SWERVE FESTIVAL
[Film, Music, Art] - SEPTEMBER 28-30

I just checked out the opening night of this festival by catching the premier of Doug Pray’s new documentary called SURFWISE.

This great film fchronicles the lives of the surf legend, Dr. Dorian “Doc” Paskowitz, and his beautiful wife and 9 amazing children!

Surfwise - Trailer

courtesy of jp444

Somehow I ended up on an old Guns N’ Roses video clip - made me look up Chinese Democracy. I guess the album is really a metaphor for it’s release, cause it doesn’t seem like either will ever happen.

So in ode to a great band, here’s a great song - I Used to Love Her

There has been some talk for some time about this “Finishing the Game” movie. Well, if you’d like to see it in all it’s glory, along with some other excellent independent features, please make your way down to the San Diego Asian Film Festival coming up October 11-18 at the Ultra Star Cinemas in Mission Valley Hazard Center.

Some other huge films to note include a showing of Chan-Wook Park’s “I’m a Cyborg, But that’s Ok.” Also, documentary “Air Guitar Nation” will be showing. 2003 International Champion C-diddy will be in attendance doing a live performance too!

Finally, the closing night film is the West Coast Premiere of Michael Kang’s New Flick “West 32nd”. It stars John Cho and Grace Park.

Get more info at www.SDAFF.org. It’ll be fun fun fun!

Also Note there will be a huge Music/Music Video Night at Aubergines Night Club in Downtown San Diego on Friday, Oct 12. Celebrities will be hanging out, along with some great live performances by Far East Movement (www.myspace.com/fareastmovement), TIMZ (www.myspace.com/TIMZ), and The Upstarts (www.myspace.com/theupstarts).

Plus, MC HAMMER and James Franco (Spider Man) will be in attendance… You can’t make this shit up.

I saw the Hot Hot Heat “Happiness LTD” Tour last night at the Soma in San Diego. I was on the verge of not going too (for reasons unknown). But, i sucked it up, and randomly made my way over to see them. I’m very happy I did. This was a band on the list of groups I promised myself I would see. Being a fan since the “Bandages” phase, i always seemed to miss them whenever they went on tour. and Now i have. So….if you haven’t seen them, it’s quite the experience. I highly recommend it.

Front Man Steve Bays has the most unique lips i’ve ever seen on someone. They were very Mick Jaggeresque. They curved up the side in the most interesting way.

It was a fun act, with light bulbs that hung from the ceiling and lit up on cue with the music. In particular on “Oh No”, the bulbs flashed on and off in tune with the lyrics that made me very hyponotized to the point i was on the verge of seizure. But a good kind of seizure. Ya know, the kind that makes ya go, “hey, this feels kinda good on the inside.”

They mixed old songs with new, starting off with “Talk to me, Dance with me” and then moved back and forth between some of their newer material off of “Happiness LTD”.

They’re still on tour right now, so go out and get tickets and support. Check out Hothotheat.com for tour dates. Featured supporting tour band Bedouin Soundclash is mighty fine too!

Hot Hot Heat - Talk to Me, Dance with Me

courtesy of hothotheatmusic

Mary J. Blige has sold over 50 million records worldwide, 31 charting hits that’s hit Top 40 radio, and 7 multiplatinum selling albums. Coming off of winning 9 Billboard Awards and 3 Grammy Awards for her most recent album, “The Breakthrough”, Mary’s coming hot with the newest song, “Just Fine” from her forthcoming album, “Growing Pains”.

You would think that after becoming the legend and icon she is, she would take a break, but for Mary, music is her life, her passion and her gift, and she went back into the studio off the huge year she had last year culminating with the Grammys.

“Just Fine” is a certainly a step forward from her songs about heartbreak, pain and sorrow, to confidence, encouragement, empowerment, and refinement. Set to an up-tempo beat, nicely accentuated with staccato drums and cymbals, and beautiful vocals, it’s hard for anyone to resist this song. By the end of the song, you’ll be singing the hook, “just fine, fine, fine, fine…”

Get ready for some feel good music.

I first heard about Finch through my then roommate Abe. “Dude, check out this video on youtube!” What I saw was grainy footage of a band playing to a roomful of sweaty guys. The fans were ecstatic, and belted out every word to every song. I also noticed that the songs were catchy but had inserts of howling screams. I became an instant fan. Looking back at the video now, I can see that the vocals were off key and many chords were messed up, but it still perfectly captured the essence of what I liked about the band. I went down to Tower and bought a copy of What it is to Burn, I was not disappointed. Overall, most of the songs were good, and a handful were played a million times, especially the last track, What it is to Burn. This was new for me, because by that time Emo had been around for a minute, but I had never bought into it… and Finch was being labeled as an Emo band by many. I took it in stride however and chose to just enjoy the music.

A couple of months went by and I heard about some band called The Used. I was near UCLA and stopped by a record store called Pugz (now defunct) and found the album. I bought the album without ever having heard any of their music. The cover art actually sold me. I was on my way to San Diego and so had a full two hours to soak it in. At first it was really hard to digest, something about Bert’s singing was a shock… but once I got used to it, it was like crack. At that time in my life, The Taste of Ink was the most inspirational song ever. I had read their bio, read their lyrics, seen their music video, and it all made sense to me. I hadn’t felt so alive in a long time. Although What it is to Burn was great, The Used became somewhat of an obsession for me.

As I read more about The Used and the scene they were being surrounded by, terms such as “Screamo” started emerging and other band names were getting mentioned in the same line as The Used. I ended up at the Warped tour the next summer and wound up witnessing an amazing live performance on a side stage, I found out that the band was called Story of the Year. I waited for their album to come out and when Page Avenue arrived, I promptly bought a copy. When I finally got down and listened to the album something clicked. The production was good, the songs were catchy, but something was wrong. I realized I hated it. It had all the smooth catchy melodies interrupted by perfect screams, but I wasn’t buying into it. The album was even produced by the John Feldman, who had also produced The Used. What was so amazing to me about The Used was how genuine it was. Somehow Feldman had captured four Utah boys at the height of desperation and it was beautiful. By the time Story of the Year came around, the sound that The Used had recorded in their debut was being replicated - which meant it wasn’t 100% genuine. To be fair even The Used wasn’t able to capture that essence in their next two albums, but at least they harvested that “screamo sound”.

Now when I hear of these screamo bands with names that 105% of the time have adjectives like “bleed” or “dying” in their names, I want to puke. What it is to Burn and The Used both came out in 2002, and sparked a movement. Unfortunately the sound got played out by 2003.

Here’s the Finch video that got me into them:

I recently spent my Sunday afternoon geeking out at the Los Angeles convention center for a Wired event called NEXTFEST. The event featured innovations in communication, design, entertainment, exploration, health, play, robots, transportation, security, and green living. It was super cool to see all the new technology…especially the incredibly neat Morpho Towers!

I took video, but my footage does not do the Towers any justice.
Luckily, there is a very clear video on youtube.

OK, so the Morpho Towers and pretty much EVERYTHING else at Nextfest was awesome.
All except this one thing….A ROBOT DJ.

Can this Robotic DJ eventually become a FR*A????
I’m gonna bust out my Hater-ade on this one and say- NO.

At this point, the robot DJ is still very experimental (aka weak-sauce). It can play records, but that’s about it. If you think about it, these two robotic DJ arms are merely super-expensive jukebox players that have the ability to move records forward and backwards in a super-annoying & inefficient way. The AI still does not have an understanding of beat-matching, rhythm, or style. The two robotic arms are limited to:

1. SELECTING A RECORD
2. DROPPING THE RECORD ON THE TURNTABLE
3. LOWERING THE NEEDLE
4. MOVING THE RECORD FORWARD AND BACKWARDS
5. LIFTING THE NEEDLE
6. PICKING UP THE RECORD
7. RETURNING THE RECORD TO ITS ORIGINAL LOCATION

Sounds like a jukebox to me…except for the Forward and Backwards part.

I hope the day NEVER comes, but if fellow DJs start losing gigs to these frickin Robots…I’m gonna go medieval on these soulless pieces of shit with a baseball bat - OFFICE SPACE style. WUT!?

GO SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL DJ!!!