before checking out the duo, i ran into sidewalk ceo / og-mtv-vj, alan hunter. we talked about opening night at sidewalk and agreed that the editing of silver city could have been better. we spent some time pondering donnie darko, and ended up chatting about his new feature film, dreamland, the possibility of me providing film score material down the road... and the lifeless yet brilliant music of photek. alan is a great conversationalist. a dying breed.
after seeing the duo sing some incredibly moving songs, i relocated to the workplay bar, where i struck up a conversation with graphic designer / filmmaker carl ross. we also talked about the festival, the films, zombie movies, "shaun of the dead", local filmmakers and the annual sidewalk scramble, for which the ashes donated music from the girls+cars ep. he suggested that i check out a monthly film industry meeting at rojo. i couldn't go to the meeting yesterday, but i'll be at the next one the night before the election.
by the way - and i'm not making any grand political statements here... today i was on my way back from the courthouse downtown, when a very old man, i'm talking mid 80s'- hobbled in my direction and motioned me to come toward him. i figured he was going to ask me where the vehicle registration office was, or something...
oh no.
now this was an old, white "southern gentleman" type. the kind that might have been a democrat until carter killed it for supposed real alabama democrats. nope. he leans over, and whispers in my ear, and i quote... "can you think of anyone dumber than george bush?" now again, i'm not preachin' ya'll, but this threw me. so i sat there, thinking. thinking. nothing. i couldn't honestly, think of someone. maybe i just froze or something.
so i said, earnestly... "no, i can't say that anyone comes to mind." then he replied... "he's dumber than a doorknob." i laughed and then realized that this was this man's only purpose in talking to me. maybe he had burned himself out trying to think of someone, uh... well, you know... dumber. or maybe he was a shadow pollster?
i can't help but thinking. what if i liked bush? what would i have said? people can be so surreal. the old man i mean, not bush.
...so back to friday night...
i also ran into some 21 year old a&r "industry" kid who dropped 5some "big names" on me, tried to get a resume out of me, and talked about me moving to "nashville for the right money." uh... right. he had trouble identifying the song "a day in the life" by the beatles, with which the headlining singer-songwriter closed his show. uh... no thanks. i thought they sent all of the "a&r" people to bosnia or something? oh, nevermind, that was me dreaming.
on saturday i did some editing on a few tracks for the album, did some post-ivan yardwork... and tons of laundry. on saturday night, i went (again) to the nick to see the 3rd of 5 cd release shows for the new skybucket records compilation.
we had a nice gathering by about 11pm. houston, jesse, ashby, christine, jen and i, all huddled around the front door and waited for the thing to get started. the first of two bands i went to see, through the sparks, are the former members of stateside (sans jpk) and their buddies, jody and james. if stateside were the rolling stones meets cheap trick, then through the sparks is wilco meets wilco. mainly by way of jody sounding exactly like jeff tweedy. no matter though, in this rare case, jody has songs that measure up every bit as good as tupelo / early wilco.
actually with lines like - "cry me an ocean and i'll cry you a creek." or "we'll melt like styrofoam in public microwaves - that's what the sad songs say." he may give tweedy a run for his money by the time he hits 30.
we'll just have to see won't we. i need to figure out how to get him to play some lap pedal guitar on the album.
the next band i came to see was lunasect. i had never really seen them before. i think i was at an earlier nick show, but i can't remember. anyway... they were good. i was expecting something a bit more trip hop, or electronic or i dunno, something different. this was much more rock, though not moronic-jet-rock. les nuby, super tight drummer. daniel, the band leader, played ambient guitar that reminded me of a heavier andy summers alt-tuning guitarscape thingy.
it was intelligent, although not quite as melodic as i expected. kind of electro-fusionesce at times. the singer, looked like she was putting her heart into it, but the vox were too low in the mix. i'll definitely get in touch with daniel soon to talk about mixing the album, and recording the drums for na na na. i had a good time, the turn out was big, and i think i was talking to thomas at some point and looked at my watch at it read like 2:30 or 3:00. that's the nick.