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We went to see the Memphis Symphony Orchestra's full season opener in the afternoon (as opposed to the "unplugged" thing that was more like a soft open, and it ruled too but wasn't a full program and kinda an even somewhat apart from the season). Okay yeah, so as I just hinted, it ruled. It was two longer pieces: Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto and Sibelius's Second Symphony. Both were really good. The second movement of the Sibelius has at the core for a good bit of it this walking pizzicato bass alternating with the cellos. Because of the walking it feels very prescient of jazz. It specifically sounds like abstract bop (maybe late Mingus or something). Probably just a coincidence of history, but it feels pretty otherworldly (jazz-like or not). And later in the evening I worked some on my upcoming Louisville show. I finished one idea I had which was to take a goofy sample and sequence it as a certain song, both of which are stereotypically "Louisville" (I won't say what the sample and song are just yet as it's all too goofy, but it amuses me and I plan to chop it up with the Morphagene in such a way as the source wouldn't be identifiable anyway). I sequenced it all using Schism Tracker, a port/clone of Impulse Tracker to use on modern machines. Impulse Tracker is the one I was mainly using back in the day. I was trying to find something to make just a simple sequence of a sample and was weirdly having trouble then I figured I could do this in a tracker. Looking up ones to use, trying to decide on the best, I saw Schism Tracker and was like, I used to use Impulse Tracker a whole bunch! So I went with that. But damn, it's the same interface and it's totally a pain to use given how I'm used to using computers nowadays! No undo (the big one), heavy reliance on F-keys (which wouldn't be bad but slightly annoying on this laptop as I have to use an extra function key to make them work right), and just general weird behavior that I guess would have seemed natural on a dos system but I'm used to certain things nowadays. Anyway, what I was doing was pretty small and simple so I kept at it but I probably wouldn't want to keep using it for something more involved like I used to! So I finished it anyway and exported it to a wav file. And then I started in on patching my modular for the show. So it's finally on the way.

I went and met my dad and my sister for lunch at Huey's. So that was a nice change of pace from the usual routine. At night Mary Beth and I went to see Spinal Tap II: the End Continues. I went in with low expectations, but it was good! Lots of really funny stuff and some good loud laughing. Not every joke lands but who would I think I am to expect that? It of course does not touch the original, but it's definitely good as a forty-one-years-later sequel. It does revel a bit in callbacks to the first movie, given the premise it makes sense, that it's about a reunion concert so of course all the songs they're playing are the older songs from the first movie (oh, and some songs too from their post-first-movie ventures). Not a bad thing, but just a note to address the extent the sequel lies in the shadow of the original (though very much not a bad shadow to lie under!). It does have plenty of original humor too and a lot of that is very funny. I'd say it's definitely worth going to see.

The Bill Callahan show was really excellent. We got there early (like as about the first ones there) to make sure Mary Beth could get a decent spot where she could see. The show was at the Minglewood Lounge. They changed where the stage is, moved it over to the adjacent wall and it's kind of weird there. I hadn't been since before covid! We were sitting around waiting for it to start and Zach and Magen were the first people I know to show up. It's funny 'cuz though I hadn't talked to Zach in forever, I'd just happened to be messaging him earlier in the day as I'd reached out after buying that Vince Guaraldi album since he always says it's his favorite jazz album (or if not the Christmas one, one of the Peanuts ones in general). Anyway, so we talked a good bit. The opener was Edsel Axle and I wasn't familiar but she was really great. Instrumental, exploratory guitar stuff...a big folk/country based but going out into experimental territory. Lots of loops. It was good. I picked up a t-shirt after the show. Then Bill Callahan played and he and his band were excellent. We saw him back in 2008 and that was good but this show was just top notch. A funny thing is that Mary Beth has been into The Trap Set podcast and that very afternoon we were listening to the Adrienne Davies interview and she was going on about what a great drummer Jim White is. Well, Bill's band starts up and as soon as he starts playing, I'm immediately like, ooh this drummer is good (not knowing who the drummer is or anything). It wasn't anything showy or flashy, but just immediately the way he played had a lot of subtlety and it just grabbed me under the surface with how good it is. A few songs into it, he announces all the band members and lo and behold, it's Jim White. Then it's like, yeah that makes a lot of sense. But there was also another guitarist and a saxophone player and they were all good. There was a cover of "So Long, Marianne" and that ruled. They closed with a song talking about the curfew the venue has and how they want to play longer. Happy to have gone to it!

I got a few cds in the mail: Inverse Phase: Retrocovered, Inverse Phase: The Midnight Chiptunes, and Inverse Phase: Chiplust. Inverse Phase is a guy who does real chiptunes, mostly covers (old radio hits and some covers of actual video game music). My very first bandcamp activity was downloading a few of the songs off this Retrocovered cd (U2 and The Cars covers)...way back in 2011 (really that long ago!?...also, the cd was available back then, why did I wait fourteen years to get it!? I don't know, but here I go!). Okay, not much else. Mary Beth and I did the Superlo grocery run at night. That's about it.

First thing to report is that I finished reading Martereau by Nathalie Sarraute and it was good. Then in the afternoon I went over to Josh's. He used his drill to help me widen the holes in a few of those brackets just the teensiest bit...and it worked! We got the brackets mounted and the power supply screwed into the case and we tested it and my wiring didn't blow up and the rails got power and then I'd brought one module to test with and it worked. So far so good! I still need to plug all of my module back in for the final test to make sure it still works right with a full load, but it seems so far so good. I also got to see Josh's vintage camper and it's pretty sweet. Then Mary Beth and I went out to dinner at Tonica and stuffed ourselves on some delicious tapas. I think that about catches you up for now.

Mary Beth and I went down to the Halloran Center for one of Memphis Symphony Orchestra's "unplugged" concerts (the first one we'd been to...were kind of confused as to the meaning of "unplugged" in the context of an orchestra...but it's more of an (relatively) intimate "deep dive" into one composer or work that mixes in a lecture with the concert). This was for Brahms's Symphony No. 1. So for the first half Robert Moody (the conductor) was giving a lecture with amusing anecdotes and stuff about Brahms's life. After a bit all of the strings came out and they did the Hungarian Dance No. 5 (so that was nice!). Then he was going into the musical elements of the symphony, and the rest of the orchestra came out and they would play brief little sections of it as he was talking about them (lots of references or homages to Beethoven in there, but some other stuff). Then after the intermission they did the whole symphony (with some notes here and there referring back to the lecture projected behind them). It was good and I really enjoyed the piece. Nice to finally know what the whole "unplugged" thing is all about! I think the real first season premier concert is in a few weeks, but it was fun getting a soft opening. I quite liked the Brahms piece they did in the last season so it was nice to dive in a little more.

I got some things in the mail. My replacement lid for the Zoviet France box set arrived. The day before DHL was going to suspend all shipments to the U.S., he just went ahead and sent the few replacements for broken parts to the U.S. and I didn't even have to reach out to him about it first. So it came and it's not broken, that's cool and that was very nice! I also got the small straight brackets for my modular power supply! The size of the brackets themselves is perfect, I think...but the only problem is that they're just A HAIR too small for the machine screws that screw into the board. I think like the base of the screw is just the size of the holes and the threads push them over. Very frustrating. I may be able to use Josh's drill press at some point to widen the holes just a teensy bit. God this whole thing has been annoying. I'm perpetually SO CLOSE. Anyway, also in the mail a couple cds: Dead Voices on Air: Abrader Redux and Coil: Astral Disaster Sessions Un/Finished Musics Vol 2 (I wonder if I'll ever be able to get the first volume or the actual album...I seem to have missed the boat and just barely even gotten this one). Anyway, I meant to share this next thing in my last post but then I forgot. I did a review on fb for this root beer I got at TFM recently.

It's a little-known fact, but the reason this is called Devil's Foot is because that's what it tastes like. Even though it has the appearance of bougie, over-marketed, overpriced bullshit, I was willing to give it a shot because of its claim to be made with real honey (and should it be merely half as good as Sprecher, that'd still be something special). But in spite of that and its further claims of using cane sugar and brown sugar, it somehow manages to taste like diet root beer. I really tried to give it a chance since I'd already spent too much money on it, but 2.5 cans out of 4 are getting poured down the drain.

In the afternoon, Mary Beth and I went to Paradiso to see a big ol' IMAX screening of Prince's Sign "o" the Times concert movie. (Though I'm not a Prince fan, Mary Beth does like Prince a lot.) I did like when the band came out towards the end of the first song playing marching toms. The dramatic elements were pretty ridiculous and it feels a bit weird watching a "concert" that was mostly recorded in a studio and on a sound stage, but I guess the theater is the point of it. After that I went and met Paul at the Java Cabana as he's back in town on a brief visit. So we talked and hung out for a while and it was great to see him again. Then later Mary Beth and I went to Mark's birthday party at Betsy's and his house. It was a nice back deck hang with a fire pit and everything (even though it was still technically August yesterday, the evening was pretty on the cool side, maybe the fire was hopeful, but it's still fun to be around). Saw a lot of people and hung out and talked and stuff.

I got some cds in the mail: Dead Voices on Air: Piss Frond, Dead Voices on Air: Shap, Lozenge: Doozy (thanks to Mary Beth's other cd of their I guess she didn't even realize was something she has), Aube: Triad Thread, and Francisco López: Absolute Noise Ensemble (this last one has a lot of collaborators spliced into it...one of them happens to be Mike Honeycutt, so!). I finished reading Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor and it was really good. It overall doesn't have a bleak FEEL and it can be humorous and charming and all, but when it hits those very sharply pointed moments, it can be pretty devastatingly bleak (and I guess that sense of hopeless isolation and loneliness hovers over the whole thing). And in two pivotal moments it had me weeping a bit (not in a sentimental sort of way...it does have a light touch but the touch in those moments are very penetrating and abject). There are also a lot of complexities with the characters and their relationships to each other. The one person who's closest to being an "antagonist" is the one you end up feeling the sorriest for, and the person who is the best and most "helpful" (I mean, he really is in a sense) is also...well, it's definitely not an altruistically perfect thing (which doesn't take away from the good there is). Shortly after finishing the book, I discovered there was a movie adaptation in the aughts and I was hate-reading about it (from a pretty universal impression, even from positive reviews, that it's a bland, heartwarming, soulless, feelgood movie that makes the friendship between the young man and the old woman too perfect (even people who like it claiming that that part is very unrealistic...which is way the opposite of in the book, how even when it's good, it's still awkward and flawed and somewhat begrudging), turning what was at its core an unflinching depiction of the descending stages of the indignity of old age into a sappy little moral lesson on the importance of chosen families (which, the importance of chosen families is something that is in the book...but it's not romanticized and while it does bring about the best things that happen, it's also unreliable and inconsistent and doesn't save anything)). Okay, I've ranted enough about a movie I haven't even seen! At night Mary Beth and I hung outside on the deck with Peanut for a little bit.

During my lunch break we did the TFM grocery run. Then at night I went out to Kroger to get a few things. So it was an all-day grocery extravaganza. Later at night we listened to that Trap Set podcast, the episode with Thor Harris. And there you have my day.