Tim O Thompson: May 2006 Archives

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May 28, 2006

Duffer St. George

Dare you infidels bear witness
perennially revise the back catalog
Band of Horses kick off tour
Desmond Dekker dead at 64

this quality of perpetual evolution
only deepens my stalker-love
I have no respect for your calendar priorities
slightly creepy sibling dynamics

you pathetic, mouth-breathing
my depraved fanboy rants
I feel only loathing, utter disdain
I'm done being a nice guy

the fact that I have good taste
swerve towards the ADD
off like a quick appendix
Duffer St. George and i don't care

Posted by timothompson at 11:29 PM

mymymymymymymyspace

Posted by timothompson at 11:13 PM

May 10, 2006

Excuse me, weren't you in the Fall?

Here's January's Guardian Unlimited story in which the author attempts to track down anyone who ever played with the Fall (PDF version). MES: "It's a bit like a football team. Every so often you have to get rid of the centre-forward."

Posted by timothompson at 01:06 PM

May 08, 2006

Banana Peel Hits The Fall Tour

Yikes–more problems are afoot on this US Fall tour. A member of opening band the Talk threw a banana peel at MES's head. Below is a verbatim report from the Unofficial Fall site.

Sonia from the Teenage Fanclub message board:

I suppose if it wasn't a specticale it wouldn't be a Fall show, would it?

The night started with the barman saying they had their liquor license pulled on Friday. Yeay. There were maybe 50-60 people at the show. $25/head on a Sunday in downtown Phoenix - no surprise. But still, it's THE FALL for fecks sake. We missed the first band, and the second sent me to the bar to stare into my coke. The ice was nice - the kind that crumbles in your mouth.

I've always liked the Fall, but wouldn't call myself a "fan," with only two or three of their how many records, and having never seen them before (not for lack of want, but for lack of availability). The show opened with promise, with a nice video/audio distortion of Queen & Elvis. Then the band came on, only to find that the keyboard hadn't been set up by the crew. Huh? WTF? Minor chaos, but fixed fairly quickly. Mark takes the stage - I had no idea he was so tiny. He seemed to be in good spirits despite the pathetically small audience, so I thought, "Okay, we might actually get to hear a few songs." Second song in (no idea what was played, sorry) and the singer from the 2nd opener (The Talk) runs on stage and throws something at Mark's head. He rips off his jacket and chases after him out the back door. And so does half the audience. And the chick keyboard player. The rest of the band keeps playing. The crowd gets pushed back in, and a few minutes later back comes Mark. We get maybe two more songs (one being "I Can Hear the Grass Grow"), and the keyboards don't seem right. Crew can't manage to get things straight, Mark and her walk off in the middle of the song. Band left alone to play out the tune (clearly they're used to it). Then they all leave and eventually keyboard chick comes back and said something about "Sorry, but we were getting violently abused and disrespected, yada yada." Hello - it was your own tourmate and the crew that did the damage, not us. She walks off in disgust, some people start chanting "USA" and that was that. Hooray - I've seen the Fall once in my life!

Here's a message from the Talk, the support band. I have no idea if the rest of the tour is off but it doesn't sound good ...

...what you don't understand is the band was quitting anyway you're lucky they played as long as they did they played for less than that a few days ago mark is a dick and his band hates him and his wife they flew home tonight without him even knowing he pulled a corkscrew on steven the bass player poured beer and ashed on their tour managers head while he was driving and tonight was his last show as well and they weren't even going to play tonight but we asked them to do it for us so don't be a dick unless you know what's going on thanks.... THE TALK

May 03, 2006

"Fuck ‘em. Elvis never did encores. Never."

I can't comment much on the Fall show from last night as I got there right before the encore (after paying $10. Thanks, Stubb's staff.) due to a previous engagement. I was hoping that maybe we'd get something like "Big New Prinz" or even "Mr. Pharmacist." I love "Fall Heads Roll," so anything off of that would have been sufficient. We did get one of my favorite tracks off that LP, "I Can Hear the Grass Grow," but that was only two verses. It was disappointing because the last show I saw at Emo's had been a blast.

From reading the comments at the Fall discussion board, I didn't miss much. Following only seven songs, Mark E. Smith abruptly left the stage. For those who paid $20 + service charges, that amounts to about $3 per song. For better or worse, MES and the Fall's unpredictable live legend lives on.

Posted by timothompson at 02:35 PM

May 02, 2006

Frothing Evangelists

Ortho_Bob: "The only redeeming thing about the whole PC world is that you don't have to be a frothing evangelist and buy into the whole thing. You don't have to invest any emotion or faith in a company, a logo and a sterile lifestyle. Everyone who uses a PC in some way hates PCs, regards everything Microsoft, Dell and so on with contempt and has as little to do with the non-functional side as possible. You ignore every update and new release until your system grinds to a halt. You find the thing that works and you stick with it. You don't salivate and queue up outside Fry's because a new limited edition model endorsed by Bono with a 5% smaller footprint has been released three months after your last big purchase."

Posted by timothompson at 11:40 AM

May 01, 2006

Pitchfork Killed Travis Morrison's Solo Career?

Like the 'Fork or hate it, that is some power (or abuse of power) there:

Morrison was the frontman for the Dismemberment Plan, a D.C. art-rock band that was adored by Pitchfork's staff -- so much so that they named the group's "Emergency & I" album of the year in 1999. Five years later, though, Morrison released a solo project, "Travistan," that Pitchfork deemed a complete disaster.

The album was branded with a dreaded 0.0 rating (Liz Phair and Sonic Youth are among the other artists who've suffered that indignity), and Morrison's bandwagon quickly emptied: College radio programmers cooled to his new project, a record store in Texas initially refused to stock the CD, and fans suddenly decided they probably shouldn't like Morrison anymore, either.

"I just got the sense [Pitchfork] thought I was a rock star and they wanted to take me down a peg, but I don't think it occurred to them that the review could have a catastrophic effect," says Morrison, who is working on a new album, with a new band. (He's also working a day job as a programmer for Washington Post-Newsweek Interactive.) "Up until the day of the review, I'd play a solo show, and people would be like, 'That's our boy, our eccentric boy.' Literally, the view changed overnight. . . . I could tell people were trying to figure out if they were supposed to be there or not. It was pretty severe, how the mood changed.

"The review isn't the story. The reaction to it is. The seriousness with which everyone takes Pitchfork is kind of mind-boggling."

Update: Long DCist thread on the issue [via].

Update: Derek discovered that Pitchfork may have reduced the new Tool album's rating by a point a day after the review was filed.

Posted by timothompson at 01:05 PM