Boston Globe Online / Nation | World / His time to soar with U2 – definitely not healthy, but pretty damn awesome all the same.
speaking of live performances and unhealthiness, i was at the disneyland house of blues last night with some friends, one of the band’s was driving by braille, a local emoish type band, the killingtons, and the main act, stavesacre, this hxc band (now this is a fun subculture to explore) .
anyway, since i don’t get out enough, i don’t think i really have a frame of reference to really judge whether anyone was any good or not (that judgement really being a sorta domain specific and culture specific thing i guess). driving by braille sounds like what altrock is nowadays i guess. the killingtons came on right before stavesacre. some of their songs were really cool, and they had this progressive rock thing going, which was neat. also, they get bonus points for dedicating their last song to this pair of obnoxious assholes up front (stavesacre fans, apparently?) who were like heckling them for the whole set. anyway, as they lead into the song, the lead singer hocks this huge loogie on ’em, which up until that point was the funniest thing i saw that night.
<ramble>hmm, i guess i don’t want to be mean or cynical so i don’t know if i should say that seeing the very same audience members all having numinous epiphanies to stavesacre was funny or sad. actually, i this was one of the things i was bothered at the u2 show about… that there are these people who are sharing this experience, which is great, but still being assholes … and also i guess, something related that i don’t have anything against and not really bothered by, but i guess somewhat uneasy about once i realized it in myself, but in the temporariness of the transposition… there’s something false and illusionary about it all i guess. but that’s the way with everything i guess.</ramble>
anyway, from my perspective, stavesacre wasn’t all that. the mix was way too muddy for my tastes, so most of it just sounded like noise. about halfway through the set, they played a really great ballad, gold and silver, and then the song after it had some actual bass line movement which was nice. hmm, and then they lost me again for a while until the last two songs. but then again, i really don’t have a frame of reference, and judging from the crowd, i don’t seem to be part of the “target audience” anyway.