drop depressed and withdrawn messages here on the blog and rain on everyone's parade.

Christopher Nolan is directing Batman 5?!! Holy cow, this is fantastico! Chris Nolan by the way is one of my favorite directors, he's one of the reasons why I wanted to get into the film biz in the first place. A shame it's not Tim Burton, the man himself, but...this is still great. In fact, judging by Nolan's detective, mystery style films, he could make a Batman movie as well as, if not better then Burton. We'll see, but I'm stoked.