Man In A Panic

Out Of Tune

Record shops are difficult to navigate over here.  Their genre definitions don't tally with my expectations.  So you find Roots Manuva in World Music and Goldfrapp in Rock and Soul.   And then 93 aisles of country bumpkin nonsense.

Best of all is the 'Go-To Make Out' selection in Tower Records, purportly a musical magic carpet to carry you from coffee-drinking to face-munching 'back at yours'.  Helicopter Girl was top of the list, lads.  Personally I recommend Sweetback - 60 mins of aural rohypnol. What are your favourite "go-to make out' tracks, readers?!

I saw Tracy Chapman live on Friday night at the excellent Independent.  Unexpectedly, she came dressed as a 21 year old white dude and sangs songs about driving a truck to surfing beaches.  Closer inspection revealed a shallow Tracy impersonator.  Had I been equipped with white stick and sunglasses, I'd love to have hollered a request for 'Fast Car'.  I might have got in trouble though - I think he was wearing a wrestling costume.

Incidentally, can you imagine my delight to discover that a large beer here is called a 'growler'?  And to have two drinks on the go at once?  That's 'double-fisting'.....

Decompression

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Originally uploaded by jonnyeye.

I spent Sunday at the Burning Man Decompression festival here in San Francisco which was absolutely brilliant.

Some shoddy photos can be found in the left hand column or on my Flickr site.

Cameras were banned which seemed slightly ridiculous.  This might have been to protect the modesty of the dudes who decided to come naked, or the Japanese rope bondage artistes...or even to safegaurd the blueprints for all the incredible, enormous dancing robots that made up the numbers.....but I reckon it's really just so that the organisers can flog 'official snaps'....all very odd given the ethos of the Burning Man community.

For those that aren't familiar with the loony festival in the desert, you can do your Burning Man research here.

Anyway, never mind - I sneaked in my trusty Pentax Optio S5i and shot from the hip.  I was too busy having fun to take many good shots though.

Best of all was the installation you see above. It's difficult to describe, but that's a 15 foot high ceramic head onto which the faces of anyone-who-wanted-a-go was projected....the effect was a huge human head floating in the dark reading poetry/singing songs/gurning.  Think Bohemian Rhapsody but loads, loads better. If I was a theatre or gig producer, I'd be ripping off this idea immediately... 

Download IMGP3981.AVI

Having never been to Burning Man, I now can't wait.  I've heard naysayers bemoaning its recent success/commercialisation (EVERYTHING YOU LIKE I LIKED TEN YEARS AGO!)...but they're probably the ones who told me that Ibiza and Glastonbury 'just aren't worth it anymore' before I had two of the best weekends of my life in those places.  So I'll be buying tickets to Burning Man in the New Year - who's in?!

The only downside of this day out was that, amidst all the fabulously dressed funsters, I'd (unwittingly) chosen to wear jeans and brown knitwear.  Next time, I plan to be a participant rather than an observer, even if I was seeing in 3D

Strictly Bluegrass

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Originally uploaded by jonnyeye.

So I found myself at a foggy Bluegrass festival on my first weekend in San Francisco.

Lots of banjos and (non-smoking) hippies-frozen-in-time. 

It was great to see Joan Baez though, especially having watched Scorcese's Dylan documentary (No Direction Home) last week.  Sadly I missed Dolly Parton - I didn't even know she could sing....funny how our generation thinks 'comedy boobs and hair' rather than 'leading light of country music'.

One interesting observation:  Californians get very excited at public swearing.  Every single 'fuck' was met with a loud cheer, regardless of context.  I must remember that for my first day at work.