Gina Harris's Blog, page 122

Concert Review: Poison

I was there for Poison.
I had never really known Tesla. I was aware of Def Leppard all along, but I didn't get into them until the early 2000s.
Poison was different. They always had good crossover appeal so were played during all time blocks, and I always liked them. I had never seen them live, though. Hearing about this tour I knew it was something I really needed to see.
They were so great.

It's not that time hasn't taken any toll. It seems pretty clear that Bret Michaels' voice is not as strong as it used to be, and equally clear that it doesn't matter. He is such a showman that you don't feel a loss. He brought the audience into every song, he got us to sing with him, and made the show a shared experience.
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It would still be remiss to point out that when C. C. Deville played the opening riff to "Talk Dirty to Me" I felt that time had taken no toll there. Age may slow him down eventually, but it hasn't happened yet. 
  For instruments they were all pretty strong. Bobby Dall sounded great. I thought Rikki Rockett sounded fine but was maybe playing with less flair, but speaking of "Talk Dirty to Me", when that started suddenly Rikki was wearing the chauffeur's cap - apparently conjured from nowhere - so he still has some tricks up his sleeve.
It is also worth pointing out that there are ways in which the passage of time can enhance.
Poison has had ego issues in their past. Saturday night it was clear that not only had they found their way back to their original configuration but that they had found ways to make it better. There was so much appreciation shown between the band members.
Actually, Bret took time to show appreciation for Tesla and Def Leppard as well, but it was even better how much credit he gave to his band mates. It's been about a year since I watched Mötley Crüe: The End. If it works for that band to take four separate buses to four separate hotels, and probably never see each other again after, I guess that's okay. To instead learn to appreciate each other more, and respect each other more, seems infinitely better. 

It don't get better than this.

https://www.poisonweb.com/
https://www.facebook.com/Poison
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZGcHLEZkIQfW9Dvp84ta4g?
https://twitter.com/Poison

Concert Review: Tesla

There are two things that I need to say about Tesla and Saturday's show.
One is that I was far less familiar with them than the other bands. I could not identify a single song by them. I knew that there was a band with that name back in the day, but apparently their videos were not airing during the times that I was watching MTV. I would not be surprised if they got played during the Headbangers Ball, but I never watched that.
Without having those memories, I still have to say that they are the least time-ravaged of the three, still playing with the intensity and fervor of a much younger band.
Their biggest disadvantage was that at times they seemed dwarfed by the stage, possibly a result of the limitations performing first can cause for your set-up.
The best surprise for me (probably not for anyone better-informed) was the early rendition of "Edison's Medicine" showing that they take their name seriously. That also shows them as pretty forward-thinking. Tesla is much better-known now than when they first did the song, perhaps making them a band "out of time". In addition, the fun they have with film options on the "Need Your Lovin" video (while not merely scientific), shows a nice mix of smarts and playfulness.
For post-concert listening, I was taken with the beautiful intro on "Love Song" and the joy and energy of "Save That Goodness". They are a good band and they did a good job.
I'm glad I got to experience that.
http://teslatheband.com/
https://www.facebook.com/TeslaBand/
https://www.youtube.com/user/TeslaTheBand
https://twitter.com/TeslaBand

It was never just Trump

I haven't mentioned this story yet, but at one lunch I was getting asked about some of the more clownish aspects of Trump, and told about an orange reference they use for him.
I am not the best person for this because I don't have any sense of humor about him. Even to the clown thing I pointed out "He is a really dangerous clown" (to which they agreed). Still, I wanted to contribute to the conversation, so I mentioned that some people call him "President Cheeto". Blank stares. I guess Cheetos aren't that popular in Italy. To be fair, the one cousin is really into health food, so she would be less likely to run across them. We eventually found a picture on the internet so it made sense, but any comedic impact was lost.
Anyway, a lot of the conversations were more about impact, and a lot of those conversations were things that were embarrassing before the election.
For example, we were talking about homelessness, and if the issue was that housing was too expensive. Well, that is a contributing factor, and we talked about that (I have some recent specific date, so that was handy), but there is also the lack of treatment for mental health issues, which affects many veterans. That should not be the case, but that is something we have accepted for a long time.
Talking about health care and what is being attempted now is very resonant for my family. One sister has only been able to afford health care since the Affordable Care Act took full effect, as her employer has never wanted to or been required to offer it. There were immediate benefits to having health care already, but an issue that required surgery came up. She could get the treatment she needed because she was covered.
That was happening while I was uncovered. I have some coverage again now, but if the last plan had passed, it would have made it so that I would never be able to afford health care again. The extent to which Republicans are keeping the new plan under wraps does not fill me with confidence.
Why do we do that to our citizens? Why do we do that to people?
Another conversation we had was how he got elected. Again, I do not know how to talk about voter suppression in Italian, but we did talk about racism and we did talk about how much of the expectations for certain behaviors is enforced only by expectations.
It wasn't just Trump who didn't release tax returns; Sanders didn't either. Maybe we didn't make a big enough deal of it when Romney was so selective with his tax returns. Nonetheless, we don't have a rule for it, so when you have someone completely willing to disregard those conventions and all others, and he is rewarded for that, then what happens? We are finding out.
For the racism, I was only able to do this in English, but I talked with one of my cousins about Bacon's rebellion (1676), when Virginians of all races united against their government, and how right after that slavery became defined by race, and racism became enshrined in law. This was in Virginia, the birthplace of presidents. Hundreds of years later, politicians still successfully use race to divide people, reliably finding again and again that white people will screw over people of color if they can still feel superior based on color, despite being poor and sick and screwed over themselves.
It sounds terrible to me, but for him, always being taught that American was built on immigration, it was incredibly sad. He's right. I get jaded from being used to it, which still doesn't make me happy with it, but it was fresh for him.
I know we can be better than this. There's precious little evidence out there right now, but I still have to believe it and work for it.
I have some thoughts on that, but this has been pretty heavy, and I went to a concert Saturday night. So three music reviews this week, and then I hope I have something useful to say Monday.

Talking about Trump in Italy

I knew people would asked if I liked Trump. I was prepared to answer that with a resounding "NO!"
That was the easy part. Explaining why I don't like him, and how many other people don't like him, and how he ended up in power anyway was more difficult, partly for available vocabulary and partly because there's just too much to mention.
They don't really know how bad he is, and it makes sense that they don't.
There are noticeable similarities between Trump and former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, but even though I know Berlusconi came off as kind of a buffoon, I didn't know much else about him. There might have been things he did right.
As it turns out, Berlusconi served through four governments; it required that much reorganizing. Then he was banned and would have gone to jail, but the sentence was commuted because of his age. Italy is now on its fourth prime minister since Berlusconi. There was some corruption and tax fraud, so they do get that.
The other key difference is that when their government is falling apart and reforming, so far it has not been something that has affected pensions and health care. I am sure there are effects that matter. Job creation could be huge, because the job markets there are very tough now and economic expansion can be easier with a stable, effective government. Also there are issues with the declining birth rate that could probably be aided through immigration or finding ways of retraining. I'm sure a good leader could be very helpful, but by and large the instability of the government does not automatically lead to instability in daily life.
(Still, a lot of what was once safe in Britain has changed, so you can never rule that out.)
Logically, if the US press spent more time on Clinton's emails than Trump not releasing tax returns, cheating workers, sexual harassment, collusion with Russia, racist incitement, pretended charitable giving that tended to benefit him and may sometimes have involved money laundering, and everything else, well, it's hardly surprising if the Italian press didn't cover it.
Much of that shouldn't matter nearly as much to them as it does to us, but some of it does. If Russia used similar techniques to try and sway British and French elections - not just US elections - that is something every country should be looking at.
The day after the election, a friend of mine in Poland sent a message to her American friends that we could come live with her. I appreciated that, but I wasn't sure how safe Poland would be. I did try and tell a cousin about that, and he didn't think an invasion of Poland was likely, but I think now he might have thought I meant Trump invading.
No, I do not see Trump invading Poland. However, Putin's actions in Ukraine, and Trump's initial denial of it, were discouraging enough. That is before Trump weakened US relations with NATO in general and Germany specifically, items definitely on Putin's wish list. Then when you consider how long Russian sources have been funding Trump golf courses, and his being brought to Russia in the '80s with that relationship apparently still existent despite numerous administrative changes, and not only many members of Trump's inner circle having Russian connections, but also Jill Stein who should have been pretty opposite, well, you have to wonder how many angles Russia is playing and to what end.
So, yes, I worry about Europe.
The other frequent question was whether people regretted voting for him.
I was able to talk a little about how farmers are suffering first, with their traditional labor sources being afraid of getting deported, and how that also affects the businesses where the immigrants shopped, with those customers being absent. I had to answer honestly that a lot of people are not feeling it yet, and will not care until it hurts them personally. That there are some people who probably are already suffering but still in denial about it again exceeded my vocabulary.
That leads us more into tomorrow's post, but let me close today by saying that I frequently saw the need of creating a primer on Trump that could succinctly cover all of the issues, and then translating that primer into Italian.
It could still happen.

Band Review: Eduardo Slompo

Eduardo Slompo has a Youtube channel and is based in Sidney.
Offerings on the channel include live recording sessions, a cappella mash-ups, and one man band performances recorded separately and combined. With well over one hundred videos, he shows a fairly impressive ability with multiple instruments and styles. There is talent and skill.
At the same time, reviewing them all together gets a bit boring. I believe the preferred model would be to subscribe and then watch new videos as they go up.
I thought that the mash-ups might be a way of breaking out of the routine, creating interesting arrangements of songs you might not expect to go together. Instead, they tend to shove many opening lines into a small time frame. That was most obvious with the Beatles, but most disappointing on the Queen mash-up.
It could have made so much sense to instead do a one-man band version of "Bohemian Rhapsody", or maybe a focused mash-up of "Bohemian Rhapsody" with one or two others of their more dramatic songs: "I Want to Break Free"? There are so many ways you could go there.
I have previously criticized other bands for relying too much on covers without creating their own music. In a case like this, covers can make sense, but there should still be a place for personal creative vision, and the lack of that is felt here.
https://www.facebook.com/eduardoSlompoYouTubeChannel
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC48cfYIFMl8du1R5kD-bcwg
https://twitter.com/eduardoslompo84

Band Review: Michael Zabrocki

Michael Zabrocki is a singer and songwriter from New York. Also serving as the Director of Music Ministries for Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church and Public Relations and Marketing Director for Christian Music Pioneer, that should be enough to keep three people busy. Despite multiple responsibilities, he still has a fair amount of music output.
Songs have a soothing feel with spiritual messages; more Christian easy listening than Christian rock, and it works. Vocal harmony is layered with the instruments, giving a sound that is full but not overpowering. At times it sounds like he is playing the harpsichord, which rather than making the music sound old makes it sound kind of timeless.
"Unless a Grain of Wheat" felt a little forced to me, as if it were trying to hard to incorporate scriptural passage into song. Other songs, in their simple expressions of joy and gratitude, were more effective. I especially liked "Welcome Sweet Morn".
https://www.zabrockimusic.com/
https://www.facebook.com/ZabrockiMusic
https://www.youtube.com/user/Zabrocki
https://www.reverbnation.com/michaelzabrocki
https://twitter.com/michaelzabrocki

What was that again?

I was better prepared to talk about death than politics, which ended up being even darker. However, I am going to put writing about that off into next week. Today I will just amuse you with some stories of misunderstandings.
My first trip to Italy was in 2006. I knew listening would be easier than talking, so I had thought of some questions to ask and let people talk. One of those was asking about their work.
In many ways this was a failure; Italians do not share our American tendency to self-define by career. The office is just something you do. However, one of the most interesting answers was also the one that lost me completely.
One couple worked a compressed work week, and they took advantage of the extra days off to show me around. They were not technically cousins, but the nephew (with his wife) of my aunt's husband.
I thought they said that they worked in a key factory. I did think it was odd that to explain it they mentioned key parties and sex, but when you are not sure someone is understanding, you may reach for examples.
Helpful vocabulary at the time would have been that fattoria means farm. "Factory" is fabbrica. I did hear "keys", because after she said tacchini, she said "turkeys" for clarification. It wasn't even that I didn't get that she was saying it in English, but I missed the first half. Also, I did hear "sex", because her job was telling the gender of the poults, which is a pretty specific skill.
That taught me on my very first trip that not only can you be very wrong, but you may not have any idea that you're wrong until something comes up later.
One helpful strategy can be asking different people the same question. That can be good even without the language barrier, because different people will emphasize different details, and you get a full picture.
For two particular misunderstandings on this recent trip, it wasn't that I asked anyone else or did any follow-up; we just talked more and things came out.
On my first day - when I am always less functional - I was asking one cousin how she had been. They had been pretty good, but had recently lost their bird, who had been like a child to them.
I thought.
I guess there were clues, in that I didn't remember them having a bird, and I usually know who has which pets.
In fact, I did not hear uccello, but Marcella. That was not a bird, but her mother-in-law. I had known they were taking care of her mother-in-law, so it really made more sense that way anyway; I just hadn't gotten it right. Mainly, I am grateful that I did not say anything specific to pets or birds.
The other thing happened with one aunt who talks a lot, so I go in assuming I will miss some things. She had expressed some concerns about her grandson's hair and tattoos (I think). He is not that extreme, but that seems very grandmotherly, so I wasn't worried.
Then it sounded like she was starting to complain about her daughter-in-law; something wasn't good.
She has never been that kind of mother-in-law, so I wasn't sure if I was getting it right. However, the grandson's mother does usually have colored streaks of some kind in her hair; maybe the grandmother was blaming the mother for the son's beautifully tousled hair. The conversation moved on, and I didn't worry about it too much.
The next time we were talking it came up again, except that time it was clear that it was more worry, and it started to sound like a health issue. Okay, my beloved aunt was a caring mother-in-law like I had thought, which was good, but now there was something else that worried me. That's when it was time to ask another source.
They are saying that it is just that work is really hard and tiring now. I still have some concerns there, because sometimes believing that work will not remain exhausting is merely wishful thinking. At least there is some clarity.
And sometimes it feels that any clarity I have is merely accidental.

The words I cannot say

We got home Wednesday afternoon, having left Tuesday morning. I am still in recovery from the trip.
For the first few days it was just that I kept finding myself drained of energy. It was like recharging a battery, but I had never charged quite long enough to get very far.
As that improved, yesterday I found emotions welling up all over the place, making me randomly weepy. It is still an upward trajectory.
Emotionally it was harder because of my mother's condition, my aunt's condition, and my mother's sorrow about my aunt's condition. Not everything enters memory for her, but that did.
Even when none of that is going on, and all that is going on are happy visits with people I love, there is a lot of mental effort for me in communicating in Italian.
My Italian isn't that great. I had the equivalent of eight years of French study and six years of Spanish. I still get rusty when I am not using it, but the base is stronger. The Lao study I did was intensive, and the simple grammar structure helps a lot. I had one year of classroom experience with Italian, and then about four weeks of family time since then. That is not fluency. I know I threw in a lot of Spanish this time without meaning to.
This time was harder not just because of the emotional components, but also they were strange vocabularies with things we haven't talked about before.
Even if you know every word for talking about death, it's not a conversation that makes everyone comfortable. My aunt will be very content to die. She can say that, and if you try and talk to her about eating and getting stronger, she immediate is very tired. It still doesn't feel quite right to say, "Okay, have at it!"
Of course there are varying degrees of comfort with that. One cousin was talking about being caught between two planes and how it is the universal human struggle, and another responded, "Not if you are Highlander. Or make a deal with the Devil."  (Sometimes understanding is not enough to have a response for it.)
Then, even if you accept it, that doesn't make everything easy. I have had this romantic view in the past that death should simply be like passing from one room into another, but birth isn't like that; we come out screaming. With all of the functionality built in to keep your body living, it doesn't all expire at the same time. There are difficulties. They require patience, and reconciliation. They require some judgment. My aunt is 94, so it is easy to think this is a good time, but what if she were 84, or 74? People die younger than that, but they live past it too. Maybe then you do fight it, instead of accepting it.
It's hard for others as well. I am still at an age where one when of my peers dies it seems unfair. This is my mother's last surviving sibling. Of those gone, two spouses are left. For them, it looks different. There is a feeling of being cut off and left alone. They aren't truly, because there are children and nieces and nephews and grandchildren, but for their generation, it is. For the younger generation, they feel losing their elders.
Truly, we do not have to talk a lot about that to feel that, and to feel that we are in understanding with each other. There are other things that we do need to be able to say: "Are you comfortable?" "Do you want us to bring you anything?" "Is there something you want to do again?" On one visit my aunt mentioned polenta. It was seemingly random, and she wasn't really asking for it, but maybe she wants polenta. We should be able to manage that.
I was able to say the things I wanted to say. This came largely from having looked it up more than once, and being patient and listening to the things she kept repeating. I was able to tell her about that moment when I thought I saw Luciana and Paolo, and that I believed there were good people around. When she said she felt outside of the world (which she had been saying a few times), I was able to tell her that there were other worlds. It's not much, but it felt important to say.
That was our last day there, in the morning. We came back in the afternoon she was so out of it that if I had heard that she died while we were in flight I would not have been surprised. And that didn't happen, because death is not an easy and predictable thing, but it is universal. It is not unreasonable to spend some time learning how to deal with it.

Thoughts from a concert

This is now officially the sixth post about that night. Granted, some of the posts were pretty short, as were the performances they reviewed. It still feels like a lot, but there was a lot going on.
It started at the merch booth, when I saw Lily Pryor shirts.
I like keeping an eye on an artist's Twitter feed leading up to a show, so I had seen that Matt Pryor was posting pictures with his daughter Lily. I thought that meant he loved and was proud of her - which was awesome - but somehow I never got that she was on the tour. I asked the guy working the booth, "Lily's not here, is she?"
"Yeah.""Is she playing?""Yeah. A few songs."
Okay then.
The Doug Fir Lounge is a small venue, and it was easy to be in front. There were four mikes, three guitars, and one ukulele. I was quite sure that the ukulele would be used for accompaniment, so that probably meant three acts, with one guitar each for Lily, Matt, and Dan. When I saw the other guy setting things up, I thought he was crew, but no, that was Chris Margolin, another act. Everything was set up pre-show, but there were enough instruments because there was some sharing of guitars.
There were team-ups. In addition to her own set, Lily came back and joined Matt for a few songs. Matt later came back and joined Dan for some songs. This was cool not just musically, but for the interplay that you got between the artists.
For the record, no, of course Matt Pryor's songs don't all sound alike, but there are some similarities where that worked as a sick burn. Point Lily, except he can ground you. I guess this is what happens when you take your daughter to work. For Matt's rebuttal to Dan that the reason he had not come back on stage yet was that Dan kept starting new songs -- yeah, Dan didn't admit it, but Matt was right.
Other thoughts I had were more about me as a writer, and specifically as a writer of musical things. For example, I realized looking at the stage that I don't know what you call it when you plug in an acoustic. Is it still acoustic? Apparently that is semi-acoustic. That's fine, but also, when you have a guitar that is shaped like an acoustic, including having a sound hole, but there is something filling that sound hole, then what is that? Having a sound hole and filling it instead of simply having a solid body must mean something.
I did enjoy having the upfront view, because I could get a really good look at the set up. For this show, I have never seen so much use of tuning clamps. Mainly I noticed that no one had the Swollen Pickle (might not make sense for such a scaled-down show), but two of them had Orange amps boxes. (Those are the two I can easily recognize.)
That started me thinking about pedal array optimization. I have no idea where you would start, but the idea is intriguing. For now it will be a throwaway line in the next Family book (Family Trip, or maybe Family Vacation) and then it might be something Mark does more with later. I don't know; I plan to finish the series in three more books, and there's a lot of vampires to kill and relationships to resolve before we get there, so there might not be time for everything.
Actually, I may know were to start, because there was one point where Lily needed to change a setting and the stand was getting in the way: Step 1, make sure that the mike stand doesn't get in the way!
Ultimately, I learn more at small shows. I will be at a big show Saturday night, and I expect that to be great too, but it started me thinking about venues.
I was at a show a month ago that I haven't written about. I really only went for the opening act, about whom I have already written a lot, so it seemed reasonable to let it go. That was at Revolution Hall, which after one show I hated. I still mostly hate the setup, but I have to admit the event staff is great, and it is in front of a field where a lot of people walk their dogs, so pre-show you see a lot of dogs, which I enjoy.
Anyway, I started thinking about how perhaps I should try some different things, like watching a band I don't really care for at a venue I really like, or vice versa, and see if I can get more of a perspective on how the venue affects things. It might be impossible to fully account for all of the other variables, but it's something to think about.
Just one more thing that was annoying. Dan said many times that we rocked. While the audience in general was responsive, I was kind of feeling it was not true, because right next to me was a group of girls who would just not shut up. It was annoying when they kept bumping into me, but more annoying that they kept talking. I believe the situation was that there was one fan who brought her friends along, and the friends could not have cared less about the acts or the rest of the audience.
I thought about saying something, but felt like I would come off as an old sourpuss who was just being a jerk. Then, someone else did say something, along the lines of how they had the best places at the show (right up front) and lots of other people would like to be in their spot and they weren't even appreciating it.
They did a little better after that. I still maintain that it is better to go to a show by yourself than drag along people who aren't interested, but I also know that by being there alone I am a freak. Still, the time I did drag someone along it was a terrible show and I always felt guilty about it, no matter how much she said she enjoyed her conversation with the bartender. And I keep going to shows that I would not otherwise go to with a different friend and it works out, so maybe I am not the best judge.

Concert Review: Dan Andriano In The Emergency Room

Two things were very clear from Dan Andriano's set, and one is that Portland loves Dan Andriano.
The Doug Fir Lounge may be a small venue, but it was packed with people who knew his every song, recognizing each intro and knowing the words. They were there for him.
It was also hard to miss that he is intense.
The first I ever saw of him was the Alkaline Trio video for "Mercy Me". I believe it combines stop-frame animation techniques with video, giving kind of an uncanny valley feeling overall. In it, Andriano's hands move really fast. I thought it was just an effect of the video; now I am not so sure. Regardless, there is a vortex of energy within and surrounding Dan Andriano that is far clearer when watching him in person than either listening to him or seeing him in videos. I just want that noted.
While I feel comfortable saying there isn't anyone else like Dan Andriano, it did occur to me earlier that fans of Elvis Costello should check him out. I think they will be pleasantly surprised.
https://www.danandrianointheemergencyroom.com/
https://www.facebook.com/danandrianointheemergencyroom
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvah50edf3WiMVgBvX8pLcw
https://twitter.com/danielandriano