Green Light, 7-11

I saw U2 last Thursday night at the Meadowlands. Even though it was a spontaneous occurrence, it still felt kinda routine -- U2 are a family favorite and there will be an attempt to see them on every tour. Like, I wasn't surprised I was seeing them, even though I didn't know I was seeing them until two days before the show.

The show, though, was far from routine. The last two U2 tours have been about making arenas feel like clubs by using a really cool theater-in-the-round thing to bring the audience in. On the Elevation Tour, it was the heart-shaped stage. On the Vertigo Tour, it was an enormous, white O. The 360 Tour brought the music outside, under an enormous claw/spaceship/crab.
I just thought I'd share some observations from the night.

There was some Popmart-like detachment from the audience. I don't know if it was the claw, the selections from the new album or the scale of the whole thing... the show was more about the music's interaction with the elaborate stage than with the crowd. I was kind of taken aback at first, but by the end of the show, I was pretty into it. It was a spectacle and I really liked that they changed the game up a little bit. The setlist could've used some tweeking, though. Like on the last tour, I loved the inclusion of weirder, early cuts like "An Cat Dubh" and "Out of Control." And everyone's been noting the lack of cuts from Zooropa and Achtung Baby. And not that I wanted it, but they didn't even play "Pride." I think they lost everyone at least once during the set. For example, they played this remix of "I Know I'll Go Crazy if I Don't Go Crazy Tonight" that had them wandering around the stage with bongos and stuff... everyone was trying to figure out what was going on, if they were even performing the song live. And of all songs to follow this little dance party with, they picked "Sunday Bloody Sunday."
I'm wondering when the tour will come where we start hearing the unheralded songs from All That You Can't Leave Behind live again, like "Wild Honey." And "Yahweh" was such an amazing closer on the last tour, I wish they could have held onto it for this tour. Instead they left us with "Moment of Surrender," a perfectly AWESOME song from the new record but it's a really momentum and mood killer and didn't have me begging for another encore. Speaking of last tour, they also had opened the first encore with a pretty unbeatable selection of songs from Achtung like "The Fly," complete with Zoo Tv graphics and all that shit. It was tons of fun to see, I wouldn'tve minded experiencing that sort of thing again.
HOWEVER: It's great to still have "Walk On" as a centerpiece of the show. And they opened the second encore with "Ultraviolet (Light My Way)." Jesus Christ. Honestly it brought me to tears, that song harbors so much pain and to have Bono swinging from a microphone in front of 80,000 people, singing that bridge...wow. It was really good to have that song back in rotation for the first time since 1993.

I can't believe we didn't get "Your Blue Room"



Ahhhh the melancholy all over that record!! It drove me crazy in sixth grade lol.

This Stella video is so good for the changing season:

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Is There a Reason for this Sentimental Streak?

My "apartment" feels a lot more lived in after this weekend. Thanks friends for leaving pillows, sleeping bags, backpacks and most of all, for being such good friends. Seriously. This place gets so alienating.

My Sunday afternoon looked something like this:

Although Be Happy Fest boasted a bill of 10 bands, only two were worth caring too much about and out of those two, I'd already seen one. That left Teenage Cool Kids, easily my favorite band of the last year. Apparently only allotted 20 minutes for whatever reason, they played at least 50, to a packed basement. The epicness of their new record, the must-hear Foreign Lands, translated remarkably well live and their older material was predictably scream-and-pogo worthy (totally a good thing.) More on them later, at this location

Temple Towers Blues

Was this place built in a fucking day?

There's no way they spent more than a day working in each one of these rooms. Sure it looks nice but the seams between the floor panels are blistering, the paint on the walls is still tacky and our bathroom has major drainage issues.

I just took a shower and by the time I stepped out, the water was up past my ankles. Our toilet has been filled to the brim with brown shit water since Thursday. Plunging proves useless. Every time you tried to flush it literally did the opposite: a column of toilet juice would rise out of the middle.

At least I can put a hot pot on the granite (granite?!?) countertops and they wont crack or melt. But seriously, how much am I paying for those granite countertops?

-Wishing I lived off campus. But I'm glad I'm in the company of friends in 207 and 212.

Also, living on the 12th street side of the Towers has given me the inspiration for a drinking game. Twelfth street boasts a bike lane and it's extremely busy most daylight hours. I propose we sit in front of the big window in the common area and take a shot for every bike that goes by. Double shot if it's a fixie. Triple if it's someone going the wrong way.

Sorry, But This Is Too True

I hate being the "fuck MTV!"-guy like I was last night. Usually I enjoy watching the VMAs. MTV was ballsy in coming up with a music video award show. They had a sense of humor about it. Over the years though, MTV and the nominees have become alarmingly sincere about the whole thing. Rather than seeking critical acclaim or furthering their artistic merit via video, the "artists" have settled into making the same old bullshit dance-party-movie-shit fuckery. I don't really know how to describe it. Last night was just so unzeitgeisty but even so supposedly millions of people were twittering about Kanye's Taylor Swift diss and Lady GaGa's absurd outfits. I had to ask the same cliched question as millions of other uptight white male music conniseurs: who the fuck cares? Nirvana, and Krist Novoselic in particular actually, said it best in 93:

No Escape

Started out the day listening to Oyster Boy on my way to Intro to Advertising with the nervously foreign and always sweet Jin Seong Park. Oyster Boy is Zach Lamalfa, formerly of Spider Geometry, and, currently, ringleader of Hoe Avenue Peace Meeting. Hoe Avenue are incredible, but spread across the country. Zach has taken the angry shitgaze he made with Gavin Thomas and Tom Melton this summer and made it personal. His "The Waterfront Cassette Tape Cassette" is a fucking BRASH piece of music; one guy's hate for stupid friends, stupid music, stupid towns, stupid books... stewed in New York City with some elegant literary references. It's Dylanesque like War On Drugs is Dylanesque but instead of offering us a meandering, nuclear but optimistic future, Oyster Boy hands us a stagnant, pissed off present. Choice line: "I'm gone, fuck you." As a human being, Zach is smart and funny; as a musician, I think he uses his talent sparingly and to great effect. This solo effort could easily have been too stripped down for its own good but it's very complete with potential to be timeless. You can download the record for free on the Oyster Boy Myspace right now and John Crodian will be putting "Cassette" on cassette as, I think, the first release for his new label High and Gay.

I had to pick my mood up with the Spraynard demo. It's about a hundred blog years old by now but still holds up. I think they're almost done their full-length. This summer, they toured fucking England which is more than your band can say. I kind of took them for granted the last time I saw them, sometime in June, but I miss them and I'm totally bummed they're not playing many shows until December at least. I had a dream last week that they appeared on TV and the host of the show said they were from Bucks County. Totally wrong.