Pilcrow

I had wanted to continue my archive concert summaries today, rolling June and July together, but I've been busy today editing a paper and now I don't have enough time left to get that done. So the rest of the 2010 concert reviews/summaries will probably be pushed into next week, with the new year's weekend upon me. 

Instead, I'll write a bit about my Christmas vacation. Despite going into it with a cold, I ended up having a very enjoyable trip home. My flights there and back were miraculously smooth and trouble-free, which was really nice. And my cold cleared up within the first couple days, so I never felt really miserable. I did not get to spend as much time in Boston as I wanted to, but I did have a nice brunch at a restaurant in a part of Boston I've never really spent time in before, so that was good, and I did get to make my obligatory pilgrimage to Pizzeria Regina, which was satisfying as always. I also didn't get to see as many friends as I wanted to, though I didn't even try contacting some of them just because I knew the holidays are such a busy time for everyone, and because I had a cold at first; however, I did get to have that brunch with my new KEXP friend Sarah "from Boston", and despite the weather's efforts to thwart me, I did get to hang out with two of my oldest and closest friends, Scott and Doug. I enjoyed visiting my parents, hanging out with my younger brother and seeing his new place, and seeing my older sister and other relatives on Christmas (well, the day after, actually) as well as talking to my younger sister and her partner via Skype.

I finally tried my hand at running a game of "Dungeon World", based on Vincent Baker's Apocalypse World, and although I could see right away where I need more practice at running it, I felt it went very well for my first time and I enjoyed it a lot. I also finally finished reading Apocalypse World, which gave me some ideas on further customizing parts of it for "Dungeon World", and made me more eager to get back to finishing the character class I've been working on as well as preparing an adventure to run for people here in Seattle.

On the topic of spending time in Boston: people occasionally ask me if I ever miss New England, and I usually say no, although I do still love it, I'm very happy here in Seattle and don't intend to leave. However, for some reason on this trip, I found myself feeling a bit homesick for Boston while I was there visiting it. I know it so well, and yet at the same time there are parts of it like the South End that I've rarely visited or spent any time in, so I'd still love to spend time exploring it as well as simply hanging out in the parts that are familiar to me. And I have to say, Boston has so much character and beauty that Seattle rarely if ever comes close to, not just because it's so much older but also because it developed over time with distinctive styles. Too much of Seattle strikes me as bland and modern and similar, and Seattle could really conform to its terrain a lot more, with the resulting interestingly-shaped buildings and neighborhoods, instead of having the grid mercilessly imposed on top of everything. I could probably rant at further length on this topic, but I'm just about out of time for now. In any case, though I do miss Boston and do feel Seattle has some shortcomings in comparison, I'm still happy to be back here and to call Seattle home.

In stark contrast to my travel adventures of the previous two months, my flight to Boston was possibly the smoothest one ever. No fuss or waiting at security (and no backscanners in use yet, and no pat-downs), I was able to change my seat on both planes to slightly better ones, I did some light dozing on the first flight to Minneapolis and then some heavier sleeping for a couple hours to Boston, nary a sound or fuss from any of the kids within earshot or from the small dog in a carrier, and I got in to Boston on time. Really the only downside was that my knees started hurting from being kept in the slightly bent seated position for so long, and my feet apparently swelled as I had to loosen one boot near the end of the first flight and then loosen the other near the end of the second. 

My brother and I had a good brunch at The Beehive with "Sarah from Boston" of KEXP fame, and then drove up to Jeremy's house in Dover. I dozed off in the car just before we crossed into New Hampshire, and did not wait long after arriving at his house to lie down again and nap for another couple hours or so. The lack of sleep and the illness are getting to me. I roused for dinner at Rocky's Famous Burgers in Newmarket and an hour or so of Rock Band, and I've stayed up for a bit to catch up on some online stuff, but really, I've had it. It may be only 8:30 in Seattle, but it's 11:30 in New Hampshire, and I'm wiped out. Time for bed. Fortunately, tomorrow I can sleep in for a bit.

Starting around the time I was in college, maybe once or twice a year I would go down to Boston with a few friends to go dancing out at the clubs. We went a few times to the clubs on Landsdowne Street next to Fenway Park—Axis, Avalon, Venus de Milo. But as the years went on, most of the time we went to ManRay, the goth club in Central Square, Cambridge.

I was never part of the goth scene. I only learned about it during college when I got into alternative/underground rock; I was too young (and effectively sheltered) to have known about the original goth scene in the early ‘80s. On the other hand, I did learn about it before Hot Topic stores and teenage mall goths became common, but still I didn’t really know anyone in Nashua who was actively part of the goth subculture. Not that that mattered, because there seemed to be a certain amount of dressing up and wearing makeup involved, which didn’t appeal to me. I also strongly sympathized with the associated outsider/outcast/punk mentality, but didn’t really feel a need to make a stand on that.

However, I did appreciate gothic fashion in general, even if I didn’t feel it was for me, and I had no problem with the basic rule of goth clubwear: dress in black and you’ll be fine. I always had a pair of black jeans, several black shirts or t-shirts, and black boots; for several years I also wore all-black Converse All-Stars sneakers. I was never anything to look at but at least I was able to blend in appropriately. And in my experience that was enough: I wasn’t there to impress people, to hit on women, not even to try making new friends, I was just there to enjoy the music and the dancing.

Throughout of the ‘90s when we did go to ManRay, we would go on Saturday nights, which featured ‘80s underground rock and new wave, and was generally the most accessible night at the club. Starting in 2001, Jay had some friends at his new job who liked to go to “Hell Night,” the third Friday of the month, and we tagged along. Fridays were the fetish-themed nights at ManRay, which meant lots of people in PVC and more outlandish (and skimpy) outfits, but Hell Night despite its name was actually the least extreme, it was just the basic goth night, with music ranging from gothic to industrial to techno. Sure there were a few people dressed in ways we didn’t care for, such as the hefty dude in nothing but a g-string and chaps, but though we may have found him decidedly unappealing, he wasn’t actually bothering us and we didn’t bother him. And people like him were more than balanced out by people such as the hot redheaded woman who likewise wore little but strategically-placed straps and a pair of angel wings. And again, we were there just to have a good time dancing, which we did.

We enjoyed that first Hell Night enough that we started going each month regardless of whether Jay’s work friends could make it. I don’t recall whether we actually made it every single month that year, but we did go to more than half I’d say, and we always had a good time. Once we arrived early enough to claim a couch for some hanging out while the club was filling, and a friendly woman struck up a bit of conversation with us and gave us strawberries from the table of food that was always set up for the event. Once or twice I had to politely turn down a guy asking me if I wanted to dance. Often we recognized the same hot women from previous times, but we never tried chatting them up. Always, the music was good and the dancing was fun.

The last time I went to Hell Night was by myself. Jay had some reason he couldn’t or didn’t want to go that month, and I decided I still wanted to have fun dancing and wanted to see if it was something I could go do by myself. So I went and I did have fun, but it was slightly less fun for not being shared with friends, and though I was confident enough to not care what others thought and just go enjoy dancing, I wasn’t confident enough to try talking to strangers. None of that would’ve stopped me from continuing to go to Hell Night, of course; rather, moving to Seattle did.

When I was young, my parents’ car had only AM radio, and we listened to WBZ all the time, but back then AM radio stations still played music. So I grew up hearing a mix of pop and light rock from the ‘60s and ‘70s; to this day I associate a lot of top-40 ‘70s pop-rock with trips to the beach in the summer, and thus think of it fondly.

Around when I was twelve, in my first year of Scouts, and starting junior high, I started being exposed to a wider variety of rock, mainly what we now call classic rock or album-oriented rock (“classic rock” hasn’t already been drifted to mean rock of the ‘80s, has it?), but also with some new wave and punk mixed in. I think I learned about “Rock 101” WGIR-FM from some of the older kids and younger leaders in the Scout troop, and we’d listen to that station while driving to or from camping trips. I distinctly remember being in a cabin on one early camping trip and hearing The Police on the radio, and recognizing for the first time that I’d heard those songs before and really liked them. In that respect, The Police was the first band I became a fan of, knowing who they were and being actively interested in hearing more of their music. Rock 101 also featured “Block Party Weekends,” when all weekend they’d play songs in sets of three per artist, and so it quickly became one of my favorite stations. For some reason we had an old FM radio in the basement, and I claimed it and started listening to my own music in my room.

We also got MTV around that time; I don’t recall whether our local cable company had it from the start, but we definitely had it within its first year of operation. My younger sister proved to be the MTV fiend, watching countless hours of it, but my older sister and I certainly watched a fair amount as well. At the time, I remember rejecting a lot of the music on account of the goofy and outlandish videos; if I thought the video looked stupid, I was likely to think the song was stupid as well. However, my tastes were still developing, and before the ‘80s were over I was already looking back at that music and realizing a lot of it was catchy and I really enjoyed it. A couple years later, I got my first boombox, which included a cassette player. I remember I was given three blank cassettes as well, which I was supposed to use for some kind of French class project, recording myself practicing my French I think. Instead, I started taping songs I liked off the radio, filling all three within a few months. I still have those tapes today, although I haven’t actually listened to them in over a decade and suspect they might be too worn out to play.

I already knew of Heart and liked them before they released their self-titled album in 1985, but that was when I really got into their music and acquired all their older albums. A couple summers later when I heard that they were coming to Manchester to play a concert, I realized for the first time that I could choose to go see a band I liked: I had money, I knew how to drive, and they were playing close by. So I got Scott and Eldy to come along with me, and that was my first rock concert, in a park along the river in Manchester.

Despite that realization, I continued to treat concerts as special events over the next several years, something I did only once or twice a year. During college, I saw Joe Jackson (for the first time) in Lowell, I saw 10,000 Maniacs at UNH, I saw Genesis at Foxboro Stadium (my first and so far only actual stadium show), and I saw They Might Be Giants at the Avalon nightclub in Boston. That last show was I believe my first time going to Boston to see a band play, and my trips down to Boston to see shows continued to be few and far between for the next several years.

Two events in 1999 caused me to start attending concerts more often. First, I started working full-time in Boston, and as my life centered more around being in Boston, it was easier to be there for shows. Second, I saw the band Mistle Thrush live for the first time. My friend Jay had been a huge fan of Mistle Thrush for a few years, and had gradually won me over. In April of that year, they opened for Love & Rockets at Avalon, a show we were sure not to miss, and I thought Mistle Thrush’s performance was fantastic. More importantly, neither of us recognized most of the music they played, it was new material, and we soon learned from talking to lead singer Valerie at a later show that due to some complications the band wouldn’t be releasing an album of this new material for quite a while; the only way to hear it was to attend their shows. So I made a point of seeing them as often as I could, and fortunately they played fairly regularly. This became even easier the following summer of 2000 when I moved just outside Boston and no longer had to drive back up to Nashua afterward.

Mistle Thrush played varying slots at shows, sometimes opening, sometimes headlining, sometimes in the middle. Because of that, and because Jay and I had befriended the band and liked to talk to them, I always made sure to get to the show when it opened, regardless of when Mistle Thrush were scheduled to play, and that meant I started seeing a lot of other bands, local or touring, that I’d never heard of. Usually the other bands would be okay, nothing special, but sometimes I’d discover a great new band and fall in love with them, and only very rarely was a band so bad that I thought I’d rather have missed them. These experiences led to me formulating my two rules about going to see live music: one, it’s always the right decision to go to the show; two, it’s always worthwhile to catch the opening act.

By random chance, Mistle Thrush’s long-awaited third album came out about six weeks before I moved to Seattle, so I had the fortune of attending their CD-release show, which was phenomenal and easily one of their best performances. Just the other day, Jay pointed me at a YouTube video from one of their live performances—it’s hard to say for certain, but I believe I’m actually in the video as part of the crowd—and I had shivers from the thrill of hearing them again. I still miss them very much.

When I moved to Seattle, I didn’t know any of the local bands or clubs, and so for the first few months I didn’t go out to any shows. However, it happened that my favorite radio station in Boston, Boston College’s WZBC, had the same frequency as Seattle’s independent music station KEXP, 90.3 FM, and it was immediately clear that KEXP was the station to listen to here. One Saturday afternoon in June, I was listening when a local band, Orbiter, played live in the KEXP studio and mentioned they were playing a show that night (at the long-gone Sit & Spin laundromat/nightclub). I enjoyed their set, and realized that with nothing else planned anyhow, I should go see the show. That began my concert-going adventures in Seattle.

For my first couple years, going to shows remained an occasional activity, but late in 2004 I realized how much I missed going out regularly like I used to do for Mistle Thrush, and resolved to make a point of attending at least one show a month in 2005. Because I also resolved to write once a week in my LiveJournal, I started writing reviews of the shows I was attending. It took another couple years for me to realize I should be volunteering for KEXP, and another couple years after that for my music writing and volunteering to merge into writing for the KEXP Blog.

So, what about my Christmas vacation, when I wasn't falling sick? It was pretty good, actually.

I've just realized that I didn't write about last Christmas (2004) at all. (I'm just going to call it "last year" even though it was 2004.) Because I had recently started paying for braces, I ended up deciding not to go home to my parents'. That was my first Christmas away from home, ever, and I ended up feeling depressed about it. I didn't actually spend it sitting at home alone (well, alone with my new cat), as I went with the Dowlers to one of their friends' for dinner; that was nice and I'm glad I was invited. Still, it just wasn't the same as the noisy LaRose family Christmas that I'm used to, and I really missed that.

So this year I decided I wasn't going to miss that again, even though I'm arguably worse off with about the same amount of credit card debt outstanding and a condo to pay for as well. Because I didn't buy my airplane tickets until Thanksgiving weekend, I spent a lot more than I wanted to. I'd already decided I couldn't afford a rental car, and I knew the transit strike in NYC was likely to happen, so I was also anticipating travel hassles; that plus the expensive flight made me grumbly before I left and second-guess whether I should be going. But I'm very glad I made the decision to go, because I really enjoyed myself.

The transit strike and jet lag meant that I didn't do much in NYC before Christmas, but it was good to visit with Andrea and Jen (my younger sister and her girlfriend) and see their new place. I wanted to check out the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Company, but we didn't have a chance to go by there until after Christmas, at which time we determined it seemed to be closed for school vacation. (It fronts for 826NYC, a nonprofit organization for teaching writing skills to students. Rather annoyingly they don't simply list any kind of store hours anywhere on the site as far as we could tell; we had to piece together that it was closed for vacation from how the latest news was written.)

Up in Boston, I got to have some of my favorite pizza in the world, sausage pizza at the original Pizzeria Regina in the North End. I was arguably more disappointed the last time I was home for Christmas two years ago by missing out on that than I was by being miserable and sick all that week, so I was particularly pleased that it worked out this time. I also had pizza at Bob's in Nashua, my favorite local place, and that was good too. Ah how I miss good sausage pizza! It's just not the same out here.

My plans to hang out with my friends mostly worked out. Unfortunately, I managed to pass on the cold I'd picked up from Andrea to my friend Doug, so that he was sick on Christmas and wasn't able to come hang out with Scott and his family that night. I did have a good short visit with Scott and Lissa and Scott's parents and aunt, though it would've been nice to have some more time. Fortunately Doug was recovered enough on Monday evening to come over for a family game and little birthday celebration for me; and we also hung out on Friday and Saturday evenings, so I got to spend some good time with him. There was good family time too, mainly Christmas day itself, a family game of dominoes on Monday afternoon, and family breakfast on Tuesday before Andrea and I returned to NYC (driven by my younger brother bandtechiegeek, who stayed overnight).

Back in NYC, Andrea, Jeremy and I had dinner at a hipster place in hipster central, Williamsburg, Brooklyn. We didn't see any famous Williamsburg residents like John and John of TMBG, but I swear the attractive hipster at the next table (with the birthday party group) kept checking our table out. The next day after Jeremy left, we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge to meet a few of Andrea's friends for a dim sum lunch - and now that I've been I can say I have tried it and it's just not something I care for. Then Andrea and I went to the Museum of Modern Art for their Pixar exhibit, which was cool.

I had hoped to meet some of my VHive (ex-Delphi) forum friends for drinks while in NYC, but there was minimal response the first week when I talked about meeting after Christmas, and no response that Wednesday. I felt snubbed, but it was a very busy time for everyone, and I know at least one other person's party plans were being turned down on account of general tiredness, so I figure I shouldn't take it personally. Anyhow it's probably for the best, as spending the last evening quietly at my sister's place, reading a book (All Tomorrow's Parties by William Gibson) and repacking my luggage, was a good thing to do. Still, I realized that since my sister moved to NYC, I haven't spent an evening out on the town in Manhattan, and I'd like to do that.

That's about it for the trip. As I mentioned in the previous entry, my flight home took much longer than it was supposed to - first there was a delay leaving because of the weather, then a passenger with diabetes fell ill and we landed in Minneapolis to let him off, and it took about two hours to get back in the air - so I got home very tired, which may have contributed to my illness over the weekend. I also didn't get to see all the friends I would've liked to; I really need a trip with more time, and a rental car so I have the freedom to travel around to my friends' scattered homes. Overall though it was a very good Christmas holiday.