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Movies and Shows
Apr. 1st, 2016 07:06 pmMovies and shows has been the theme of the past couple days. Wednesday after work we went up to the Brooks to see Dreams Rewired. It was pretty good. The video portion being almost completely just really old film footage was pretty awesome. The video essay portion with the narration and all I guess I could've taken or left, but overall it was worthwhile. After that we went up to the Hi-Tone to see Mac Sabbath. It was mostly pretty enjoyable. The opening band was terrible. Mac Sabbath actually did an extremely spot on Black Sabbath. The band sounded about as close to the real thing as you possibly could. They also reminded me of one element of Black Sabbath that I love: the drums. Really good drumming, and they definitely kept that up. Speaking of the drums, I also enjoyed the conceit of their drummer being The Catburglar (and in Peter Criss makeup). The whole thing is of course pretty stupid, but it was enjoyable. The vocals and parody lyrics were whatever, but the singer did a pretty good Ozzy impersonation (visually, his vocals match Black Sabbath the least of any element, which granted is hardest to do). Oh, and I'll add a couple of the funnier puns they threw out: Burger King Diamond, Bauhaus of Pancakes. That's what I remember at least.
So the next night it was rinse and repeat in spite of lack of sleep. Mary Beth and I went up to Studio to see the Don't Be afraid of the Shorts thing for the Memphis Comedy Festival (as it says, their comedy film shorts). A lot of it wasn't funny, but there were a few things that were. There was one from Australia about a son coming out to his parents as being straight that was really funny. There was another one about art camp as an army boot camp that was funny. Josh had messaged me earlier in the day about another show that night. It was a local band called The Pop Ritual who bill themselves as industrial/post punk so I was intrigued and listened to some stuff and some of it was pretty good and unusual for Memphis so thought it'd be good to go. The funny thing is Josh had forgotten about Mac Sabbath so he'd missed it and he was the one who was originally thinking about going to Nashville to see them. So we went to the Hi-Tone. We got there early and just talked to Josh for a while which was nice, hadn't seen him in a good while. He'd apparently had a lawsuit against him! Thankfully it's gone away. The first act was this dude who played solo guitar whose name I've forgotten. He was really good. His stuff was pretty shoegazy, kinda Flying Saucer Attack with the layers of looping and delayed and reversed guitar. The Pop Ritual played next. They were pretty good. They do some really awesome sounds, at times they brush up against cheesy 90s industrial. The vocals are the weakest part. The singer also acts like he's on a bigger stage than he is with his theatrics (which the bass player does a bit of as well). But pretty good for a local band (that sounds like such a back-handed compliment, but I don't think that's how I mean it). The next band was up from Oxford called And the Echo. They clearly fit into that 80s synth pop meets contemporary pop that's pretty hip nowadays or maybe was only recently hip. Not terrible, but way too slick to be my kinda thing. They had some pretty cool synths: a Mopho, a Lil Phatty, and a huge Dave Smith thing (a Poly Evolver, I'm guessing). The singer had two synths in front of her. She touched the MicroKorg once and the Mopho never. I'm going to guess it was being midi controlled there, so not just a prop. The crazy thing was their light right. A huge fucking thing that was synched with their sequences. And felt a little ridiculous in the tiny room of the Hi-Tone's secondary stage. The guitarist also didn't play anything for at least the last two songs. And on one of them there was sampled/pre-recorded guitar that was playing in their backing track. So there's guitar playing and he's not playing anything. I dunno, just kinda weird. Okay, what else? I met my dad for lunch today at the Commissary. That's about it.
So the next night it was rinse and repeat in spite of lack of sleep. Mary Beth and I went up to Studio to see the Don't Be afraid of the Shorts thing for the Memphis Comedy Festival (as it says, their comedy film shorts). A lot of it wasn't funny, but there were a few things that were. There was one from Australia about a son coming out to his parents as being straight that was really funny. There was another one about art camp as an army boot camp that was funny. Josh had messaged me earlier in the day about another show that night. It was a local band called The Pop Ritual who bill themselves as industrial/post punk so I was intrigued and listened to some stuff and some of it was pretty good and unusual for Memphis so thought it'd be good to go. The funny thing is Josh had forgotten about Mac Sabbath so he'd missed it and he was the one who was originally thinking about going to Nashville to see them. So we went to the Hi-Tone. We got there early and just talked to Josh for a while which was nice, hadn't seen him in a good while. He'd apparently had a lawsuit against him! Thankfully it's gone away. The first act was this dude who played solo guitar whose name I've forgotten. He was really good. His stuff was pretty shoegazy, kinda Flying Saucer Attack with the layers of looping and delayed and reversed guitar. The Pop Ritual played next. They were pretty good. They do some really awesome sounds, at times they brush up against cheesy 90s industrial. The vocals are the weakest part. The singer also acts like he's on a bigger stage than he is with his theatrics (which the bass player does a bit of as well). But pretty good for a local band (that sounds like such a back-handed compliment, but I don't think that's how I mean it). The next band was up from Oxford called And the Echo. They clearly fit into that 80s synth pop meets contemporary pop that's pretty hip nowadays or maybe was only recently hip. Not terrible, but way too slick to be my kinda thing. They had some pretty cool synths: a Mopho, a Lil Phatty, and a huge Dave Smith thing (a Poly Evolver, I'm guessing). The singer had two synths in front of her. She touched the MicroKorg once and the Mopho never. I'm going to guess it was being midi controlled there, so not just a prop. The crazy thing was their light right. A huge fucking thing that was synched with their sequences. And felt a little ridiculous in the tiny room of the Hi-Tone's secondary stage. The guitarist also didn't play anything for at least the last two songs. And on one of them there was sampled/pre-recorded guitar that was playing in their backing track. So there's guitar playing and he's not playing anything. I dunno, just kinda weird. Okay, what else? I met my dad for lunch today at the Commissary. That's about it.
