...watched willy wonka and the chocolate factory last night. i only remembering [ed. yes, clearly i'm proofreading carefully these days] seeing it once before, and now i understand why my memory fairly well erased the details of the movie and replaced them with a general sense of terror. the stuff of a kid's nightmares.
no doubt the tim burton effort will be equally unsettling.
They tell me blogs are self-indulgent, myopic little screeds, fashioned for group-thinkers and navel-gazers.
I never saw the flashing blue lights until we were already on the side of the road. Why I signed up to join a group of friends and people-i-sort-of-knew headed for spring break on the Florida gulf coast, I still don't quite get. Just a weird choice that led to the really terrifying backseat of a rural Mississippi deputy's police car. I was never charged with anything, though I've since learned that guilt by association (see above: "people-i-sort-of-knew") is something the Mississippi Annotated Code codifies pretty clearly. Lucky me. The many officers of the law on scene decided that we were all telling the truth when we insisted that the bag with the drugs belonged to only one of us and that the remaining three were very much unaware of its presence in the vehicle. We were most certainly being truthful about that. I, for one, knew better than to get in a car with some illicit substances and head across Mississippi. The three not-really-accomplices to the one charged with a scary felony were simply handcuffed, delivered in separate cars to the local constabulary, and released almost immediately.
I remember little about the spring break week itself, except for a tremendously acute and chronic state of anxiety. Oh, right, and the basic obnoxiousness of a beach loaded up with SAEs and Chi-Os from Ole Miss and 'Bama.
But the music was good. One of the group had recently developed a Pixies thing and had this habit of fiercely repeating a favorite song over and over until it was time to move on. My spring break from hell songs -- let's be pretentious, shall we?, and call them the aural residue of those days -- were both Pixies full-on rock songs, "Is She Weird?" and "Where Is My Mind?". Existential pieces, both. Good for just kind of banging the nerves out of your system.
Anyone remember the East coast blizzard of 93? As if my shaky spring break trip wasn't unsettling enough (there are other stories, mind you), I watched snow blow horizontally across a shoreline road while headlight-illuminated waves crashed awfully close for comfort.
We stayed the week because some of us wanted to. And I believe some of us enjoyed some of the trip. There was this hike we took through a tide marsh. That was nice. I just wanted Friday morning to arrive.
On our return to school, I wound up on a heavy diet of Pixies, something that's been maintained all these eleven years. Sometimes, a song reminds me of being on the cold beach at night, happy to have gotten away from both Johnny Law and that skeezy bar full of skeezy folks. Another brings to mind the carelessness of our return drive home; somehow, stupidly, "Allison" turned up really loud made speeding through the western end of the storm alright. After all, no one was in jail; no one was hurt; no one had insisted that we give the unbelievable guy with cocaine a ride home.
The Pixies are the right cue for scary times, I think. People talk about the band's under-appreciated influence over much rock in their wake, and that's right -- they were a great band. The surreal is all over their songs, though, and as N says, there's also violence there. I don't get much in the way of therapy or catharsis from listening to "No. 13 Baby," probably, but I revel in being knocked over by those songs. Almost all of them rattle me in the best sort of way. Can a music fan be a masochist?
Halfway through Old Man Rhody's truly wonderful birthday party Saturday night, I knew I was sick. I'd arrived with nothing but a scratchy throat, but left feeling miserable. Sunday morning brought only more yuck. My common cold, not to put too fine a point on it, was awful. In fact, things were probably worsened by my fear of having to miss... you guessed it... last night's Pixies concert.
After more than a decade after their breakup, they've reconvened for a very long tour, and N and I were lucky enough to score orchestra seats for the first of their two Constitution Hall shows.
I went, sick. Absolutely one-hundred percent worth it. (Funny, I'm telling this quasi-public story on my so-called blog, but opted not to tell my doctor yesterday, when warned to stay on the couch until the ickiness passed).
No real concert review here, as it feels too soon. I've got a bad case of Jamesonian nostalgia, in which the perfect concert has been almost immediately constructed in my imagination and will determine the representation of any sort of experienced phenomenon. That is to say, I've persuaded myself that last night truly rocked beyond belief. I remember that things seemed momentarily off on one or two songs (poorly tuned guitar, weird extra beat from drummer Dave Lovering during "Velouria," lyrical hiccup or two perhaps).
Second song of the night: literally smashing version of "Wave of Mutilation." Oh, man. In our seats, I could feel air being moved in and out of my lungs by the beat.
The band can do punk/noise anthems with the best of them. "Isla de Encanta" was insanely loud and fast.
Some favorite songs went missing, but not too missed. Would have liked to hear "Alec Eiffel," maybe "Allison." But still, "Head On" was blaringly good.
Instead of going backstage for tequila shots or whatever, they actually just hung out on the stage during applause, waving, pacing from side to side to acknowledge both sides of the house, and sort of goofily miming the "choice" to do an encore.
Only Kim Deal can wear that blue KMart sweater on stage and make everyone feel ridiculous for ever thinking about "what I oughta wear to tha show." Seriously.
Two song encorce: "Gigantic" and "Where Is My Mind?". I so totally swooned at the last song of the show. It's easily my favorite. All four instruments, Frank Black's oceanic lyrics, and Kim Deal's back-up "Oooh-Oooh" just line up so perfectly to ask the perfect rock and roll question. That's the first time I've ever actually been sad when I knew a concert was ending.
What an obsequious little encomium of the Pixies... I suppose I'm just that enthralled. All of this with a wicked head cold, fading voice, and sore throat, mind you. Masochism. Right.