December 9th, 2002. Monday
Once again, it be colder than a mutha. I really can't stand it. My hands are all dry and crusty.
Other notable events besides the weather:Caught the Loose Fur show in Brooklyn on Saturday night. It's the collaboration between Jeff Tweedy and Glenn Kotche, the singer and drummer of Wilco, respectively, and Jim O'Rourke. The show was alright, though I generally don't like going to shows where I don't know any of the songs played. And since their album doesn't come out for a month, this was one of those shows. There were some inspired moments, and overall the show was pretty good, but it didn't really seem to mesh. The songs Jeff Tweedy sang sounded like spacier Wilco songs, and the songs Jim O'Rourke sang sounded like Jim O'Rourke songs. Tweedy was singing differently than he does in Wilco for a lot of the songs, and at times it seemed like he was actually trying to sing like Jim O'Rourke. The most impressive song was a 15 minute instrumental that was loud hard rock for the final ten minutes, the entirety of which the drummer spent grimacing musically. That was pretty rock and roll. What also struck me was the fact that Jeff Tweedy isn't a very good lead guitar player at all. He's great at the country finger picking and acoustic stylings, but watching him try to play lead electric guitar was almost embarrassing. There's a difference between crafted art/noise rock and just a couple of guys freaking out noisily onstage, and the show on Saturday was probably 70% of the latter. And Jim O'Rourke kind of annoys me. The best Tweedy lyric of the evening was "I wish I could fuck you like he thinks he fucks you."
In other music news, Ryan Adams continues his ascent up my most hated rock stars list, also known as the "Getting A Little Too Big For Their Britches" list. I'd really have to hate someone for me to take the White Stripe's Jack White's side in an argument.
Also- I'm finally back on broadband internet access from home again. After moving to Greenpoint from Park Slope, I discovered that Greenpoint and Williamsburg were the only areas in all of New York City not to have cable modem or DSL available. So I called up last Thursday, and sure enough, Time Warner Cable had made Road Runner available a week earlier, along with Digital Cable. So I says what the hey, and get the whole shebang. The whole process was incredibly, almost suspiciously easy. I called in the order around 4, picked up the self installation kit after work, went home, and had everything installed in minutes. I couldn't have imagined DSL self-installation being that easy. Of course, there was a big problem with the cable signal coming into my home, so I didn't actually get everything working. But the Time Warner people I spoke with on the phone were actually helpful. It turns out that the signal coming into my apt. isn't very strong. So I'm supposed to wait a week until they can send someone to my house. Being as impatient as I am, this was utterly unacceptable. So the next day after work I went down to Radioshack and bought a signal booster. I sprung for the more expensive model, but it doesn't really matter, since I will be returning it after the cable guy comes and fixes the problem. I suspect he will do this by supplying a Time Warner Cable signal booster. Not only that, I'll be credited for the week that my cable was "out." And no one will be the wiser.
Also on Friday, my former neighbor Rachel came out to the 'Point to play guitar. We ended up mostly hanging out and only played guitar for an hour or so, but it was fun nonetheless.
Mail to G-Rock