Killing Two or More Birds With One Blog Post

The Man Called E
Originally uploaded by devpd.

So...it's been a while since I posted something. And it's been over a week since the eels concert I attended last Sunday, but I have yet to post anything about it. And there's that new Catbird Records release I haven't talked about yet. So without further ado...

• eels delivered one of the best concerts I have attended so far this year. Crafting a concert experience radically different from their "With Strings" tour captured on DVD and CD last year, eels went totally rock 'n roll on our asses, delivering drastically reworked versions of their more somber album tracks. Tracks like "Old Shit/New Shit" and "I Like Birds" were barely recognizable in their new formats. Imagine "My Beloved Monster" chanelled through James Brown, or a version of "I'm Going to Stop Pretending That I Didn't Break Your Heart" covered by Joe Cocker and you have a general idea of the eels' "No Strings Attached" concert. The covers were varied, too: Peaches' "Rock Show," Tom Waits' "Jesus Gonna Be Here," as well as the standards "I Put a Spell on You" and "That's Life." eels were in fine form, impressive considering the gig they had before their show in Carrboro was Lollapalooza in Chicago!
  
• Catbird Records has just shipped their latest release, Last Night I Saw God on the Dancefloor by Maestro Echoplex, and I am ready to say that it is probably the best CBR release since the Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin/Michael Holt split LP. Download the utterly beautiful "My Eyes are Disconnected From My Head is Disconnected From My Body" here!
  
• Have you joined la la yet? No? Why not?!
  
• My brother expressed interest in seeing a heavy metal band down in Charlotte last Thursday called DragonForce and seeing as how my parents wanted nothing to do with it, I had to drive him there. I gotta say, I was very impressed with what the band calls "extreme power metal!" It was much more enthusiastic and a hell of a lot more melodic then that shitty "screamo" I'd been hearing lately. (All three opening acts for DragonForce were textbook metal, or as Brian Posehn calls it, "metal by numbers.") Bottom line is any band that has a keyboardist who not only plays rockin' solos that incorporate video game sounds and the "Simpsons" theme, but also plays a mean keytar(!) has gotta be worth a damn, right? Right.

Alright, I think that covered everything. Sorry for the shitty grammar, but I wanted to get this done and over with. I head back to Wilmington next Friday, so the next post I write may be written from my brand spankin' new apartment at UNCW! wOOt.

Peace, Love, and Understanding,
Devin