being an up-and-coming rock star is harder than you think

this is an awesome little article. i've decided to post it here. because it's funny, but also upsettingly true. not sure they tell you this when you go to 'hey kids, let's start a band!' school.

and i love the kaiser chiefs even more after the 'wank off a tramp' comment.
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Rock whirl

After a year of promoting their debut album, Kaiser Chiefs have become a cautionary tale about how indie rock can damage your health

John Harris
Friday October 21, 2005
The Guardian

Kaiser Chiefs, those hyperactive Leeds scamps whose music remains pretty much ubiquitous, recently returned to the UK for a multi-band tour modestly billed as a "rock'n'roll riot" (and co-sponsored by those well-known seditionaries at 02). In that sense, they have their work cut out: you cannot welcome the audience to such an event and then sit on the drum riser. Instead, the gymnastic manoeuvre known as the "Ricky Wilson jump" is surely all but obligatory, and they are having to play with the kinetic lunacy of a group who have only just started out.

But just look at them. After almost a year promoting their inaugural album, they are a walking cautionary tale concerning the health-threatening effects of a career in indie-rock. The keyboard player known as Peanut is the most glaring example. Pictured on the cover of one music magazine this week, he seems to have strayed into the frame by accident, his trilby hat sliding off the back of his head, his face dappled with stubble, bags sitting under his eyes, and his face frozen into the blank look of someone who has just got back from a theatre of conflict. He does not appear to be a man who is about to play his part in a rock'n'roll riot. He looks like he wants his mum.

But what are they to do? Some months ago, Ricky Wilson poetically summed up his drive to succeed by claiming that he'd "wank off a tramp" to achieve his dreams. The trade-off, it seems, may be even more dreadful than that: pinballing across time zones and language barriers, regaled with an endless chain of highly inventive questions ("Why are you called Kaiser Chiefs?", "What is 'Leeds'?", "Why is Pete Doherty now fat man?"), he too looks as if he may soon need to spend time at one of those institutions people of my parents' generation used to call a health farm.

This, of course, is something that has been happening to all moderately successful groups since the dawn of rock itself, thanks in part to the music industry's innate refusal to ever learn the lessons of history. So what if the fate of Kurt Cobain, Syd Barrett, Ian Curtis and every other sacrificial victim of the rock whirl suggests that the talent of creative types might not be best served by endless graft? They rarely complain, do they? And so, to paraphrase Allen Ginsberg, we watch the best minds of successive generations destroyed by drum sound checks, in-store appearances, a surfeit of free drink, and the eventual hatred of their own art. When it comes to the Chiefs, this latter point is particularly important; given that their best songs archly decry the vacuity of modern living, and thereby walk the line between cleverness and outright annoyance, imagine what it's like playing them every night.

To cap it all, they recently supported U2 and were treated to the experience known as the "Bono talk", a supposedly mystic rite of passage whereby rock's most pompous man issues advice to those groups who may or may not be snapping at his heels. It probably goes something like this: "Well, good evening lads. I am very busy eating blinis with Condoleeza Rice, but I have this to say to you: when you are sitting in a truck stop near San Diego, crying at the emptiness of it all, consider that me and Dave "the Edge" Evans also had moments like that, but we worked like good lads and eventually became millionaires and also saved the developing world." There is one answer to that: "Yes, but you also made Rattle & Hum, as both an album and feature film. And on that evidence, we should return home now."

Eventually, like soldiers coming back from Waterloo, the Chiefs will wearily exit their 564th Nothing to Declare lane and find a grinning record company employee holding open the limousine door and saying, "Right, chaps. We're now going to a top-flight London recording facility to begin work on your second album." Their press officer must already be drafting the press release about a sudden onset of "nervous exhaustion". And if I were Mr and Mrs Peanut, I'd have the spare room ready.
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from the guardian uk online.

'elizabethtown': my very first movie review!

my friend took me to a siff (seattle international film festival) screening of 'elizabethtown' on monday night. i'd heard horrible reviews of it, mostly from the toronto film festival, where cameron crowe screened a woefully uncut (hence like, 3 1/2 hour long version) of the movie, with the caveat, 'i haven't cut it for realease yet, so please don't judge it based on length.' but they did anyway, it got TRASHED, and cameron crowe left the festival early to fly back and take a machete to the movie.

so my friend and i were thinking, sure. they judged it based on length but not based on the quality of the film! it's cameron crowe! come on! he's so cool! we love him very much! 'almost famous' is my favorite movie of all time! he can do no wrong! let's give him a chance. plus, i must say, i was very curious about young orlando bloom, since i'd never seen him in anything but big huge ensemble costume dramas where really all he had to do was stand there and look pretty. so yay.

i will try to sumerize the mish-mash of a "plot": a young shoe design prodigy (????) named drew, played by the aforementioned pretty pretty pretty orlando bloom (soooo pretty) is working for a nike-esque company in portland, oregon. he designs a shoe (??????????????????) that's supposed to be the Next Big Thing. the shoe (??!!) goes nowhere and loses the company over $900 million dollars. in a fantastic cameo by alec baldwin, playing the owner of this fictional shoe company, drew is shown all of the things the company will have to cut because he cost it so much money with his 'fiasco'. and he gets fired. so, oh that's too bad.

so drew goes home to commit suicide when the phone rings (and yes, it's about as quick, compelling, and believable as that sentence). it's his sister, telling him his dad has died and he has to fly to elizabethtown (in kentucky? i think) to retrieve the body (he's died while on a trip home visiting family) and bring it back to oregon for burial. so he ditches the suicide idea for the time being and goes to his sister and mother (played, quite surprisingly, by susan sarandon), then he flies to elizabethtown to meet relatives he's never, er, met before, because his mother hates them all.

on the way there, on a near-empty plane, he meets a deeply irritating flight attendant, played by a deeply irritating kirsten dunst. while mostly it seems drew feels the same way about claire (dunst) as we do, i.e. irritated, there's one moment when their eyes meet where you can actually feel the connection in the audience. it's one of the better moments in the movie, as it's absolutely palpable.

so he tells her he's going to elizabethtown, and judging from her horrific, in-and-out southern accent, she's kind of from the area? or something? so she draws him a map and tells him not to miss exit 60b, and keeps repeating it and shouting it in the airport as he's going for his rental car, etc., like it's a number we should all remember for later. which, well, it isn't.

he gets momentarily lost but finally ends up there, meets the family, who are all quirky and southern and listen to lynard skynard and all that, as we all know, all southern people do. he's got an aunt played by paula dean, from tv's food network! and she's actually one of the least offensive people in the movie! miracle!

he ends up calling claire, who's left her phone number on the map for him (apparently she thought he was as pretty as all people with eyesight do), and for reasons not made entirely clear, he calls in a fit of desperate boredom (i guess?). they end up talking all night, then meeting for sunrise, but in an awesome cameron crowe moment, as they sit there for what should be a really romantic moment, they're both so exhausted that they go their respective ways.

so there's that.

then there's this weird push and pull with what should happen with his father's body (mom wants it cremated and brought back to oregon, family wants it... er... not, and buried in the family plot in elizabethtown). so that happens for a while.

things with claire kind of heat up, and they end up getting together, but then they aren't together, but we don't actually know why, since it seems she's not being honest about having a boyfriend...? oh who knows.

then the mom and sister come out for the memorial service, and mom ends up melting the ice between her and the family with a rousing eulogy which includes a HIGHLY inappropriate story about a boner. heh heh. wow, she's a real fireplug, aint she?

then drew drives home and scatters his father's ashes (he ends up getting cremated) along the way while finally saying all the things he's wanted to say to him. or something?? with absolutely no backstory on the relationship between father and son, it's tough to know what the deal is there.

anyway, so he scatters his ashes in all these places that are meaningful for drew, while his father's instructions were to scatter his ashes over the ocean. so we're not sure why this should be cool, but apparently it is.

anyway, blah blah blah. and i won't give away the end, which is absolutely not exciting or interesting in the least, in case you're bored or drunk or high one night and want to see this thing.

i don't know if it would have been better before crowe's slash and burn job, but it is possible the worst edited movie i've ever seen in my life. drew gets angry with no build-up at all, so the audience is left absolutely baffled. like, drew gets in the car, immediately misses his exit to elizabethtown, immediately pulls over, starts pounding his fists on the steering wheel in a huge temper tantrum, then the next thing you see, he's pulling into town and it's this huge relief. huh? you were lost for like, 15 seconds? why are you so angry again?

it's as if he took all of his movies and put them in a blender, and it spit this one out. there is zero character development. who the fuck is claire supposed to be? quirky? cute? funny? insightful? just a nice girl? no one knows. but i do know that kirsten dunst can't do a southern accent to save her damn LIFE.

and are we supposed to feel sorry for drew? he shows no emotion, other than kind of quirky bemusement, at being depressed and wanting to commit suicide, and he appears to feel nothing for his father or his father's death. it would be one thing if there was backstory to an uncaring father, but all the minimal backstory into his father is of this really nice guy and good dad. so... hm.

orlando bloom is PAINful. i have never seen a worse performance, and yes, i'm including keanu reeves in that. he is tense and awkward and unnatural and self-conscience, he has the worst timing i've ever seen. He either waaaaaaaaaay overacts ala tom cruise (only 10 times worse) and yells and freaks out, or he is completely wooden and lifeless, and stands there looking mildly amused through the whole thing. there are one or two quiet moments where you can tell, if he had the right training, he could actually be a decent actor. but this was such a heavy role for him, and he just fell apart under it. and his american accent is worse than ewan mcgregor's (was. it's fine now. ;o). he sounds overdubbed most of the time, with exaggerated words that shouldn't be exaggerated. if you know what i mean. literally, 1/2 way through the movie, you're PRAYING that crowe doesn't give him any more to say. it's that painful to watch him.

i normally don't really mind kirsten dunst, since the things i've seen her in ('virgin suicides,' 'crazy beautiful,' etc.) have been good and she's been able to carry them. but it was if she acted DOWN to orlando bloom's level, and gave quite possibly the worst performance of her career to date.

i thought susan sarandon was fine, but her character was so one dimensional, you couldn't root for her or hate her. she was just... there. the rest of the family were good, if not ridiculously stereotypical. but at least the acting was good. and thank GOD they surrounded orlando bloom with decent actors, otherwise it would have been unwatchable.

there were moments here and there where you wished he would have spent more time on them, like the road trip/grieving process at the end could have been cool if there was more time spent on developing these characters and that the mood was maintained throughout the rest of the movie. instead it felt tacked on to the end, didn't really feel like part of the same movie, and you really just wanted it to be over at that point, so who cares.

the music of course was great, always appropriate, always cool. and they even threw in a little my morning jacket with the elton john standards, so that was awesome.

otherwise, although i really do love cameron crowe so much, i have to say, this is just, to quote the movie, 'a fiasco.'

i really love small venues

really, i do.

the older i get, the less tolerance i have for big stadium shows. not that any of the bands i listen to will ever hold a big stadium on their own... well... maybe radiohead. and maybe one day keane. but otherwise, probably not so much. but anyway, still. stadiums suck. what's the point of going to a show if you can't stand comfortably in front of the stage watching a performance? and as an added bonus, if the venue is small enough, sometimes one of the bands will come out and watch the other band, blocking your view because they're 8'11 and chose the one spot in the whole place that's right in front of you. it's true.

so last night, we went to see clap your hands say yea, and the national. we would have stayed for m83, since they're really really good, but we didn't. we have no explanation or excuse, other than: we just didn't. so these kids were all part of a benefiit for the greatest radio station in all the land, kexp. our morning dj, john richards, periodically holds these 'john in the morning at night' shows that almost alway sell out, and almost always kick some serious bootie. last night was no exception.


we skipped john vanderslice, athelete, and math & physics club, since we needed food and really, we just couldn't be bothered. we showed up to the tiny little venue that is nuemos just in time for clap your hands say yea.

terrible name for a band, in my opinion, but my GOD they're amazing. they hail from new york, of course, and while the lazier amongst us might compare them to very early talking heads, primarily because lead singer alec ounsworth has the unique vocal stylings of david byrne (albeit a david byrne who's smoked rock after rock of delicious crack), these guys can hardly be compared to just one band. they're less experiemental (except for the vocals) and more just solid, straight-ahead hooky rock music. the very best of indie. what other indie bands wish they were. and they sound about 90% better live than on disk. i just don't think ounsworth's quirks can transfer successfully to record. it took me a while to get into them, mostly because of that voice (as my friend kerry says, it certainly doesn't have that timeless quality about it), but last night's incredible performance turned me into a believer. and MAN are they loud.

i would have had a clearer view of clap your hands say yea, except matt berninger of the national came over and stood in front of me for the entire performance, and let me tell you, that man is tall.

speaking of the national, they took the stage next. now, the national is a band whose sound and singer matt berninger's voice do, indeed, translate well onto disk. you may have heard the song 'able' on various radio shows, but it's 'secret meeting' that's their real masterpiece. the chorus reminds me of old irish folk songs, while the rest of the song is kind of quiet and slow... hard to describe really. and i'm too tired this morning to really do it justice. but trust me, it's good.

on stage, the national just rock the fuck out. berninger looks like a man possessed. or high. or drunk. or... well... he has this insanely intense stage presence which is at turns odd and engrossing. his vocals never waiver, whether he's falllen down or hunched over in some weird fugue state or standing clenched and reaching with one claw-hand toward the heaven, rope-like veins bulging out of his painfully skinny frame. we were standing under the speaker, and me with no earplugs again. if clap your hands say yea were loud, the national, with their wall of sound outros, and berninger's powerful baritone, are louder. and ouch.

and watching the national with us? alec ounsworth from clap your hands say yea, standing next to my friend. it's amazing how an average, kind of dorky looking guy can get any woman he wants by just standing up on stage and singing into a microphone for an hour. dorky looking guys, take note. if alec ounsworth can have several girls chatting him up and hanging on him, form your own band. then you can, too! and contrary to the importance of clap your hands say yea's music and their kind of, 'this is all ridiculous,' onstage persona, i can tell you: ounsworth was loving the attention. ;o)