NBA: Kings solicit local Sacramento art for area billboards →
How about a gif billboard:
Accordion 'Thriller' at Luigi's!
Whoa. (Thanks to Infinite Improbability for her blog’s accordion series.)
Brooklyn Blood: Zach Hill, Ganglians, Wavves tour gets violent, ugly in N.Y.?
Video courtesy Chocolate Bobka.
Here’s a little fun: Ganglians’ “Never Mind” from a tour stop in Brooklyn.
I hope they’re having fun and making a bit of cash. I haven’t spoken with anyone but I’ve heard two things: 1) they had a hard time getting into Canada but made it. 2) they had to get their own van/car and aren’t riding in the Wavvesmobile?
And then, of course, there’s this: Wavves’ Nathan Williams, who recorded the new Wavves album here in Sac with Zach Hill—it’s pretty good—says he got in a fight with Jared Swilley of Black Lips. Williams wrote on his blog:
“[W]hen some dude is just looking for a fight at 4 in the morning talking shit to my face and his girlfriend is spitting in the face of all my friends it’s a whole different story.”
Interestingly enough, Swilley has an entirely different take on the fight:
“I’ve never ‘come after’ [Williams], it wasn’t four a.m., that wasn’t my girlfriend, no one was spitting, and I didn’t attack him. I don’t give a shit about that kid and his music.
What happened was, after we finished our set I went to Daddy’s with some friends and saw that faggot from Wavves talking to a photographer friend of mine. The only thing I did was walk up to him and say ‘You’re that faggot from Wavves and I don’t like you’. He smiled a bit but didn’t say anything.
After that, I went outside and saw their tour manager hanging around with some guys. They started getting all chuckles with me and so I told them I wasn’t gonna have it. After that, Wavves tour manager hit me square in the face with a bottle. Blood started pouring out and six dudes fucking started kicking me until I blacked out.”
How lovely. Sounds like a rough tour. But I hear Wavves sells nearly “$2,000 in merch a night,” so Hill must at least be making some cash. And, honestly, I do really dig the new Hill/Williams Wavves songs.
UPDATE: I made this.
Sacbee: need for homeless shelters before cold weather →
Is it unrealistic to expect K.J. to spend more face time shilling for the arena than brainstorming potential winter-shelter locations?
Sac For Tourists and SN&R present ...
Friday, October 16
Doom Bird is Kris Anaya and Joe Davancens (ex An Angle) making lovely chamber indie.
Touchez is James Williams (ex the Feeling and Spiral States), Mario Andreoni of Chk Chk Chk and others. Really fun retro-pop rock.
San Kazakgascar is Eastern bloc rock.
DJ Gourmet is, uh, blog house?
$5 admission. 100 percent of the door goes to the bands (oh, and the sound guy)
Doors at 8:30PM, SanKaz at 9PM, Doom Bird on at 11PM.
$3 beers, $3 slices, $3 wines.
Luigi’s Fun Garden
1050 20th Street in Midtown
I finally checked out a show at the Fire Escape in Citrus Heights, and that’s probably the best-sounding live show space in the area.
—
I never thought about the acoustics of the Fire Escape. I’m always too distraught that my camera is shooting mud. The stage lights there throw its sensors for a loop.
(via bramble)
Charles Twilling does the sound at Fire Escape. Of course, everyone knows Twilling from the old Capitol Garage. My limited experiences at Fire Escape were not sonically memorable, I must admit, though I hope to give the venue many more chances this fall and winter.
No love for Michael Moore
“C’mon dude. You didn’t like my movie, either?”
Michael Moore used to be funny. TV Nation was great. Same goes for Roger & Me, which struck a delicate balance between who-me comedy, populist editorializing and compelling docudrama oh so well.
Times change. I caught the advance screening of Moore’s latest polemic, Capitalism: A Love Story, on Tuesday. And, after 20 years of making films, who would have guessed that Moore would end up a sad caricature of himself. And dull—fatally so.
Moore even pokes fun at said persona. In one scene during the final third of the film, Moore returns again to General Motors’ headquarters, whereupon security and police stop him and his crew before entering. A guard deadpans into his walkie-talkie (I paraphrase): “It’s Michael Moore, the filmmaker, here to see the chairman, again.” The audience laughs.
And this scene’s representative of Capitalism as a whole: ho-hum, more of the same across the board but with little depth or teeth.
What’s more, Moore’s approach now feels insincere; targeting middle-class Christian viewers with placating scenes in some vain attempt to convert them to his nu-progressive cause or something like that?
And yes, I write “nu” progressive because, ultimately, it feels like Moore has lost his populist teeth. In the film, he takes to task congressional Democrats and Republicans, but spares the Obama Administration, even though absolutely zero done when it comes to regulating and overseeing the Securities and Exchange Commission.
In spite of this, I probably did enjoy the film a bit more than SN&R film critic Jonathan Kiefer (read his two-star review here)—but not much more. Or Moore.
And my biggest beef—and this was a topic of discussion when Moore appeared on Bill Maher’s HBO show—is that Moore for some reason thinks democracy is an economic and social system, not a political one. I don’t get this.
It’s as confusing as his latest hodgepodge feature—which I’d say gets 2-and-one-half SN&R popcorn dudes out of five.
Kris Anaya (Doom Bird, ex An Angle) does Michael McDonald
Yacht-rock karaoke.
I was trailing Anaya last night for an upcoming music feature, which among other things featured a stop at the Townhouse’s Wednesday karaoke night. This iPhone video is pretty shabby—just got it, normally I shoot on my Canon—but you get the idea (and now know that the falsetto parts on “I Keep Forgetting” are pretty damn hard to hit).
Underground Music Examiner: new music blog →
Hi, UME, meet Sacramento Music Examiner.
Sac Press: transparency, scrutiny, sanitization—and some rough comments →
“We do lay out our front page everyday, composed of articles scrutinized by our community and then by editors.”
I’m not really interested in looking deep into the Sac Press business model this morning, but this seems to be the kicker: Have editors edit/screen stories before they’re programmed on Sac Press’ main page. This idea that the community-as-fail-safe is a bit silly.
(Josh Fernandez is hilarious.)
Snog: City Hall will be watching ... always →
I’d like to get my hands on this footage after, say, a year and edit together a Downtown James Brown’s Greatest Hits dance video.
Sac Press: NIMBYs fight G.V. Hurley's successor's liquor license →
I’m on Dale Kooyman and Vito Sgromo’s e-mail lists, and I’m sick of these guys. There’s a much more productive way to go about this—and I feel sorry that a good guy and excellent chef like Billy Ngo will have to battle this cabal, who contest most Midtown/downtown ABC licenses on general principle.
Acne Treatment