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Music, Page 1

New Years, live-ish with Green Day

I've gone to far too many events this past week. If I don't put an end to this quick, I may be­come "nor­mal"…

I took it to the next level tonight, though, by trav­el­ing into the fu­ture to see Green Day's New Years Eve con­cert at LA Live. Well, sort-of. NBC was film­ing the con­cert with Car­son Daly as the host. They gave us all new years hats and had us all count down from 30 as if the ball was drop­ping on New Years Eve. Ap­par­ently they'll air this then. TV Magic!

After the count down, Green Day came on with a "Happy fuck­ing New Year!" and rocked the stage for the rest of the night. Their per­for­mance was com­plete with ex­plo­sions, fire­works, and a good mix be­tween their newer stuff and the older stuff I was lis­ten­ing to on tape when I was eight years old (holy crap) in el­e­men­tary school. Bet­ter yet, a friend I hadn't seen in ages was down to visit fam­ily for the week, so I met her and her broth­ers there and caught up. Good times!

The Whigs come to LA

Just saw The Whigs live at the Trou­ba­dour—what a kick-ass show! The owner of my pizza place turned me on to these guys a year or so ago and I've been a big fan ever since.

Open­ing for them was The Dead Trees and The Fea­tures. I had heard of nei­ther, but they both put on great sets of their own—I bought their CDs right after the show. :)

If you've never heard The Whigs be­fore, they are giv­ing out two songs from their up­com­ing CD "In The Dark" for free from their web­site.

San Diego Comic-Con '09

I spent all day Sat­ur­day in the San Diego Con­ven­tion Cen­ter, at­tend­ing Comic-Con with my brother. Once again, an amaz­ing ex­pe­ri­ence.

The first thing we did was make a bee line to the SAE/FSM booth, where I picked up a copy of the Bat­tlestar Galac­tica Sea­son 4 sound­track. After that was done, we took a quick walk around the rest of the ex­hibit hall. This is a pretty damned big ex­hibit hall, span­ning the en­tire bot­tom floor of the con­ven­tion cen­ter. With all the peo­ple there to push through, it takes about 10 min­utes to walk from one end to the other.

While walk­ing around the hall I hap­pened to find Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game, with cover art done by friend Cyril Van Der Hae­gen. I men­tioned this to the guy be­hind the counter, but he just feigned in­ter­est hop­ing I would buy it! Oh well.

After that I went look­ing for the Oni Press booth, where I bought my brother the first Scott Pil­grim book. He fin­ished read­ing it be­fore we left (he was not so in­ter­ested in Ray Brad­bury) so we went down to the floor again and he bought him­self the next few books in the se­ries. With any luck, I'll have got my brother hooked on graphic nov­els! I also went to the Top Shelf booth hop­ing to pick up a copy of Blan­kets but they were all out.

The first panel we at­tended was for Dune, with Brian Her­bert and Kevin J. An­der­son. They were dis­cussing their lat­est novel The Winds of Dune and com­ment­ing on the process of mak­ing a new book every year. I must admit, I have read many of the new Dune books and al­though they aren't Frank Her­bert ma­te­r­ial, I have en­joyed most of them ( Sand­worms of Dune being a no­table ex­cep­tion for hav­ing a very shal­low plot and in­vok­ing sev­eral dei ex machina).

After that we headed back over to the SAE/FSM booth to get the CDs signed by Bear Mc­Creary. We were first in line! At the same time, Bryan Lee O'Mal­ley (au­thor of Scott Pil­grim) was sign­ing at the Oni Press booth—we went over there af­ter­ward but the line was so long that we didn't care to try for it. The Bioshock 2 booth was small—ba­si­cally a small veiled closet with a game­play trailer play­ing for 5-6 peo­ple at a time. But that trailer made the game out to look pretty awe­some. You play the first big daddy, the only one with free will. You can take air­locks to go out­side of Rap­ture into the ocean. You now make the choice to ei­ther har­vest or adopt lit­tle sis­ters. Adopt­ing them seems to store them in­side your suit some­where, it wasn't too clear on that. You can take them out to have them har­vest adam from cer­tain bod­ies. While har­vest­ing, you need to guard them from hoards of splicers. Then comes some­thing new—your lit­tle sis­ter says "Uh oh, I don't think big sis wants me to play with you any­more", and in comes the big sis­ter—these are very quick, su­per-ag­ile en­e­mies that pos­sess telekine­sis.

The sec­ond panel we at­tended was that of Ray Brad­bury. He talked of his fas­ci­na­tion of space ex­plo­ration and walk­ing on the moon for the first time. Per­haps most in­ter­est­ingly, he claimed to have total re­call of his en­tire life. He said he was a 10 month baby, and de­vel­oped hear­ing and sight within the womb. He claims his mem­o­ries go back to being in the womb and after birth.

The final panel was for Human Tar­get, the new TV se­ries from Fox. In the show, our main hero (Christo­pher Chance) gets hired by rich peo­ple to solve any prob­lems or threats against them. He is a very in­tel­li­gent de­tec­tive, im­per­son­ator, and all-around body­guard. It stars Mark Val­ley as Christo­pher Chance, Jackie Earle Haley as Guer­rero, and Chi McBride as Win­ston, with the score done by Bear Mc­Creary. We got to screen the pilot be­fore a short Q&A with the stars and pro­duc­ers.

Human Tar­get has some pretty awe­some ac­tion scenes, pretty sim­i­lar to the Bourne se­ries. It is some of the best ac­tion I've seen on TV for as long as I can re­mem­ber. The act­ing is stel­lar, and the score sounds some­where be­tween Caprica and The Sarah Con­nor Chron­i­cles. The char­ac­ters have a light quirk­i­ness sim­i­lar to Push­ing Daisies. The show is being billed as a pro­ce­dural with a light sprin­kling of se­r­ial, which is pretty typ­i­cal for Fox. They want to give you a new ac­tion movie every week. Un­for­tu­nately, the pilot had a lot of faults that I hope they steer clear of in the se­ries.

For one thing, the char­ac­ters are too flaw­less. The main char­ac­ters—all an­ti­heroes it seems—al­ways know ex­actly what to say, have a per­fect plan, and im­me­di­ately know ex­actly what to do to keep the plan on track (pun!) from any curve­balls. Not once did it show an im­per­fec­tion, and I had a hard time be­liev­ing or re­lat­ing to them be­cause of it.

An­other prob­lem I saw was with Guer­rero—he had no in­tro­duc­tion, and just sort of im­posed him­self on the story. He is a com­puter hacker, but it never re­ally showed that process. Most of his scenes were just quick cuts to him re­veal­ing some new in­for­ma­tion that he hacked off screen.

I had planned to meet some friends while I was there, but that was a pretty big fail­ure all around. One didn't pick up his phone. An­other didn't wake up until re­ally late and my phone died in the mid­dle of a con­ver­sa­tion with him. The one guy I was able to meet I didn't do any­thing with be­cause he spent the whole day play­ing D&D.

The BBC Amer­ica booth fea­tured a lot of Doc­tor Who trin­kets and ap­parel, with lots of ad­ver­tis­ing for the new Torch­wood mini-sea­son Chil­dren of Earth(which is pretty good, by the way—go watch it!). There was an awe­some life-sized Dalek on dis­play.

We spent the two hour ride home lis­ten­ing to the Bat­tlestar CD, and it didn't dis­ap­point!

BSG Season 4 Soundtrack details

Bear Mc­Creary has an­nounced track list­ings and cover art for the dual-disc BSG Sea­son 4 Sound­track. The first disc in­cludes the haunt­ing "Gaeta’s Lament" sung by none other than Alessan­dro Ju­liani (Felix Gaeta) him­self, two tracks from my fa­vorite episodes of the sea­son "The Oath" and "Blood on the scales", and the sec­ond disc is the in­cred­i­ble en­tire score of the two-hour fi­nale "Day­break".

I can't wait!

Composers, everywhere!

I went to a sign­ing event yes­ter­day, with 15 or so big name com­posers. I talked with a lot of cool peo­ple: Michael Gi­acchino (Lost, Star Trek movie, Up), Stu Phillips (Bat­tlestar Galac­tica, Knight Rider), Ron Jones (Su­per­man, Star Trek: TNG, Fam­ily Guy), and John Mur­phy (28 Days Later), that I can think of. Prob­a­bly one or two I can't re­mem­ber right now (I've been awake for a long time). I'm ashamed to admit if there wasn't info dis­played for them, I would not have known who most of these guys were.

The whole rea­son I came, though, was to meet Bear Mc­Creary—com­poser of the mod­ern Bat­tlestar Galat­ica. It was a real treat to meet him, and as a sur­prise his beau­ti­ful wife to be Raya Yarbrough (who can be heard on some BSG tracks) was there too.

While I was there I picked up an ad­vance copy of the Caprica sound­track and got it signed. I'm re­ally en­joy­ing this album—it feels like BSG, yet at the same time some­thing com­pletely dif­fer­ent. Like the show, BSG's music was very char­ac­ter-dri­ven. Nearly every­one had their own theme, and what you'd hear on scene would ei­ther be a vari­ant of a theme or ac­tion music. Caprica's music feels much more scene-dri­ven. You can feel drama and emo­tion in them, often times pic­tur­ing a scene to go along with it. It is more sus­pense­ful, more sor­row­ful, more ad­ven­tur­ous.

It was also much softer than oth­ers. The TT Dy­namic Range Meter av­er­aged around 12, with some tracks going as high as 19—com­pare this to the new Green Day album which man­ages a measly 6. Re­play­Gain ac­tu­ally wanted to raise the vol­ume—some­thing I haven't seen in a long while! This is re­ally cool to lis­ten to on good head­phones :)

Now, on to the con­certs.

Bear McCreary to score Capcom’s Dark Void

Bear Mc­Creary, com­poser of Bat­tlestar Galac­tica, let out the in­for­ma­tion today that he is scor­ing Cap­com’s new game, Dark Void. I re­mem­ber some videos of this com­ing out a while ago, from E3 maybe, and it looked like a pretty fun game but after so much time I had for­got­ten about it. These new videos make it look as awe­some as ever, though, and with Bear scor­ing it, you know the music will be amaz­ing!

If you like his music, con­sider post­ing at Cap­com where Bear is try­ing to get au­tho­riza­tion to re­lease a sound­track CD.

You were a frakkin good show

So say we all!

Battlestar Galactica coming to a close, but Caprica remains inbound.

A few weeks ago, for the first time in my life, I watched a TV episode twice. Back to back, with no break in be­tween. Blood on the Scales, for me, was pure gold. The story was in­cred­i­ble, es­pe­cially if you got the chance to see the we­bisodes that sup­plied im­por­tant con­text for it. The act­ing was top-notch. Alessan­dro Ju­liani in par­tic­u­lar, who has had a rel­a­tively small amount of screen time be­fore now, re­ally stepped up to de­liver a won­der­ful mov­ing per­for­mance. The music—oh my sweet god the music. Any­one who knows me well will know my love for the BSG sound­tracks, but the music in this par­tic­u­lar episode spoke to me on such a pro­found level that I lit­er­ally missed di­a­log at points and had to rewind to hear it again. I will be shocked, pleas­antly, if I ever watch an­other episode of any other TV show that af­fects me like this one.

This Fri­day be­gins the final count­down for Bat­tlestar. It will be the first in a three episode arc to end the se­ries. On one hand I am sad to see it go. I will miss not just watch­ing it, but hop­ping on­line af­ter­ward to read Bear Mc­Creary’s en­thralling be­hind-the-scenes sum­mary of the score. But on the other hand, I would rather see it get the strong fin­ish it de­serves than see it be­come the prover­bial Old Yeller like Star­gate: SG-1 did.

But Caprica will be start­ing early next year, so maybe all is not lost. I worry about them milk­ing the mythos to death in it, but these guys trans­formed a corny 70s show into some­thing amaz­ing, so I have a lot of hope. Ear­lier this month, Bear gave an early pre­view per­for­mance of the music of Caprica.

CN 2009 recap

This year’s NSU Cul­ture Night was in­cred­i­ble!

Open­ing up was Kyodo Taiko, per­form­ing their Swing and Black and White sets. Black and White is a new, pow­er­ful set cre­ated this year which I sus­pect will be­come a new fa­vorite among fans. As al­ways, Kyodo loves to have fun – doing funny skits in be­tween sets, and al­ways show­ing off their skill and good humor through­out their per­for­mance.

Next was the drama team. Drama al­ways sets the theme for the show, typ­i­cally about the cur­rent is­sues of the Nikkei com­mu­nity. This year their per­for­mance cen­tered on re­cent buy­outs in Lit­tle Tokyo, hop­ing to bring at­ten­tion to what has been a de­cid­edly stealthy move by cor­po­ra­tions that may end up re­mov­ing a large chunk of the cul­ture from Lit­tle Tokyo. This year’s set had plenty of humor to go along with it, oc­ca­sion­ally pok­ing fun at rival Los An­ge­les col­lege USC. They brought back a run­ning joke from last year’s per­for­mance which re­ally had the croud bust­ing up. This per­for­mance was split into sev­eral parts, spread through­out the night.

The Odori (tra­di­tional dance) team opened up with their typ­i­cal slow, ex­ag­ger­ated, metic­u­lous dance. But some­thing was dif­fer­ent this year – for the first time I’ve seen, they are using a bit more mod­ern music. They per­formed Gion Kouta, and ex­pertly merged it’s more com­plex and slightly faster music with the tra­di­tional Odori style. This ap­proach was a pleas­ant sur­prise, and puts them more in line with Kyodo’s tra­di­tional-mod­ern hy­brid style.

NSU Mod­ern’s first set was their very en­er­getic Mad Hat­ter’s Tea Party, which is a real treat to see live. Mod­ern re­ally shines here, show­ing a true pas­sion for in­no­va­tion in dance—these guys must sweat pure con­cen­trated skill.

After a short in­ter­mis­sion, Odori started the show per­form­ing the aptly named Mat­suri, also a more mod­ern up­beat song. This was evoca­tive of a real mat­suri (fes­ti­val) in Japan and was very fun to watch!

Kyodo came back to per­form Yon­sei, Nanairo, and of course their sig­na­ture fi­nale En­core. Nanairo is a new set cre­ated by this year’s new­bie class, but not to fear—this has all the en­ergy you’d ex­pect in a Kyodo per­for­mance. Kyodo holds a spe­cial place in my heart—the first time I saw them left me spell­bound, caus­ing me to fall in love with taiko and seek it out any­where I could find it. I’ve been to many taiko per­for­mances since then—most of them fea­tur­ing Kyodo—so I am quite fa­mil­iar with En­core. Yet after all this time, it still fills me with the same glee as if I was see­ing it for the first time.

Mod­ern closed the night with their Tribal and Jazz sets, both of which I've never seen be­fore. Tribal was typ­i­cal Mod­ern style—en­er­getic, fun, super sexy, and good beats. Jazz took a com­pletely dif­fer­ent turn with a strong bal­let per­for­mance, show­ing Mod­ern’s di­ver­sity.

And that’s the night, it was a blast! I was happy to see Leech Sen­sei there, my awe­some Japan­ese teacher from high school. Looks like he brought even more kids than when I orig­i­nally came to a CN with him, so I’m glad to see Japan­ese is get­ting more pop­u­lar! I just hope they aren’t giv­ing him as hard of a time as I did, read­ing Dune in class and ar­gu­ing with him about the mer­its of Quake vs. Di­a­blo II ;).

Edit: added miss­ing Kyodo and Mod­ern videos, and up­dated the ex­ist­ing links to the CN2009 ver­sions. Thanks zachirie!

NSU Culture Night 2009

There are only a few weeks left until the 23rd an­nual NSU Cul­ture Night at UCLA. This is a re­ally fun night ex­plor­ing Japan­ese-Amer­i­can cul­ture. There will be taiko (drum­ming), mod­ern dance, drama, and odori (tra­di­tional dance) per­for­mances. These groups are uni­ver­sity kids so they know how to have fun—every time I’ve seen them per­form it has been a phe­nom­e­nal ex­pe­ri­ence.

It’s free and open to all so if you’re in­ter­ested and can get to UCLA’s Royce Hall at 6:00pm on Pres­i­dents’ Day (Feb­ru­ary 16th), you can re­serve tick­ets by send­ing an email with your name and num­ber of tick­ets to nsuculturenight2009@​gmail.​com.