May was a pretty busy month, so I don’t have many music videos to share…
Betty Davis - He Was a Big Freak
The fan made video slideshow is NSFW.
Spirit of the West - Home For a Rest
A certain Wil Clouser suggested that I should put this video up. So go grab a beer and enjoy.
The last time Arcade Fire was in Portland, they played at a fairly small venue, and they weren’t even the headliner. (It was kinda sad because most people left after Arcade Fire played their set. Same thing happened when Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! was at the WOW Hall supporting The National. Damn you concert promoters with shitty popularity radars!)
This time they sold out the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in a day or so. There were a surprising number of older people in the audience. They’ve got wide appeal, bitches!
And the show was fucking amazing.
(Blurry photos coming at ya!)
Electrelane doing their thing.
I serendipitously listened to a few Electrelane songs in the days before the concert. And while they were a little better live, it was still pretty meh. But the world do need more girl bands. And girl race car drivers. And girl engineers. And girl film writers and directors. And …
I think this was during “Haïti”. Or could’ve been “In The Backseat”.
It was kinda weird seeing Régine smiling and dancing during (a rather rocking) “Haïti”, in the same way that it was weird to see The Decemberists cracking jokes during songs about star-crossed lovers, revenge, and war.
“Intervention”. But Win didn’t smash his guitar at the end, like he did on SNL.
They played about an equal number number of songs from their two albums, which is great. I was a little disappointed that they didn’t use the helmets during “Neighborhood #2 (Laïka)” — they were on the stage and all!
The ladies.
If there’s anything hotter than a violinist in a black dress dancing to Arcade Fire, I haven’t seen it.
Closing with “Wake Up”. Let’s thank Joe, who took the picture, for excluding Régine!
In addition to filling up the stage with gear and people, they also had some nice visuals with projections, lights, and whatnot.
The last time, which was my first time, I went to San Francisco, I had a lot of fun. And three of the six, including mine, red-eared sliders that we scoured the SF Chinatown for are still alive. (Scoured = they are illegal, so we can’t exactly get them from Petco.)
When I went down to the Bay Area this past weekend, I covered a much larger area: Mountain View, San Jose, Palo Alto, Menlo Park, San Francisco, and Berkeley.
Here are some photos:
World’s Crookest Street.
Amen.
Pirate ship!
Mermaids and stuff.
Palace of Fine Arts.
That’s Andy at the bottom of the image.
Buddha chillin’ in the Japanese Tea Garden in the Golden Gate Park.
The Japanese are weird. Am I right?
Andy and Bobby from the top of that bridge thing in the previous photo.
Some kind of thing.
Andy and Bobby learnin’ about stuffsss.
The famous guitar player Francis Scott Key. Ironic that his last name is key.
Phallic symbol #289. AKA the Hoover Tower at Stanford.
Two of the The Burghers of Calais.
HELLO!? YEAH! I’M IN A CHURCH!
Part of Stanford from the Hoover Tower.
David was representin’ OSU on the Stanford campus. I was representin’ squirrel crimes.
Anyway. Maybe next time I’ll finally visit that Golden Gate Bridge thingy.