Sunday Night I saw the Legendary Pink Dot's in Houston......it was my eighth time seeing them!



I was the first one in the venue and made my way to the Merchandise Table where this guy started talking to me. I must have had a funny look on my face because he stopped talking and I said, "You're Chris McBeth." Now he is the one with the funny look on his face.

I introduce myself, the light bulb goes off and gives me a big hug. Chris owns Beta-lactam Ring Records and I've been ordering music from his label for close to 20 years......recognized Chris's voice from his multiple appearances on Dead-Airs radio show, What's This Called?

Chris takes me through a few doors into a room where the Dots are busy assembling CD cases. Each takes time to shake my hand and we have a nice 15 minute visit about the current tour and their previous visits to Houston.






01. D-train
02. Love Puppets
03. Mirror Mirror
04. Credibility
05. Page Aquarain
06. Real World
07. Disturbance
08. 10 O'er 9
09. So Gallantly Screaming
10. City Of Needles

These guys last night. Another new band I hadn't seen before. Combination of jangly guitar pop and screaming face red. It was worth going.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij9q8Of_ZZ4

This month:
Merzbow - Great!

Los Siquicos Litoralenos / Skull Mask / Rubber O Cement - Funnest, best line up show I've been to in a long time.

Senyawa - Super intense folk rawness from Indonesia

Black Spiritual /Dead Neanderthals - Dead Neanderthals set a high bar for the evening with a heavy set of droning free jazz, then Black Spirituals blew everything away, the best, deepest and most sensitive jazz/noise thing I've seen in years and something that every fan of Lee & Thurston's improv records needs to see or hear.

Thurston Moore and Sick Llama - Sick as fuck duo set from two musicians who should continue to play together.

Big Shug and Jeru the Damaja - Was awesome to see these guys playing the hits; however, Jeru was reeeaaally milking the crowd participation stuff and bumming out chunks of the audience with his frequently sexist and homophobic stage banter. On the Big Shug is a soulful dude and one of the few rappers who can actually sing.

NO doubt you've seen some amazing shows recently. I'm very interested in what you thought about, Skull Mask? I've been listening to Miguel's music over the past two years and find him to be an interesting guy. He lives in Mexico and travels into El Paso on a regular basis.

On October 21st, I saw Richard Pinhas perform at 14 Pews in Houston. This was Richard's first time playing Texas in 40 years. 14 Pews was once a church in a residential neighborhood and it has, 14 Pews. Without any fanfare or proper introduction, Richard sat down and just started to play for about an hour. He has a new album out that I picked up at the show, but it really doesn't sound like anything he played that night.





Tomorrow, Richard Pinhas starts a tour of Japan with Merzbow-Haino-Yoshida:



The opening act, Illicit Relationship is a husband/wife duo from Houston and their set was amazing. I had recently received their newest CDR in the mail so I was a little familiar with their sound.

I just went to Dinosaur Jr in Brussels, at a last moment decision. It was good, but like many have said already, the voices are so buried in the mix these days that they are hardly hearable. Both J and Lou didn't look too good either. Normally Lou is all happy and talkative, this time not and he looked like he had lost a lot of weight compared to when I saw him last time about half a year ago (when he did a solo tour).
Best tunes were the noodles that J was doing in between the actual songs

Best moment during the support set was probably when I slapped a guy in the face (but not hard) who was continuously being a total dickhead and completely stoned or drunk or whatever. Then his gf started bitching at me and then they got kicked out :)

Addition:
I just read that John Molony is the drum tech on the Dinosaur Jr. I already thought he looked familiar. He played along on the support act (vocals and some drumming) and on one song during Dinosaur Jr's set he played second drumming with another additional guitarist.

Very enjoyable although there were some sound issues during his set. It was interesting to see a finger picker using a lot of effects. Judging by the merch table he has quite a few things going on and I'm curious to hear what his other projects are like. I liked his performance enough to buy a tape.

I messaged with Miguel today and passed along your comments about the Skull Mask performance at Cafe OTO. Miguel said he appreciates the feedback and to check out all things Skull Mask here. According to him, one of the Amps provided by OTO was the cause of the audio issues.

On weekend I saw a bunch of shows both nights.
On friday it was the Sludge Feast with:
Rutsa (grind/sludge thing)
Coughdust (very down-tuned local sludge, Crowbar -ish with more groove. good stuff live)
Stolen Kidneys (noise rock/post-hc/sludge guitar feedback assault, totally great shit)

On saturday:
Echo is your love (long standing sonicyouthian noise indie guitar mess. About 8 years since the last time I saw them. it was good to see them again. I was heavily into them around 10-11 years ago)
Sokea Piste
Sur-rur (these two I've seen alot lately, but nevertheless, both were great again)

I just saw Thee Oh Sees in Toronto. Stellar show, I wish it was longer. I don't understand music theory but I have a concept of it.

The guy's lyrics were completely incoherent, his voice was nothing more than an instrument, which was a psychological relief! Every once in a while the guy screamed and the crowd went wild.

It was a 3 piece band though my brother says he usually has 2 drummers. The tone of the guy's guitar was so psychedelic, the sound he made opened my mind.

They played no encores, my brother said they don't really care about trying to overplease. The last song was really trippy and about 10 minutes so they still left a good impression.

One cool personal thing was I invited some friends to the show and then they couldn't make it. Then another old friend I didn't know would be there picked me out in the dark and told me Oh Sees was his favourite band. It was great to see him there. He tried to get a concert poster but they wouldn't let him back in after the show. The poster was stellar though, it was like a moose with the Milky Way airbrushed in it, no text.

I am glad my oldest brother got me into Thee Oh Sees and would definitely see them again. They left me wanting more. Best modern band out of California.

I wanted to see a somehow new band called Last Train, in a four-band festival called Octobre Rock, one hour from my place, in a village.
The venue was cool. What was not was that the festival had a DJ. And what he played, I did not like. I was there for rock, and we had... zouk... and disco... blaring loudly out the speakers.
The first band came on, teenagers, not quite comfortable with themselves (no blame intended), doing covers. Not great.
The DJ went back at it again. Some horrible hard rock, some French irritating pop...
The second band came on. They had an accordion and a saxophone. Being angry as I was, it was about unbearable. They hadn't started yet though. The singer went to the mike for the usual one-two-one-two. The sound wasn't as bad as with the first band, it was worse. Plus, the DJ had been freewheeling for more than 30 minutes at that point.
I had to quit and ran away.
The galette-saucisse was the only good thing that night.

And I've seen Föllakzoid in Angers in september and liked them.
Sonic Boom and Klaus Johann Grobe too, for a very very enjoyable night.

Last Saturday:

- Thighpaulsandra (kind of mediocre)
- Chris Corsano / Tony Elieh / Sharif Sehnaoui (fantastic, high-energy gig)
- Amnesia Scanner & Bill Kouligas: Lexachast (mindblowing, out of this world)

Glad you enjoyed it. I saw them for the first time at the last ATP I was at. I was coming down from acid, totally worn out from it (those 8 hour trips are tiring as fuck) and wasn't all that up for them. However, they blew me away. Great live band.

They are. Seeing them tends to revitalize my faith in whatever punk is or was. Those guys just totally throw down.

I think they've actually turned into one of those bands that's just infinitely better love than on record. Don't get me wrong, I've never heard a Thee Oh Sees album I didn't like, and it seemed like they were really on a roll up until Floating Coffin (their apex, in my opinion), but lately their albums have kind of all started to blend together.

But live, they're ferocious. Whatever their lineup happens to be at the time. I think I've seen them four or five times and each was a total kick in the balls.

how was Rubber-0? I haven't seen them for a couple of years, but they always put on a great show, same guys in Caroliner and Hans Grusel

This past Sunday night, the wife and I went to see The Goo Goo Dolls here in downtown Beaumont. I'm not much of a fan at all, but I was surprised at how many "album" cuts I knew. Anyway, it was nice to have a 15 minute drive to the show and overall, it was really good.

That venue looks gorgeous.

Agreed. That venue looks very nice. Seen several shows there?

Bad Luck Jonathan, December 3. This is the 50,000th or so band from head Mekon Jon Langford. It might just be the best gig I've seen this year. If Langford is coming to your town in any of his musical incarnations, do yourself a favor and go.