Separated At Birth, Part VIII

Audience at last night’s My Bloody Valentine show.

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UFO watchers from Close Encounters Of The Third Kind

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(MBV photo via Ned)

In his blog Ned alludes to how this show (especially the combo of Spectrum & My Bloody Valentine together) is a resetting of the clock – both groups effectively being the Year Zero for so many bands that followed in their wake.

However, I can’t help but notice just how many bands who list MBV and Spacemen 3 in their MySpace profiles completely miss the point – as if all you need for shoegaze glory is 250kg of off-the-rack effects pedals, some designer amps, and enough time for a smoke break while everything feedsback. Sure, Kevin Shields has the most complex rig I’ve ever seen on stage anywhere, but there’s a purpose to it and coupled with a good sound system that otherwise non-stop autistic tweaking of sound pays off.

I’ve seen an Apollo Saturn V launch. I’ve seen the Swans. I’ve seen Survival Research Lab performances. I once got to see a SR-71 flyby on full afterburner and that gets pretty close to the total frequency response generated on stage. It’s a structured event with ebbs and flows, an endless acceleration of Shepard Tones, and enough VLF to affect every whale and nuclear submarine on the planet. It’s entirely possible that this was all auditory illusions going on in my head.

Attention any other bands who are contemplating reunions: The bar has been set pretty high here. I can’t think of any other band who’s taken sixteen years off and have come back sounding as vital as the day they left. Maybe they’ll even get around to that third album.

Hallelujah!

Sanity prevails over Cupertino:

To Our Developers:

We have decided to drop the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) for released iPhone software.

We put the NDA in place because the iPhone OS includes many Apple inventions and innovations that we would like to protect, so that others don’t steal our work. It has happened before. While we have filed for hundreds of patents on iPhone technology, the NDA added yet another level of protection. We put it in place as one more way to help protect the iPhone from being ripped off by others.

However, the NDA has created too much of a burden on developers, authors and others interested in helping further the iPhone’s success, so we are dropping it for released software. Developers will receive a new agreement without an NDA covering released software within a week or so. Please note that unreleased software and features will remain under NDA until they are released.

Thanks to everyone who provided us constructive feedback on this matter.

I suppose this is where I mention that I am now a registered iPhone developer. More news on that later on.

Spacemen 3 at The Echo

Spiritualized @ The Echo
Spectrum

When both Spiritualized and Spectrum play the same venue nine days apart it’s dead easy to draw up all kinds of coincidence and irony parallels. Hell, the music crit review basically writes itself. However if there’s any kind of comparison to look for it’s how Sonic and Jason have both dealt with that long hazy shadow of Spacemen 3 – now seventeen years in the past.

After years of shows with just him and maybe an occasional guitarist, Sonic has a full-band version of Spectrum again. As usual, I’ll patiently await the full album but in the meantime it’s great to hear these songs again. I forget just how brutal of a rhythm guitarist Sonic is.

Some YouTube clips:

“How You Satisfy Me” (yes it was that dark in the club)

“Revolution”

“Suicide”

After years of adding and subtracting band members, Jason finally has a lean version of Spiritualized that sounds great without the overkill of previous full-band tours. Perhaps best of all, Jason was positively chatty (which means saying “thank you” twice) during the show. Songs In A&E is a terrific album. It seems like Jason has finally assembled something that hits just the right elements of skeletal, noise, and over the top excess. Some of the songs remind me of Spacemen 3’s The Perfect Prescription – “Yeah Yeah” and “You Lie You Cheat sound like they could have come out “Things’ll Never Be The Same” rehearsals and “Baby I’m Just A Fool” could very well be a 2008 take of “Walkin’ With Jesus” if it wasn’t for the completely unexpected THIRD chord instead of the usual two.

“Come Together”

“Lord Can You Hear Me”

Inflationary Universe

Offered without comment…

A ten billion dinar note from the last days of Yugoslavia. Tesla appears to be saying “You have no idea what’s really going on” to himself.

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A quadrillion Zimbabwe dollar check. Apparently the bank prepared for million percent inflation by putting two lines for the sum section.

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But if there’s one picture that’s representative of 2008: The Year In Money, it’s this:

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ExDetectives show tonight

We’re playing a free show tonight.

Stroboscopic and The 5th Wall presents a night of music and mayhem at The Unknown Theater from 10pm on Thursday 25th September:

Playing on the main stage will be ExDetectives and Brookline, and in the lounge STANLEYLUCASREVOLUTION will be playing tracks from the new cd ‘Evolutionary Sunset Call’…

The Unknown Theater, 1110 Seward St, Los Angeles, CA 90038

ExDetectives - Unknown Theater

Weishaupt, we have a problem

It’s kinda sad to degenerate from being the world’s largest and most successful conspiracy to needing to hire an inexperienced kid in Knoxville. It’s just so difficult to get good help these days.

When Knoxville Police found 25-year-old Richard Anthony Smith, they say he was trapped in an air duct about 45 feet below the roof of the Knoxville Museum of Art.

Unusual enough.

But it’s what he said next–“Mission failed”–that would launch a tale of intrigue.

With help from the Knoxville Fire Department, officers pulled Smith from the air duct without injury. Then they asked him what he was doing.

A police report indicates Smith said he was a “special agent with the United States Illuminati, badge number 0931.”

His mission?

One from “Director Womack,” to “defuse and confiscate a Soviet-made MERV6SS-22AN warhead, with 14.5 kg of enriched uranium and a plutonium trigger, capable of delivering a 40-kiloton yield.”

Police say Smith believed the device was concealed in a blue, plastic cow sculpture in the basement of the museum.

Smith was the first to tell police he was off-course however–the police report indicates he got a phone call from his “agency” while in the air duct, saying they had made a mistake, as the bomb is supposed to be hidden in a museum in Memphis.

“Thank goodness he had a cell phone and was able to call 911 and got out without getting injured, because it could have turned out much worse,” said KMA Executive Director David Butler.

“You know everyone is laughing about it, and obviously concerned about this guy and his well being, and it was a serious situation, and we had to handle it as such,” said KPD spokesman Darrell DeBusk.

The police report indicates Smith said he rappeled onto the roof from a CH2 Huey, but police believe he stood on an ash tray to get onto the stepped-design portion of the roof.

Smith called 911 himself, just before 4:30 Wednesday morning. He faces a charge of aggravated burglary.

Richard Wright RIP

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Sigh 🙁… Terribly underrated, Wright was largely responsible for why my favorite band is my favorite band and by indirect connection why music means so much as it does to me. I guess no one outside of his family knew that he was ill.

I suppose it’s appropriate that his last appearance was singing “Arnold Layne” at the Syd tribute concert last year. Everything full circle?

[photo found on Flickr]

UPDATE: Ned articulates much better than I can.