2003-05-14 - 1:38

Tenacity

On the whole, I consider myself fairly mature; but I still found it amusing that when the girl at Chapters rang my order through, the limited size of the digital display caused the title The Tenacity of the Cockroach to be truncated to "THE TENACITY OF THE COCK"--a message that was suspended interminably in red LED form, as she finished ringing in my discount coupon. ("Marge, I swear I didn't touch her. You know how bashful I am--I can't even say the word 'titmouse' without giggling like a schoolgirl.")

At any rate, I have enough reading material to carry me through for a while, since I also picked up the third Disinformation collection, Abuse Your Illusions; The Last Night of the Earth Poems (more Bukowski); and Our Band Could Be Your Life. Even though I had been thinking of getting that last book for a while, I kept forgetting its title; but Richard not only brought it to my mind again recently, he also mentioned that he finally read it, too, and enjoyed it a lot.

Last night was the Chili Peppers at the Corel Centre, with Queens of the Stone Age and The Mars Volta, a show that I caught with Aaron, Loralei, and Greg.

TMV were a mixed bag. The audio mix completely buried the vocals; and the songs were excessively sprawling. On the plus side, though, the strong drumming seemed to hold the show together and the frontman exhibited the best rock star moves that I've seen, throwing his mic around and jumping off the bass drum. It was an energetic performance, but it was difficult to get much else out of the set from my vantage point (which was fairly far from the stage, actually).

Queens of the Stone Age were very good, starting well and getting better as the set went on. I'm quite psyched to see them again as part of Lollapalooza.

The Chili Peppers put on a solid show. Nothing mind-blowing, but they still know how to play (even if, as I believe, John Frusciante is carrying the soul of the band himself).

The song selection wasn't particularly inspired. All of the recent radio singles were present; and after the band had built up momentum, they worked deeper into the new album. As with the previous time that I saw the band (the summer of 2000), they essentially skipped over the non-Frusciante eras. (It seems that One Hot Minute never really existed; and the first four albums were represented by only a single song: the encore-closing "Me and My Friends.")

On the whole, I'd say that I definitely preferred the setlist from the previous tour; but the playing was certainly up to snuff last night. Most of the highlights that I would name arose from John's work--extended guitar pieces on certain songs and a solo turn covering "I'm Eighteen"--however, it's also cool to witness a tight live band that works very well as a unit.

I must say, though, that it can make you feel old when the row in front of you is filled with girls ten years younger than you. Heh. Actually, I admire the enthusiasm that they had for the concert. For me, that concert in that setting on that night . . . it was good fun, without question; but it wasn't an Important Experience. It's cool to see that it was a big deal for others, though, since that sense of excitement adds to the event.

Yeah, so now I'm four concert reviews in the hole . . . I'll catch up.

For now, though, I should probably sleep, especially since I have the rest of my bedroom set being delivered tomorrow; and they could be here anytime after 8:00.

J.