It's All About Theo
Indie Music Video Festival feat. Theo and the Skyscrapers//Pianos//12/9/05
FINALLY got to see Theo, kept missing her earlier on in the year. I was tempted to buy a ticket just to make sure that I'd get in but mostly so that I won't be tempted to make other plans or stay in and catch up on writing. I thought she was going on @ 9:30, so of course I got there early. So it's a good thing I didn't spend the extra $$$ on the s/h thru Ticketweb. I get there and the woman at the door said she wasn't selling tix until 8. What tix? There are no tix to sell at the door. She also had the ballots so we could pick the Indie Music Video Festival's "best of the fest"--except she was cutting them up and only gave me the ballot for Part 2, which started at midnite, or after Theo's set. It said Part 1 on one half, 2 on the other. So she separates them and stacks them all in one pile. Can't she fucking read? Another botched election. Of course I then had to sit there bored and hoping not to get sent back outside where it was crowded and no place to sit for an hour while I watched Theo and the band eat dinner.
The video part went like this: Music videos one after another, only broken up by the credits page/screen. This is how MTV should be. I thought there was gonna be some stupid host/MC/"VJ"/stand-up comedian but no. I haven't seen a video in ages, and we're supposed to judge videos, not bands. I could provide reports and dissertations on each video and what sucked about some of them, but I have enought shit to write, old and new. So the standouts from Part 1 were: Canoe--C'mon. Song/band didn't really grab me but the video (photo) collages which made up the band members as they played is fun. Billy & The Lost Boys is a Canadian band that's actually fronted by a cute, perky girl and they played frenetic powerpop. You can't go wrong with the live show vid, especially one that's got sped-up images of the crowd paying the cover, getting their hands stamped, rocking out, etc. It was perfect for their song You Get What Everyone Gets. The Vandals' I Am Crushed opened with a shot of a one-armed action figure on the roof of a house and then told the story. A little boy gets it for his bday but it's got an X on its chest, not to mention a skull for a face and horns. The GI Joe-type action figures are supposed to fight it--their packaging is marked Hero and the skull-faced one is Villian. The boys immediately stage battles and Skull Guy tries to hide from them thru the whole video. The video ends with Skull Guy falling off the roof of the house. Needless to say I almost cried. Somebody else applauded at the end. I was beginning to think that all these videos were from rock bands, but Pete Miser's haunting Scent Of A Robot is a rap song about a robot who accidentally learns the crushing truth about himself--"I'm a robot programmed not to know that I'm a robot," but while at work someone mistakenly emails him his program code. Now he has to tell his wife and daughter the truth. At work, his boss is very sympathetic as Miser morphs into a sketch of a robot and back, telling him that he's a valued employee and he wants him around. Take some time off--or is it about an office drone coming to terms with the crushing truth of the robotic nature of his daily routine? Chilling. The video for Smoosh's La Pump blends Claymation with live-action shots of the preteen gals in action.
Theo & the Skyscrapers went on about midnite. I was never into the Lunachicks or even the Toilet Boys, whose Sean Pierce is the guitarist for the Skyscrapers but then again, I was never into Bikini Kill yet see Le Tigre. In a weird way, I think Theo is the most like Debbie Harry than all the other female singers that get compared to her. She's such a nightclub/NYC nightlife ingenue and so I expected more people to be there but no. Their slogan is "Death To False Disco" and complete with two cabinets of seizureiffic strobes and a light box, they laid down danceable hard rock/metal. They ended at 1 and I was tempted to leave, since I'd originally thought Theo was going on earlier and I could've hit Rocky's, but The Briefs had a video in Part 2. I considered sticking around until the bitter end in case there were other cool bands to discover and do my duty to vote on good videos but I'm not crazy. Well, not that crazy. The Evaporators, from Canada, for some reason struck me as a DotDash type band based on the name, and they kinda are. When are all these great Canadian bands gonna come down here? The Real Losers are fuzzy, 60s British garage rock. The Briefs' vid for Orange Alert was kinda weird in the fact that I haven't seen a video in ages and I've only seen The Briefs--and all bands--live. It was like seeing The Briefs on MTV, something I hope never happens. As much as it would probably mean they're successful and all.
I left right after. In fact, the place pretty much cleared out after Theo so I don't know what the point of the voting is. So with Rocky's out of the question, I stopped off at Cakeshop next door.
FINALLY got to see Theo, kept missing her earlier on in the year. I was tempted to buy a ticket just to make sure that I'd get in but mostly so that I won't be tempted to make other plans or stay in and catch up on writing. I thought she was going on @ 9:30, so of course I got there early. So it's a good thing I didn't spend the extra $$$ on the s/h thru Ticketweb. I get there and the woman at the door said she wasn't selling tix until 8. What tix? There are no tix to sell at the door. She also had the ballots so we could pick the Indie Music Video Festival's "best of the fest"--except she was cutting them up and only gave me the ballot for Part 2, which started at midnite, or after Theo's set. It said Part 1 on one half, 2 on the other. So she separates them and stacks them all in one pile. Can't she fucking read? Another botched election. Of course I then had to sit there bored and hoping not to get sent back outside where it was crowded and no place to sit for an hour while I watched Theo and the band eat dinner.
The video part went like this: Music videos one after another, only broken up by the credits page/screen. This is how MTV should be. I thought there was gonna be some stupid host/MC/"VJ"/stand-up comedian but no. I haven't seen a video in ages, and we're supposed to judge videos, not bands. I could provide reports and dissertations on each video and what sucked about some of them, but I have enought shit to write, old and new. So the standouts from Part 1 were: Canoe--C'mon. Song/band didn't really grab me but the video (photo) collages which made up the band members as they played is fun. Billy & The Lost Boys is a Canadian band that's actually fronted by a cute, perky girl and they played frenetic powerpop. You can't go wrong with the live show vid, especially one that's got sped-up images of the crowd paying the cover, getting their hands stamped, rocking out, etc. It was perfect for their song You Get What Everyone Gets. The Vandals' I Am Crushed opened with a shot of a one-armed action figure on the roof of a house and then told the story. A little boy gets it for his bday but it's got an X on its chest, not to mention a skull for a face and horns. The GI Joe-type action figures are supposed to fight it--their packaging is marked Hero and the skull-faced one is Villian. The boys immediately stage battles and Skull Guy tries to hide from them thru the whole video. The video ends with Skull Guy falling off the roof of the house. Needless to say I almost cried. Somebody else applauded at the end. I was beginning to think that all these videos were from rock bands, but Pete Miser's haunting Scent Of A Robot is a rap song about a robot who accidentally learns the crushing truth about himself--"I'm a robot programmed not to know that I'm a robot," but while at work someone mistakenly emails him his program code. Now he has to tell his wife and daughter the truth. At work, his boss is very sympathetic as Miser morphs into a sketch of a robot and back, telling him that he's a valued employee and he wants him around. Take some time off--or is it about an office drone coming to terms with the crushing truth of the robotic nature of his daily routine? Chilling. The video for Smoosh's La Pump blends Claymation with live-action shots of the preteen gals in action.
Theo & the Skyscrapers went on about midnite. I was never into the Lunachicks or even the Toilet Boys, whose Sean Pierce is the guitarist for the Skyscrapers but then again, I was never into Bikini Kill yet see Le Tigre. In a weird way, I think Theo is the most like Debbie Harry than all the other female singers that get compared to her. She's such a nightclub/NYC nightlife ingenue and so I expected more people to be there but no. Their slogan is "Death To False Disco" and complete with two cabinets of seizureiffic strobes and a light box, they laid down danceable hard rock/metal. They ended at 1 and I was tempted to leave, since I'd originally thought Theo was going on earlier and I could've hit Rocky's, but The Briefs had a video in Part 2. I considered sticking around until the bitter end in case there were other cool bands to discover and do my duty to vote on good videos but I'm not crazy. Well, not that crazy. The Evaporators, from Canada, for some reason struck me as a DotDash type band based on the name, and they kinda are. When are all these great Canadian bands gonna come down here? The Real Losers are fuzzy, 60s British garage rock. The Briefs' vid for Orange Alert was kinda weird in the fact that I haven't seen a video in ages and I've only seen The Briefs--and all bands--live. It was like seeing The Briefs on MTV, something I hope never happens. As much as it would probably mean they're successful and all.
I left right after. In fact, the place pretty much cleared out after Theo so I don't know what the point of the voting is. So with Rocky's out of the question, I stopped off at Cakeshop next door.
posted by heather @ 12:31 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home