first up, Her Space Holiday:
a friend introduced me to this guy's album "The Young Machines", and I loved it. LOVED IT. it's electronic and beat-y and like reading someone's private journal... sort of rambly and kind of raw. when we first got to the venue, he was standing by the merch table selling the opening bands' stuff, and I wigged out a bit. I wish I'd had the presence of mind to walk over and just say "hey, I really like your music. I like how you express yourself and the honesty I feel in your songs and that bit at the end of 'From South Carolina'? Yeah, whenever I hear the music swell I imagine the end of an epic movie about Liliputians and the whole kingdom is all dancing and waving." (which is true... that's what it makes me think of.) but I totally chickened out. it wasn't a starstruck thing... hm, it's hard to explain what I mean. see, I sometimes have people who come up and tell me how they like some of the characters I play or a commercial I did, and it's all very nice and flattering most of the time, and sometimes it's not what I want to think about or I don't feel like making small talk about it. and I just didn't want to be that girl that night with the HSH guy whose name I can't remember. make any sense? probably not, right - I mean, if the guy didn't want to interact with fans he probably wouldn't have been helming the merch table. anyway, I really liked seeing him live and singing along, even if he was backed by a band and not rocking a laptop.
oh, I also like his other, more hopeful-sounding incarnation as xoxo, panda (especially the sleepy tigers song!)...
and last Friday, we hit Tilly and the Wall:
my first exposure to them was this song on a mix cd my husband made me when we first started dating. this was a fun, fun show and I got to bring home a T&TW tote bag. woo-hoo! if you look closely at the next photo, you can see the tap dancer up behind them all... rad! I wanna tap dance!
so now that I've mentioned the mix cd, I want to tell that story. M and I had been hanging out for a week or so, and I honestly couldn't tell if we were going anywhere or not. which was very disconcerting for me. who might have a control issue or two. one night, we agreed to meet at Empire Cafe for dinner, and he said he had something for me. I don't think he gave it to me until we were almost done eating - anyway, he had made a cover featuring sharks from a National Geographic magazine with the caption "Shark Repellent: Music to Clear the Waters". this was awesome because A) at some point I had mentioned that I was scared of sharks and, for awhile, they appeared in all of my bad dreams and even weirdly showed up in real life at inopportune times (*an old boyfriend actually broke up with me at an aquarium years ago with a shark lazily swimming behind his head. if that doesn't put the freak in freaky I don't know what does.*), and this was proof that he actually listened when I talked and B) while a sharpie scribbled on a cd does the job, he showed real creativity and extra effort, which was just... well, flattering. even the cd inside had a watery label on it! the artists I remember the most from the playlist were the Annuals (opened), REM, Tapes n' Tapes, the Mountain Goats, the Pipettes, Neutral Milk Hotel, Nanci Griffith, Depeche Mode (closed), Hello Saferide, Against Me!, the Flaming Lips, and, of course, T&TW... there were others, too, but my memory is hazy right now and I don't want to cheat and look in itunes. the point is that I am a sucker for a good mix cd. and I loved it. I ended up making one for him, too - my cover featured pictures of places we went/walked on our first date. I don't really know that he loved or even liked most of the songs, but when I think about those cds now I see them as the hopeful and quiet risk of making of something personal and unique for someone new - when you're already in your 30's with water running under your bridges and a much warier eye - still, choosing to make this carefully crafted offering and put it out there for a person you met on the set of JB's short film last month to do with what they will. Here are our album covers:
pretty sweet, huh?
oh, and p.s. : on another walk 11 months later, just outside the Rothko Chapel (pictured above on the cd cover), on a patch of ground where once stood the white, ice-sculpture-y-looking thing also pictured above, bottom middle (which was actually an interactive art piece you could walk around in and touch)...
my husband proposed to me.
*smile*
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