Event

I was once again unable to make it to the animation festival in Ottawa this year, and the Philadelphia Film Festival once again filled some of that gap with a well-curated program of shorts. I’m feeling pretty raw lately about a variety of big things both personal and global, and several of these films collectively poked at all those things, so while I don’t regret attending, I did come away from the screening more emotionally… See more →

Two and a half years ago, I came away from Kinference 2023 disappointed that more of my peers weren’t as put off as I was by the current state of tech’s dominant preoccupations. My experience wasn’t much different this time, except that in the intervening years, Web3 enthusiasm has fashionably given way to AI enthusiasm. This isn’t to say all the speakers were doing PR for LLMs, and among those intermittently expressing guarded misgivings, Frank… See more →

A quick reminder to myself that in the future I really should swap out my 15dB earplug filters for the 25dB ones (or maybe even the solid ones) if I’m going to be right next to the speakers. My left ear was not the same after this show, and I hope it’s not permanent. That said, of all the dozens of shows I’ve attended in this room over the years, I don’t remember any of… See more →

First time in a long time I’ve come home from a show covered in fake blood! I knew Ghoul’s schtick borrowed liberally from Gwar’s, but I didn’t realize just how far they took it until one of their elaborately costumed characters came out with hoses attached to himself. Sure enough, his face was soon ripped off to get the fluids flowing. Not nearly as messy as a Gwar show (which these days suits me just… See more →

Even if I’ve never been all that interested in the records that came after The Downward Spiral, a Nine Inch Nails show is always an event, so I had been keeping an eye on tickets for this one. By the day of the show, even the available cheap seats were not quite cheap enough for this cheapskate, but at the eleventh hour, a friend materialized with an extra ticket, and I came to my senses.… See more →

Not a packed show, but well-attended by scene afficionados, as I noticed members of Baroness, Pentagram, Pharaoh, and Sonya in the audience. Also cool to spot Ben Brower (formerly of The Stuntmen) in Breakker! Tower crushed. Definitely the best way I could have spent this particular Sunday evening in Philadelphia.

The late, great Faraquet scheduled a handful of reunion gigs across a weekend (presumably so no one in the band would have to take time off work) to celebrate the 25th anniversary of their lone full-length album, The View From This Tower, which has long been high on the list of my favorite underground records. I felt a rare bit of hometown pride when the Philly show sold out fast enough for them to add… See more →

A solid bill of oddities tonight.

Ecology: Homestones is a purveyor of harsh noise that probably wouldn’t hold my attention if it weren’t performed by a towering ghoul with a shrunken head, accompanied by a limbless torso writhing along to the cacophony on a hook behind a velvet rope. Apparently there’s a whole mythology that goes with this, and incredibly, it’s attracted more than a half million social media followers in just a few short… See more →

It’s not uncommon for me to lament an old band’s preference for new material at a live show, and while tonight’s set list was dominated by songs from NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD, and I do find that album to be something of a rote exercise, that wasn’t the only reason I left early. Even in this grim geopolitical moment, Godspeed’s brand of all-consuming pessimism somehow feels to me more naive… See more →

I joked with some other folks in line about the event staff carding people at the door: Would anyone attending a Slowdive show in 2024 be under 40? I had momentarily forgotten that the kids on TikTok have in recent years made shoegaze far bigger than it’s ever been, and not only had the kids come out to pack this show, but they’d arrived early. I got there shortly after the start of Quannic’s opening… See more →

The name of this tour, The Future Past, led me to believe it was one of those tours where Maiden would be sticking to the classic albums, which is all I really want to hear. If I had done any research at all, I would have learned that “Days of Future Past” is the name of a song on their 2021 album Senjutsu, and indeed, that album accounted for a full third of the setlist.… See more →

The Scariest Skeleton

Mali Elfman, Pete Scalzitti IV (USA)

Tennis, Oranges

Sean Pecknold (USA)

Martyr’s Guidebook

Maksymilian Rzontowski (Poland)

It Shouldn’t Rain Tomorrow

Maria Trigo Teixeira (Portugal, Germany)

Horse Portrait

Witold Giersz (Poland)

Beautiful Men

Nicolas Keppens (France, Belgium, Netherlands)

A Crab in the Pool

Alexandra Myotte, Jean-Sébastien Hamel (Canada)

Bug Diner

Phoebe Jane Hart (USA)

Wander to Wonder

Nina Gantz (Netherlands, Belgium, France, UK)

My fourth Greet Death show, and my first since singer/guitarist Harper transitioned, and it was nice to see her come out of her shell, playing more expressively in a way that maybe she felt she couldn’t before.

Soul Glo isn’t really my thing, but I’m not gonna tell you they didn’t burn the place down. Mannequin Pussy, not so much.

Frontwoman Marisa Dabice isn’t an especially clever lyricist, and it’s easy enough to get past when listening to the band’s records, whose sonics are more about feeling than thinking. But while the records are mercifully absent overt speechifying, this show sadly was not, and Mannequin Pussy’s emotion-to-intellect ratio is a poor fit… See more →

I only found out about the Philadelphia Organ Festival the day before it started, and I’m so glad I did. I wish I could have attended more events, but if I could only make it to one, this one, “The Organ’s Modern Touch: Minimalism and Contemporary Works” was at the top of my list.

This festival being devoted to the organ, video screens were set up at either side of the sanctuary, one showing the… See more →

Late last year, my friend Jon (without an h) told me his high school buddy John (with an h) was putting together a band to play Misfits and Danzig tunes for Porchella, the annual Halloween band crawl in Irvington, the town in New York’s Hudson Valley where John lives. John on drums and Jon on guitar. Did I want in? As anyone who has ever spent more than five seconds with me knows, fronting a… See more →

For this, my 14th Ottawa International Animation Festival in 25 years, it occurred to me that I’ve been attending OIAF on and off for more than half of my life! I always make a point of seeing everything in the short film competition, which is the centerpiece of the fest, but my flight times didn’t fully cooperate with the festival schedule, so I had to miss one of the screenings, making this year’s accounting sadly… See more →

Ghost’s set was largely unchanged from the one I saw last year—and I enjoyed it just as much a second time—so I won’t describe it again. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t make a note of how impressive Amon Amarth’s stage production was, especially for an opening band. The stage was bookended by three-story Viking statues. The drum riser sat atop a massive Viking helmet encasing video screens projecting eyes, fire, lightning, and… See more →

I knew right away that the arrival of Metallica’s …And Justice for All in my suburban home in June of 1989 was a pivotal moment. I didn’t even wait for my birthday party guests to disperse before sneaking up to my room to listen to it, even though its tone was decidedly at odds with the celebratory atmosphere. It was the darkest thing I’d ever been exposed to, forcing me to contemplate unvarnished truths about… See more →

My first visit to the Foundry. The place has strong “waiting in line for a theme park attraction” vibes.

This show was my first visit to the First Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia, and I was immediately struck by the building’s gold brick interior, which I don’t think I’d ever seen in a church nave before:

The interior is buff-colored brick and sandstone and the pews are black walnut, exemplifying [Augustus] Sims’ architectural philosophy of honesty in building materials, eschewing plaster throughout. Stone carvings both inside and out were done by Alexander Milne Calder,… See more →

Another sold out Underground Arts show, and I’m still not taking my own advice and getting there early, so I didn’t get to see much more than the backs of a lot of heads. I was cranky about it at first, but even when you can barely see them, it’s impossible to stay cranky when White Reaper is doing their thing.

I think I can count on zero hands how many people I know who can even name an Unwound song, let alone call themselves fans, so after I got over my excitement when the reunion tour was announced last summer, I was a little surprised to learn they were playing Union Transfer (capacity: 1,200), and still more surprised when that show sold out and a second one was added. I’ve long had an objective understanding… See more →

The six massive pillars in the middle of Underground Arts make the stage invisible to big chunks of the room, and when it’s a sold out show like this one, finding an even halfway decent sight line can be next to impossible if you don’t get there early. I’ve been burned by this a few times now, so I think going forward I’ll need to commit to early arrival or just skip the show.

Tonight… See more →

After having to cancel my plans to attend last month’s Ottawa International Animation Festival at the last minute, I was glad the Philadelphia Film Festival’s animated shorts program gave me a chance to get my fix. This was a pretty solid collection of films, encompassing a variety of styles and narratives. The overall tone was fairly dark, which is always fine with me, but several of the films also made a habit of just stopping… See more →

This was a bucket-lister for me, long overdue and worth the wait. It was also the second incarnation of Weird Al’s Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Tour, in which he plays all original songs rather than the pop parodies he’s famous for. And I realized at the show that I think I generally prefer his originals! Don’t get me wrong; it was super fun to hear the parody medley in the encore, especially the extended “Yoda”… See more →

That rare four-band bill where everyone’s great. And as always, it is impossible to overstate how thoroughly @melt_banana rules.

I’ve been waiting a long time for this night, and it did not disappoint!

It’s rare for me to go to an arena show, and when I do, I generally expect the lack of intimacy to seriously diminish the experience. This was certainly the case for Mastodon, who absolutely demolished the basements and bars I saw them play years ago, but they couldn’t energize me in nearly the same way from across Trenton’s cavernous Cure Insurance Arena. The fact that I haven’t paid much attention to their last few… See more →