Good morning. Hello. How are you? #599
Unjust wars at Nuclear Power Plants and I am a Holy Fawn stan now thank you Bill.
Good morning. Hello. How are you? All well? Did you watch the possible end-of-the-world on webcam last night? That was super fun.
I was sitting in the old-person chair up in the playroom, I’d just finished my shift watching Jane and getting her ready for her sleepover at Grammy’s and Emma had come and gotten her to bring her over. I saw a Tweet about a battle going on at a Nuclear power plant, and it had a livestream link. I didn’t think too much about it, I was in my YouTube watching phase of the evening, and the link was a YouTube link, and I’d finished all the videos from my subscriptions. So I click on the link and it’s just this grainy black and white unchanching livestream of a parking lot and some buildings. I leave it up, but since nothing is happening, I go back to my phone for some more super-healthy doomscrolling.
Then I see a flash on the TV and I look up and I see tracer rounds slamming into buildings, I see white lines coming from the air hitting buildings, I see big white flashes, small white lines coming from little black dots in the parking lot. It then hits home that I really am watching, live, a battle at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, the same type of plant as Chernobyl. I am watching, with 59,000 other people, a potential nuclear holocaust live on the internet. It does not feel good, it is horrifying. I’m paralyzed, actually, and a tear starts streaming down my eye and it reminds me of some sci-fi movie where someone is paralyzed and they have a tear streaming down their eye, but I can’t remember what movie, and if I were the kind of person who had all day, or even, just imagine, multiple days, to write this email, I’m sure it would come to me, it was a real moving shot. But it turns out it’s a very unpleasant experience in reality, being paralyzed with horror while a tear runs down your face. Watching an unjust war, live, take place at a fucking nuclear power plant. Jesus christ what is modernity this is horrifying.
Then Bill emails and tells me that Holy Fawn, the band opening for Deafheaven on this tour, are fantastic and I really should go to this show. And I look at the clock, and I look at my tickets, and yeah, I can make it and still catch the opener, and it seems like that is a much better use of my time this evening than watching livestreams of potential nuclear disasters, or even livestreams of wars in general. Man I tell ya, all my boomerang theory stuff kind of went out the window when you’re watching a livestream of a battle at the largest nuclear power plant on a continent. TV Eye indeed.
So I text Emma and tell her I want to go, and I’d love for her to come but it’s okay if she doesn’t want to. We had discussed it the day before and she was on the fence. At the time I told her I didn’t want to go alone. And honestly, before this live nuclear powerplant battle thing, and Bill’s email, I was leaning toward staying home. S2E11 of Discovery dropped, along with S2E01 of Picard and I had a nice evening of Trek planned. Was gonna be real sweet. But it didn’t seem like it was gonna cut it anymore. I needed some rock and some humans. So Emma says she’ll stay home and do work, which probably means working on her dollhouses, but whatever, I am very into her new DIY hobby that makes copious use of power tools. Seems a perfectly sane way to spend a night.
So I go to Cat’s Cradle and get a parking spot no problem. They're still checking vax cards and they are still requiring masks. I think Orange County is dropping their mask requirement on Monday so maybe this will stop soon, but it was actually really comforting to see that some people are still being sane in the face of the CDC basically giving up. Cat’s Cradle’s capacity is 750, it was mostly full, no one was violating the rules, everyone wore their masks, it was fucking fine people are such babies.
Got there in time to see some of the opener, Midwife, who was super cool, solo woman with an electric guitar and a cool fuzzbox on her angelic voice. Then Holy Fawn who were every bit as awesome as Bill told me. My god, they ruled, that’s the perfect blend of metal, shoegaze and post rock right there. I love how they kept saying “we’re big fans of your city,” because they couldn’t be bothered to learn names of the cities they’re in, that really sparked something old-timey-primal-rock-life in me, as I stood in this town of 21,000 people. There were lots of women dressed to the nines in cool goth-meets-tattoo-parlor chic. One woman had a delicate black lace filligree around her heavy duty mask and it looked so cool. I only mention the women because when I got home Emma was like ‘was it dude rock like the Furs show?’ and no, it was not. People just out, having a good time, following vax requirements and mask orders, the world’s a lot more sane than the internet would have me believe. Except for the whole unjust war at a nuclear power plant part.
Anyway, I am now a Holy Fawn stan, they are fantastic. I tried to buy a shirt, because I can now clearly see me as the kind of guy who wears Holy Fawn t-shirts, that’s just who I am now, but unfortunately they only had Canvas XL, which isn’t big enough for my giant, deformed shoulders. I was very sad. I just checked their site and they have a new shirt coming out with a moon on it and they have 2XL of that one so my new very important dream in life of being a guy who wears a Holy Fawn shirt will soon be accomplished.
After Holy Fawn they played Ian Brown’s “First World Problems” over the PA and it was just such a fantastic troll on multiple levels, I really had to respect it.
There you go again with your first world problems
Where your living is easy
I used to own the “First World Problems” single. Sold it on Discogs. Man I really followed that guy’s career for a long time after the Stone Roses. Glad I let that one go. Kinda liked Golden Greats though.
Anyway then Deafheaven came on, and a few things here. First, it’s Deaf heaven, as in the pearly gates, not haven, like I always thought. Whoopsie. Secondly, I think I learned something last night. I have a strong bias against singers in post rock bands who do not play instruments. I cannot get behind that. That guy was just moving around so, so much. The whole thing was really confusing to me. I mean, first off, I’m very curious about Deafheaven’s slow migration from metal to shoegaze, and Holy Fawn opening was a positive indicator that we’d get some metal tinging going on here. And secondly, I have to admit I am old as shit and my feet were definitely starting to hurt at this point. And thirdly, there’s only so much standing around alone at shows I can do, staring at my phone, before I wish I was experiencing this whole thing with someone. My “go to a show alone” muscle has definitely weakened through the pandemic. But in the end, I’m fairly convinced the main problem was that that singer dude just didn’t have a guitar strapped on, or even a bass (one of the singers in Holy Fawn played bass and now I want to be a bass player in a post-rock band so bad) and that is just not working for me. I kept trying to tell myself “but you like this music, it sounds like good shoegaze, in fact it sounds a lot like Mellonova, which whom you were friends and toured in the 90’s, that is cool.” But he was just moving around up there on stage, doing that little body sway vocalists do, and not standing there with a guitar looking all bad-ass (as, I should point out, the singer in Mellonova did), and I just couldn’t get over it.
And it was weird, I was thinking “man, I see tons of bands with lead singers that do not have instruments.” Later, at home, when I was explaining this whole situation, Emma was like “Oh, you mean like Mercury Rev, one of your favorite bands?” And I felt sort of dumb. But I think this strong prior bias is confined to post-rock/post-metal/whatever-we’re-calling-this-genre. Also Jonathan Donahue leans into the absurdity of the situation. This guy was taking it seriously.
Or maybe it was just that my feet hurt.
I really did think I was the prime target for Deafheaven’s migration to shoegaze but after Holy Fawn, I just wanted to see them bring the metal.
Man. I would not want to be in a band that has to go on after Holy Fawn.
Yesterday at lunch, Jane wanted to eat lunch out on the patio, and since it was eighty degrees outside, we accommodated her. I notoriously do not like eating outside becasue it is just too bright. So historically Emma and Jane have not expected me to join them when they eat outside, and I end up eating lunch alone inside like I’m at the kids table. But I wanted to see my family, so I went outside. It was just like being at SXSW on the patio of Iron Cactus. My own little mini 30-minute long SXSW. Since I am, alas, not going this year. But I’m gonna go next year, I swear.
There were many, many more sprouts in the garage seedling area yesterday, my fear that the heating mats weren’t working and the garage was too cold are gone, not least of which because it’s now in the 70’s. So all my little seedlings are popping up and it is just great. I am very happy. My final Birdie’s Bed came, and I will be doing more assembly this weekend and then it is hauling dirt and building garden soil with amendments all day long, load after load, until all my beds are filled. I am very excited it is going to be great.
But first, I gotta go to Walmart, right now, and then I have a workday on Friday like a normie. Working on summer (or, ahem, Spring) Fridays is tyranny let’s overthrow the system.
Okay here is today’s mix, with “First World Problems” on it, because it was such a good troll, and “Cornelia Street” because, as you can see from the photos, I got a sweet new copy of Lover on vinyl. Don Lennon’s “Three More Songs a Night” because late-period Don Lennon is underappreciated and it’s a great song. The rest is new music because new music is awesome it keeps you young but be warned every mix from here on out is probably just going to be a Holy Fawn mix. Oh and Neneh Cherry did a new verion of “Buffalo Stance” with Robyn, come on, that is awesome.
Off to Walmart for a big adventure TTFN.