I'm now officially less than a month away from leaving the Office. Lalalalalala….
Today was actually a pretty good day, since my boss was gone the whole time. Still, he managed to make me feel like a worthless bitch a couple of time nonetheless – I had to set up a lunch reservation at the Palm for tomorrow (mmm, the taste of pretenciousness is sweet) and to fix his Ipod. Yes, I'm known around the Office as The Kid Who Fixes the Partners' Ipod Issues. Seriously, I've done it a few times. Can I put that on a resume?
There is one amazing piece of Office news. I'm winning the fucking NCAA pool. Seriously. I'm in the lead going into the final weekend, and apparently I can't be topped. My LSU pick has been golden. I don't have any of the other Final Four teams right, but I'm kicking ass anyway. Truly one of the highlights of my life.
Another recent first – I got my first record company warning for uploading copyrighted material for that Gnarls Barkley song. I felt a strange rush after getting that email. A rush to take the song down, which I did twenty seconds later.
Last Friday I saw my fourth show of that week, a quadriple bill at the Starlight Ballroom headlined by Mates of State. Up first was some weirdo who goes by Panther. His act amounts to robot dancing and sorta kinda rapping to a techno beat. Whatever. Next, Maria Taylor. She was awesome. I had expected her to be up there solo, but she had a full band, and they were very tight. She has an amazing voice, and the crowd was really into it despite the early timeslot. Her closer, Song Beneath the Song, might have been my highlight for the whole night. Her stuff live is much louder and rockier than on record, I was very impressed.
Up next was the Gossip. It seemed like a good chunk of the crowd was there for these guys, a loud punk three piece. And I didn't like them. Now first of all, the lead singer, a real ball of energy, violated my first rule of good music. That is, screaming is not singing. And she screamed too damn much. Hence, she sucks. The second thing that bothered me was that she made me feel old. The crowd at this show averaged 19 probably, which surprised me. On top of that, she actually said the following two things (paraphrasing): "You guys are all young, don't have a care in the world, go out and make a difference" and "You should all join a band, even if it's just two people". I'm jaded as fuck, yes. I was totally put off by this. How cliche is that? I will give them this, the Gossip got the place moving and my head bopping. Overall, not my thing at all.
Mates of State finally came on at like 10:45 and played about an hour. I love the setup and the type of music, and HaHa and especially Fraud in the 80's are fucking great songs. Their show is just pure fun. However, one thing bothered me. Kori was apparently having voice issues, although I couldn't tell on the songs she did sing. So, they started inviting people who knew the lyrics to sing the girl parts on stage. The problem was, after the first person who went up and actually knew what she was doing, this turned into teenage karaoke night! Kids were up there just to dance and yell the choruses with their friends. You could look at this two ways – a) a fun way to salvage the performance or b) dumb. I'm going with b. I have no soul. I'd see Mates of State (and just Mates of State) again though, definitely.
Elliott Smith performing Say Yes at his very last show. Amazing. (via Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands)
The songs include my highlights from Friday's show and a new Rainer Maria song that I've fallen in love with thanks to WOXY.
