Phoenix peeps:
It is your sworn duty to go see the Eagles of Death Metal at Big Fish Pub tonight. They have excellent moustaches and play a very fine brand of filthy rock about fast cars and women who are faster than the cars I just mentioned. They do not appear to be touching the East Coast anytime soon, so you must serve as my rock-n-roll surrogate.
Also, be the annoying douchebag at the concert who holds up their phone during a song when they play I Only Want You, and let that phone be placing a call to my phone. When I pick up a call from someone in the four-eight-o tommorrow night and hear a lot of indecipherable static, I will think, "Hey! One of my friends is watching the Eagles of Death Metal right now!" 'cause lord knows that holding-up-the-phone shit doesn't actually work. But, like most things, it's the thought that counts.
Go! Seriously! Do it for Uncle Donald!
I saw an awesome show tonight. It was John Vanderslice and The Mountain Goats. I have seen John Vanderslice before, he was awesome as always, but the real story was The Mountain Goats. Holy shit. The dude warbles and orbits his antique microphone and does with one acoustic guitar and a bassist what entire bands of disinterested-looking good-haircut-having Interpol acolytes can't manage with whole truckloads of instruments. He has marvelous story-songs about crank addicts and bad luck personified and step-fathers being a pirate and the open road. Someone bought him a glass of whiskey (dude is hell of Irish) and he gave some to his bassist 'cause he couldn't drink it all, but was then vocally disappointed with how much the bassist actually did drink, and asked if someone would buy him another. By the end of the next song, he had it in his hand. He then explained to us "the conundrum of the guy with the acoustic guitar," whereby when you play the slow song you want the people by the bar to be quiet, but if you ask/tell them to be quiet, you look like a dick, so he asked us, the audience, to do it for him. During the next song break, he straight-up ordered them to be quiet. Then he played "Shadow Song," which I had never heard, and holllly shit. (You can hear a great live version here, from this awesome live show archive.) Shivers. Then he played with J. Vanderslice and his full band (Vanderslice is his producer) and forget it. Just forget it. The rock was epic. See the Mountain Goats if they come to your town, or buy one of their eighty records. You won't regret it if you like folk-rock or warbly weird voices or piss and vinegar or acoustic guitars or any of the good things in the world.
I am avoiding writing a screenplay outline. It is five AM. It's due at 10:30. I've done a pretty good job so far.
Posted by DC at October 8, 2004 02:57 AM