The Bad Splice is no longer going to be a movie review only blog. In fact, there may not be movie reviews at all. I’ve decided I don’t really like writing them. So I guess this will be a more ordinary, self-centered blog. Starting with the post below…
June 19, 2008
Notes from the R.E.M./Modest Mouse/The National concert
1) People with lawnchairs will inevitably come late and squeeze into the space right in front of you on the lawn. They will be very tall and wearing even taller hats. These people are douchey and you should not feel bad about loudly disparaging their character and/or lineage. Feel free to call them “Gigantors” and throw Mike and Ikes at the backs of their heads.
2) The men’s room never has a line. The women’s room always has a serpentine queue of poor ladies hopping on their toes. This will eventually result in a revolt where one woman decides she can’t wait, and goes into the men’s room. This act of urinary liberation will spread through the line, and soon the men’s room will become unisex, like Ally McBeal’s, or whatever.
3) I hope the ladies enjoyed the contact high from the voluminous amounts of marijuana being smoked in the stalls. I suppose I should have realized that there is probably some crossover between the Dave Matthews/Jack Johnson crowd and R.E.M. fans, despite the fact that DM and JJ make me want to smash windows with my head, like some crazy lady in The Happening.
4) Don’t go see The Happening. I know this is not related, but I’m serious. If you do go see The Happening, take your sarcastic robot buddies and enjoy the worst performances of Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel’s careers.
5) The Mann Music Center expects you to pay $8 for a Miller Lite, rather than paying you that much to take that swill off their hands. Oh, and you might expect a nine dollar “cheesesteak basket” to come with fries, or perhaps a basket. You would be mistaken.
6) The National was great. Pitchfork loves them, which makes me a little wary, and the singer dances pretty spastically (like the guy from Midnight Oil), but they have a really appealing variety of songs, and I would have liked them to play a bit more.
7) Modest Mouse has two drummers (awesome!) and they use a glockenspiel on one song (double awesome!!). They have a lot of energy, and I like most of their older albums, but their live sound is awfully consistent from one song to the next, and 45 minutes is sort of a long time to hear a bunch of songs with the same tempo and rhythms.
8 ) People loooove The One I Love. I don’t really get it myself. It’s a nasty little, repetitious song, with a classic f.u. ending. I don’t dislike it or anything, but it’s certainly not the R.E.M. song that’s going to make me scream at the top of my lungs and demand to have Michael Stipe’s babies. (That would be Electrolite, which they played too…)
9) Eddie Vedder sang Begin the Begin during R.E.M.’s encore. I don’t dig Eddie that much, but it was still pretty cool, and no one threw batteries at him or anything. Nice job, Philly!
10) Johnny Marr from The Smiths played along with the band on Fall on Me, which is one of Michael Stipe’s and my favorite songs.
11) The night ended with Man on the Moon, a song I used to love, but have burnt out on over the years. But hearing it tonight, with the (maybe?) full moon rising overhead and a nice chill in the air for a June night, all seemed right in the world. Hey baby. Are you having fun?
