Bloodless Coup

hilarious. i don't know from sufjan, but two nights ago i saw VS at the rex here in town, and volcano girls was, for me, one of the highlights of the show. they pretty much tore the place up (they're LOUD), although i was disappointed that they omitted two of their most conceptual songs, "25" off American Thighs and "Earthcrosser" off "Eight Arms to Hold you."

incidentally, i only know these names because i brought both CD's to work today, and i'm now playing volcano girls for the second time today. it's seriously one of the most catchy songs ever, in the purest sense of the word.

oh, and it gets better. the guitarist, the male one, lives here evidently, and my date for the evening introduced me to a couple of guys in a local up-and-coming band, who in turn introduced me to the VS guitarist when he wandered out after the show to say hi. cool guy. very very tall. :-)

if i'd known you were a VS fan, i'd have let you know they were coming. it was my first eardrum abusing rock show in probably a couple of years, and i had a great time.

Uh, the original Veruca Salt was a pair of women musicians. Whatever toured Pittsburgh last night was some sort of new iteration. The breakup of the original band was very acrimonious and involved Dave Grohl (Nirvana, Foo Fighters). I didn't even know the band was still around.

Well, you are partially right.

yeah, i'm not prepared for the ontological quesiton of what makes up "Veruca Salt." they played about half songs from the first two full-length albums (all i knew), and louise was still there fronting. seeing as louise and nina sounded an awful lot alike (in the studio at least), that she's now leading all of the songs with the new bassist singing back-up, it worked just fine for me. i knew there was something with nina gordon, and knew that wasn't her onstage, but i was happy anyway. sokol's easy on the eyes, too. :-)

and i should add that evidently the wikipedia entry isn't up to date. this is certainly not the bassist i saw last night, so evidently sokol is no longer the bassist, or isn't the touring bassist anyway.

Well I'm not a huge VS fan - I like every song of theirs that I've heard (as far as I recall), but I don't know too many or have any of their albums (perhaps something I should fix). But I LOVE that song - and it came to mind again when I watched (the utterly splendid) Jawbreaker again last week (it plays over the opening credits).

i really think their first two albums are worth owning, but if you really like volcano girls i'm more or less perfectly confident that you'll enjoy "eight arms to hold you," the album on which that song appears, because the songs basically are all in roughly that vein.

"American Thighs" is that it's one of my favorite albums of all time from people who clearly were only mediocre musicians on their best day. i mean, they had no idea what they were doing, "seether" hit as a single early in their history as a band, and they found themselves with a big record deal. even though the music is almost primitive on that first album (and not in my view the affected primitive of certain notable bands, but primitive as a matter of necessity), the ideas are really spectacular in their modest way and carry the idea through nicely.

whenever i rediscover either of these albums, i play them to death for a week or two. and i'm pretty much banned from playing them in the car, lest i look down to find myself doing 90mph on bigelow boulevard.

Ah, what I call the Elastica effect - at least as far as "Stutter" is concerned. Cool, I'm always looking for albums that'll put me in that kind of mood.