Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1574
Sharon Van Etten at Cat's Cradle, Real Wild Child returns, post-op clapping is hard, parental photo scanning
Hello hello hello. Good morning. Hi. How are you? I am good. My fingers are healing nicely. Never mind that puss coming out of my finger I’m sure it’s fine. Last night a man attempted to put a stamp on my hand and he grabbed my hand and pressed his thumb right into my trigger surgery stitches. It felt… unpleasant. I also heard him mention to the people in front of me in line that he was sixty years old. That dude looked good for sixty years old. One of those creatures of the night, perpetually thin rock n roll dudes who has spent his life working in night clubs and somehow still looks great. Vampire. Except in a kinda rockabilly style. Has there ever been a rockabilly vampire movie I kinda think I would watch that some night where my gummies were unexpectedly strong.
We went to see Sharon Van Etten last night. And her new band, The Attachment Theory. I thought it was my first time seeing her ever, but I just filed the photos in my comprehensive photo filing system, and learned that I had seen her open for Nick Cave in 2013, so that is a thing. I vaguely remember that now. I kinda liked her. I felt this way recently when I ripped my new 4k purchase of the magisterial Twin Peaks: The Return. The discs contain bonus footage of every Roadhouse rock and roll performance. And there is one by Sharon Van Etten. And I had no recollection.
Except I feel like I’ve been listening to her forever.
Anyway, she was awesome, absolutely great rock n roll show, exactly the sort of pick-me-up you are hoping for when you rally on a Monday night for a show. Because if you rally on a Monday night and the show is not a banger, you kinda wish you just went to bed. But nope, she ruled.
Emma liked her too. Emma didn’t know her. Emma loved the stuff from the new album, Sharon Van Etten with Attachment Theory, where she met some people in a band and joined up and made an album with them and it is really good and very synthy compared to her earlier stuff and man, it really hit awesomely live. She was like Siouxsie or Chvvrches or something. Pretty goth, kinda a beehive hairdo, doing goth dances. It was rad.
I especially liked hearing her band doing the old stuff — Comeback Kid and Everytime The Sun Comes Up and of course the perfect, glorious “Seventeen,” which was the fourteenth song of the set. We left after it, skipping one song plus the encore. Because I am old and I keep an eye on Setlist.FM and check back several dates to see if there is any variety in the setlist, etc. because I am old and I want to go to bed and get my sleep.
I checked my 10,000-plus-song playlist of all my favorites, and of my 10 or so favorite Sharon songs not from the new album, she only played three of them, but that was okay because it was still awesome and she has a million good songs and man going to a great rock show is just great.
I learned that clapping is a very difficult thing with my hand surgery. Eventually I figured out a way to clap but it looked fucking ridiculous. I was an absurdist clapper.
Very diverse crowd between old and young but you know what? Not much of a band t-shirt game. Emma had her awesome Nick Cave/Birthday Party Drunk on the Pope’s Blood shirt. It is a confusing shirt. It has the cover of the Birthday Party EP but says Nick Cave. I like it. I had my Cindytalk Camouflage Heart shirt on. We saw two shirts from the recent Gang of Four show at Cat’s Cradle but… that was abou it?
If we can’t get seats — few and far between at the Cradle, with a lot of competition for them — we have this place we like to stand, over on stage right by the front bar, so we can lean on the wall. It’s a great spot until the place gets backed, then a) people keep trying to go to the bar only to discover that it’s a cash bar, and then they have to sullenly go past us to the back bar, that bar should really get a stripe reader I am at a loss as to why they are forgoing this income, and b) it is right next to the invisible walkway from back to front. It’s not in the walkway, it is a legal place to stand, but once it gets crowded, clueless concert-goers stand in the unseen, unspoken path, and they have to keep moving and it is a giant hassle.
Also it is the same people over and over walking by. I mean jesus. Cats Cradle has a capacity of 750, it is borderline sold out, 99% of the people stay int he same place, and the same 10 or so people just keep going back and forth, all night. Sometimes a dozen times. Some are getting drinks, of course, but some are… not? They just can’t stand still,. Very interesting.
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We are listening to Nine Inch Nails some more today, going through all my old vinyl now to pair with the listen to all the new vinyl I listened to yesterday. Only one I hadn’t heard before was The Fragile: Deviations 1 which is a 4LP remix/outtakes/alternatives compilation of work from The Fragile era. There is no Deviations 2. It is a mystery. Maybe there will be someday. It was pretty good though. Maybe coulda been 3LPs.
Also, check out LP 2 of my newly-purchased-from-the-factory With Teeth. I have written UMG a strongly worded email. They have not written back. Behold:
PSA if you need to put a bandage on the palm of your hand, the best ones are the Band-Aid Water Block Flex. Nexcare waterproof and that ilk, as well as the waterproof ones with Hydrocolloid Gel or whatever, they don’t stick. Nor do regular ones. But Water Block Flex? Sticks like a champ, even survives three or four hand washings before it gives up the ghost. They last about 12-18 hours. But in that time? Nearly flawless.
Hey I have big news for you. Look!
That’s right, Real Wild Child, my goth dance night for kids and toddlers, makes its triumphant return to Man Ray, Cambridge, MA, and it is a Christmas Edition on December 20. And there is going to be a m’fin SANTA CLAUS so get ready man. I am very excited. You should find your nearest sub-18-year-old human being and come. Oh my god it is going to be so great.
I am so excited. I’ve wanted to do a Christmas one since the beginning.
Hopefully next year we’ll find a way to get Jane out of school and bring her up for a Halloween one.
Here is a photo of a mysterious relative of mine, who is the daughter, I think, of one of my grandmother’s sisters, but don’t quote me. But look how bad-ass she looks:
We — the royal we — have now scanned 315 or so photos having belonged to my parents, leading me to realize I radically under-estimated how many photos I had to scan. But I took the time to sort them by size, so I don’t need to keep doing a “preview” scan and cropping the scan output over and over, I can just plop ‘em down and hit scan.
In the old days I used to scan four or five photos in a batch and then cut them out of the scan one by one and do individual saves but this time I am not doing that. I do not know why. After 20+ years of this method, I have suddenly become convinced it is not as efficient as just scanning a single photo at a time. I suspect the reality is it’s a faster method, but it is more labor intensive, and if you don’t keep up as you go, you end up having scanned all the photos only to find you have several hours of cropping to do. This approach has the benefit of being done once you’re done. That gives me some comfort.
Didn’t see too much of Jane yesterday. Took her to school, our school time was nice. We got some screen time in together and she kissed me a hundred times which was lovely. Dinner was nice, she used a few impressive vocabulary words and gave me some of her grilled cheese. But she had a babysitter last night and Emma and I took advantage of it and snuck out early and, gasp, saw the opener, Torres. Sharon did a track with her so that was a nice bonus. Jane is very good to babysitters. It is a blessing. They all think she is an angel of a kid. The babysitter told us how great she always is.
“That must be nice,” Emma said. “For you.”
For your listening pleasure, vol 3 of our journey through 1991, the electronica edition. Yes, DHS’s “House of God” 12”, the seminal version, came out in 1990 but look, right there in the remix title it says 1991 so it counts.
This one is a little long. You know, I wrestled with “Industrial Dance” and thought about making an additional volume just of that stuff, but there is not enough of the good stuff that specifically came out in 1991, so it is sprinkled between this and other volumes. Whaddyagonna do.
Stay safe out there, mmm kay. Don’t let the bastards win.
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Thanks for reading.
And hey! Maybe buy one of my books!
Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.