As prophesied, Ted and Katharine and Eve and I hit up the Arcade Fire show at Radio City on Wednesday. It was great, although we were in the very last row of the mezzanine -- for the best, perhaps, considering what happened down below. I'd bought the tickets in part because I kind of liked the band, but, honestly, more because the High Line Festival was being promoted and discussed as being a New York cultural... happening, and I wanted to be a part of it. And, you know, in my more self-confident moments I'm willing to grant that that's basically bullshit, but I'm glad that I got 'em because I'm getting pretty attached to the music. I feel like a lot of other too-many-people-on-stage bands are too much concerned with making some kind of glorious orchestral cacophony, and, you know, that's novel, I guess, but it doesn't rock. I'm gonna go ahead and say that Arcade Fire is first and foremost a rock and roll band: Their songs've got all the right tense and angry chord resolutions and nice hard beats. It's not happy music. So if they happen to want to dress like characters from Ada (e.g., cute girls in leotards stomping around the stage fiddling with theremins or some shit) and have a couple of dudes fight over bashing an un-mic'd symbol on stage during a song... that's okay with me.
But it would've been cooler if Bowie'd showed up.
I picked up Eve on the way up and got to see her office, which is very cool and professional-looking and in a beautiful old building -- the Prince George -- over on 28th St. Apparently a drug deal went down in the elevator as we were leaving? I failed to pick up on it. Eve, ever-vigilant.
Last night was Ted's birthday, so we all went out to the Olive Vine for dinner. It was the one on 7th Ave. and Lincoln, not the one up by me, but the menu is largely the same. I ordered the Olive Vine Pizza because it is fucking good, babies, and the Lincoln St. location prepares it better than mine, even: Lots of zucchini and some cilantro, even -- which Tom H., with whom we met up at PJ Hanley's afterwards, had never heard of but found delicious. He's from somewhere outside of London, though, so.
Woke up flatulent and slightly hung over this morning and headed over to Southpaw for this punk record swap thing I'd heard they were doing. It ended up being okay, but, true to their word, it was mostly records -- which I, you know, respect, but can't listen to -- and they didn't have any of the obscure stuff I was hoping they would, in particular the two albums ("Mentalenema" and "Nail It Down;" think they're John Peel-recorded) from this great 80s punk band The Abs. They've got a song on this compilation I bought in high school that really stands out and I've been searching unsuccessfully ever since for their shit on CD. The best I've been able to do is determine that some of the original members have re-formed under the aegis of Doctor Bison, but it looks like they don't tour or put out actual albums.
One of the former sysadmins from work just called me up out of the blue to come to his house for a belated Cinco de Mayo party. "We're making tamales and drinking tequila-based drinks," he said. Fuck, that sounds pretty good to me. Is this the start of the summer barbecue season?
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