weekendity: rock and roll and plants and museums

I've been banging out this paper, and it's now up to six pages, half cited, just needing a little more flesh on the bare bones, a few visuals to get some points across. People ask me at the coffeeshop what I'm working on and their eyes glaze over when I start talking about eleven thousand virgins getting martyred by Huns and reliquary trade in the Middle Ages, but that's okay. The place I get the best work done in is now devoid of ukulele-praising boomers, and thankful the music is better than the one near me. I forget how much I can't deal with twee indie when I'm away from it for so long.

So me and College Radio Homie and a friend of his ended up watching another mutual friend play Friday night. I wasn't planning on this, but I'd heard some good things about the headliner and figured why not.  The bar was packed, I didn't want to drink, so we stood by the stage and ended up watching a Liturgy side project that was pretty swank on the instrumental end (being neither a kvltist or appropriating hipster, I was more disinterested than anything else), but it was really good and riffy and unpretentious for a bunch of PitchforkianBrooklynistas. I described them to CRH as sounding to my strange ears like Kyuss playing afropop and surf music and then just being Kyussy. Would've picked up a demo if they had any, but no merch.

 And a then a local band with gear that we drooled over including a ton of pedals brought the shoegaze with a little extra sludge on the side.

I was sleepy by this point and so I ducked out maybe 2/3rds of the way through the set and went home, because I'm getting old and knew I wanted to save my energy for the rest of the tuneage to come.

Successful in our pursuit of good riffs and hanging out, we met up the next night since I told him he'd probably like Royal Thunder given our musical common ground. I had gone to a college radio shindig at a darkroom where I hung out with DJs from the other station and made more phantograms, and we talked about weird arcane Clevelandia lore before I headed out. I was also told for the first time that I'm "well-preserved" which makes me feel old though it's probably some combination of clean living and general attire than anything else.

I hate that I get skittish walking down the street from my car when I see a guy coming the other way who starts the whole 'hey baby why won't you talk to me come on baby' and I know there's the inevitable racial politics here, as I step off the sidewalk and walk in the street to give me a little more room for movement.  One fellow Clevelandian pointed out to me once  that "hookers in other cities wear hot pants and in Cleveland they wear sweatpants," but I'd still assume given the look of the regular clientele of Now That's Class what with the leather jacket and the band t-shirt, that it's pretty damn obvious I'm on my way to get my fix of tuneage rather than working the corner.

 A local punk band was playing when I got there and I'm just not big into the whole Misfits/horror punk thing, never have been. I think you need tattoos to like that stuff. Ancient VVisdom played an almost similar set minus the one song of theirs I kind of liked, I'd probably dig it more if it wasn't for the vocals and lyrics, given my lack of affinity for the Lord of the Underworld and the nu-metalish stylings that didn't mesh well with the dirgy doom-folk thing for me.

Royal Thunder made converts out of my comrades and either that night in Pittsburgh was an off night or their live show has really tightened up because they played a great long set full of big riffs and drum fills and that voice that made me happy to see other ladies who can bring the rock and or roll with raw power who don't need the gimmicks of politics or excess skin. It's nice to get steamrolled by some serious live goodness, and they were nice to talk to afterwards. All my pictures turned out badly but I didn't take too many, because we were immersed in that beautiful cathartic sound.

I went to the art museum for a homework assignment, but detoured at the Greenhouse to get my fill of beauty and lushness and the smells of jasmine and citrus and I forget how awesome the cacti are.

listened to a talk about illuminated manuscripts, rolled my eyes with my classmates at some stupid audience questions, and wandered around  looking at armor, Impressionist paintings, and the newly-reopened medieval section full of relics and rock crystal and beautifully carved wood. No pictures since I didn't want to get kicked out. Still, it's awesome that such a place is free.