Live blogging from the Minneseries :: 06.21.07

11:06 PM

Another week, another live blog from the Nomad. We Became Actors has just taken the stage, and I've just taken a couple of Negronis (Gin, sweet vermouth and Campari). I love Campari--it's official. You probably won't, but that's cool.

Jesse Stensby (We Became Actors' frontman) has got some frontman skills. I really appreciate bands with a singer who just sings--doesn't play guitar, doesn't play keyboards--just sings. It's nominally less hot in here than it was last week.

Mouthful of Bees guitarist, Mark, is on tour with Battle Royale, so they have his brother sitting in this week (as well as last week, apparently), but that's part of the beauty of a weekly show, ain't it? Shit happens, and you deal with it. I'm looking forward to MOB.

11:24 PM

We Became Actors play loud, tight rock and roll. It doesn't get much more straightforward than this. Stensby does actually have a keyboard onstage, for your info, but it's way over on the side, precluding his playing of it simultaneously with his singing, so I'm standing by my earlier point.

Lookout: Drum solo.

11:39 PM

Cure cover in the house. I confess, I can't remember the name of this song. It's the one that starts, "Show me show me show me how you do that trick ..." You know the one I'm talking about. Yes, I have some blind spots.

11:42 PM

On a completely unrelated note, King Kaufman has a great column today on Salon. Basically, he talked about the way people who are phenomenally talented, as a part of the whole self-denigrating and generally ingratiating way we expect people like that to act, play up the whole confidence and experience angle while downplaying the whole "I'm so much better than most living human beings at doing this" angle. I particularly like this part:

It's hard to believe this didn't dawn on me till I was in my 30s, but one day it did: Nobody ever interviews unsuccessful people about this subject. There must be millions more failures who had the confidence they could do it, whatever it was, than there are successes.

It's true, and it's something nobody talks about. All those motivational posters that tell you to believe in yourself and not listen to the critics and to follow your heart? There are some people out there who really need to listen to other people. Obviously, the whole believe to achieve thing has been played up by the movies in terms of sports, but Kaufman also makes the connection to music, because he was a musician. Bands always feel slighted when they don't get the attention they think they deserve, but you know what? They probably aren't all that.

I had a band, and we were pretty good, and all that, but there's probably a reason we didn't make it. You can blame it on timing and breaks, and that certainly plays a part, but there was definitely a moment where we decided what we were good at (blues) was not what we wanted to do forever, and thus stranded ourselves in a world that we didn't really fit into--indie rock. Sure, we could have stayed a blues band, mining that circuit and probably doing pretty well in that musical world, but I don't think we would have been happy doing that. Of course, I don't honestly think we ever could have made it in a meaningful way in terms of being an indie rock band because we were too a.) old by then and b.) not raised in it and c.) not really all that cool. So we were pretty much destined to break up and fall apart, unhappy with where we were and unable to get to where we wanted to be. But isn't everybody?

11:50 PM

We Became Actors' last song is definitely their best, a hooky pop wind-up with a classically yin-yang chorus that goes, "She looks so pretty but / acts so ugly." They should sell it. Either that, or take over the world with it and cash in.

12:01 AM

Just chatting with Todd, who runs the Nomad. Y'all people need to get out here and enjoy these nights, man. I'm not afraid to say it's a bit dead in here and that you should be out here enjoying it with us. Mouthful of Bees is "teh shit," as the kids say, and here they are, playing every Thursday in June and there you are, sitting in front of your computer reading this. You know where you shoulda been last night? Right here, among the clouds, with us. You've changed. You used to be cool.

12:35 AM

Holy cow, Mouthful of Bees are loud. And great. Some bands, when they play loud, can't really drum up any energy other than fury and/or anger. And some just sound like a mess. But MOB sound like a glorious and glorying mess. They've already torn through "The Now", "Jessica" and "Under the Glacier" from The End and now they're sinking their considerable teeth into a new tune.

And now they're on to "Serpent," which gets a brand new intro courtesy of some looping, it sounds like. Once you've gotten over the shock of just how good the songs they write are, what continues to impress is their ability to remake and re-imagine these songs. It's an ability that seems well beyond their median age, which, if I remember correctly, hovers around 20. "Jessica" is a sleepy ballad on the record, but it gets a swift kick in the pants thanks to a revised drumbeat from Katelyn Farstad. It just seems like most young bands are content to recreate what they already recorded, or perhaps to radically revise it for live shows. The subtle shifts they effect are all the more amazing for that.

12:44 AM

In other exciting news, Cloud Cult's manager, Adrian Young, has just passed me off not one but THREE unreleased tracks from The Meaning of 8 to check out for possible inclusion in this year's Twin Town High compilation. That's just great. In still more news, MOB are on their last song and I'm headed home. Puppy to walk, etc. See you same time next week.