From: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org (loud-fans-digest) To: loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Subject: loud-fans-digest V2 #14 Reply-To: loud-fans@smoe.org Sender: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk loud-fans-digest Monday, January 14 2002 Volume 02 : Number 014 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [loud-fans] Sleater-Kinney, 12 January, Portland [Michael Zwirn ] [loud-fans] Chat? ["Andrew Hamlin" ] [loud-fans] no need to correct me! [Michael Zwirn ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2002 09:34:09 -0800 From: Michael Zwirn Subject: [loud-fans] Sleater-Kinney, 12 January, Portland Show Report: Sleater-Kinney at the Crystal Ballroom, Jan 11th 2002 A few months ago, Michael Mitton and I tried to get into a sold-out Sleater-Kinney show in Portland and were turned away (along with around a hundred other people) at the door. Following that experience, I did buy my first S-K record, and checked a few out from the library. This time, Michael bought tickets ahead of time for a show at a larger venue, the Crystal Ballroom in downtown Portland, and we had no trouble at all. The Ballroom is a neat venue, a hall holding more than a thousand people with a huge dance floor mounted on ball bearings (rumor has it) that sways and rocks back and forth. A non-smoking venue, hallelujah, and an all-ages setting that had the over-21 alcohol area way in the back. The opening act was a woman who performed a multi-media show under the name Tracy and the Plastics. It was pretty crude stuff technologically, although she is a pretty decent vocalist, and there were some humorous moments in the film she had projected behind her. She reminded me of what Laurie Anderson might have been, had she grown up in Olympia twenty years later. The Standard, from Seattle, did an overly long set featuring generic rock with a lead singer who overemoted like a braying goat. Their instrumentals weren't bad though. When Sleater-Kinney came on, they were in an upbeat and chipper mood, asking the crowd if they wanted to dance and have some fun. The crowd indicated the affirmative. They launched into "Call the Doctor" as their opening song, one of the few tracks I can recognize on first listening. I thought the first half of the set was fine, a bit less energetic and engaging that I might have expected, but good stuff, and I was enjoying myself thoroughly in songs like "You're No Rock and Roll Fun." But they seemed to be emphasizing the more jittery, less anthemic numbers, and the tempos were a bit hard to groove to. Janet mentioned that she had just moved to Portland and was writing a lot of new songs, some of which were featured in the set. By far the best, in my uneducated opinion, was one with a back and forth refrain between she and Corin on lead vocals, that might have been called "On Bended Knees." It started almost bluesily and gained momentum and drive. Although the set was good, it didn't seem to really pick up for awhile. A woman in the front of the audience had some kind of medical problem, and the music stopped for a few minutes while the band called for medical attention and the crowd pulled away. Then Sleater-Kinney thanked the audience for its consideration and started up again. During the final half-hour, and the encore, the energy level picked up demonstrably. It didn't hurt that they saved some of their most energetic songs "Dig Me Out," "Get Up," "End of You" for the end, and the crowd was dancing far more animatedly and responding to Corin's rock-and-roll posturings (Pete Townshend windmill guitar poses, Keith Richards air-kicks, etc.). Janet has that bracing yelp of a voice in the higher ranges, and Corin answers her in the lower range, with a palpable force and sense of mission that's quite contagious. The drumming is spectacular, with nifty double-time changes and tricky signatures that resolve themselves into stomping choruses. It strikes me, as a fairly ignorant listener to their music, that the band encourages an air of overt Rock-and-Rollness, with a sense of enthusiasm and fun that is quite out of character in much of the indie world. They are enjoying the music and the fan adulation, and pull out the odd punk cover song for giddy kitsch value, and they like being rock stars in their little section of the pop universe. It's not alienating at all. That could explain the appeal to their music and their well-deserved critical and mass attention. - -- "A toast to proposals and flings" Mary Lou Lord ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2002 09:37:42 -0800 From: Michael Zwirn Subject: [loud-fans] 2001 films Favorite movies of the year 2001. Some movies that I did not see, that I think could have been contenders: The Royal Tenenbaums In the Bedroom Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Ali Waking Life Pane e Tulipani (Bread and Tulips) The Man Who Wasn't There Black Hawk Down Gosford Park Lantana Memento Acknowledging that, my favorite films of 2001: 1. Ghost World 2. Hedwig and the Angry Inch 3. Monsters, Inc. 4. Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amilie Poulin (Amilie) 5. Bridget Jones's Diary 6. Die Krieger und die Kaiserin (The Princess and the Warrior) 7. Spy Kids 8. Le Placard (The Closet) 9. Startup.com 10. Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone - -- "We're all drifters, singers and sisters, brothers and mothers and lovers and confidantes / We were born alone, we're alone when we're gone, so while we're here why don't we all just sing along?" Continental Drifters ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2002 16:58:47 -0800 From: "Andrew Hamlin" Subject: [loud-fans] Chat? Jer and I are over at irc.eskimo.com #loudfans. Well, I'm over there; I'm still prodding Jer experimentally with one foot to see if he's "awake." Join us! Saruman agrun-DAY...born on a Mon-DAY... Andy "Though he did a Spartanburg show in 1996, [Bob] Dylan hasn't performed in Greenville since a 1991 concert at Memorial Auditorium, where he was turned away unrecognized at the back-stage door after strolling into the venue from the Hyatt Regency." - --from an article by Donna Isbell Walker in today's "Greenville News," Greenville, South Carolina ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2002 17:55:40 -0800 From: Michael Zwirn Subject: [loud-fans] no need to correct me! I haven't been checking email since early this morning, but I know full well that I got all the names of Sleater-Kinney band members wrong. - -- "I'm polite when crumbling, and I'm nice when I want something" The Loud Family ------------------------------ End of loud-fans-digest V2 #14 ******************************