Quests Aided by Pleasant Weather

I think all healthy people like to be interviewed. Look at those chain emails and the lists of random questions going around facebook. "Favourite day of the year?" "Biggest pet peeve?" It doesn't matter; people like talking about themselves. It begins in elementary school with the very same lists of questions and continues into adulthood with forwarded emails. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Peoples' willingness to talk about themselves certainly makes my job easier.

It also helps when people are used to be interviewed. Talking to Rat Scabies yesterday was brilliant. He told me all about the Holy Grail and what makes a good quest ("the weather"), what it was like producing the latest Flipron album (Gravity Calling) and what drives his current recordings. Very interesting stuff! He had no end of nice things to say about Flipron as musicians and as people, and although my interview with Jesse Budd leads me to agree with him, it's still nice to hear good things about a band you're a fan of -- it reaffirms your allegiance. It's rubbish when you find out someone you admire is a tosser.

Take the Killers, for example:

In my first year at Uni, me and all of my friends listened to Hot Fuzz on a loop until I headed back to the States for the summer. I got to see them in Minneapolis with Linnea and Jess H as part of an EPIC road trip that involved a great deal of hysteria and Dairy Queen soft serve. We spent most of the 80 miles from Rochester to St Paul trapped in the worst thunder storm of the summer, me in the front seat trying to calm the driver, Linnea, to the point of not killing us, while Jess H took pictures of the storm from the backseat. Once we escaped the rain we hit the Interstate, which was a completely new adventure for Linnea, and needless to say, when we got to the show we were all feeling pretty lucky to be alive.

The opening band was Louis XIV and the sound quality was appalling. We couldn't hear any of the actual music, but they were so pleasant and looked like they were having so much fun that I went out and bought The Best Little Secrets Are Kept which, although it's mercilessly "influenced" by T Rex and the Kinks, remains a dancing-as-I'm-cleaning-the-house favourite.

Sound-wise, the Killers were fantastic, but it was just like listening to the album in an arena with other people. There was something really joyless about Brandon Flowers' performance that I found terribly dissappointing. I know it must be hard touring for weeks and months at a time, but shit! Afterwards I read an interview they did with the Rolling Stone where he was talking about the shows -- they're shorter than most, and he doesn't enjoy them. I think he described it as "paying their dues."

Again, the Killers' sound quality was superb, but when I think of bands that are exciting to watch, I'm going to think of the UK Subs at Milkwood Jam, or Pour Habit who I recently saw opening for NOFX. Again, the sound quality was not fantastic, but man, were they fun! It's a shame I couldn't get a photo of Chuck scaling the stack. Fantastic!

Madina Lake was surprisingly fun to watch in a weird sort of way. None of them were plugged in to facilitate all of their manic bouncing and twirling. The balloons were a nice touch and well-judged for the age and mood of the audience, and I have to commend Nate for surfing a crowd THAT hormone-ridden. Fair play, dude. That would have scared me.

Next for my adventures I'm reviewing the Counting Crows show in Cardiff on Saturday. My inner ten year old is excited. I played August and Everything After to death in 1994/5. Undecided about the more recent stuff, but I'm sure it'll be a good time.

Either way, you'll hear about it.

A Photocopier and a Stapler

As usual, I've spent today making plans for the magazine.

Tomorrow I'm interviewing Rat Scabies, and I couldn't be more excited. I'm trying to resist the temptation to read previous interviews because that never helps, it only convinces you that everything's already been asked. Still, I don't feel completely lost going into this one as I have something most music journalists do not: a background in early medieval literature.

Specifically the Arthurian romances of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. I wasn't sure that would ever come in handy in my life as a journalist, but lo--!

Very excited, and equally chuffed to be working on some questions for Kate Smurthwaite of Cruella Blog. She's a fantastic writer and in this case, the trouble isn't knowing what to ask, it's limiting the questions.

Reading the blog (which I highly recommend) is making me think of the Old Days* with Teen Council and the always inspiring Jess H. In 11th grade I published her practical How-To guide to staging protests, but I never got to use the advice myself. Not long after that, I was in Britain, and it seemed like the issues were less pressing. It was an illusion, of course, but not every issue is as obvious as nearly getting hit by a missile aimed at a Planned Parenthood.

A year ago I covered a pro-choice rally in Cardiff. I thought I'd interview a couple of people and take some pictures, but I ended up hijacking the microphone and following a crowd of like-minded people to the police station to complain when a photographer was taken into custody for taking pictures of the event. Naturally, everyone took pictures of the arrest, and that's the great thing about Citizen Journalism. Everybody's got a camera.

There are a lot of great things about Citizen Journalism, but I don't have to tell you that. The Antagonist owes everything to self-publishing. And what's wrong with that? Do investors and advertisers make something worthwhile? If anything, they invalidate a publication/station/object by compromising its interests and creating a dependency on approval. That's not healthy. Much better to say what you've got to with a stapler and a photocopier.

*2003