Tool Rools

So, as anyone who reads this blog will know (all two or three of you), I'm a fan of the Format / Fun.'s front man Nate Ruess. This weekend my girlfriend, her roommate, and I went to Minneapolis to see Fun. in concert. I enjoyed their segment. Unfortunately, they were opening for Jack's Mannequin. Now, there was a time in high school that I liked this band. It was during my emo days. I saw them in concert at Summerfest (I think in '06?). It occurred to me after watching Andrew McMahon that he is a giant tool. This weekend, older and wiser as I am, my beliefs were only affirmed.

Now, if any of you want to learn how to be a tool on stage too, I'll educate you in a segment I will call "Tool Rools". Mr. McMahon followed all of these.

#1 First thing you do when you get out on stage is yell "How the f*** you feeling tonight (insert name of city here)?!?!?! This question follows or is similar to other tool rools to follow, but it deserves it's own rule because it's so cliche and one that tool rockers will always follow. Naturally, Mr. McMahon was not an exception.

#2 Have two mics, a foot apart, with absolutely no difference in effect/volume, that you switch between constantly so you can make spastic dramatic movements.

#3 Spastic dramatic movements. Now, there is a right way and wrong way to do it. But McMahon makes ridiculous faces when he plays that in no way are necessary and are clearly meant to be emotive but just come off as douchey. Dude looked like he was having sex with his piano. He clearly was thinking, Yeah, I look awesome because it totally looks like I'm rocking out hard when I'm playing chords on a piano.

#4 Insert the name of the town you're playing in into the song. This is what you do if you're a cheer whore. And yes, it happened.

#5 Stand on the speakers and sing. Unless you take a dive into the crowd (which is only okay if your music is dive-worthy and not sappy ballads disguised as rock), you are a tool.

#6 Swear as much as you can when you talk. Especially if you're not angry about anything. Like, fine, if there's power behind your statements, by all means, exercise your Constitutional right. But come on, if you're saying "I'm quitting music to become an f***ing ice dancer" (actual wording from the concert), then save it.

#7 Have other tools in the audience. So many stories. The girl behind us that was singing at the top of her lungs horribly, the guy in front that would be like "DID YOU HEAR THAT SOLO? IT WAS SO F***ING AWESOME. HE'S THE BEST MUSICIAN EVER! READ MY SHIRT, IT SAYS JACK'S MANNEQUIN! I GIVE HIGH FIVES IF YOU LIKE JACK'S MANNEQUIN!" (Again, actually overheard from the concert. Another unrelated thing I heard was a guy say "I just did something with a man that I never want to do again...").

#8 Jump on your instrument. I'm amazed he didn't destroy his piano. There was really no need for it. I really hate being at concerts when people destroy their instruments. It's like, "Yeah, it's a crappy economy, and you paid $25 dollars to my show, and I really could have charged you $3 less if I didn't have to replace this instrument, but bah, it's so worth it right?" No. It's cliche and it was originally done by people way more talented and rebellious than you. Your music is about wishing someone knew how you felt about them and crying in your pillow, not a corrupt government.

#9 After each song make it look like you just ran a marathon.

#10 Announce to everyone that you're drinking alcohol on stage. Especially when it's a martini.

Basically, I've seen a lot of bad concerts (mostly in my high school days), but if I were the Pitchfork of concert reviewers I'd give a Jack's concert a 0.0 or probably even this.

Pneumon-YEAH!

So, it's been a while since I've updated, but I'm going to have a bit of time on my hands for the next five days or so. Coincidentally, like my last post, this story has to do with a concert (or maybe not, since concerts are often the most exciting part of my life).

So, on Friday, I had what I thought to be a fever. I didn't have a thermometer, so I had no way of confirming. I quaranteened myself to my room until Sunday, when I had a 5K I had signed up for.

The 5K was the Run/Walk for Literacy, run by the Literacy Network. I've started my practicum at Verona Area High School, and my cooperating teacher set up a team. At the time I was feeling somewhat better. I hadn't run in a week-and-a-half, so I wasn't feeling great about how I'd finish, but I figured I'd go out there and do what i could. I ended up finishing in 25:19 with an 8:09 mile average. I got 50/276 overall, 35/106 men, and 5/13 in my age group of 20 to 29. I was pretty happy considering the circumstances, and had I known what I know now I would have been even happier. Plus, the finish line snuck up on me, otherwise I would have sprinted earlier and maybe grabbed a few more spots lower.

Anyway, back on track. I went to school Monday without a hitch. I had a cough here and there, and at night it hit me a bit harder, but generally I thought I was still getting better. Last night I coached hockey practice, then I went to the free WHY? concert at the Union. As I was meeting the band, I started to feel a pain on my left side in the rib area. I shrugged it off as either nerves or gas and headed back out into the crowd with my t-shirt. During the opening band the pain intensified and I still didn't have to drop a deuce. I was starting to worry. My first thought was a collapsed lung because that can happen without provocation and I was having trouble breathing. I tried to tough it out until WHY? I only made it halfway through the second band, AU, who were actually an amazingly entertaining duo. The drummer was fantastic and had some unique drumming methods. At that point I called my girlfriend and asked her to take me to the hospital. Katie was amazing and stayed with me throughout the long night.

When we walked in they asked me if I'd recently had flu-like symptoms. I said yes, and it was like an alarm went off in the room. Mask on, into the quarantined area. Luckily it was a slow night so I got into a room pretty quick. It turned out I had an 103 fever. It made me wonder if I'd had a fever for five days now. I went through about 4 people over the course of three hours conjecturing that I had swine flu and what I was feeling was "aches". I didn't believe them one bit. Luckily there was a promise of a chest x-ray somewhere down the road, otherwise I'd have insisted on it. Eventually, I was given some vicodin, so things started looking up. Finally I got my x-rays. The first clue that it wasn't swine flu was when the doctor walked back into the room without a mask on. I had pneumonia. Doctor seemed surprised. I wasn't.

So now vicodin and fluids are my best friend. I'm back in my hometown until at least the weekend. Couldn't have happened at a busier time in my life, but my professors and partners have all been very understanding. In the meantime, I hope to get a ton of work done and finish up Crime and Punishment. My vicodin dosage has been cut in half, so I'm not as pain-free as last night, but I'm assuming things will improve in the next couple days.

Hmm, what to give you musically. In preparation for the concert I listened to nothing but WHY? for about four days. But I have been loving Phoenix's sophomore and junior albums, 2004's Alphabetical, and 2006's It's Never Been Like That. I'll give you two songs. One that's a rare "not-upbeat" song by them called "I'm An Actor" off the earlier of the two albums, and one off the latter, which is the more Strokes-like songs we're used to from their most recent, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. In the Long-Distance Call video we get a bit of a look into their French-ness.


I'm An Actor by Phoenix at Yahoo! Music



Long-Distance Call by Phoenix at Yahoo! Music

It's Official: I've Played an Instrument On Stage with a Professional Rock Band

So, it's probably not as impressive as it sounds, but it was one of the most exciting experiences of my summer, so it's still pretty sweet to me.

It was about two weeks ago that I saw that Headlights had posted a concert date in Madison on their Myspace. I investigated and found out it was at the UW Memorial Union Terrace and it was part of the union's free "Hot Summer Nights" series. The Terrace is a sweet place to watch concerts because you can buy pitchers of beer and enjoy the beautiful lake view. Once the band you're there to see plays you'll obviously want to move up, but until then it's nice to kick back and have some nice conversation and maybe get a little alcohol in you. This is what my friend, Jenny, and I did while the opening band, Scotland Yard Gospel Choir, played.

The demographic was clearly mostly there to drink. Much of it was middle-aged and unaware of who Headlights was. Even many of the college students there were just there to get drunk and dance to free music that they'd never heard before. Now, I have to mention Kansas-basketball-jersey-mullet-man. Now, the picture to the right was snapped by a young woman named Kayla Clarke, who also captured the video that will be embedded later. KBJMM as I will refer to him later was the sweetest dude ever. Drunk as a skunk and ready to party, he had a beer in one hand and his other hand in the air all night in various hippy symbols. The band loved him. The people loved him. God loved him.

Now on to my story. By the time Headlights played, I had a bit of liquid encouragement in me. It was my third time seeing them, and I had a short conversation with Erin last time they were in Madison at Forward Music Festival, so naturally in my state, I was determined to impress them. So what did I do? After every song I yelled out what album the song was from. I was standing in front of Erin, and I think she laughed a couple times due to it. After a new song, I yelled out "Wildlife, due October 6th!" Erin went, "Woah, who said that?" I raised my hand, and she said, "Come up and say that into the mic". I went up and repeated myself, and the band and a couple people in the crowd laughed. Feeding off that, I grabbed the mic back and said "AND! If you pre-order now for $20, you get a free T-shirt!" The band found this funny, and Tristan said, "That guy is now on the payroll".

Now, even if this had been the only happening of the night, it probably would have been the best story I'd have to tell from a concert, and I've been to a lot of concerts. But two songs later, it was time for the encore. Now's where the video comes in:



Basically, this is the gist of that video:
Headlights called up some people from SYGC to play percussion. Tristan said "Not to discriminate, because I don't know which of you guys (meaning the crowd) has rythym. I know Scotland Yard Gospel Choir has rythym". However, then Erin decided to ask me if I wanted to play tambourine and I replied "YES!". So I jumped up there. Then for some reason, I felt the need to say something, so I go, "It's in 4-4?" as in the time signature. And replied in the affirmative and clapped on the beat as Tristan played the intro. Then I recognized it as "TV", proceeding to say something stupid, which was "Oh, you know this". This was in response to Tristan earlier saying "Trust me, we don't know how to play it any better than you guys do", but Erin probably had no idea what I was talking about and was thinking Uh, yeah, I recorded the song, but she's really nice and would never say that. Interestingly enough, on their last tour I don't think Headlights played TV, probably because they were sick of it because that was there first "hit".

Anyway, what followed was three minutes of me smashing the crap out of my hand with a tambourine. At the end, I try to high five the lead singer of SYGC, which he meets with a drumstick. Then for some reason I keep my hands raised like a dork. Again, liquid encouragement. After the concert we went over to the merch stand and Jenny bought a shirt. I actually had all the merch they had, so I was unable to purchase anything. I thanked Erin for inviting me up and she and Nick both thanked me for the plug of their album. Afterwards I called my girlfriend, who probably couldn't keep up with my drunken school-girl-esque rambling.

So song of the day = TV by Headlights. I'll include the version without the drunk tambourine so you can decide wihether it sounds better with or without me in it.

TV by Headlights at YouTube

Minus the Bear Concert an Intense Ride

Minus the Bear encountered a bunch of problems at their concert in Madison on Thursday. One band got pushed out of the lineup by the sponsors. Then, Portugal the Man, who actually drew a significant chunk of the crowd, had to pull out because their van broke down in Chicago. Thus, the people that traveled showed up for an 8:00 show that got pushed back to 9:30 due to unforeseen circumstances.

Club 770 is literally a cafeteria by day. It's placed in Union South and has a capacity of like 450. Well, I'm pretty sure they overflowed this place because there was absolutely no room, but due to our early arrival my friend Jenny and I were able to get front row. Worse than that, there were kids that were clearly on acid or something of that nature jumping around and into people, even before Minus the Bear was on and the Big Sleep had the stage. There was a drunk girl that I couldn't shake that kept playing drums on my back and trying to get me to dance crazily (Her name was Regina). Jenny found this hilarious, and due to my extremely muscular back I was able to tolerate it.

Once the Big Sleep was off, everyone tried to rush to the front. It was basically like trying playing Red Rover for an hour-and-a-half. I am a small guy of 5'6" but I was not letting anyone through. Jenny, on the other hand, got pushed out. She was gone before I knew it, something I felt terrible about. She ended up watching the show from the side. The reality was, I could not have gotten out if I tried, so we kept communications by text message. The entire concert was spent with the entire weight of the crowd pushing against the front row, causing them to be constantly bent over onto the stage that was only a foot-and-a-half off the ground. It was also really tiny and I'm amazed they got five members on it. It was like clowns in a clown car.

During the second song, probably over the previously mentioned pushing, a fight broke out about 5 feet to my right. Cory, the bassist, jumped out. He had clearly been uneasy about the pushing right off the bat. It's funny, because last year at the Lussier Teen Center, Cory had to keep kicking kids off that ran onto stage. Anyway, Cory jumped out, then Jake, the lead singer, also jumped out to stop it. There was no security, so I guess they felt it was their job, and I guess no one would have been able to see it from the back, so really they were the only authority figures to do it.

The rest of the concert was amazing. They played The Fix (link to the Youtube video of them playing it at the concert), which is my favorite song of theirs, and they played a bunch of songs off the new album. In fact... you can see the entire setlist because with two songs left I asked Cory for it after the concert. At first I didn't think he heard me, but right as the song was starting he bent over and handed it to me. Before the last song I showed him it in case he forgot what the last song was and he laughed. Encores were "Fulfill the Dream" and "Absinthe Party at the Honey Warehouse".

Overall it was an amazing concert. I hope they still come back considering the problems they've had their last two concerts out here. I wonder how they feel about playing small venues like this when they could easily fill larger ones.

I'll make the song of the day Knights, because it has a sweet music video and is the best song off of Minus the Bear's new album, Planet of Ice.


"Knights" by Minus the Bear at YouTube



Oh, and I made it in a couple of pictures. I can be seen in one on Mixtapes|Heartbreaks (although Cory's blocking out my face), and there's this one that the writer of that blog sent to me. Thanks Stacey!

Also, the top picture looks kind of cruddy because I didn't take any pictures with the flash on. I didn't want to blind them because I was literally that close.