YOU CAN'T TRIPLE-STAMP A DOUBLE STAMP!

Got to see Zappa Plays Zappa again on Friday. A different beast, really, without the amazing projecto-Frank and/or a member of the old guard like Ray White to be the insanely charismatic focus of the show and give them an expanded repertoire, which ultimately meant a lot more instrumentals and masturbatory solos, which were really amazing and fun and groovy at the time, but ultimately forgettable; so the whole concert is a lot more of the moment than one for the ages, which is of course fine and valid in itself. They played a lot from Roxy and from Apostrophe'; the highlight of the night was a completely kickass Pygmy Twylyte.

Dweezil is looking more and more like David Krumholtz and is a sublimely cool being. The bass player loved the wide-leg rock plant and the second guitarist was very unassuming but Dweezil just stood there in the spotlight with a smile, slightly inclined over his guitar like he was playing Space Oddity at an uncle's 50th. The joke beforehand with ecce_homosexual was that the cavernous van outside the stage door was reserved for Dweezil's ego but really, it was there to house his awesome. Like last time he stayed back to sign shit until everyone was gone: Ben scored a setlist that said underneath the encore like a kick in the face "Cosmik if needed;" as Ben said, Cosmik is always needed, but I suppose they did play for over two hours so I can't complain too much. Special mention to Scheila Gonzalez who fucking rocked it.

A link via vensre: apparently Dreamwidth is giving invite codes to those with validated OpenID addresses.

Going to to Barossa for a few days to get drunk, don't have any fun without me.

Two weeks ago bumface and I went to see Gotye (pronounced Gore-tee-yeah) at the Gov Hindmarsh and he and his mini orchestra were so much fun, and he is so young and cute and talented I thought I would evangelise a bit. He is somewhat obscure in Australia and so I imagine he's unheard of outside of Aust but he certainly deserves wider exposure.

Heart's A Mess is the song he's best known for. It's catchy and haunting and has some great bass sounds and people went nuts when he started playing it. I love the film clip.

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Learnalilgivinanlovin has also gotten some radio play, it's a fun Mowtowny number.
( live at Triple J. Pls to note hilarious white-boy dancing by Robbie Buck. )
As you can see, when live he chooses to drum and sing. Bumface almost had an orgasm when she realised this.

Out Here in The Cold is from his first album, so I hadn't heard it, but the six-minute live version was entrancing. He introduced it as the song with too much B-flat, heh.
( Three-minute video version. Lots of Melbourne. )

For the tour he commissioned local artists to make film to be projected behind the stage. I put this here not because the visuals are especially stunning (although they're lovely) but because the song it's for, The Only Way, is a personal favourite and he opened with it and it ROCKED.
( version with extended intro )

This concert footage doesn't have the best sound quality but the waltzy, fun song, Coming Back, is another personal fav, and god! he is so! cute! with his little Cher microphone!
( and it has a flute too! )

My first stadium concert by Jessie aged 22.

I'm not the world's biggest Robbie Williams fan, don't know half the songs or lyrics. I'm like, "And through it AAAAALL, be mmmmmmm... PROTECTION, a lot of love and AFFECTION, whether it COMES to CALL," but because I have no memory of Take That I've always thought him pretty much a dude. He played tonight in Adelaide, and I went with sixty thousand other people, and I was quite moved. He's pretty much got it all, Robbie: he's a singer, standup comedian, slapstick comedian, dancer, stuntman, stripper, choirboy, rentboy, dork.

Everyone was a bit nutty from being out in the sun, Robbie included, and after he got everyone fired up with a few songs and a lot of, "PERTH'S SHIT! SYDNEY'S SHIT! FOOTBALL TEAMS! CRICKET! ADELAIDE ROCKS!" which is the perfect way to wind up an Adelaide crowd, the atmosphere just went to eleven. We all got really screamy and appreciative and Robbie started on these long comic rants with rude impressions of Elton John. He belted out each song and ran around the stage like a maniac and gave us every opportunity to cheer and clap and scream. By the end he seemed quite genuinely overwhelemed, and the giant screens showed him looking out at us with love and gratefulness and a bit of awe. He kept telling us how great we were, which was nice, and that this was the best show of the tour. He told us that we'd reminded him of why he does this and that when he wanted to retire after this especially long tour like he did after every tour, he'd think of us and get back to work. So I think that was quite special and I'm glad I went.

My favourite bit was probably first song of the encore, Let Me Entertain You, which went off and had everyone in the stands dancing.

As exhausting as it looks, next time I want to be standing in that first half of the oval. It was fascinating to watch the stadium fill up from my Godlike perch. It was like time-lapse photography in slow-forward because it was of a scale that you only ever see time-lapse stuff in (ever notice how you never see the middle-ground in time-lapse? Oh, a cell or a flower, a city or cloudscape, sure, but a room? the width of a city street? Those're the dimensions of *my* life, at least). The stage was a huge lightshow intricately planned with plenty of pyrotechnics.

One of the things that really struck me during the first half was how he got into the naughty/playful so-nonironic-it-becomes-ironic-and-then-goes-back sexuality of it, the performance aspect of it. He's not a stripper, really, he's a burlesque or cabaret performer. Just the scarf coming off is a crucial moment of the night, the first big scream during the show. Nipples are to be teased, not half-bared through a soulful and windblown unbuttoned shirt (that horrid fake babyish eroticism of boy bands or the simpering slut-eyes of so many women in pop). He's a really high-end hooker.

In conclusion: SIXTY THOUSAND PEOPLE ALL LOOKING IN ONE DIRECTION. Incidentally probably the most exhilarating thing was my first real Mexican Wave. That shit's tidal.

Just a little quickie (but not really) update. Have been bizarrely busy lately and have barely gotten on the comp at all, woe. And in the next couple of weeks I have three essays due, so I I'm going to get very, very behind, I think.
BUT, check out the cool topics I get to do my essays on:
For Anarchism and Libertarianism: Ursula Le Guin's The Disposessed
For Beauty, Pleasures and Principles: The sublime in the LotR films.
For Politics, Ideology and Discourse: Queer theory and Alexander, and The Persian Boy (well, I haven't really formulated the question for that one yet...). Means I'll have to watch Alexander again, but I can skip all the crappy bits at least and stick to Jared Leto's moony eyes.

Totally to my surprise, I have become a rather large fan of Battlestar Galactica. It's weird for me because generally my key into a TV series is the characters first, and scenario second; the main reason I watch Stargate, for instance, is to see Jack, Daniel, Sam, Teal'c, Hammond, Janet, etc. But BSG I first turned on just to perve on Jamie Bamber and CKR, and none of the characters except Boomer have grabbed me in the way that I'm used to. But the scenario is great, the writing is awesome, the acting just as good. 1.11, Kobol's Last Gleaming pt 1, was one of the best hours of genre TV I've ever seen; the trailer alone blew me away. And one by one, the other characters are getting to me, although I've felt little need to read fic yet. The next season better hurry up! Plus, there are just so many cool women!! It blows me away. Now all we need is a queer character, like, GASP, there are queers in the ENLIGHTENED FUTURE? and this thing'll break some real ground.

Authority: Revolution #9: FUCKING AWESOME!!!!!
Lucifer #62: I am loving this series so much, and I was so happy to see the return of Jayesh and Karl, I have been waiting and waiting for them to pop back up. Yay!

Saw Tori Amos on Monday. I was closer to the stage than I thought I would be, but I still had a lot of trouble seeing her clearly, especially when the light was all green or all blue, and I've had a headache the last few days from straining my eyes. I so need new glasses. The supporting guest was the dude from George, and he actually played Polyserena, which I like a whole lot, and he also covered Black is the Colour of my True Love's Hair. But other than that I could have left him.

Tori herself was so funny and charming and adorable. I almost sort of didn't really believe she existed till I saw her live, she's just that kind of personality. But yeah, she was excellent, so amazingly talented. Her song choices were limited because she had no backing band, but I still thought she could have had more variety, it was mostly her "light" ballads, whcih got a little samey, none of her thumpers (such as Sugar and Professional Widow) and only one arty freakout (like I Can't See New York), which was the Beekeeper, and it was the highlight of the evening, absolutely mesmerising. Actually, that, Original Sinsuality, and Mother Revolution were arguably the best songs of the night, and they're all from her latest which is pretty weak in spots (well, the three songs I've mentioned, plus Marys of the Sea, are the best songs on the album, and they're really excellent, so I suppose it's not so surprising that they were high points).

( setlist, minus a few songs I've forgotten, in an approximate order. * means especially good )