I'm off to the MLA for three days of fun-filled interviews! Look for more posts once the new year is upon us.
It's been nearly a week since the havoc over at the Alrosa Villa. Sad heavy metal fans are still making their way over to the big rock outside the club, where an impromptu Dimebag memorial has sprung up. Local news crews have stopped setting up across the street to peer at them. Five people dead, and I can't believe we slept through the whole thing...
I'm not really a metalhead, but Vulgar Display of Power has to be one of the heaviest slabs of sound this side of Hell. Yeah, I rocked out to it on more than one occasion. In an era of hair-sprayed dandies practicing passionless acrobatics on the fretboard, Dimebag's guitar playing was tonally complex, emotional, and truly innovative. I'm pouring one out for you, cat.
Last Friday, we went out with a couple friends, Allison and John Michael, to see The Hives show at the Newport. Fabulous show by a band I had liked but hadn't really paid a lot of attention to in the past. What made the show especially cool, however, was the time spent before and after at our local dive bar, Larry's. See, because J-M used to be roomates with Eric Davidson from the New Bomb Turks (and is quite the scenester in his own right), he knows The Hives fairly well, and so they came out and had a few drinks with all of us. Very polite, friendly, down-to-earth, Swedish... And it didn't hurt that they put on an incredible show: energetic--nay--frenzied, even. Very much in the vein of the Stooges or the Turks. We even got hugs from Matt Destruction (bass) and Pelle Almqvist (vox). So now I guess that makes me a groupie?
Changing hearts, changing minds, changing the very fabric of our language...one comment-spam-laden entry at a time.