July 26th, 2002. Friday
 

    Highlights of the past few days-

    On Tuesday night, I caught the movie Teen Wolf on cable television.  It was on Encore. I love this movie.  This was a significant viewing, because it may have actually been the first time I've seen the uncut theatrical release of the movie.  Up until then, I'd only seen the edited network TV version.  Obviously, it wasn't all that different.  But for the last 17 years, I never knew there was a scene at the part of two people tied together, covered in whipped cream.  And let me just say again how great this movie is.  Michael J. Fox covered head to toe in fur.  This movie would never get made today.  It's such an absurd premise.  But oh, does it work.  Also, whenever I see a movie like this, it makes me think it would've been fun to have been a teenager in the mid-80's. Of course, if that were the case, I'd be old now.

    Wednesday night, older brother Garrick drove into town, then we took his car out to Jones Beach to catch the Weezer show.  It was quite a cool, breezy night by the ocean.  The crowd was largely high school kids, much different from the first time I saw Weezer in 1995 in Allentown, PA.  That show was at this club called Starz I think, in the outdoor stage area in the back. The place probably held 500 people at the very most.  Also on that bill were Teenage Fanclub and that dog.  Those were the days. But they still had the giant glowing =W= back then.  I always thought it was hilarious.  But when I was transcribing a Weezer interview for Spin, the drummer said he liked playing stadium shows instead of small clubs because he always felt it was sort of ridiculous to have that giant glowing W in a small shitty club.  I thought that was the genius of the whole thing. I was a little disappointed to discover that this was done without any sense of irony.
    The show itself was great, besides feeling old, but not as old as Garrick.  Stupid people really do have more fun.  A lot of idiotic Long Island kids.  It's really weird to me to see the transformation of the fanbase of weezer.  I mean, it was pretty obvious, but this was the first time I saw it first hand.  What was good about this show was that they only played about six songs from their last two albums, and the rest from the first two.  I found it particularly hard to pay attention during the newer songs.  The played half of Pinkerton, which was most satisfying. I'm glad I caught them on this tour instead of the last few, because they're playing a lot of older songs now.  "Only In Dreams," the last song on their first album, was very nearly transcendent, particularly the minute long crescendo at the end.  The song was played mostly in the dark, with pale indigo stage lights from the rear of the stage, coming through a thick cloud of smoke.  About 2/3 through the set, the drummer's set was lifted up by four ropes, and attached underneath was the giant, lit up =w=.
    As good as the show was, there were some annoying things as well.  Rivers Cuomo is getting a little big for his britches, I think.  Most of his interaction with the crowd was pretty inane.  Either that, or he's just gotten crazier.  On this tour, he's taken to dressing up in a suit.  When he came out in his brown suit and dark tie, wearing sunglasses and earplugs, Garrick remarked that he looked just like and Agent in the Matrix.  That's all I could think about until he took the sunglasses off.

    More music viewing was had on Thursday.  After work James and I walked around the East Village for a while, and landed in a restaurant on Ave. B and 10th st. for wine and nachos.  It was an odd mix, and neither the wine nor the nachos were very good.  Then walked over to the anthology film archives, where a drummer named Tim Barnes was performing a solo percussion piece.  Tim Barnes has played with indie-rock luminaries such as the Silver Jews and Jim O'Rourke, and has played on a few songs for James.  He's really into percussion, and sound in general.  The setup was in a small room in the basement, with mini fluorescent lights on the floor.  He had a small drum setup, with bongos, beat-up cymbals, and various sticks, mallets, and bows.  The main thing he did was to get sounds out of his instruments through unconventional methods.  For example, he spent a lot of time raking the drum sticks across the ridges of the cymbals, played the drums with a violin bow, and got a good resonance out of his low tom by dragging and rolling it across the floor.  A good part of it was pretty tedious, but I kept an open mind about it. Just watching him move around like a maniac was fascinating, watching the facial expressions he made and little noises.  The cool thing was that through getting unconventional sounds through unconventional methods, every noise became part of the music.  When someone opened a soda, the sound fit right in. When his stool creaked, it sounded like it was planned.  James later told me he thought the same thing, and thought about farting loudly, knowing that it would fit in with the routine.  I had to admit that I thought exactly the same thing during the show.
    After waiting for a while while James shmoozed some indie-rockers, I took the F train to Herald Square and walked to 30th st. and 7th ave to meet up with Garrick.  His band was playing a club called the Downtime, and being the good brother I am I attended the show.  Geoff also showed up right before they went on.  The club was right next to the studio where I auditioned for my neighbor's band.  The show was put together by a zine called Unsung Hero, and they like Garrick's band, the Jellybricks.  Garrick had warned me that all the other bands on the bill were metal bands, or nu-metal as it were, and that the show would suck.  His band, you see, can best be described as loud power-pop.  They were probably the only band that night to make use of things like three-part harmonies, clothes that fit them, and standard guitar tunings. The band after them played everything in "drop-D" tuning, which I always felt was cheating. In drop D, the guitar is tuned to a chord, so you don't have to do anything accept extend your finger straight across the fret board to make a chord.  A lot of metal bands use this tuning.  It also makes the sound lower and thicker.  nothing terribly impressive about it.
    Anyway, the show was enjoyable.  Geoff and I sat in the mezzanine by ourselves, and had a good view of the band.  The place was pretty much empty, with most of the crowd consisting of the other bands.  They sounded pretty tight and excited.  The last song was a cover of The Who's "Baba O'Riley," with Garrick singing the lead. I didn't even know it was him singing until I looked up. Not bad. The only thing I would say is that it sounded a little too close to the Who's version.  Covers need something different.

    The rest of the family is coming into town today. My littlest brother, the rarely-mentioned Galvin, is going to Japan for at least a year to teach English. I never really liked the fact that he studied Japanese, we being Chinese and all.  Anyway, he spent his junior year there as well.  When I think about it, I think in the last two years I've probably seen that guy a total of about 14 days.

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