Harry Potter and the rainy weekend spent (mostly) reading...

Unless you've been living under a rock that doesn't have internet, TV, radio or any other method of communication for the last week or so you know that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final book in J.K. Rowling's epic Harry Potter series, was released this past Saturday morning at 12:01 a.m. I'm a pretty big fan of the books (and the films based upon them). I remember going and buying the first one while at school in Montreal and starting to read it while waiting for the Metro... which stopped and left again without my poking my nose out of the ever-engrossing children's book I had just started to read. These books have a way of making time disappear.

You may not know this, but books released in Canada often have a different distributor and/or publisher then books released in the United States. This is the reason why the Canadian versions of the Harry Potter novels have different, more colorful (or, as a nod to the Canadian spelling, colourful) covers. As an example, take a look at the two versions of the new book:

The American cover of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

The Canadian cover of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Rather different, wouldn't you say?

Anyway, since the majority of the time that J.K. Rowling was cranking out stories overlapped with the time I spent in Canada, I had acquired Canadian versions of the first five books. I got a friend to buy and ship me the sixth book from Vancouver, since at the time Amazon.ca would not ship to a non-Canadian address. When the release date for the newest book hit the street, I checked and was to discover that this time around I would be able to purchase a Canadian edition online.

Unfortunately, there was no way that I was going to get the book the weekend it was released, so I had made peace with the fact that I would not be apart of the first wave of folks reading the book. I'd read the book when it showed up in my mailbox, which was alright by me.

The hardcore of the hardcore: these two girls are reading their copies of Harry Potter on the rail at Brooklyn's Siren Festival.

On Saturday morning I left my apartment early to meet with my project group from one of my classes at my school's library. We got our business out of the way and split up. I was heading out of the building with the other two males in my group when something sitting on the circulation desk. "I'll see you guys later," I said as I headed to the girl working the desk.

I picked up the massive tome that was sitting in on a small easel labeled "Book of the Day" and asked her "May I check this out?".

"Of course you may," she said with a smile. "I've been wondering how long it would sit here before someone grabbed it." She scanned my library card and opened the book's spin for the first time to place a green "Due On" card in the back. I skipped out of the library happy about my unexpected acquisition.

Even though it was difficult, I trudged my way through a bunch of schoolwork before heading home and directly onto my couch. I set myself up with some music, a glass of wine and 756 pages of fine adolescent literature. One of South Florida's infamous afternoon thunderstorms was getting under way outside my window (that's what I get for getting my car washed), so I was more then happy to be inside curled up in a fantasy world.

Five hours later I looked up and it was beginning to get dark. I was almost 500 pages in and I felt likeI had been reading for no time at all. Amazing how time seems to disappear when you're completely immersed in a good book.

False spoiler at the NYC release party

That evening I hid the book from my own view and went bowling with the crew. Many beers (and assorted strikes and gutters later) I passed out on the couch.

If you've ever passed out drunk on the couch, you know that it ain't easy to sleep through the night. I woke up at 6 and headed to my bed, but it wasn't long before the mental alarm clock that prevents me from sleeping late was clanging in my head, so I headed back to the couch to read some more. If I didn't have plans with the parents on Sunday afternoon I would have probably stayed in my underwear and devoured the rest of the book. But I left to spend some quality time with the family, knowing full well that I'd have a chance to finish the book that evening.

Which I did, at about 11:30 last night. The conclusion was surprisingly satisfying. Without spoiling anything, I can say that I felt Rowling did a good job tying up what seemed to be a million loose ends in the extremely complex mythology of her wizarding world. The characters have grew and changed dynamically, and even at the end some are revealed to be not what they seem. I am pretty sure that the Deathly Hallows will be the last book in the saga of Harry Potter. I can only hope that the author is planning her next project. Maybe it will be an adult one, as the last couple books of the Harry Potter series, especially this last one, are not really for children.

Unlike most movies, which leave me disappointed in the ending, I felt happy with this conclusion. Plus I didn't turn on my television the entire weekend, which is a feat I am quite proud of.

well, I sure feel D.U.M.B.er... (part 2)

Welcome back to the next installment of the thrilling, chilling tale of our crazy little weekend mini-tour!

(To read the first part of the story, head here.)

After we bailed on the latter part of the Umphrey's McGee we worked out way into the inside room of the club, known as Heaven. What a bad choice of a name! First of all, the entire place was painted black, and all of the staff were semi-freaky looking goth kids. It was only slightly cooler inside then it was outside, except there was a humidity level of about 99 percent; if you went into the restroom it got considerably worse. Luckily the bars were cash only or I'd still be hungover today; I drank some seriously stiff vodka/sodas up in that place.

Perpetual Groove needed to bring their A-game to this show, and they definitely delivered. I stopped by the merch table to chat with my favorite band manager/generally nice guy Ben (thanks for the t-shirt) who told me that they were ready for the Ruckus.

Perpetual Groove
(photo courtesy of Chris Hight)

When the band came out it was immediately evident that he was right. Over the PA a majestic fanfare played, and the quartet from Georgia came out and took their places on the small stage. Here's what went down:

I: Teakwood Betz, A Day the Way, TTFPJ*, Save for One, Suburban Speedball, Pepper**, Two Shores, Robot Waltz

Set II: Speed Queen, Diggin' in the Dirt, Occam's Blazer, Under Lock and Key, MOTA, Out Here> Space Paranoids

E: Crapshoot

*With Allen Aucoin on drums and Aron Magner on keys, Disco Biscuits
**With Joel Cummins of Umphrey's Mcgee on keys

The show started strong with Teakwood Betz, one of the group's major tunes that always pleases. Next up was A Day the Way, which is one of their newer songs and one that I have yet had the chance to fully appreciate, perhaps due to its late placement in the two shows I have seen it at. Plus, it is a tad on the slow side. But when they dropped into the funky dance party of TTFPJ the crowd returned to get down mode.

And that was before the special guests took the stage. Aron Magner and Allen Aucion, the keyboardist and drummer from the Disco Biscuits, respectively, joined the band for an extended electronic jam in the middle of the tune. Magner even gets to drop his "wish I was a gangster" line in the middle. There's so good stuff going on here, take a listen:

Perpetual Groove w/Aron Magner & Allen Aucoin - TTFPJ - 6-30-07

After the first guests left the stage pGroove played two of my favorites: the relatively new rocker Save For One and the hauntingly beautiful Suburban Speedball. Next up, they invited Joel Cummins, keyboardist of Umphrey's McGee, onstage for a rousing rendition of the Butthole Surfers' "Pepper". Two Shores followed up before a massive Robot Waltz closed the set.

Disco Biscuits' drummer Allen Aucoin fills the drummer's seat for a tune
(photo courtesy of Chris Hight)

I would have probably left at this point thinking that the show was over if the keyboardist's lovely wife didn't let me know that they were coming out for a second set. I'm pretty glad that the rest of the crowd did not receive this same heads up, as the crowd thinned out nicely during setbreak.

Bassist Adam Perry celebrates his birthday with some rock star moves
(photo courtesy of Chris Hight)

When they came back on they wasted no time dropping into the rocker Speed Queen. I could hear some faint teases of Peter Gabriel's "Diggin' in the Dirt", so I has happy when the played the song as their next tune. It happens to be one of my favorite covers that they play, and I haven't heard it for while, so I was happy. Next up was Occam's Blazer, another one of the group's instrumental monsters. Sometimes when the band locks into a good psychedelic groove I lose track of time, and this Occam's could have been 5 minutes long or a half an hour long as far as I could tell. Under Lock and Key is another new one I can't talk to much about, but it gave me a chance to catch my breath before MOTA--another trippy tune--started. Next up the band dropped into the fist-pumping ballad Out Here, which segued into the old school favorite Space Paranoids.

That sexy Matt McDonald
(photo courtesy of Chris Hight)

A quick Crapshoot encore, I said my hellos and goodbyes, and we were out the door. All in all, a great performance from Perpetual Groove, the late addition to the lineup who actually got the opportunity to play longer their either of the more popular bands on the bill. Food for you guys; it couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of dudes.

I said a quick goodbye to my lovely lady before jumping in the back seat of the car for the ride back to South Florida. I'm not embarrassed to say that I slept nearly the whole way back.

Next time, the shocking conclusion of the story!

well, I sure feel D.U.M.B.er... (part 1)

Disco Biscuits' bassist Marc Brownstein

(photo courtesy of Chris Hight)

...which, if you ask me, is to be expected. I mean, last weekend was a serious one. Serious in terms of partying and good times, not serious like morose and humorouslessness.

We started out on Thursday evening when we packed up a buddy's little Scion (sure is bigger on the inside then it looks from the outside) and set off on the first part of our journey. It didn't take long to make it to Ft. Pierce, where we were picking up our final traveling companion. We tossed him in the back seat and set off for Atlanta. Fast forward to 6 a.m. I've been driving the final shift for a couple of hours. We're so close to my lady's house that I can smell her dog keeping my place in the bed warm. And we hit Friday morning Atlanta rush hour. Although I was tired I was also a bit wired from the caffeine, and my right leg cramped out terribly and I bounced from gas to brake and back again. Finally, we overcame the bottleneck and finally arrived at our destination.

A few hours of sleep before we make breakfast and head out on a food shopping expedition. Normally, a trip to the supermarket does not excite me all that much, but I had been awaiting this trip for quite a while. It was my first opportunity to visit Trader Joe's. I had heard nothing but good things about the store and its' cheap prepared foods and even cheaper bottles of wine. The hype was much deserved, as I filled the cart with bottles of "Three Buck Chuck" and ogled the store's lines of sauces and homemade pastas. There are approximately 479 Trader Joe's locations in the state of California, and not a single one in Florida. Someone should do something about that...

Anyway, we took our groceries home to prepare for a big dinner. The lady and I made both a meat lasagna and a veggie lasagna--from scratch, thank you very much--and fed a full house of dinner guests. Much revelry commenced, and my hazy recollections seem to recall some time spent with Comcast's Karaoke-on-Demand. Good times.

Saturday. Game day. Show time. I had made plans to go to BBQ before the show. In hindsight, eating a sloppy plate of pulled pork with all the fixings prior to consuming large quantities of alcohol and partying really hard wasn't a really good idea. Add to that the fact that it was at least 100 degrees outside and that there was approximately 7-and-a-half square feet of shade at the venue and you'll understand why I felt like I was dancing with a lead weight in my stomach. The heat (and probably the pork, as well) made me thirsty, and next thing I knew I had spend $50 on bottled water. The water added to my stomach discomfort, but I only peed once the entire afternoon. The rest I sweated out my pores as the day went on.

On to the music.

The Disco Biscuits are a nighttime band. They play a dirty trance-rock hybrid that is well suited to dingy, smoke-filled nightclubs. In Atlanta, they were playing in the blazing sunlight in a park in the middle of the day. Not really the ideal local for a Disco Biscuits show, but they wrote an interesting setlist and played it pretty well.

Set I:
Digital Buddha> Crickets¹> Strobelights and Martinis> Mindless Dribble> Voices Insane> I-Man²> November Rain³, World Is Spinning, Save The Robots

¹ inverted
² with "Gamma Goblins" (Hallucinogen) tease
³ ending only; with Brenden Blayliss (Umphrey's McGee) on guitar

the Disco Biscuits
(photo courtesy of Chris Hight)

Buddha was a good way to kick things off, and Crickets is always nice to hear. It is worth noting that they didn't finish (or in the case of the inverted Crickets, began) either of the first two tunes. The segue into Strobelights and Martinis was a bit sloppy. Dribble gave me an opportunity to punch my boy D00K in the face a few times (one of the only times it is acceptable to do so is during the slamming intro to this tune), and the band kept the pace up by segueing solidly into Voices Insane, which smoothly transition into the meat of the show.

This version of I-Man is one of the best I've heard. It starts out as a rocking version before the jam starts; once it does it turns into a techno monster. Teases abound, including the mentioned Gamma Goblins and the unmentioned "Swingtown" by the Steve Miller Band, complete with audience melody sing-a-long.

Near the end of the tune, Biscuits' guitarist Jon Guttwillig gave his guitar to UM's Brendan Bayliss and picked up what looked like a Strat or Telecaster as Bayliss wailed away. They absolutely killed the > November Rain, with Bayliss taking the lead and tearing it up through out.

Brendan Bayliss (L) and Jon Gutwillig tear it up. Aren't they cute?
(photo courtesy of Chris Hight)

World is Spinning was throwaway, and Save the Robots was a great way to end a solid set.

I'd post some tunes, but the show has not yet been uploaded to archive...

I'd post Umphrey's McGee's setlist, but since I don't really know any of their songs it wouldn't really matter. It did seem like the majority of the crowd was there to see them, as it really started moving once the band unleashed its' shredding dual guitar frenzy. I had a good time at this set. UM teased Black Sabbath's "Crazy Train" what seemed like a million times, and they really can jam. We left early to try to secure a spot for Perpetual Groove's late night set at the terribly misnamed club Heaven on the inside portion of the venue.

Umphrey's McGee
(photo courtesy of Chris Hight)

It turns out we missed the Biscuits come out to perform an encore after UM had finished their set; they played Helicopters, which segued (with a band switch off) into UM's Miss Tinkle's Overture.

Tommorrow I'll continue with the late night Perpetual Groove throwdown, the drive home (I slept almost the entire way) and a rainy Sunday night in Pompano Beach.

Battles crush my skull... in a good way.

Last night I volunteered to be designated driver and hopped in the car with a moderately-sized crew. We were heading down to Studio A in Miami, home to overpriced drinks, beautiful hipster-chicks and dudes in over-ironic t-shirts aching to be noticed (some crew members included).

Why would we head into the god-forsaken 305 on a Monday night? It had to be a good reason to get me off of my couch on a Monday; so it had to be a great reason to get me to drive down to Miami in the rain on a Monday, the night before my weekly longest day ever (I have HUGE meetings on almost every Tuesday).

This was a good reason, New York avant rock (or if you want to be genre-specific, math rock) group Battles' first show in South Florida, and I was gonna see it. I first heard of the group a few months back when they announced that their first full-length LP, Mirrored, was going to be released on Warp Records. I found some of their tunes online and was immediately floored. The intricate layering of manipulated sound left me wondering "how did they do that?" and the driving oh-so-hard drum beats rattled my brain and made my neck cramp in anticipation of some serious head-banging.

I did a little bit of research and discovered that Battles were a super group, of sorts. I could go into the detailed back story of the group and its' members, but I think that this video will do much better justice as an introduction:

Suffice it to say that all four members are virtuosos in their own right, both technically in how they play their instruments, but also creatively, in the type of music they write. I've listened to a lot of music, and I've never heard anything like Battles before.

Anyway, back to the review.

After taking some half-baked advice on getting to the venue and getting lost in the ghetto twice and spit back onto the highway once, we made it to the venue as the final opening band was setting up their gear on stage. They're called (according to the same person who gave me the above mentioned directions) John Hancock and the Founding Fathers, and 'id give you a link to their site but I can't find out anything about them. They were actually pretty good, with a sound ranging from ! ! ! -esque dance punk to a more 80s new wave/pop sound. Their outfits had an unexplained jungle theme to them, and they all wore face paint for no good reason. But they had a song with the refrain "My girl is part Italian and I am part Mongolian," and I was glad that I saw them.

After the set ended, they cleared the stage completely and the guys from Battles started setting up their gear on in the empty space. It was actually rather cool to watch as the took the black space and completely constructed their setup. The stage was bookended by two similar setups. On each side a table held a laptop computer (gloat, Madpercolator, it was a Mac) and more effects pedals then I could count. A guitar leaned against each table. In the middle of the stage was drummer John Stanier's unmistakable yellow drumkit, complete with the high hat symbol on a stand that was about six feet tall. Behind the kit their sat various stringed instruments that would be played by Dave Konopka when the show finally began.

They came out around midnight, and we were ready. I stood about three rows back looking directly at the afroed Tyondai Braxton. When the double bass drum kicked, I did what I did at most concerts: I started dancing and dancing hard. I looked around to survey the crowd and discovered that out of the relatively meager size showing for the venue (but relatively good for a rainy Monday night) there were exactly seven people exhibiting any kind of body motion at all, and that they had either ridden in my car to get there or we met there.

Why is it that people don't dance at hipster shows? I really want to know...

The band kicked ass during their hour-and-fifteen minute set. It was pretty impressive how they would take something as simple as a guitar riff and then loop and manipulate it until it was indistinguishable from its' original form. Add to that the ability to layer on top of layer on top of layer until it sounded as if their were sound coming from a dozen different players instead of the four onstage and the brutally punishing intensity of the drums and you can imagine how intense this show was.

Battles play loud, aggressive rock and roll that is obtuse and angular in its melodies and rhythms, but at the same time danceable (to those of us who do that kind of thing, anyway). It is definitely the kind of music that not everyone can get into, but if you're into it you understand how good this band is at playing it.

My buddy Billy-B took some photos last night that I'll post up when he has a chance to send them my way.

And here they are:

Battles in motion

drummer John Stanier reaches up to hit his high hat