Hello. It's my half-birthday today. I am now 30 1/2 years old. Once I hit 30, I stopped worrying about getting older. (Because that's when you realize that you cannot possibly get older.)
By the way... there are short Justin Beiber reviews coming some point. Oh, I see you there gaping at your computer screens. Mmmhmmm. Yes I did.
Also, I have *A LOT* of concert reviews to post. All of which are in various stages of completeness. I am vowing that I will post at least one of them tomorrow. (Which means that I'll either post one or not.) It isn't going to be five pages long.
I probably should have posted more, but I run out of energy to edit after awhile. I have this massive word document filled with these hastily written reviews, so there will probably be more tomorrow. (If not, then I probably got caught up in some TV show or YouTube videos or something.)
So I started to work a 4/10 schedule meaning that I work 10 hours a day for four days a week with Friday off. This probably means I'll only be updating Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. That is, depending on if I can keep this momentum going. By the way, I have a large backlog of reviews that I haven't post. What I'm posting today were written between 12/27 - 12/29... (yes I'm keeping track of that on a spreadsheet). The reason for waiting like that is to give me a fresher approach to these reviews so I can edit them more efficiently (although I know I'm still letting quite a few mangled sentences get through). More unintended, it also lets me get some sense into an artists' future releases so I can more easily go back and tweak earlier reviews if I need to... (Like Elvis or Sinatra, whose albums I'd never listened to before now.)
I'm also openly taking requests for full discographies. Someone e-mailed me and asked for John Lennon, and I wrote the review of the... er... naked people album yesterday. Although note that I'm sort of stabbing at them as it is. Just reviewing whatever I feel like. I've started the Polvo discography thinking that was requested a long time ago, but then I remembered that it was actually Primus I was supposed to do! (Polvo, I was only supposed to review the reunion album! But now I'm listening to their earlier stuff. And, somehow, even though it's noise-stuff, I actually like it.) So I'll also start to review Primus sometime. But I haven't started yet.
...I'm not sure when I'm going to get around to those concert reviews! Maybe I'll just skip 'em? ...Ah well, they're already distant, permanent memories; I'm not going to forget anything else about them.
Phew! Lots of updates today. Ideally I should have updated these gradually over the last few days. Though that Sparks review was poorly written initially and was hanging me up a bit! (I seemed to hit my stride a little better after that.)
Happy New Year!!!! ...(Uh oh, it's back to work tomorrow! Back to the world of lousy computer models, monster spreadsheets, and endless documentation!)
...Ha, OK, I hope no one gets too upset over those early Frank Sinatra reviews. Rest assured, though, he'll start getting some overwhelmingly positive reviews by the time the mid 1950s rolls around.
Hi! The Dweezil Zappa concert was excellent, although it reminded me that I know next to nothing about Frank Zappa's discography. That is, I reviewed a handful of them awhile ago, but apart from Freak Out!, Burnt Weeny Sandwich, and--more recently--Hot Rats, I hadn't been listening to them so extensively through the years. (Part of that is to blame for his discography being unavailable to purchase until recently.) ...But that's OK, though, because I'm inspired now to perhaps look into it a little more deeply. The same thing happened to me when I saw The Psychedelic Furs last October.
I have been quite busy with the short reviews over these past two days, reviewing some things I doubt I would have otherwise. Notably in there is some Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra. (I'm letting them fester for a bit so that I can make a few passes editing them before posting them.) I've also been reviewing a bunch of albums I've been listening to heavily in the past few months, including three of them which I'm deeming five-stars. Two of those albums weren't even on the radar in my original estimate that there are probably only 200 five-star albums in existence, and the fact I've discovered new ones so quickly is a wonderful thing! (...Yes, my brain is very excited about this.) Even a wonderful, semi-obscure find like that Lucy Show album--even though I wasn't quite ready to deem it five stars--was a fantastic, recent discovery.
FolkLaw were a band that sent me a CD to review that I've FINALLY gotten around to. (Though I'd only promised a capsule review...) I have three more of these to go.
(I guess I'm doing band-request reviews again... but only the short reviews and only if I can understand/tolerate it.)
So the old reviewing bug seems like its starting to come back to me although I seem to be more in the mood to continue building up the short reviews page. It's also becoming somewhat obvious that I'll have to start separating that site onto separate pages by letter so that it doesn't get too large. Since I get a week and a half off work (at long last!) this is as good of a chance as any to do this.
I also have some concert reviews that are long past due that I hope I'll get to over this break! I still have the Del McCoury Band review to write (which is halfway finished), then Neil Young, then Alice Cooper, and then John Cale. All excellent experiences. However, I suppose going to concerts has lost a bit of their excitement, which would explain why I'm no longer as inclined to try to commit to memory every single intricate detail to memory about them. So I'll likely be keeping these reviews short. ...I also have a new concert I'm going to tomorrow: Dweezil Zappa!
A few other tickets I had purchased recently were for The Residents in February, Janis Ian in April, and (the big-ticket item!) Fleetwood Mac in May.
OK. I'm really not into working on the site at the moment I guess. ...This review I kind of had to finally force myself to finish! (And even then, I'm going to want to read it over again and polish it some more. But for now, I want to move on.)
The Alice Cooper concert was fantastic. I sat very very close. So close that he pointed at me during the show and called me "Poison." (He might have been pointing at either of the persons next to me, but I am declaring that it was exactly me he intended that for.) That song, by the way, I still have fresh in my mind tortured me to death during my linear algebra final four years ago. As I was taking that test, the room was quiet as a mouse, but that song was SCREAMING at me.
I have two more concert reviews to write before I get to that one! The bluegrass one, I really should just write a few paragraphs. One reason for that is I didn't recognize any of their songs. The Neil Young concert will be longer, but ... considering I'm so late on these things, I'll cut down some of that B.S.
...I'm kind of mortified that it's been taking me so long to write this review. Especially since I now have three other concert reviews to finish. And making matters worse, this review isn't even done yet. I'm posting it now, because I'll read it over again tomorrow and get so embarrassed by my awkward phrasings that I'll go in and edit it far quicker than I would have otherwise.
And if I don't get my next concert review published by Sunday, there will be four concert reviews outstanding! That's when I'm going to see Alice Cooper. (The Neil Young concert was last Saturday, by the way. It was a mite headache-inducing, since he was definitely in an Arc kind of mood. It also didn't help that the two opening acts--one of which was Los Lobos--were also extremely noisy. ...Er, don't worry, I'm going to write an overwhelmingly positive review.)
So I might have been going a little insane with the concerts this year. And if all of that wasn't enough, there are two other ones I've bought tickets to recently. One is John Cale next month. ...I originally didn't think I'd go to that, but then my good senses took over when I realized that guy is awesome, and how could I ever pass that up? (After buying the ticket I listened to his new album, which---wow---is excellent.) Another one I'm going to in February is in response to people who think I shouldn't only see old bands. This is a singer-songwriter named Ellie Goulding. Now, I didn't buy the ticket randomly: I like her two albums. They're quite poppy, though, so I'm sort of curious what audience she's going to attract. (I'm, by the way, a neutral figure at concerts. Nobody in the crowd sees me as anything.)
Lastly, I'm a little peeved that I missed the announcement for a Sufjan Stevens concert next month. The concert is sold out. But! Can't win them all. And I can't complain considering all I've seen this year.
Anyway, hopefully I'll get that David Byrne/St. Vincent concert review out by the weekend. Portland is way less interesting than Vegas, so that review shouldn't be nearly as wordy. Also, there were only three Talking Heads songs performed (and a few St. Vincent songs I was familiar with but of course they weren't as deeply rooted as a Talking Heads songs). So I'm thinking--with a little bit of luck--I can keep that down to three pages. But it'll probably be four.
Apologies for being a lazy bastard! But at least I finally got around to finishing and uploading the review for the concert I attended three weeks ago. Since then, I've been to three OTHER concerts, which I still need to finish writing and posting. The first is Elton John in Las Vegas, the second is David Byrne/St. Vincent in Portland, and the third is The Del McCoury Band in Edmonds (i.e., just down the street from me). ...It turns out Del McCoury is kind of a bigger deal than I was giving him credit for, so maybe it was a good thing I went to that. (Though truth be told, the Canadian folk-duo Dala, their opening act, was far more up my alley.) Maybe I'll try to be a little more diligent in writing for this website this week. Maybe there'll also be a few capsule reviews, since I do have a few new opinions of things I've been listening to lately.
Apologies for the lack of updates! The whole purpose of the capsule review page was to get me to update daily, but... Blah...
At some point I'll take whatever requests anybody wants for that page. There have been a few common requests lately, so I'll one-by-one start to tackle them there I think. And STILL at the same time, keep up with the long reviews.
Anyway, as I mentioned in a post on my forum, I saw The Psychedelic Furs on Saturday, and a review (I hope!) will be posted tomorrow. If it's not posted tomorrow then it'll be posted in two weeks! (I'm going on vacation. FINALLY. After almost two years of never going on vacation...)
I also got a ticket to see Dweezil Zappa who's coming by here a couple days before Christmas! That would make a grand total of 15 concerts this year (I've been to nine so far.)
...And my pointless and unattainable quest to review every single album ever released before I die continues. (I'm a little bit shocked I'm enjoying Motorhead so much, though...)
Here's an example of my whims... I listened to Mike Love's one and only solo album on a whim who covered a Neil Sedaka tune. I had only really known Sedaka by name and not anything else, so I listened to one of his albums a couple times and gave some quick impressions on it.
Also, I've decided that when I write a long review I'll also upload a capsule one... Just to help beef that page up. (Eventually I'll have to separate these reviews into pages in alphabetical order... But that day won't come for awhile...)
That Maroon 5 I posted a few days ago, I had to rewrite. I noticed something about the album they'd released prior to that in 2010: It's actually pretty good. (Review that zero people care about: Coming soon.)
I have a full-length review ready to be posted tomorrow. The Sundays. Why? Because tomorrow is Sunday. Then. Probably that Peter Gabriel live album. That is. If I don't die from boredom.
Oh yeah... wasn't I supposed to finish a concert review or something? (I have the Psychedelic Furs concert in about one week... So I'd BETTER at least finish it by then!)
OK. So I'm starting to settle down and thinking I'll keep both sites running at the same time. I think all I was lacking was a vehicle to service all my silly whims, and that's exactly what the capsule site would hopefully provide. (For example, I remember once wishing I could review every single Willie Nelson album. That would have been way too much of a daunting task to write full-length reviews of them.) So I'll keep the main site, I guess, for the 'serious' reviews. Or whatever you want to call them. ...I also believe eventually I'll have capsule versions of every review that's on the main site. And if time were infinite, vice versa. Some readers do prefer short reviews to long ones, and this is a way to have my cake and eat it too.
I also think I was getting a bit tired of re-listening to so much stuff on my queue a number of times that was more than necessary... I should keep the number of listens to a minimum unless I'm actually addicted to something there...
I find it amusing that the minute after I told someone on my board that I was thinking I would never use a 1.5 rating, I discovered an album that deserved a 1.5 rating. (Hey and guess what? Crabby Appleton only had two albums, so I reviewed an entire discography already... yay...)
I'm not sure how much this capsule site is a phase, but I'll keep adding to it until my heart says otherwise...
Well... I'm seriously thinking about contradicting everything I said about the capsule site being only a side-project. I mean come to think of it, I honestly don't think the content of reviews is diminished a whole lot when they're only one-third the size. Above everything else, it saves me from having to pad some of these reviews with tons of B.S. (The Jepsen album I reviewed yesterday, for instance, I didn't have to mention once that I'm not a teenage girl! Wasn't that something?)
I also listen to music far more than I used to when I was in college, and so I am actually able to review three or four albums per day if I want to. Moreover, a lot of what I've been hearing lately I don't think the WRC has ever reviewed before. So why not get a little more variety? ...There's also something very appealing to me about being able to review three albums in the time that I only used to be able to review one.
It's also a fact that I'm REALLLLLLLLLY getting tired of trying to finish pages. It might have something to do with the fact that I happen to be at the troughs of all the artists I'm reviewing right now. But I do start to feel a little sick to my stomach at the notion of coming up with 1,000 words to say about some of this stuff. ...Maybe I'll come out of that mentality, but until then, I might just work to beef up that capsule page for now. (I'm also going to have to figure out how I want to organize that.)
Anyway, I'll wait to see if there's an uproar, but I don't think there'll be one. I'll continue on with this for now. I won't make any major changes to the main site for awhile, because there's always a strong chance I'll change my mind about this and go back to the old ways. This website is only a means of entertainment for me, so I guess I should just do whatever I feel like...
Phew! So I'm trying to be somewhat more tough with my ratings that I am on the main site. ...I kind of got into this trap where I would always default to an 11 whenever I reviewed a 'respectable' album, even if I didn't particularly enjoy it. On the capsule site, I'm trying to be a little more... er... curt. (Mazzy Star is respectable but not very enjoyable, so it gets three stars. Jepsen's album is enjoyable but not very respectable, so it gets three stars. Three stars is still a "Good" rating, by the way...)
Yeah, I didn't forget about the main site although I don't appear to be working on it much! Well... I'm having too much fun quickly reviewing random albums. Maybe it'll wear off...
...And I guess this was the danger of launching that capsule review side-project: It lets my mind wander. If my mind is allowed to wander, then it will definitely wander! (...Eh, I figure the important thing is that I'm writing something. It doesn't matter what it is, really.)
I've also been pretty busy working on the Blondie and Devo concert review, which is mostly done, but it might be a few days or so before I complete it. (I never used to fret over grammar and structure. Why can't I go back to my old ways?) Another review that I'm halfway finished with is John Paul White's album... He's the male half of Civil Wars. He looks like Johnny Depp.
Has anyone ever heard of a band called Slowdive? I'm listening to their debut right now for the first time, and it is sublime...
That new capsule review page takes me back to when I used to write those movie reviews. I started those before Netflix, so I only reviewed whatever came up on TV or whatever happened to catch my eye at Hollywood Video. (I'm obsessed with reviewing things, by the way... 14 years later, I'm still at it. I think I have a disease...) There's no structure or planning to that thing whatsoever. Which is good!
Just a tiny update today with the statement that I'll probably have much more for tomorrow. I have the next Booker T. & The M.G.s album written completely, but it just needs editing. I'll also write a handful or so of short reviews for tomorrow. That's not to mention the concert review I have to write, but I'll save uploading that for Sunday. (I'm dead beat tired right now! Give me sleep!!)
OK, this weekend it's time to write that Blondie & Devo concert review. Maybe the reason I'm stalling is because nothing particularly noteworthy happened to me there, and I'm less compelled to try writing down every detail of everything that happened there. Also neither band really talked to the audience much... I'll also get around to revising that ZZ Top review, which is rife with awkward sentences and--as I found out later--the opening sentence or two I don't believe is technically correct. (They were in their 30s when the bearded look was adopted.)
OK! The next full review is getting close to being finished (which is Free as a Bird by Supertramp), and I suspect I'll have it uploaded tomorrow. Meanwhile, here's a glossed-over mini-review of an album that I probably never would have been able to touch otherwise... (Although, I wish I could write more about that album! ...Well, maybe one day.) There are so many more albums I've been listening to lately that I could include on that mini-reviews page, but as I said, I really shouldn't let that side project have priority. I'll just let them trickle in whenever I feel like writing about them.
Major insomnia tonight thanks to the relatively hot weather. (If it's warmer than 70 degrees, it's curtains for me. Well, the miserable Seattle weather will return to me shortly, and I'll be able to sleep again.) One thing that's probably going to be painfully obvious about this new mini-reviews page is that I listen to a lot of synth-pop.
So an idea I've been kicking around for about a year was to start writing extremely brief reviews of albums that I've sort of been listening to on the side. Now, I've finally decided to give it a try. This page would never replace the main site, and my main concentration will always be on the main site. This new page is only for breezed-over impressions of albums that I happened to be listening to. A few of these albums I really haven't listened to very much and thus I might not have even formulated concrete opinions of them in my mind. (Hence, my hesitation to assign full 15-scale ratings for them.) However, I might also write short reviews of albums I've already written full reviews of.
...I was planning on writing a full review today (Natalie Merchant!), but given that I spent most of my day working on formatting that page that seems unlikely! But I'm going to work on it at least!
Also I went to a Blondie and Devo concert 10 days ago, and I haven't written my review of that. (The ZZ Top review is godawful, and I also need to edit that pretty badly.) ...The Psychedelic Furs concert is coming up in three weeks, which means I probably won't be able to get around to that page, so I'm going to go ahead and cancel it for now. The concentration for updates will continue to be rewriting the old site.
I almost didn't update, but at the last minute (9 p.m.) I decided to just push through with it! (I probably published it way too prematurely, and there are a few things I still need to fix with it... so check back again tomorrow, if you want.)
Also, that Mike Pinder album came to me already, and it was autographed! (I guess not too many people buy those things...)
OK, the moment of truth comes this weekend. Will I write a ton of reviews so I can go everyday next week with an update? ...Or not? (Tomorrow is my day to upload the ZZ Top concert review.)
So this one-a-day business probably won't last very much longer though hopefully updates will continue to be relatively frequent. (I might be able to sustain it for awhile thanks to Labor Day weekend starting tomorrow.)
...Whew, I was getting *close* to breaking this one-a-day update streak. I probably still needed to read that Michael Bolton review over once or twice, but it's more important that I don't break the streak! (I'm very tired right now... Zzz...)
I do have another review that just needs to be edited for tomorrow (Shawn Colvin) and then I have the first draft of Peter Gabriel's New Blood partly written right now. And then of course the ZZ Top concert review is getting closer and closer to completion. I also listened to Primus for the first time today, and... Er, I have no idea why I was hesitating to start listening to those. They're fun!
Meanwhile, I've been ordering Moody Blues solo albums from the Internet, which I'll start reviewing as soon as the 10,000 Maniacs page is through. It turns out these albums are not all that pricey, which is contrary to what I'd thought earlier. John Lodge's super-rare one I was actually able to get off of iTunes. I ordered both of Graeme Edge's. ... Mike Pinder's are a little tricky because I have to get them directly from his website, so I only ordered his first one for now, and I'll get the others after I see how smoothly that goes. (...What amazing adventures I have ordering CDs...)
So the ZZ Top concert was quite good, although it was very short. 1 hour and 15 minutes. When they went off stage I thought it was the half-time intermission, but it turned out they were only coming back out for an encore. They didn't have an opening act or anything, so the entire thing was 75 minutes. ...Well, at least I ended up making it home for bedtime at 9:30!
So the concert review definitely isn't going to be long at all. I already wrote the gist of it on my phone on the ride back home. I think I'll have it pieced together by the weekend... (By the way that ZZ Top page I have pegged for rewrites in the relatively near future, and I'll complete the thing this time. But who knows when that'll be? 12 years from now??)
I'm also sensing the urgency about getting that Psychedelic Furs page started... I have less than six weeks. Uh oh.......
Update! (Yes!) I also have updates ready for Monday and Tuesday. Hopefully, I'll have another one finished for Wednesday before I leave for the ZZ Top concert in two hours. ...I'm not posting these reviews now because they still need to be read over again and edited. I mean, if I don't mangle sentences enough in the reviews I end up posting here, you should read them when they're just in their first drafts.
So tomorrow's update is scheduled to be Bob Dylan's Empire Burlesque, then it would be Kiss' Animalize and then (the most long awaited review of them all!) Michael Bolotin. At least by Thursday (or ideally before that), I would like to have posted the ZZ Top concert review, which I'm going to make an earnest attempt to keep at less than a page and a half. Who knows whether I'll be successful... Maybe the concert will blow my mind or something?
Ooo. I'm not sure how long I'm going to keep this string of once-per-day updates going. It depends on whether I can get caught up this weekend. Otherwise, it was a nice run! (Also I have the ZZ Top concert Sunday. I've promised myself I wouldn't make that review terribly long, though.)
Phew! Made the update. Weirdly I have four other reviews in various, unfinished states. I was supposed to upload the Mary Chapin Carpenter one today, but I read over the first paragraph and it was pretty awful, and I am way too tired to edit it. Fortunately, the Yardbirds review was in a more acceptable state, and so I didn't have to break this amazing 19-day streak.
Also, I've been trying to tinker out that Devils review, but it has had me somewhat baffled. (I guess that's the album Duran Duran would have made if they could have made one in 1979 when Stephen Duffy was lead singer... It's sort of an entertaining album and sort of not. Seems like some of the songs are strangely developed or could have used more streamlined instrumentation... but that would have been missing the whole point of it, since apparently the Duran Duran of 1979 weren't about streamlining things........... Pardon me, I'm thinking out loud.)
Yup, I've finally been paying attention to long neglected pages...
Also take a look at the queue where I've organized it just a bit differently. So there are a whopping 14 different pages being built right now. (Yikes!) But variety is a good thing, and this set up helps keep me working on the site. Before, when I had set in stone the exact order I'd review things in, I would run across something I didn't want to review, and an extended hiatus would ensue...
Also regarding the "vote" I was going to set up next year. I sort of forgot there was already a sort of gang-request to review Primus. So right now, that'll be the vote-thread. Once that page is through there will be another vote. (I'm hoping 2013. Before May. But I really have no idea.) And I also apologize to the person who wanted me to review In Prism by Polvo. That one kind of got lost in the shuffle, since the band name looks a bit like "Primus" when you scan the list... so I moved it up.
At long last! A review I had in the works since last November!
Also if you know Yes solo albums pretty well and you'd like to have input on which ones I review, then say so on my message board. (There are about a billion of them, and I lack the willpower to trudge through all of them!)
Huh, I was kind of thinking I would more positively reevaluate that album. While I'm certainly rating it higher than I did in the original review, it isn't much higher.
Phew! I admit I got a bit bored writing that concert review, which probably means people are also going to be bored reading it. I'll probably also go through it again tomorrow and check it over with a fine-toothed comb. This was one of those things that I've read over about four or five times and got tired of reading it over, so I just posted it to get it over with! I am noticing quite a few things right now about it that I would like to change, so check back tomorrow if you want.
I've been feeling mildly-to-moderately obsessed with this website lately, and I can't decide if that's a good thing. (I suppose it's better than surfing Wikipedia or watching TV...)
I did a quick calculation and discovered that I have 205 reviews left before I've completely rewritten the old site. (This would make me 82.6% finished, if anyone still remembers that calculation I used to have on the front page.) Unfortunately, there were less than 50 of these rewrites completed within the past year. Also not helping these efforts is that I'm spending so much time writing about someone like Joy Williams, who wasn't even present on the old site! ...Speaking of Williams, after leaving the CCM/pop genre she formed her own production team and released only EPs and a few singles. Unless I missed something, there are 22 songs in total. Instead of reviewing these things individually, I'll just lump them all in one review. (These songs are fantastic, by the way.)
The Yes and Procol Harum concert review is finally written. It's way too long of course. I'll just look it over again tomorrow and try to iron out some of my sentences before posting.
So I believe Procol Harum would replace Peter Gabriel on my queue. Cream would replace The Yardbirds (but before that I'd review Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton). The Psychedelic Furs (who I'm going to see in concert in early October) would replace Shawn Colvin. Yes would replace Mary Chapin Carpenter. ...And then I'll stop lollygagging around with Stephen Duffy and finally finish those and he would be replaced with... Maybe Sarah McLachlan? ...Hm, sounds like a plan to me. Oh! And those Natalie Merchant albums are glaring at me. (How embarrassing is it that I was supposed to finish that page the first time I saw her in concert... and she had time to come around to Seattle again and I'm still not finished with the page!)
Whew! Almost didn't make the update today. (Close one!) Unfortunately all my updates typically have a few jumbled sentences in them on account of me having jumbled thoughts while I write sentences! Well, they get looked over with a fresh eye in the morning... For instance that Kiss review I posted yesterday got edited a bit this afternoon.
OK. I think I'm maybe 70 percent done with the first draft of that Yes review. (Just a warning, I do talk more about Procol Harum. But that's mostly because Gary Brooker talked to the audience way more than anyone from Yes. ...Or at least he said far more memorable things.) I'm thinking Sunday will be the day I post it.
Oh, guess who I'm going to go see in November the day after my 30th birthday? I've been feeling a bit bummed over my 30th birthday quickly approaching, but this'll soften the blow quite well indeed! (The most entertaining concert I've ever been to: Alice Cooper in 2005. The record still stands.)
I'm also not sure how I managed this, but I got third row seats. Or otherwise known as the best seats that I could score without purchasing a $500 VIP package. (Sorry. Meeting Alice Cooper would be too much like Wayne's World except I would probably lose breath and pass out. I mean, if you read that Ray Davies review, I was freaking out enough over eye-contact!) I'm going with my dad on this one. We listen to the same era of music, but never agree on much... except for Alice Cooper.
Also, at the very last minute, we (that is, my family) decided to also go see ZZ Top in a couple of weeks. Very nosebleed seats, but it's at that same casino that I've been getting frequent flier miles at recently, and that stadium isn't terribly large. They won't look like ants. More like mice. Also I'm not going to make that a terribly long review especially since I don't count myself as a ZZ Top fan-boy (they're more of my dad's thing). And even though I actually have a ZZ Top page, I doubt I'll recognize all their songs. Lastly, I should make that review short, because they are freaking exhausting me!!!
So yeah. This is a record year for concerts. I've lost track. (I might have to give up Cat Power. It might be good to have that weekend off! That's a general admission show anyway, so I'll just wait to see if I still feel up to buying a ticket.) And I know I'm not being very hip, but I find these old bands genuinely entertaining. More than I'd find the new stuff. I mean, let's be honest about it...
Arabesque: Rewrites have been completed! Now. Onto correcting those Michael Bolton reviews. (That is, I don't really think he's going to be so positively reassessed as Arabesque was. But if he does, I might have to shoot myself.)
Wow! Yes were on fire. I also have to eat a little bit of humble pie when I say they smothered out Procol Harum. ...Although that's not a really fair thing to say, since Procol Harum were only an opening act, and that's what happens to opening acts. And I still profess to liking Procol Harum songs far more than Yes songs! Well, now that I've seen Procol Harum, all I want now is to see them as headliners. (Gary Brooker said something about coming back with the Seattle Symphony 'if they let him do it.' He might have been just being cheeky, though. It was hard to tell.)
Anyway, all those rumors or impressions I kept on getting about Yes cutting corners or being old 'n' lazy are profoundly false. Last night, the song of theirs they played that I know the most was "Roundabout." That's one hell of a complicated thing, as you well know, but they didn't miss a single note of it. ...It was a lot of fun. Maybe it was more exciting overall than even the Hodgson concert. (Well, I guess Yes rock more and Hodgson writes pop songs, so apples and oranges!!) Their new lead singer looked a little strange next to all those old men. (I thought he looked late '30s-ish, but correct me if I'm wrong...) But he was really good, too. That show was shockingly good. Strangely $80 well spent and not only because I wanted to see Gary Brooker.
The review is in the works. I don't think it'll be posted for a week. I'll also try to continue posting regular reviews, but I might lose my one-per-day pattern. (I have the final Arabesque album in the can, so there will be an update tomorrow unless something freaky happens in "my real life.")
Lastly, I know that I get plenty of requests to start new pages (though not an overwhelming amount of them). I have trouble accommodating these due to the fact that I update somewhat sporadically, and I'm still trying to rewrite every review on my old site. Not to mention that I also get these unscheduled whims sometimes that tie me down (hence those Joy Williams reviews lately), and I'm going to see some shows of artists whose songs I'd like to know better before going.
However, I'm thinking by sometime early next year, I'll start a poll, and I'll start a few new pages based on its result. ...That is, unless this site slips into another lengthy hiatus. (Well that novel I was so passionately working on earlier this year... What a piece of trash!) But anyway. Think of some nominations in the meantime just in case if this thing comes true. (This will replace those single-album reviews that I've been doing...)
Phew! I got it finished and posted... That is, about two hours before going to the next concert. I'm sure I'm going to love the 10 or so songs I get from Procol Harum, which is the whole reason I'm going there. The Yes portion I'm not so sure about. (I guess they're going to play their new album, which is probably a good thing, because from what I heard of it, it's not bad at all.) And maybe they'll also perform "I've Seen All Good People," which is freaking awesome.)
