I saw Arcade Fire last night at the Greek Theater in Griffith Park, now home to all sorts of creepy stuff after the fire earlier this month. My friend Bob was quick to make plenty of jokes about the very real possiblity of “The great Arcade Fire fire of ‘07″ breaking out, but thankfully no flames were spotted.
Instead we watched a fantastic concert put on by a whole gaggle of Canadians who really know how to bring it. After seeing Arcade Fire open up for David Byrne in June of ‘05 and reading reviews of the show at Coachella this year, I was ready for these guys put on one hell of a live show. They did not disappoint. 10 musicians occupied the stage with all sorts of crazy instruments, including a hurdy gurdy. (I had to look that up – I didn’t actually know the name of a hurdy gurdy and if you try to say you did I won’t believe you.) The band also likes to trade instruments, making for all kinds of fun band interaction and drum banging. And the crowd was into it, singing along and freaking with appropriate amounts of glee when Win Butler (the lead singer who is actually Texan, not Canadian) walked all the way up into the nose bleed seats.
I knew at least one woman got more than she expected when I heard her say “I hugged the lead singer and then licked my hands”. Now that’s devotion.
My pictures sucked – this was the best one I got:
According to Cinematical.com, director Mike Figgis was detained at LAX for 5 hours when he answered the question about the reason for his visit with “I’m here to shoot a pilot”.
Now, if you live in LA, heck if you pay attention to television in the tiniest bit, you know that a pilot is the first episode of a TV series. Just in case you were concerned that homeland security wasn’t doing its job, this is hard proof of the fine fine work they’re doing. Hurray!
Or maybe it was just that the immigration officer wasn’t all that impressed with Timecode. I mean, it *was* rather gimmicky.
Filed under: Television
Like almost everyone else caught up in this show, I was afraid about half way through the 3rd season that the train was coming off the tracks. But after watching the season finale I’m completely back on board, and if any of you have stopped watching, I suggest you get the DVDs when they come out and get caught up! The twists and revelations during the final 2 hours were unbelievably great. If anyone is arguing that television today isn’t smart or challenging, they’re not watching Lost. And of course the best news is that ABC has given Lost an end date – there will be 3 more 16 episode seasons, so 48 more episodes, to tell this story. With the end in sight, the writers on this show can plan ahead. An unheard of luxury in the television universe.
The internet is full of theory sites, but one of my favorite voices on the subject is the guy who writes about the show for Entertainment Weekly. His name is Jeff Jensen and he’s a smart cookie. His stuff is pretty thought provoking – especially his theory that Lost is all about the struggle between modernism and postmodernism.
And here’s his article about the season finale, which is, of course, only to be read if you’ve seen it.
Filed under: Randomness
A few days ago a friend of mine sent me a clip of Tom Waits reading this poem. I liked it so much that I found the text online and have had it on my desktop as a virtual post-it ever since. Now I share it with you:
The Laughing Heart
Charles Bukowski
your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.
The YouTube clip is below and also includes some guy named Bono reading another of Bukowski’s poems.
Filed under: Los Angeles
A few days ago UCLA put over 5,000 amazing photos of Los Angeles online, and you gotta see it to believe it. The website describes the project further:
“The UCLA Charles E. Young Research Library Department of Special Collections has selected and digitized 5,124 of the more than three million images contained in the Los Angeles Times and Los Angeles Daily News photographic archives. The photographs chronicle the history and growth of Los Angeles from the 1920s to 1990.”
It’s rather easy to spend hours browsing the collection. I’ve spent far too much time perusing it myself. The best part is that there are fairly hi-res versions of each shot there for the taking. Here are a few of my favorites:
This is the Angelus Temple in Echo Park, not far from my house. It’s still there, but the street cars aren’t. 1923.
Demonstrators downtown during an unemployment demonstration led by communists, dubbed “The Red Riot,” 1930
The fantasticness of this shot is multi-layered…This is the Reverend James Cleavland at the Cornerstone Baptist Church, 1977
Filed under: Los Angeles
I just read on MetroBloggingLA about a press release Los Angeles Animal Services has released about animals displaced due to the fire in Griffith Park.
It says:
“It is important for L.A. City residents to understand that many wild animals will be displaced by the fire and may turn up in areas of the City of Los Angeles where wildlife has never been seen before. These animals will be looking for water and may be seen drinking from garden ponds, pools and other water reservoirs.
These animals will be frightened and in some cases may be suffering from injuries caused by the fire. Displaced animals that are uninjured and do not appear to have been orphaned are to be left alone to recuperate and move on.
All injured, sick and orphaned wildlife should be reported to L.A. Animal Services at (888) 452-7381″.
Orphaned animals??!? …Sniff…
Filed under: Music
I saw Bodies of Water at the Echo last night, and man was the show FUN TIMES. Who can argue with 2 trombones, a trumpet, a viola, a keyboard, 4 singin’ voices and the usual slew of guitars and drums…no wait – there were 2 drummers! EXTRA drums!
Said the Gramophone, my favorite Mp3 blog, posted about them a few months ago – you can read and listen here.
Anyhow, they’ve got a month long residency on Monday nights at the Echo for the rest of May so get on down there. And the bands they’ve got playing with them, while different every week, were great last night. So come early and stay late!
Filed under: Music
So it seems that Andy has recorded that version of “What’s Goin’ On” that I mentioned in my previous post.
Here it is, for your listening pleasure:
Shawn, Andy’s manager/business partner says:
“Enjoy and please pass it around. In fact if you are so inclined, take a section of the song or however much you want to and cut some footage to it and post it up on Youtube. We are passing it around as a free track to disseminate amongst the masses.”
Masses: go forth and disseminate!
