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Music Appreciations, Illuminati Hotties +



Music Appreciations, February 2019

Illuminati Hotties! At the Turf Club last night. https://illuminatihotties.bandcamp.com.

Very good show(wo)manship, voices, guitars. A similar sophisticated approach to fun and thoughtful rock that I heard in the band Bodega, 7 months ago at Turf. Nice use of dynamics, nice to have understandable lyrics and a hard rocking performance. 2 guitars, bass, drums. Sarah Tudzin and fellow guitarists appeared in shorts, a daring fashion choice in Minnesota this month. A bit more polished in approach than Courtney Barnett but not lacking in grit at all. (She takes the label “tenderpunk” - not bad…) You can hear the Barnett parallels here: https://illuminatihotties.bandcamp.com/track/youre-better-than-ever.

 Expect a bigger venue next time in town. Sad that there were so few to hear Illuminati and sad that the loud clowns back by the bar didn’t take their sloshy laughter downstairs.

Pretty good local opening R&R act, Prothloons (?) with a three guitar attack and decent if a bit angsty lyrics. I’d seen the tall well-dressed lead guitarist in another band.

But horrors, horrors the 2nd act (named Half-something): a woman who “played” electric guitar and quavered. She apologized for a cover she sang as her leadoff - whose lyric is something like “he hit me and it felt like a kiss….” I plugged my ears and didn’t listen to any other of her pieces. Happily had a copy of Poetry with me. I don’t get it - why perform a thing like this? Is it like artists who comment on the world by displaying a steaming turd at MOMA? Counter-propaganda like adoption of the pink pussy hat?

And my son’s friend Matt spotted me at the show. I have not seen him for a long long time and am glad I have aged so little as to remain recognizable.

We saw Bohemian Rhapsody this week and enjoyed it. Interesting to consider how that band went about using opera, rock and show tune approaches to boost the audience buy-in. And if sufficiently microdosed (the music that is) I can certainly enjoy their hits. The band members were pretty convincing.

I see in the newspaper that Kacey Musgraves ruled an award ceremony - for an album vastly inferior to her Same Trailer, Different Park. Jeez….

Most fun recordings of previous week. Bad Plus: The Rite of Spring. Slint: Tweez. Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section.
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