When the Earth folded in on itself and said "Good Luck"

Well I have truly been a slacker with this thing, haven't I? I haven't felt particularly inspired to write anything in the last week or so, nor do I really at this point, but as is so often the case on Mondays, I'm off work and nobody else in the world is. Well, it has actually just occurred to me that it's SPRIIIIIING BREEEEEEAAAKK WOOOOOOOOOOOO so I think I could find something to do if I do some leg work. Eh.

I went and saw Modest Mouse on Friday night in Oxford. This was the second time I've driven down to Oxford to see a band play (the first being Colour Revolt six or so months back) and both times I've been struck by how many gorgeous girls there are around (many), and, immediately after, the even-more-startling amount of buttoned-down-douche-bag-cave-dude-date-rapists at every turn. In the same instant, I find myself thinking "Seems like I picked the wrong school" and "Please get me as far away from these people as possible." I'm sure many of these dudes are nice enough people, and I'm probably just a judgemental prick, but I kinda doubt it. At least this visit, there were no altercations like the last time when Derren and I nearly got into a fist fight with some tool right behind us because Ashley asked him to stop yelling "you suck" at Colour Revolt and he had to run his mouth off at a girl. I digress. I had real mixed feelings about Modest Mouse. The truth is I just didn't have much fun. The sound in the club was mediocre, but that's not their fault. Isaac Brock seemed to be phoning it in, but I couldn't tell if he just didn't care or if he too was annoyed at the crowd that had shown out to see his band. Perhaps both, or maybe neither. He went on three seperate angry rants which were hard to hear due to aforementioned sound issues, but I know one seemed to be about how annoyed he was that people kept shouting requests at him, and one hilarious bit that I did hear clearly about how much he "hates this fucking city" because every time he comes in town, there's a Trent Lott rally going on and that anybody who in the club who "likes that dude can leave right now, or better yet, come back and fucking fight me after the show." The set was surprisingly lacking in singles, especially from the last couple albums, which I actually enjoyed a lot. Highlight would definitely be all of the material off "The Moon and Antarctica" which was fantastic ("3rd Planet", "Tiny Cities Made of Ashes," "Wild Packs of Family Dogs" (!!!), and "Paper Thi Walls"). Other than that, lots of stuff off "Good News..." (but not "Ocean Breathes Salty," "Bury Me With It," or "Bukowski,") and some older tracks I didn't know. The only song played off "We Were Dead..." was "Dashboard," and I really would have liked to hear a couple more songs from that album. My hypothesis before the show was that, because they were playing this tour without Johnny Marr, they'd be leaving out a lot of that cd, but I didn't expect only one song.

Anyway, that was a long winded explanation of their set that was probably boring, and I should have just said "It would have been really cool if they'd played all of 'The Moon and Antarctica', but they didn't. Oh well. Douche-bags were present." It kinda occurred to me though while I was sitting here thinking about the show and how I didn't have as much fun as I thought I was going to... I realize that the set they played was pretty good for the most part, and that if I would just have ignored the people around me and (ahem) vibed out on a band that I do really love, I probably would have had a really great time. That kind of judgmental attitude, and especially that I'd let it get in the way of my good time, is a flaw of mine I'd like to try and correct.

Either way, I'll be down in Oxford again in June to see Animal Collective, so we'll see how it goes.

I planned on writing some more, but that was already long enough, and the longer I sit here on the computer, the more aware I become of how beautiful it is outside.