Due to circumstances that were my fault but also unavoidable (not really sure about the math on that one), I missed Hounds of the Wild Hunt AGAIN. When I see things like this,* I realize my foremost show-going mission is to see them. In other Hounds of the Wild Hunt news, the dudes keep telling me about this mythical live record. Here is my suggestion: Do this thing.

Onto Ceremony, who I am sad to report were a serious disappointment live. My roommates can attest to the fact that when Zoo came out, I couldn't stop cranking it on my boom box, even when they were trying to go to sleep. Last night, though, it sounded like they put that record on quaaludes and then sent out some people who didn't give a shit about it to play the songs for half of an hour. "These guys are frauds," my guest, who we'll call Rossjam™, said. "The guitarist looks bored," he added, just after I'd written those exact words in my notes. Confidential to front guy: I'd rather hear you belt that shit out than watch you put your shirt over your head, exposing your stomach tat, and then repeatedly give the crowd "crazy eyes." Still, when they broke out their older stuff, I'd never seen dudes crowd surf over such an anemic pit; those motherfuckers were dedicated. Maybe it was just an off night.

One song into Titus Andronicus' set, it was clear we were watching a band operating on the other end of the give-a-shit scale. Without getting into the details, the set was pretty glorious. These are just dudes in shabby t-shirts doling out fist-pumping anthems you can caw along to. By the time they broke into "Titus Andronicus Forever," the second song off 2010's excellent the Monitor the crowd was at a fevered apex, but maybe I say that just because I wasn't able to resist the impulse to squeeze my janky old torso up to the front row. (This time I was wise enough to hold onto my glasses.) And the way they ramped up those last few songs was true showmanship. When you're finale is that great, you don't need an encore. The end.

*Technically, that video is of the Whore Moans, but it's the same people, save for the drummer, who has been replaced by Doug Krebs the Friendly Sound Guy™.

I got caught up in long goodbyes and a huge slice of pizza pie last night at The Ballroom in Fremont. On the way to the show my date lost a crown on her tooth, and tore her hose on the ratty seats of my beat up old car. Timing isn’t my strong point and I thought j.wong was playing his CD Release show at 9 rather than 8. Alas, I walked in an ungracious guest +1 to j.wong manning a merch table instead of a microphone, and Mark Eitzel’s band in the middle of a sound check. Perfect.

As it turns out, though, Mark Eitzel's music is meant for (or maybe just about) the born late, befuddled, and haggard. I admit to knowing next to nothing about the man, save that he fronted a band people seem to love (American Music Club: Never Heard of Em’) and survived a heart attack a ways back. He took the stage between a trap kit drummer and an electric piano player in patchwork of thrift store accessories (fedora included) that made up his suit. He sang from the knees, bending ever so slightly and arching his back, belting out his melodramatic prose, his voice more than rounding out the missing parts of the rhythm section. He wasted no time getting to the one song of his I’d heard “I Love You But You're Dead” from his new album Don’t Be A Stranger. It was a rousing version, and the crowd seemed to appreciate his passion.

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Happy Halloween! So far, Decades Cover Night last Saturday at the Black Lodge has been my favorite Halloween party. There were 13 bands scheduled, so it was packed early with M Women, Boat Party, Stickers, King Dude, Dude York, and a bunch of one-off bands that formed for the night to do a sweet cover or two. The changeover process was as seamless as possible, considering every band was only playing one or two songs, and it was much more organized than I would have thought possible—ringmaster Pelly (from Haunted Horses) managing to successfully herd dozens of progressively drunker musicians into setting up and playing their slot on time.

Highlights: Sonic Youth's "100%" by M Women," (more bands should cover songs off Dirty) and Pony Time's cover of Bikini Kill's "New Radio" (Luke Beetham's dazzling performance combined the vocal stylings of Kathleen Hanna and the hessian dance moves of Angus Young from AC/DC.)

Here are some of the hot pics from the night taken by Parade Images' ultimate party photographer Keith Johnson:

• Keith Johnson
• The Last Unicorns

• Keith Johnson
• Weedleaf Crown

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Steven Ellison may not be Dilla, but he's gotta be the best Flying Lotus ever. The LA-bred beat conductor gave us Until The Quiet Comes this month, a 47-minute lullaby for the ghosts that sometimes clamor for attention around this time of year. I'd always liked his stuff, but it was the connection to things closer to me that really made me more than casually interested—the heartbreaking/mending Kahlil Joseph short film that was set to Quiet tunes (Joseph, you'll recall, made a name doing similarly amazing work with Shabazz Palaces). For the first time, I found myself at a show to see the dude; I expected massive, beautiful sound, but a lackluster stage set involving (a.) a dude and
(b.) a laptop.

But goddamn, was I ever was wrong. FlyLo indeed used a MacBook to play selections from all throughout his considerable catalogue, along with Kendrick Lamar's "Swimming Pools (Drank)" and some Kid A—but he did so with projection screens behind and in front of him, creating a low-tech but highly effective 3-D environment. The Lotus' silhouette flew through wormholes, chilled in the center of a black hole, beat his pads in the midst of a meteor shower. Now maybe that is something he's done before, or other people do, but ain't neeever seen no shit like that. The ubiquitous glowing MacBook apple was, for once, actually kind of comforting, when seen flying through space. At one point I thought: "I'd better capture this to put on LineOut, that's so pretty"—when suddenly the Palaceer Lazaro from Shabazz Palaces joined him onstage:

Word on the skreet—I mean Matson—is that FlyLo, Shabazz, and THEESat made a track together at some point, which seems altogether natural and right.

As for the show: it was my favorite beat show I've ever seen, engrossing, fun (his breaks in the music to simply say "oh shit" or "whiskey time"—he later gave his bottle to the crowd—seemed to kill all pretense), and triumphant like the end of a victorious high school football game. Maybe that last was due to all the high school kids packed in there, but we were all on the same page musically,
for once.

Last night, I went to the Sounders game with some friends. Though I always end up bored out of my mind watching football, baseball, hockey, volleyball, basketball or really any other organized sporting match, I hoped that soccer would somehow be different. Unfortunately it was no exception, and I sipped on a precious $11 beer, zoning out and day-dreaming about what I was gonna do afterwards when suddenly I remembered that later on the Rendezvous was hosting their first all-ages show! I managed to drag my friends over after the game, and was stoked to walk out of a stadium full of 60,000 screaming green-and-blue-clad soccer fans and into a room of 19 mellow kids sprawled across the floor and watching Calvin Johnson's band, the Hive Dwellers. If you've never seen Calvin Johnson dance, it looks something like this: