I’ve seen a lot of great music in this room. I’ve seen the place packed full with sweaty nerds dancing to The Faint. I saw Ted Leo and Communiqué share a bill there, playing to less than a dozen people on a Tuesday night. I saw Rilo Kiley play there when they were small enough to open for a side project from one of the dudes from Ozma, whereas now they play cavernous arenas opening for Latte Rock juggernauts Coldplay.
Now, it’s Ma Jong’s, an Asian fusion restaurant geared towards yuppies. There’s no stage and the only music I remember hearing was James Blunt piped in via Muzak. My orange-peel chicken tasted fine, but eating there mostly just depresses me (and that’s not just because I’m breaking my policy against patronizing business with pun names).
There aren’t a lot of opportunities to catch a decent show without heading to San Francisco. After the original Capitol Garage closed, those opportunities shrank even further.
Some enterprising locals opened Junta recently, giving downtown Sacramento a live all-ages music venue once again.
Thanks to its location directly in the middle of Stabbin’ Country, it’s a safe bet the venue won’t get displaced in favor of another upmarket douche zone anytime soon. I just hope it gets a chance to succeed. The kids deserve their rock.
* To celebrate my pal Matt’s birthday, I took him to see the Rebirth Brass Band at Harlow’s on Sunday night and ended up having more fun than I’ve had at any show in the past five years. Brass band music is cool and all, but it’s not something I listen to with any regularity, so I figured Matt would enjoy the hell out of the concert while I’d drink a few beers and maybe nod my head a bit. This was not the case. Matt did enjoy the concert, but the band won me over immediately. I danced, spazzed, hooted, hollered and clapped for about two hours straight, losing about three and a half pounds in water weight from sweating in the process. I used to love live music more than anything, but I don’t see as much of it as I used to. What I miss most about live music is that moment at a great show where it’s no longer a concert, but a party. That moment came at the very beginning of the Rebirth Brass Band’s set and the feeling never stopped. I feel so lucky to have seen them.
* I’m not one for hyperbole, so I hesitate to say this music video by Pleix for the Vitalic song “Birds” is mankind’s greatest achievement, but I will say it ranks somewhere in the top 25, just between waffles and Gutenberg’s printing press.
* Worst thing I heard this week: Sergio Mendes - Timeless. Is Sergio Mendes even remotely popular or influential enough to warrant a Santana-style pop-friendly guest-filled extravaganza? I’d say no, but that didn’t stop Will.I.Am from assembling a crew to update the Brazilian sounds of Sergio Mendes. With the lead Pea deucing his dumb, clumsy raps over mostly smooth jazz-quality arrangements, this ends up sounding like an unholy cross between Red Lobster lobby music and the worst of MTV Hits. Other guests like Justin Timberlake, Q-Tip and Stevie Wonder (STEVIE WONDER!) do no better. This album functions less as a tribute to the talents of a great musician and more as a cheap way for everyone to find out what a train wreck sounds like in Brazil.
* Best Thing I Heard This Week: The amazing a capella version of “God Only Knows” Petra Haden recorded, which is somehow more incredible than her a capella version of The Who Sell Out. You can download her version of “God Only Knows” for free over here.
* I think around the time I stopped eating so much food, for some reason I started watching way too much Food Network, which led me to an unhealthy celeb-crush on Giada de Laurentiis. Even though she smiles so much as to quite frequently appear demented and half of what she says makes no damned sense, I am in deep lust. Plus, everything she cooks looks delicious. By the time I finish watching an episode of “Everyday Italian,” I’m so hungry and aroused that I get confused and often find myself making sweet love to a plate of spaghetti tossed with olive oil, basil, gorgonzola and toasted pine nuts. Clearly, whoever decided to allow her to host “Behind the Bash,” a show where she occasionally appears in formalwear, is trying to kill me. I may need help.
* While being lazy is fun and all, I’m trying to push myself to work harder so someday maybe I can actually make a success out of myself. As a reminder to stay focused, I made a motivational stand-up I keep on my desk at work. Here’s what my version of a “hang in there” kitty poster looks like:
(“Stay On Your Grizzly” is my motto for 2006, by the way.)
She Wants Revenge stopped by the office today. Their record sounds like rejected demos Interpol threw together during experiments into goth territory. It is the photo-negative version of Ringside’s self-titled record, in that the two have similar forms, only where Ringside is light, She Wants Revenge is dark. It comes out on Tuesday.
It’s always strange when an artist visits our office. They’re usually there to plug an album or make themselves known to the people selling their records, but the employees who come to these things are mostly there for the snacks.
Occasionally, but not often, we’ll get an act like Nickel Creek that’s talented and well known enough to make everyone forget how absurd it is to play a show in a generic conference room in the middle of the day. More often than not, though, an unknown artist strums and sings to an audience who, if the artist is lucky, will stop mowing down their sandwiches long enough to clap politely once the playing stops.
She Wants Revenge didn’t even play for us, though. They just played their new video and talked for a bit about how they met and how weird success is. What’s especially impressive is that they were humble and charming enough to make me reevaluate my opinion of their music, which is no easy feat.
The Killers stopped by a few months after Hot Fuss came out to meet us, thank us for selling their record and eat some pizza. Most likely, their label tricked them into attending (or visiting Sacramento at all), so the event amounted to little more than sixty minutes of uncomfortable shyness and awkward silence with some marginally famous people. Good times.
Whenever anyone visits, though, I always wonder what they think of this sort of thing. I imagine they look at it as part of their job, but that doesn’t make the whole affair any less humiliating. Then I think about all the humiliating things I’ve done for work over the years and how they won’t be heading back to a cubicle after their performance and suddenly I think they don’t have it so bad.
