Yeah Yeah Yeahs w/ Blood on the Wall — The Tro­cadero April 5, 2006

Show Your Bones may not sat­is­fy fans look­ing for pre­tenders to The Pre­tenders hard-bit­ten vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, but enig­mat­ic, extro­vert­ed front­woman Karen O. still pro­vides good val­ue for the enter­tain­ment dol­lar, prov­ing that the mil­lenial hype for the New York sound was­n’t com­plete­ly off the mark.

Con­sid­er­ing that record­ing Show Your Bones near­ly destroyed the band, YYY’s aren’t the self-sat­is­fied garage rock card­board cutouts The Strokes proved to be, and even with Liq­uid Liq­uid seep­ing in to “Phe­nom­e­na”, they haven’t gone total­ly DFA either, leav­ing them in an elec­tro-acoustic no man’s land of sorts, which isn’t entire­ly a bad thing.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs — “Gold Lion”

The tec­ton­ic changes fac­ing media com­pa­nies are by now the top­ic of an often-recit­ed ser­mon. Put briefly, dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy is plac­ing con­trol over much infor­ma­tion square­ly in the hands of con­sumers and cre­at­ing all kinds of oppor­tu­ni­ties for new entrants who can push the rev­o­lu­tion forward.

And…

These are new-media ven­tures that leave the com­pe­ti­tion scratch­ing their heads because they don’t real­ly aim to com­pete in the first place; their cre­ators are mere­ly tak­ing advan­tage of the eco­nom­ics of the online medi­um to do some­thing that they feel good about. They would cer­tain­ly like to cov­er their costs and maybe make a buck or two, but real­ly, they’re not in it for the mon­ey. By pure­ly com­mer­cial mea­sures, they are illog­i­cal. If your name were, say, Rupert or Sum­n­er, they would rep­re­sent the kind of ter­ror that might keep you up at night: death by smi­ley face. [empha­sis mine.]

What he said, with reser­va­tions. Thoughts?

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This 18th C. Adap­ta­tion pits Felli­ni against Mon­ty Python and treats Lau­rence Sterne’s unedit­ed mas­ter­piece as it should right­ful­ly be treat­ed: as though no one has ever read the book in its entire­ty, pre­fer­ring the idea itself over an actu­al telling. The film already has some­thing of a folk­lore: it was shot in five days, with no mon­ey; that it was­n’t actu­al­ly script­ed, but impro­vised, main­ly by Coogan, but every­one went along for the ride, neces­si­tat­ing a “Don­ald Kauf­man-esque” inven­tion to cov­er their tracks. There will undoubt­ed­ly be more as this film reach­es larg­er audi­ences, but for now, small­er myths should do.

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David Den­by’s Tory take on V for Vendet­ta came as some­thing of a sur­prise. Ignor­ing anar­chism alto­geth­er, Den­by takes the Dad­dy War­bucks short-course in lib­er­al democ­ra­cy, the sort of good for the goose blath­er that reach­es equal­ly abrupt and sim­ple-mind­ed con­clu­sions about rad­i­cal vio­lence as it does the per­va­sive good of the sta­tus quo.

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Ray Davies — Irv­ing Plaza, March 25, 2006

Play­ing to a packed house, Ray Davies opened Sat­ur­day night with “I’m Not Like Every­body Else”, an ode to rebel­lious indi­vid­u­al­i­ty and a sting­ing tes­ta­ment to his nar­cis­sism. Late­ly the song’s been fea­tured in IBM com­mer­cials that show office work­ers lip-synch­ing the lyrics as they go about their day, robot­i­cal­ly rid­ing in ele­va­tors and expe­ri­enc­ing the mun­dane as a thrilling new busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ty wait­ing to hap­pen. Once a curi­ous rave-up from The Great Lost Kinks Album, “I’m Not Like Every­body Else” has become a strange, iron­ic anthem to con­found­ing the busi­ness hivemind.

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