just to share memorable quotes from a weekend of guillaume (in no particular order, that's for sure):
7. oh, I'll eat chicken, for the right occasion. I'm not THAT kind of vegan.
what I love is that they're still filming sesame street right on the streets of new york, and not some soundstage in burbank. I don't know why it's so comforting, but it is. the fact that my friends and neighbors sometimes will stay in the places I expect them to be, and I might run into them on my way back from the park on a saturday afternoon. 
a five pound box of gummi lobsters, that's what!Anyways, finally. Finally! Chris Srompolis took the microphone to briefly ("Here's our film") introduce The Adaptation:
Quite seriously, the film really lived up to everything ever mythologized about it. Yes, it is a film for fans of the Indiana Jones adventures. But it's also a film for fans of film-making. And really, a film for fans of film. In the end, a 100-minute tribute film shot by a gang of 12-year olds would not stand up to audiences if it weren't good. And it wouldn't be around, packing theatres, almost 20 years after its 7 years of filming and production were complete if it weren't great.
I used to have this little worn post-it stuck onto my desk at the office:
I used to Black Mountain
I used to Pink Mountaintops
I used to JagJaguwar
written on it in red ink, courtesy of a conversation I’d had with PB and meant to follow up on for years. I picked up Black Mountain’s debut LP, and listened, liked, and shelved it, for whatever reasons.
Then I got In the Future as a gift as a prelude to seeing them last week at Johnny Brenda’s. And! And!
It’s been three years since their debut album, and in the meantime, they’ve developed a definite bluesier, harder edge, making them less raw, but in a good we’ve-been-practicing sort of way. There is something dirtier, bleaker in what they have to say and how they say it now. “C’mon, let your halo down” opens up Angels with a tiredness that makes you remember the Doors more than the early Sabbath that everyone wants to compare them to. Although you can hear the Geezer Butler-esque heavy basslines throughout, and the intro to Stormy High is practically a tribute to Tommy Iommi, there’re echoes of the Robby Krieger/Ray Manzarek combo that keep it smarter.
At times, like throughout most of Wucan, the composition of the instruments and vocals is absolutely mesmerizing. And the play with syllable arrangements, “no, you don’t ever want to get some place where you cannot believe” against the rise and fall of the melody is clever enough you can forgive some of the spottier parts where the keyboards (3.01-3.54, for example) begin to degrade into synth-rock.
There’s a lot said about the Stephen McBean + Amber Webber dual vocals, but the real driving force is the drum and bass interplay—the intro combination in Tyrants is by far the most memorable 90 seconds in the album. It’s that heavy double-fisted drumming that pushes the album away from veering into some serious Pink Floyd territory (soft keyboard trills starting 2.54 into Queens Will Play, for example), although it was altogether much less so during the live show.
For better or worse, Stephen McBean’s voice sometimes gets a little too whiny and thin, especially in Evil Ways, which starts out so strong with the drum and keyboard entry, you wish it could’ve gone on a bit longer without interruption. He’s an indie-rocker stepping into the flannels and beard of Jim Morrison, and here and there, it shows.
There’s also something slightly PULP-y about this as well, like moments in the intro to Wild Wind, where it sounds like when Jarvis Cocker and Russell Senior would build up these blues-y early-in-the-morning-walk-back-home sort of rambles. And yes, I did sort of have a crush on the drummer, who looked like Trent Reznor back when he was thin and cute.
I know it’s early, but this is definitely in my Top 10 of 2008.
This morning I had to face the truth and actually accept a label to stick onto myself. I’m an insomniac. Maybe not forever, not always. But now, here, yesterday, today, and probably tomorrow.
Some nights I sleep a couple of hours. Here and there, barely hovering over the sandy grit of wakefulness, touching down every so often to remind myself of how tenuous this sleep is. Other nights, and most of them, it’s an endless stretch of awakeness. Blink upon blink, neverending, until the night outside lightens by the millisecond and I can pretend it’s a new day, a new start.
It’s not the staying awake but the trying to sleep that is so exhausting. I spend my nights willing it to happen, cajoling my mind to shut itself down, negotiating with the universe for that moment when consciousness blinks off. And yet, and yet.
I can handle the fatigue, the exhaustion. It’s the falling apart that drains me of my ability to keep it together. It’s as if I’m floating through zero-gravity, and without this ceaseless effort of concentration, the edges of me begin to blur and slowly drift apart. I’m pulling away from my core. Like a puzzle picture that’s not quite fitted together; the loose edges getting looser.
It’s just empty space but it feels full, and I’m walking around tight with the crowding of empty. Nothing. Void. Today I am a blank.
