RobertSpuhler.com

Reviews: Away We Go, Whatever Works

(NOTE 1: I'm rusty.)
(NOTE 2: There aren't any big spoilers here, but if either of these films interest you, go see them before reading this anyway. Who the hell am I to tell you what to watch?)

"Say You Wanna Get In" - Metric, The Wiltern, 6/8/09

When interviewing Emily Haines a few weeks ago, she mentioned to me (somewhere in between my bouts of the vapors), jokingly, that she thought she'd make an excellent "dancehall diva."

In a way, it seemed a bit laughable – not because she doesn't have the pipes for it, but because the woman who once sang "worldwide, air-tight, no one has a face left to blame" seems to have a lot more to offer than catchy hooks.

On June 8, I went to see Metric at the Wiltern, on tour to support "Fantasies," the band's new (and best yet) album. Needless to say, she's nowhere near mindless hook territory. But what was interesting was that, in front of a sold-out crowd in a venue larger than any the band has headlined in Los Angeles, the beats per minute never slowed down. From the breakdown at the end of opener "Twilight Galaxy" all the way until a slightly ballad-ized version of "Live It Out" to end the night, every track was a dance track.

The crowd ate it up, no doubt. But as someone who remembers a lightly attended shows at the Troubadour in 2003, for instance, I missed the peaks and valleys of the older shows. I missed "Calculation Theme." I missed "Love is a Place." I missed "Blindness" - one of only two songs from the new album that went unplayed (the other, "Collect Call," is also slower).

This is what happens when a band grows. To some - not all, but some - of the people in that audience, Metric is that band that was on Grey's Anatomy. Or that band with the hot lead singer. And those people wanted to dance. Hard to fault the band for that.

I'm incredibly happy for them - the band deserves every accolade it gets at this point, and has certainly worked hard enough to merit this level of success. But there's definitely a selfish kid in me who misses his secret.

And don't get me wrong - when the tour comes back, I'll be there again. Because they still put on a hell of a live show.

Sedaris on Writing

I've had an interesting couple of weeks in terms of interviews for am New York, the NYC daily to which I contribute. First, I interviewed Emily Haines, and you all know what that meant for me. Then on Friday was a great double-header: Bebel Gilberto in the morning and David Sedaris in the afternoon.

I have more to say about all of them combined, but first this: Sedaris was absolutely wonderful to talk to and incredibly insightful. The only problem was this: My stories for am New York have a word count limit of right around 350 words. Sedaris answers questions with parables or anecdotes - and most of them would take up the space of an entire story!

So, here are a couple of transcribed bits from the interview that I really liked. The story appears in the paper and online on Tuesday.

On how a diary entry can end up as a story: "It usually starts by rewriting it to read out loud. Often they're incidents, not enough to make a story out of. But I wanted to read some new diary stuff this tour. I'll get my haircut anywhere, any barbershop. Kids could set up a table on the side of the road with a blowtorch and a sign that says 'Haircuts: 25 cents' and I would do it, because you can't go wrong. There's nothing you can do to make my hair worse than it already is. So I was in Memphis, and I was at the Peabody Hotel and I asked the concierge if she could recommend a barbershop. She sent me to a black barbershop and that's the most segregated service I can think of in the United States. When I went in the guy was like, 'What are you doing here?' He didn't say that, but he might as well have said that. He said, 'Go upstairs.' Upstairs was a salon where they were giving hair extensions. She said, 'Come back tomorrow.' But then she said, 'No, I'll cut your hair.' I thought it was just an incident, and I wrote about it in my diary. But I thought about it, and then rewrote it and thought I'd give it a try on this tour. Now, I think this might be a story about race. On the surface, but I was to really think about everything that went through my mind while I was sitting there reading a copy of 'Black Hairstyles Magazine' with Lil Kim on the cover with a Chanel logo spraypainted in blue on her head...that was something I thought I could take this page-long diary and turn it into a seven-page story."

On recriminations from writing about people he knows: "I wrote about my dad recently. In the story, I'm lying in bed with my sister Amy and I'm singing. I'm in fifth grade. My dad comes in and gets really, really angry. And I read the story and realized, 'they can't see him.' And my dad pretty much lived in his underpants. He'd come home from work, take his pants off, and he would not put them back on until he went to work the next day. So I wrote that my dad was in his underpants, but I added that he looked good in them. And that was true. I thought, 'Who cares if the world knows you were in your underpants if you looked good in them?' It was just a question of adding that. 15 years ago, maybe I wouldn't have added that. There's always something good you can say."

On writing about yourself: "The most personal things you can write are things that you can relate to. Like sometimes … how old are you? ("I'm 30.") Okay. You have a couple of years before this is going to happen to you. But in about twenty...two years, you will pee and then you'll put everything back and then you'll look down and there'll be a big stain on the front of your pants. You'll leak. It's really bad when you're at the airport and you have khaki pants on. You look down and you have a big wet spot. So what you do is you stand at the counter and splash yourself with water so that it looks like you had a sink accident. Now I haven't written about that yet, but I know that when I do, there'll be so many men in that audience who will say, 'that's exactly what I did!' I can't be the only one to do it. And then I started looking at guys in the airport, and you see it all the time! And it's not that embarrassing to me. I wouldn't think, 'have you now shame?' It's not that important to me.

Idol Chatter (I'M SO CLEVER~!!)

It's okay to know what's going on in mainstream culture.

I have to keep reminding myself this. It turns out that being a music writer means knowing not just about tiny Canadian indie bands or going to hip-hop shows where there are more people on stage than in the audience.

So, tonight, I sat through the American Idol finale. And kept notes. Because it's therapeutic.

• We pick up late – because I had to drink myself into a stupor to sit for this – with the Idolites singing “So What,” by Pink. She's a rebel folks – her song is being sung by the only group of people that the cast of “Kids, Incorporated” could take in a street fight. Still a rock star, indeed.
• David Cook sang something. I can't be bothered.
• Now, the Idol Awards, or some such nonsense excuse for callbacks to the failed audition episodes from the beginning of the season. Does anyone out there really believe that three-quarters of these people aren't actors? Especially the kid who wins with some sort of alter-ego thing?
• What is a Lil Rounds? And why does Queen Latifah have to carry her around?
• Watching the commercials and the performances thus far, there's a blonde waif from this season prominently featured. How pissed do you think the producers are with the fairly inconspicuous duo they were left with? Let's not forget that all of the Idol winners whom have actually made a splash post-show were women.
• Jason Mraz reminds me why I hate him.
• Kris Allen and Keith Urban are next. Since when have Idolites been allowed to play instruments? And with Allen looking at Urban the entire song … I thought the other guy was gay?
• The Idolettes sing Glamorous by Fergie … and they're worse. Worse than Fergie. No, really. It's possible. Fergie comes out to sing one of her other songs after having beaten up a stripper at Jumbo's for her shoes.
• And where Fergie goes, the rest of the Peas can't be far behind – how else could her luggage get there? I'd talk more about their performance, but every time I see the band now, I just go to YouTube and remember a simpler time:
• More awards – hey Idol? Remember when your ratings for the crap singer shows were in the toilet? Because it doesn't seem like more of it is the secret to glory. Some half-naked and, to be frank, half-attractive woman wins for telling off the cougar judge, who then gets half-naked herself. Goodie. Hey, I don't have Cinemax anymore. Don't judge me.
• Parent interviews. No one tells Seacrest to piss off. America loses.
• Idolite-in-glasses sings with Lionel Ritchie. Because nothing says “contemporary resonance” like Lionel Ritchie. And it keeps going! Three song medley!
• I feel so late in the game with all this, because I just know that every single Paula Abdul-druggie-and-drunkard joke has been made. Right? Any ideas?
• Adam is GOING TO THUNDERDOME! What the hell is he wearing? And he's performing with KISS? I can't tell if this is sad or kinda awesome. I'm learning toward … the latter. Gulp.
• Does the Hard Rock really think that a residency from Carlos Santana is what's going to get them back in the game with it's core demographic - 21-30 year olds from southern California? Good luck with that.
• Kris singing Santana is high comedy.
• Ford music video. Here's your future of entertainment, folks. Blatant product placement - product obsession, really - because no one watches commercials. 
• Steve Martin? Steve Martin? STEVE MARTIN?!?!?!?! Dying. Inside. And he gets saddled with the tone-deaf blonde.
• Martin gets off the only funny line of the night, in response to Seacrest's "who will win" question: "I hope I do."
• HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Rod Stewart, from the boy Idolites. They all look so uncomfortable. 
• And this brings out (of the mausoleum) Mr. Stewart himself. And it's painful. I'm sorry, but there is a sell-by date, and he's past it. It's okay. We'll remember you. I promise.
• Another award thing, mocking bad female singers. I might have dated the third one. Oh, and look how she "hijacked" the show! Good thing the guy with the graphics was right there just in case!
• "We Are the Champions," and I'm just beaten into submission at this point. If this doesn't end on time, my head is going to explode.
• Almost 100 million votes. Yesterday, me and six other people voted on the LA ballot props.
• Country defeats Cure! Country defeats Cure! Seems like America got it wrong...and I just finished caring about it.

It's About Where You At

Long time, no update. More coming, I promise. For now:

I've spent the last two weeks on an assignment for a major online social networking site. This site just launched a Yelp competitor, and my job was to do those style of reviews. I was assigned to come up with reviews for 100 different places, trying to avoid chains as often as possible.

This was a lot more fun than it should have been. First of all, I did not know how well I know LA until undertaking this. Second, I have a strange memory - it takes me a second to remember my phone number, but that restaurant where I went on that bad first date? Know it like the back of my hand. Finally, it's reminding me that it's a lot more fun to try someplace new than get stuck going to the same Subway and/or McDonald's over and over again.

This was my list. What's yours?

(NOTE: Not all of these got positive reviews. Your mileage yada yada yada.)

Saints and Sinners, Backstage, Joxer Daly, Rush Street, The Well, Bowery, Cafe 101, Santa Maria Barbeque Company, Brass Monkey, HMS Bounty, Edison, Campos Mexican, Daily Pint, King's Head, Yankee Dandy's, Hollywood Billards, Warzawa, The Loop, Nyala, Tom Bergin's, Molly Malone's, Cat and Fiddle, Red Rock, Bigfoot Lodge, Happy Endings, Broadway Bar, Pig and Whistle, Boardwalk 11, Irish Times, Ford's Filling Station, Big Wangs, Miyagi's, Kabuki's, Bird's, White Horse, Cafe Loft, Father's Office, Tin Horn Flats, Good Luck Bar, Fred 62, Liquid Kitty, Village Idiot, Foundry, The Shack, Venice-whaler, Cabo Cantina, Duke's, Swinger's (Beverly), Swinger's (Santa Monica), Q's, Tattle Tale, 25 Degrees, La Fonda, South, Royale, The Dresden, La Cabana, Gyenari, Don Antonio’s, Talpa, Bungalow Club, Blue Room, Library Alehouse, Rainbow Bar and Grill, Tito’s Tacos, Grunions, El Rey, Hotel Café, Albano's, Z Pizza, El Guapo, Bourgeois Pig, Jones Café, Formosa Café, Tropicana Bar at the Roosevelt, Scarlet Lady, Chichen Itza, Luna Park, Sorento's Italian Market, La Rocca's, Good Microbrew, Ye Rustic Inn, Cozy’s, Avalon, Vanguard, Largo, Echoplex, Arclight Cinemas, Crumbs, Roscoe’s, Cozy Inn, Bar 21, Vanilla Bake Shop, Prado, Hennessey's Tavern, Short Stop, Circle Bar, National Sports Grill, Buffalo Wings and Things, Twains.