Paramore

 We went to see Paramore live this weekend.  They put on an amazing show - they were all very tight as a band, and the songs were incredible, and they had so much charisma on stage.

Hayley Williams is an amazing singer and frontwoman.  This was the last stop on their tour but her voice was none worse for the wear.  She belted out every song like it was their first tour.

Taylor York is a great guitarist and a fantastic showman.  It was so entertaining to watch him.  I also love his guitar playing - very inventive in the context of pop songs.  The guitar tones sounded very midrangy as we were listening to them sound checking, but in the mix, they sat perfectly.

Zac Farro was a super solid drummer and through the band's recordings, I've found him to be very inventive.  The drum sound at the venue was great, though overall the sound was kind of mediocre.  He also stepped out to sing a song by his band Halfnoise.

In preparation for the concert, I had listened to their entire setlist and loved the material.  I also read about the band's history, and about how Williams wanted this to be a band effort rather than a solo project, despite her being personally signed to a record label.  Listening to the songs and the efforts by the musicians, I can understand why.  They are all very inventive musicians, and I like how the later material is very bass driven.  In fact, it's not a surprise that songs like "Ain't It Fun", with the really cool bass line, were produced by Justin Meldel Johnson, a bass player himself.

I might be late to the game, but I'm now a big Paramore fan.

Fury - Ektomorf

I've heard some Ektomorf in the past and really like them.  The lead singer and guitarist is not shy to show his Max Cavalera influence, both visually (camo ESP guitars) and musically.

Being a huge Max fan, I appreciate this.  I've only gotten three tracks into this album so far, but I really like it.  Hopefully it will rise to the level that the new Harms Way has and be one of my favorite albums of 2018!

Promise Me, Dad - Joe Biden

A memoir of part of this time in office, "Promise Me, Dad" is a poignant and enlightening story revolving around the decline and loss of his son Beau to brain cancer.  I learned about Biden's involvement with foreign policy, specifically the Sunni, Shiites and Kurds in Iraq, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and the foreign aid given to the Northern Triangle (Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador).  I learned about the experimental cancer treatments given to Beau, and about Beau's legacy as Attorney General of Delaware.

Maybe most importantly, I learned about the compassion and dedication of not just Biden, but his entire family, and also of Barack Obama as he helped Joe deal with the grief of losing his son.

Through his Vice Presidency, I didn't know a lot about what Biden had done, but this book shed some light on that.  He also talks about his decision not to run for President, but in hindsight, for the good of the country, I wish he had.

It was also a story of hope - hope that you can be okay, after a loss.  This was an important message to me.

This was a great book.

Boss HM-2

The Boss HM-2 is a distortion pedal that was made in Japan between 1983-1988.  Production was moved to Taiwan between 1989-1991, after which it was discontinued.

It has recently attained cult status because of it's use on seminal metal recordings in the 90s, particularly Entombed and At The Gates.  It's seem a recent resurgence due to bands like Nails and Harm's Way.

Liking bands from both of these eras, I bought one recently.  It is a great sounding pedal, in it's crappy way, if you know what I mean.  It's not meant to emulate fat refined Marshall tone.  It's meant to be brash and obnoxious.  I love this pedal!

Simon Prebble

Upon listening to the first hour of the audiobook "Remains of the Day", by Kazuo Ishiguro, the reader sounded strangely familiar.  It occurred to me that the narrator of the butler in "Remains" reminded me of Winston from the audiobook version of "1984", and I discovered that Simon Prebble narrated both of these books.

I never thought about how much I associate certain voices with certain stories, so much so that Prebble's voice seems like Winston's actual voice to me.  That makes it slightly challenging to listen to "Remains of the Day", except that the storyline seems completely different from 1984.

Still, it's weird, because 1984 is one of my favorite books, and Prebble's voiceover is a big part of that.  He is a very good reader though!

Black Panther

We saw "Black Panther" this weekend.  It was a really good movie!  First and foremost, it was an exciting, epic movie in the modern Disney style, replete with Star Wars styled dogfight scenes, excellent sword play, and one-on-one fighting.

On another level, it was a socially aware movie that suggested that the solution to race related problems is not the arming of oppressed people - rather, it suggested positive dialog and sharing.  Maybe a little idealistic, but I thought it was an interesting suggestion.

It lacked some of the wacky humor of recent Marvel movies, but I like the contrasts of each recent Marvel Studios movie.

It Was Me All Along - Andie Mitchell

In "It Was Me All Along", Andie Mitchell talks about her eating disorders, and her life experiences that contributed to them.  It's a story of transformation, filled with a lot of stories that I think are relate able to anyone who has had any kind of troubled relationship with food.  There was a lot that of female specific issues but overall, I think this is a non-gender specific book.

I like this passage, towards the end:

"In grieving the end of our relationship, I'd gained 15 pounds.  And slowly, as I felt the balance restored, I accepted them as part of me.  Maybe I'd lose them, maybe I wouldn't.  Either way, I had to be kind to myself.  What I discovered in that year, and perhaps in all of my life, was that I am always growing, always learning.  And whenever I think I've figured it all out, I've really only just begun."


I really enjoyed this - maybe one of the better books I've read so far this year.

Dave Lombardo, again

There was a passage of this interview that really resonated with me.

"I don't like guys like that either.  I walk into a room and people don't know who I am and then I see their attitudes, and when they find out who I am they drop their guard.  'Oh, Dave, how are you?'  but before that, they had all this ego.  It's like, I don't deal with people like that.  My dad always said 'Never think you're better than anyone else' you know, and I've held that throughout my life.  I'm first a human being like everybody else.  I just have a different job.  And just because I have this job it doesn't put me in a power to treat people different or to use people.  I don't like people like that so I refuse to be one of them."

I love this statement and identify with it.  I've never felt that my job as an engineer puts me above the secretaries, or the janitor, or anyone else.  And I've never felt in any of my bands that my ability as a guitar player or leader of a group makes anyone else's opinions or preferences diminish.

For Lombardo to have this kind of humility, gives me something to aspire to.  He's one of my favorite drummers, but he's definitely a very cool human being too.

I think it's so cool that he has a shirt designed specifically for him, and I bought one of his limited edition shirts!  I want to support him in any way I can.

A beautiful bento box

I went looking for a bento box this past weekend, but couldn't find anything that I thought was really nice and had a lot of utility.  Everything at the store was plastic, and seemed to be sized for children.

Fast forward to Tuesday, and I found a beautiful okurimono (gift) left on my desk by a friend who visited Japan last year.

This bento box is perfect - two separate compartments for rice on the bottom and okazu on the top.  A beautiful gift from a good friend.

Modern Pain

While searching for Self Deconstruction albums, I found this album with the same name by a band called Modern Pain.  It's freaking awesome!

Japanese grindcore

I am blown away by Japanese all-girl grindcore!  There are two bands that are so good.

Flagitious Idiosyncrasy in the Dilapidation - what a strange name!  But they are just shredding.

Self Deconstruction is also amazing.

They don't have releases on Apple, so I'll have to find their music elsewhere.  From their videos though, they are crazy good!  Much better than, ahem, Babymetal.

Death Note

I have never read a Manga comic in my life, and know very little about what Manga even is.  My first ever Manga book is Death Note.  It's pretty interesting and fun and easy to read.

Death Note is about a kid named Light who discovers a book left in the human realm by Ryuk, who is a Shinigami (God of Death).  The book has the power to kill people, if you write their name in it and visualize the person.  Light uses the book to start murdering criminals, and becomes hunted by a mysterious crime fighter.

The only thing that's kind of funny is that the e-book flips right to left, the panels on each page read right to left, the word bubbles read right to left....  but the text in the word bubbles read left to right!

Music list 2018

Albums I'm looking forward to:

1. Eyes Set To Kill - Eyes Set To Kill (2/16)
2. Posthuman - Harms Way (2/9)
3. Firepower - Judas Priest (3/9)

My favorite albums of the year so far:

"Old" stuff to check out:

Xibalba
Pig Destroyer


New releases to check out:

Thunderbolt - Saxon (classic metal)
Rocknroll Machine - Turbonegro (punk rock and roll)
Down Below - Tribulation (Gothic black metal)
Catharsis - Machine Head (Slipknot)
Order of Torment - Genocide Pact (vintage death metal)
Into Beyond - LIVLOS (thrashy death)
The Awakening - Wrath Sins (sorta Mastodon-ish/nu-metalish)
Puncuring the Grotesque - Autopsy (old school death metal)
We Exist Even Dead - Eventide (djent)
Fury - Ektomorf (3/16)
Beasts of Burgundy - Squirrel Nut Zippers (3/23)
Rotation - Marc Rizzo (3/30)
To Drink From The Night Itself - At The Gates (5/18)

Sting-Ray Afternoons - Steve Rushin

Steve Rushin is just about the exact same age as me, and I think this book appeals to readers in close proximity to our age.  Growing up in the 70s, there are lots of things that only people that grew up in our era will understand and identify with.

However, familiarity and nostalgia can only go so far.  Steve Rushin's biography is relatively uninteresting, so no matter how much times he references the theme from Good Times, or Farah Fawcett posters, I was pretty bored and just felt like getting this book over with.

Hardcore and thrash

There are a lot of relatively newer bands out that I really like.  Maybe because they capture the essence of stuff that I've been into for awhile - stuff like Arise-era Sepultura, Pennywise, and Nails.

Terror put out a really great EP called "The Walls Will Fall" in 2017.  It's thrashy and hardcore and reminds me a bit of Hatebreed.

Harm's Way has a new album coming out called Posthuman, that sounds like Max Cavalera meets Nails.

Incendiary sounds like Zak DeLaRocha singing over hardcore.  Their "Thousand Mile Stare" is awesome!

And I've been raving about Power Trip's 2017 album "Nightmare Logic".  It's one of my favorite albums of the 2010s.

The Death of Expertise - Tom Nichols

This title of this book is, as the author initially states, pretentious and self important.  But it makes a lot of sense to me.  The basic concept of the book is that Americans are arrogantly proud of their ignorance.  Nichols says that we have gone from an intelligent society, to an ignorant society, to a arrogantly incorrect society.  I believe this book was heavily influenced by the 2016 U.S. Presidential elections.

I haven't done any fact checking (ha - the moral of this book), but if he says that people don't regard expert advise because of the college system and the media, it makes some sense to me.

I see ignorance proliferate even in my workplace, with people that have college and advanced degrees.  It's disheartening to know that even intelligent informed opinions elude some of the most educated people.

I think what Nichols fails to examine is the lack of emotional or interpersonal or intrapersonal intelligence, as described by Daniel Goleman or Howard Gardner.  I believe that this is a factor that makes certain people arrogantly incorrect.

Regardless, I think this is a good book that attempts to explain why American society is uninformed and doesn't care, and a wake-up call to Americans to think more critically.  Unfortunately, I'm sure most of the readers of the book are the choir being preached to.

God Is Not Great - Christopher Hitchens

I could not get through the first half hour of this audiobook.

The content is fine, and I've read a couple of pro-atheism books (Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins).

The problem is the author is the reader of the audiobook.  His volume fluctuations are so severe that I have to turn it up super loud to understand his soft passages, which make his loud proclamations jarring.

I have this on paperback, so I'll read that instead.