Monthly Archives: April 2013

Record Store Day

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Thankfully the second weekend of the Coachella is not being televised or I would feel compelled to tune in through to the next early Monday morning again. That set me free to get out for enjoy Earth Day, which was coincidentally ‘Pot’ Day and Record Store Day. I thought I’d just slip into the one last remaining, though anachronistic, physical record store in my county: Greywhale Entertainment. I took a walk the long way through the mall to build the anticipation, but when I got there instead of an ‘On Sale’ sign I saw ‘For Sale’ and the store was gone. I admit waiting for a single fabricated calendar date to exercise support for my local brick and mortar record store was lazy, but today it was a heavy to realize the concept of a local, physical record store was dead. Other than Walmart or Best Buy, which don’t count, if I wanted to hold in my hand and look at a record before I bought it, I’d just be left to reminisce about the past. Continue reading →

Coachella Road Trip

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This weekend I have been on a road trip to Indio, California. It hasn’t been too rough on my car, only had to eat a couple of truck stop hot dogs, I’ve been able to get pretty decent lodging and parking hasn’t been bad at all, even though this was for the super crowded Coachella Festival. I’ve been in the same space as probably a few hundred thousand other hippies, but then in reality I have been holed up in my TV room with the heater cranked up (cold, late winter freeze in Utah) and plugged into the YouTube broadcast at coachella.com. Every year in April I idealize about how I should actually pack a tent in my car and drive down to Palm Springs to get in on the big party but it’s hard to rationalize the time away from responsible life, but more honestly it’s a grueling gauntlet of discomforts. I did join in for one day in April 2002, and with the relatively short drive from San Diego, the day pass only costing about $70, the lucky find of an open motel room, and temperatures not pushing past 90 degrees that day, I was thoroughly wiped out after seeing Bjork, Siouxsie, and the Chemical Brothers late into the night. I was heat fatigued, dehydrated, and wedged up into some massive, sweaty Samoan’s ass the whole time. Continue reading →

Mid-Life Moshing

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Now I know for sure how I want my car stereo to sound. Yes, I just took a big leap and got a decent deck installed a couple of weeks ago. But just one week ago I stood 10 feet away from KMFDM and their enormous speakers concussing my torso with The Ultra Heavy Beat. It was a Thursday night, another day of work the next morning, not feeling highly motivated to rock out, only there out of duty and guilt from missing their show a couple of years before, they’re getting old and probably just milking the retro tour scene. No. Sascha and Lucia have a stunning, super-human presence on stage. The two guitar dudes flanking the stage brought and brazenly brandished the Rock (not Dwayne The Rock). And the acoustic drums decimated any idea that they’d be weaker than juiced up electronic beats. I woke up out of a lull in life right there. I remembered how much of a kick I got out of all the KMFDM records, how much I loved standing right in front of erupting loudspeakers (with tissue crammed in my ears for protection), and I started to get little twitches for wanting to hop, and dare I say at my age, thrash around into other people. Continue reading →