Lily Allen

Almost forgot. Wanted to write a bit about seeing Lily Allen on Friday-it was pretty cool. Got there a bit late because I was having dinner with a friend and a friend of a friend, but got to see most of the set from the upstairs balcony. 9:30 Club was packed. I've never seen it so jammed, with the possible exception of Sleater-Kinney's show there last August. The music was great and the samples translated really well into live music. She had a horn section, a fantastic drummer, a guitarist and bassist. Plus a synthesizer thingy that she kept banging on during random moments. It was all really fun, no angst and everyone just bopping along. Lily didn't do too much stage chatter-mostly it was just a bit about the next song and she'd just start into it. Exception was the slapdown for the ATL posse, who apparently ended several states out of their way yet didn't seem to know it. Lily politely corrected them with, "We're in DC, muthafuckas!" Was pretty funny. She didn't seem that drunk but she was drinking and smoking (!) on stage and giggling in a really cute way. You could tell that most of the crowd, if they didn't have one already, was walking out with a crush on her. Not gonna lie, I would not mind being Lily Allen for a while. Singing songs about done-me-wrong exes! Reprimanding your lil' bro in front of thousands! Skipping about in dresses and sneakers to the reggae beat of your own Specials-influenced songs! Touring the world and giggling adorably! Blowing smoke in the face of newly enacted DC smoking ban! I am only slightly envious.

Holiday Fallout

Crap day today. The day after a holiday always is, because you've had that extra taste of freedom and now it's that much harder to go back to the old 9 to 5. Work complete fiasco as it seemed all the authors needed a status update on their manuscript and they needed it NOW or at least YESTERDAY. And they're all for an editor who's been a bit slow with sorting through their assigned manuscripts. Which means I have to be the moderator of Author-Editor Relations, a role I heartily dislike because it means having to feed them a bit of knowledge to keep ravenous authors satisfied while withholding any real information from them, because an author with knowledge of what is really causing the holdup on their manuscript is a dangerous author indeed, liable to call me up and shout angrily about Competition and Significance, or worse yet, ask to speak to an editor. Editors are like priceless treasures behind glass-they are there to see and to judge, but not to touch or have contact with. This includes email.

Anyway, for the concerned, I am feeling better now. More and more it appears that New Year's was the absolute bottom and now I am finally going up.

BIRD FLU - M.I.A.

The newest Asian epidemic to sweep the nation. This time it's dance-related, and I'm rooting for M.I.A.'s captain hat and the little kid in the red shirt. He can lay it DOWN!

Upstairs

The boys who live upstairs have some of the most annoying habits I've ever witnessed. It's like living with a spoiled younger brother who always gets his own way, except you can't ever exercise the familial privilege of shouting at him and locking him in his room. The boys upstairs are very fond of believing they are singer-songwriters. Unfortunately their version of singer-songwriter involves too many late '90s covers and a completely stupid amount of foot stomping. I should add that the foot stomping rarely, if ever goes with any actual rhthym, making it hard to tell whether it is actually foot-stompingly good sex, poor dance coordination, or some weird combination that I don't want to think too hard about. And this shit goes on at all hours. It appears that when the Muse tells you to play a Clap Your Hands Say Yeah cover (they're quite fond of "Upon this Tidal Wave of Young Blood") at 3 am, well, you just GOTTA play that shit.

How you say...

I'm in love. Completely, utterly captivated. Exactly my type, too: sweet retro sampling spread over deep bass with a smooth flowing emcee on vocals. And Canadian, too! They have the best national anthem AND fake-looking money with poetry on it. Plus, they make movies about curling.

THUNDERHEIST was what I was crushing out on all day on. It consists of two people, Isis the emcee and Grahm the DJ. They have four songs up on Myspace and damn. Listening to their stuff was like the ecstatic moment when the DJ starts playing the exact song you've been dying to hear all night. You spill your drink, you're so excited. That's what every song was like. Totally perfect party music. The only song you can download right now is "Sueños dolces," in which they sample the Eurhythmics' bread and butter. Listen to all, however, and be jealous of our northern neighbor which is the only place that ThunderHeist is playing shows right now (with the exception of a SXSW showing.) A 12" is in the works but hasn't been released. If this isn't enough for you, the band is Diplo-approved.

THE BLOW - 'parentheses'

Technology

...is a bitch. Something went wrong with the spacing on my last post, so instead of a dramatic narrative list neatly separated by double spacing and as indicated by *, you got a ginormous neverending paragraph punctuated at random by *. I kept trying to re-upload it with proper spacing (and the preview kept psyching me out because it would show the spacing) but ultimately Blogger won and thus, no double spacing.

I'm posting the "Parentheses" video by The Blow because it is adorable. And I really wish there was a karaoke like this near me.