Big Ears: 2010

^If you do PM me

Hm. Didn't even go really last year. I went downtown when it was happening on the last night though and snuck in to one of the shows. I missed Dan Deacon last year... But Dirty Projectors in my town...I have to go.

I didn't go to any shows yet, but I live here...so I can go to what shows I want.

Anyway...I met the singer from King Crimson last night! He came to this bar last night called the Preservation Pub and watched my friend's band play. So thank you Big Ears.

no d, here you are buddy.

So Big Ears Festival was absolutely terrific. Sorry, no pictures. I couldn't get the awesome camera from my friend that I wanted to borrow and was left with a POS that produced no photos worth posting. The only disappointments of the weekend were Sufjan Steves only playing two fucking songs (he was a guest with the Clogs) and the dumbass at will call for Gang Gang Dance who couldn't find my ticket and eventually accused me of false identity once he did find it, a real go getter jackass. I also expected Knoxville to be much bigger than it was. For some reason I thought it would be about the size of Cincinnati or Nashville and not a small town the size of Dayton, OH. Oh well, not an exciting city by any stretch and there were no black people there at all which was really weird coming from Cincy where it's about 50/50 black and white. The Ex (old punk band from Amsterdam) fucking kicked ass and was a great way to start the weekend. They had a chick playing drums and three guys on guitar/vocals. The one was tuned down to act as the bass. Nosaj Thing was nosaj thing, no special light shiow but great music as always. jj was really disappointing as it was just the one lady who was not easy on the eyes at all but had a good voice. She was holding bottles of beer that she would swig in between songs, kinda depressing. The xx was fucking awesome. These guys are the real deal. They have their shit down and could very possilbly become the Cure of our generation. They had a legit light show complete with disco balls and silhouette screens (just for one song, dont' worry, they didn't pull any Gorillaz bullshit.) I think it was Jared who wanted the Ben Frost review. They me start out by saying the crowd at his show completely sucked and was by far the worst of the weekend. Just a bunch of loud, obnoxious assholes who wanted to go to the bar and get drunk. They made it suck for me and all of the other music geeks who traveled and had much respect for the artists. His stage was completely minimal, stripped down, bare bones. He just had a consistent white/yellow light on him the whole time and he had a macbook pro, a MIDI controllers and some other mixer decks with lots of knobs on them. The xx "percussionist" also just smacked away at the MIDI pads to keep the beat and he was actually really tight. I sincerely enjoyed Ben Frosts music though (even thought I later found out that Lucero was playing right across the street and I for sure would have enjoyed that set more. The way his music just builds and gets louder and louder, until it completely drops, then goes back again, that was some intense experimental stuff I could dig.


Now for Saturday. The Dirty Projectors were fucking awesome! Don't miss them or the xx at coachella if you're even remotely a fan of either albums. I'm not a big fan of Bitte Orca and I missed their early sent at bonnaroo last year. They simply blew me away. The theater that they played in was beautiful too. As I said before, The Clogs was so disappointing because Sufjan only played two fucking songs. They made great chamber music but why bring Sufjan in only to play two songs? It seemed really pointless for him even to be there. New Brutalism and The Konk Pack were both great experimental noise music. If you like MBV's live version of You Made Me Realize, you'd like them. Now for Joanna Newsom. She was great but definitely no best show ever besides Bordoms that bmack is claiming it to be. That's all hype. She played Good Intentions Paving Company which was phenonmenal but if you've seen Radiohead, Tool, NIN, The Cure, Portishead, etc then it's completely fucking ridiculous to say she's the best live show you've ever seen. She's just a pretty chick with a harp and some good tunes. Nothing "epic."She didn't have any special guests either. Gang Gang Dance were themselves. I was on molly, all the way up front so of course I had fun. Nothing amazing but a fun, fucked up band for sure. Overall Big Ears was fucking awesome and I can't wait for next year as long as they bring the lineup again.

^^I really wanted to go this past year, but just couldn't make it work. I think the festival is headed in the right direction, and look forward to seeing what they book next year when I can hopefully go.

I saw Joanna Newsom play with an orchestra a few years ago, and it was in fact the best show I have ever seen. And I've seen Radiohead, The Cure and NIN all play.

I want to see Portishead p. badly.

You might have to move to Europe for that to happen. They are supposedly recording a new album though so we can hope they actually tour here for that and not just one coachella show. That version of Wandering Star was unreal.

I just saw Joanna again. This time in only a 200 capacity venue and I was able to get fifth row, center. Again, amazing but my mind hasn't changed. Not close to the best ever. However I can see how seeing her perform all of Y's with an orchestra would be much better.