Of Montreal in Minneapolis
Of Montreal played First Ave. in Minneapolis Saturday night. If you haven’t heard of them, think Glam Funk Extravaganza: Prince meets Davie Bowie meets indie rock meets variety show on acid. Frontman Kevin Barnes has more than a hint of the musical mad scientist/insane genius about him. Their albums are elegantly produced and recorded, full of instrumental and lyrical variety. Live, however, they ecshew some of that refinement in favor of raw intensity and crazy antics.
Here’s a link to the photo album of the weekend. The concert shots aren’t from Saturday (they’re stolen from Pitchfork and taken at a show in NYC last month), but the show looked almsot identical.
We spent the rest of the weekend eating and showing Heather’s visiting Spanish former foreign exchange student Marta around Minneapolis.
RATM will play Target Center in Minneapolis during GOP convention!
Looks like Rage will be playing the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis. Tickets go on sale Saturday morning – I’m getting a buddy to try to score some for me since I’ll be camping. Anyone know if this is a BYORS (Bring Your Own Riot Shield) event, or will the 98273409238 cops there have extras, considering the result last time they played a political convention?
Hit me up if you wanna go…
UPDATE: got two presale tix. They’re seats, which sucks, but there was no GA available. Still trying to get some GA ones.
Our basic freedoms, man…
This weekend was Paddle Fish Days in Madison Lake (where Heather’s parents live). I don’t know why they call it that, because there didn’t seem to be much paddling. I do know they have a fish-kissing competition.
On to the important stuff – we skipped pretty much everything and went straight to the beer garden/band concert thingy. We dragged Luke and Kyle
along, and met some people we knew there also. That’ll happen in a small town. The locals were complaining that beers cost $3.
This band called IV Play
was playing a bunch of cover tunes – your standard G&R, AC/DC, whatnot – they weren’t completely untalented. Eventually, after some beverages passed, they started playing some more… motivating music. Some Manson. Some Rage. Kyle and I decided to go up front (where nobody had yet begun acting appropriately in response to these tunes) and shake things up a bit. Well, big local D-bag decided he didn’t like these antics, and after a song or three made the decision to remove yours truly from the show. We waltzed to the edge of the crowd, at which point I assertively disentangled myself from him (injuring myself in the process – a very deep cut indeed)
and made my way back up to the front for the end of “Killing in the name of,” and further celebration of my basic freedoms along with the other dozen or so people that had awakened to the example of our righteous behavior.
The shocking thing is that I experienced more anger and violence at this tiny hillbilly cover band street festival than I did at the Manson and BOTH Rage shows I went to last year, combined! Even the band was like “don’t kill each other guys” – I mean seriously – who plays Manson and Rage and then tells the crowd to stop throwing a few friendly elbows… Buncha amateurs…
Here’s a link to album with all the pics (just a few more):