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Djangoists, Miranda July and ESG
Oct. 29th, 2006 02:29 pmI’ve actual been pretty anti-social for the last couple of months. The older I get, retail interaction and the fact I have 200+ co-workers exhausts me. I’ve felt out of control with social planning so I’ve been not committing to almost anything.
But my birthday week opened the social event floodgates. Last Sunday I went to see my friend Chewy play drums for three bands in honor of his birthday and his parents’ anniversary . He was not the oldest child so the proximity of these events is coincidental. His heavy metal drumming hurts my ears but I got to hear him brush the drums with the cabaret stylings of Allison Lovejoy, the "reinterpreted, embellished, dismantled and then reassembled" Django Reinhardt cover band Django Obscura, and Spaghetti western ex-squatter punk sounds of King City.
Tuesday I went to see Miranda July do her multi-media work-in-progress "Things We Don’t Understand and Definitely Are Not Going To Talk About". I have to say that I really love her work. She manages to somehow wring something out of topics that other people can’t. That might sound like a backhanded compliment but I don’t mean it that way. It takes a lot of nerve to take on a heterosexual break-up story and make it fun and interesting. Her talent is twisting the otherwise ordinary, mundane, and cliched in ways that are culturally critical and thought provoking.
Friday I went to see ESG. I gotta say, I had no idea that the kids knew who they are. I expected a crowd of old folks and instead Gary Fembot and I were among the oldest. And the place was packed! ESG was awesome, playing their punk/funk oldies and their newer "soul jazz" tunes, many now sung by the daughter of one of the 3 sisters who formed the band. That this band has an eclectic following was symbolized by the fact I saw three other co-workers there and I don’t think that, outside of a membership meeting, we’d all been in the same room before. Someone, who I hadn’t seen, even came up to me at work the next day and asked me how I liked the show. If you read my LJ, I would have asked your name if I hadn’t been so busy and distracted.
Now I’m exhausted and have a bit of the flu. Go figure. I think I’ll be skipping most of the Halloween festivities.
But my birthday week opened the social event floodgates. Last Sunday I went to see my friend Chewy play drums for three bands in honor of his birthday and his parents’ anniversary . He was not the oldest child so the proximity of these events is coincidental. His heavy metal drumming hurts my ears but I got to hear him brush the drums with the cabaret stylings of Allison Lovejoy, the "reinterpreted, embellished, dismantled and then reassembled" Django Reinhardt cover band Django Obscura, and Spaghetti western ex-squatter punk sounds of King City.
Tuesday I went to see Miranda July do her multi-media work-in-progress "Things We Don’t Understand and Definitely Are Not Going To Talk About". I have to say that I really love her work. She manages to somehow wring something out of topics that other people can’t. That might sound like a backhanded compliment but I don’t mean it that way. It takes a lot of nerve to take on a heterosexual break-up story and make it fun and interesting. Her talent is twisting the otherwise ordinary, mundane, and cliched in ways that are culturally critical and thought provoking.
Friday I went to see ESG. I gotta say, I had no idea that the kids knew who they are. I expected a crowd of old folks and instead Gary Fembot and I were among the oldest. And the place was packed! ESG was awesome, playing their punk/funk oldies and their newer "soul jazz" tunes, many now sung by the daughter of one of the 3 sisters who formed the band. That this band has an eclectic following was symbolized by the fact I saw three other co-workers there and I don’t think that, outside of a membership meeting, we’d all been in the same room before. Someone, who I hadn’t seen, even came up to me at work the next day and asked me how I liked the show. If you read my LJ, I would have asked your name if I hadn’t been so busy and distracted.
Now I’m exhausted and have a bit of the flu. Go figure. I think I’ll be skipping most of the Halloween festivities.
