some days are sulky, some days have a grin

the grin...
for various reasons pretty much all good, i haven't gotten much sleep this week. tuesday night's reason had to do with the brian jonestown massacre show at the independent. i hadn't seen them live yet, just on screen in dig!, the fun but apparently disavowed by bjm founder anton newcombe documentary about bjm and the dandy warhols (**). newcombe's reasonable objections aside it did nothing to make me not want to see them play. the non-musical highlight from the show had to be when an audience heckler asked "where's hollywood?", referring to ex-bjm matt hollywood. anton's response was to tell the guy to take the 5 south, or maybe catch a bus. it was two joel gion shows in 8 days for me, as his other band the dilletantes played at the syd barret tribute.

sunday two weeks ago was also all about the grin, as paul kelly played along with the waifs at great american. paul came on wearing a blue shirt with white polka dots, very festive. looked in good spirits. as the set went on he informed us that it was his last night on tour.

the set-list, as far as my foggy memory goes included midnight rain, they thought i was asleep, every fucking city, when i first met your ma, down to my soul...josh from the waifs joined for how to make gravy and vicky then joined the two of them for to her door.

i'd never seen the waifs nor even heard any music (odd for me, to not know of a band this good) and I was quite impressed. the women have fantastic versatile voices and vicky's harmonica playing was awesome, the band are amazing musicians, the songs are very good. I love "discovering" new bands...even ones that can play two almost sold-out nights in san francisco and have been around for years. the highlights of their set for me were the song about salmon fishing on the southwest coast of australia, and the finale, a great version of paul's from little things big things grow.

also worth ginning about is new music from the hold steady, heard already on kexp. i went on a buying spree a couple of weeks ago, gettin a mix of newish and oldish including the long winters, thom yorke, calexico, band of horses, the raconteurs (yeah, yeah, the last three have been out for a while...i was on vacation and busy) and a couple of others. and i still don't have all that i want. so sue me, i'm greedy.

the sulky...
my desk-top hard-drive containing my windoze os seems to have finally fried. thankfully i long ago bought another drive for files. though now i have to decide if i should finally ditch the desk-top and get a laptop. would probably be easier than to keep repairing that machine.

why do you fail me once again, muni? seriously, of the last 5 or so times i've taken the muni j line, there've been 2 power outages and one capricious shutdown for no apparent reason. i'm not going to turn this into the j-line version of the n judah chrnicles, but suffice it to say that it may be that i do the rest of the j-line's riders a big favor if i were to avoid it. i'm carrying some bad j-church mojo lately. moreover, it kept me from from getting a quick and needed power nap before heading out tonight to see old crow medicine show at slims. that i'm seeing them belongs in the grin side of the ledger. i'll just need a second and third wind to get thru the night.


** speaking of warhol, the upcoming two-part american masters (pbs series) film devoted to his life is on my must-see list.