Author Archives: Steve Kazimir

Video: Times New Viking “Try Harder”

Times New Viking continues to release beautiful little film explosions for the songs on their latest album, Dancer Equired. The latest comes via directors Juliane Piecha and Ian Cook.

The band is on tour. Keep reading for dates. Continue reading

Fader Fort 2011 RSVP Open

Click here and may all your dreams come true.

Dickies SXSW Day Show Features Dum Dum Girls, Okkervil River (more)

You can RSVP here. Keep reading for flyer. Continue reading

Filter SXSW Event Includes Surfer Blood, Raphael Saadiq (and more)

RSVP here.

Austinist Announces SXSW Day Show

Let the SXSW Unofficial Day Show announcements begin!

Austinist Teams Up With Windish Agency, Laneway Festival and Eat Your Own Ears

Join us on Wednesday at noon for music from Cloud Nothings, Twin Shadow, Royal Bangs, Givers, Cloud Control and many more, including a special surprise to be announced later. More details, including RSVP links, etc. coming soon. (full story)

SXSW Launches Streaming Radio Station on Shoutcast

Listen to it here. Doesn’t look like you can skip songs a la Pandora, and clicking on an artist’s name leads you to an AOL search result….

She Still Never Played Killer Queen
My 3-Night Stand with Tori Amos: An Assessment of the Experience

tori

Most Tori concert Internet reviews start the same way. “This was my nth show, I’ve been a fan since 19XX, Album X, Tori was SOOOO GOOOOOD” I’ll try not to do that. Instead here’s my own fuzzy memory transcript of a conversation I had with Tori Amos on September 19, 2001, at the Virgin Megastore in Union Square, Manhattan, New York:

ME: So Tori, the next time you do a covers album, a little Queen would be nice.
TORI: I was gonna do Killer Queen!
ME: Aw, what happened?
TORI: Might play it liiiive….
ME: At your Beacon Theater shows next month, that’d be fantastic!
TORI: Which show?
ME: Any. I’ll be at all of them.

I’m really not in the habit of remembering shows, I’m more in the habit of remembering going to shows. The things that happen before, during (apart from the music) and after. So it was that on October the 9th, 10th, & 11th of 2001 I found myself at the Beacon Theater seeing Tori Amos for three concerts, right in a row. I remember going with friends one night. I remember the guy who bought the ticket I had to unload on a sidewalk scalper sitting next to me and commiserating with him about how much he paid and how little I got. I remember going by myself one night right after kung fu class, getting to the Beacon from Bloomfield, NJ in an unprecedented (for the time of day) 38 minutes…I caught every green light going up 10th Avenue, and can still see that emerald chain of light in my mind’s eye, stretching off into infinity with the promise of a great night ahead. What did Tori actually play? I’d need the Internet to know. I certainly remember what she didn’t play. I also remember, after all was done, after sitting through a 3rd interminable opening act, a 3rd performance of ’97 Bonnie and Clyde, a 3rd night of butt-to-seat numbnessosity, thinking, “You know what? I love Tori and all, but I’m never going to do this again.

I could use more sentences, with more commas, to tell to you that I, in fact, did do it again. But I already did. Do it again, and tell you that I did it again. Again.

Here is how it all went down. If I type fast enough, I’ll remember what songs she played and how it sounded.

It started innocently enough. I informed my loving wife, who, throughout this entire adventure was at my side, and whose daily showers of love, patience, support, and understanding are truly more than I ever deserve, that Tori was performing at Radio City Music Hall.

We’ll get tickets, it was decided. Maybe Patty wants to go? We’ll see and then get tickets. Maybe Patty’s sister wants to go see the show in Phillly? Ah, she’s playing in Philly, yes. Maybe we’ll go to that one. Which one will we go to? Maybe we can visit my parents, they live close enough to Philly. We’ll see who wants to go where and when, and we’ll buy tickets to that one show. Which show now? Well, we’ll see what prices are when they go on sale, and then decide.

New York on sale: *click* Bought. Philly on sale: *click* Bought. All right, so I bought tickets to both shows. That’s a change of plan. So we’re going to see both. Hooray.

A week or so later, the Red Bank, NJ show is announced, right smack dab in the middle. What do you know. Surely we can’t go to that one, too. That would be crazy. Red Bank on sale: *click* Bought. Color me certifiable. Honey, now you’re not gonna believe this…. Continue reading

On Seeing The Bangles in NJ Last Night at My Childhood Movie Theater

Duffy says: The best man to my wedding, Steve Kazimir, sometimes e-mails me about shows he goes to in NJ. He went to see The Bangles last night at The Wellmont Theater in Montclair, NJ. To many of you this is a cool new venue run by the Bowery Ballroom people, but growing up it was a movie theater where me and Steve saw a bunch of films, good and bad. Here’s what he wrote me:

 
 
 
So when I bought tickets for the bangles show at wellmont a while back it wasn’t because I’m a die hard bangles fan. I thought, “hey, it’s a harmless show I could take the wife to, it’s where I saw lawrence of arabia for the first time, what the hell?”

So I went to the show to say I went to the show. I went for those ironic, kitschy, 80s nostalgic reasons. I went to the place where I sat through 4 hours of kenneth branagh’s Hamlet (TWICE) to earn my “I’m making fun of myself for doing this while I’m doing it” merit badge.

I mean, walk like an egyptian for chrissakes, right?

Rob, please explain to me why, if this is so, the Bangles rocked my face off last night. You don’t return to the place where you saw Charlize Theron’s Oscar-winning turn in “Monster”, or where Johnny Depp had to outmaneuver Christopher Walken in real time just to be rocked like that on a Sunday night. It was quite an unexpected rocking. I certainly didn’t rock that hard when I saw “The Daytrippers” there. Although in retrospect, back in 1996, when I went there and Sean Connery “Welcome(d me to) the Rock” I guess that’s what he meant. That’s what he meant all along. The Bangles. They rocked.