5th grade: Ace of Base
8th or 9th grade: Blink 182, Lit, and Matchbox 20
10th or 11th grade: Everclear serves as one of the gateway bands to music that I become no longer ashamed of admitting I listen to.
I wanted to go see Summerland because I wanted to see Everclear. But it was only going to be Art Alesakis from everclear- no matter- I will see fake-everclear- and even if it is like a cover band of everclear I will enjoy it.
Highlights/ (bullet points?) of the evening:
1) not huge crowds like before Radiohead
2) Chastain Park has HORSES!!!! Amazing. I want to go back and secretly visit them.
3) Marcy Playground is enjoyable.
4) Lit is fun. FUN FUN. They are good performers. High Energy. I liked their new songs.
5) Gin Blossoms- kind of lame. very lame?
6) Sugar Ray is funny. This guy is a performer. This other blogger called Mark McGrath a douche, which yes, I can see that, but Mark seems to play the doucheness up in a full-character-douche-roll* which I can appreciate the beauty of - from the sidelines of not buying into it. they started with "Wipe Out" which reminded me that I should look up indie bands doing Surf Rock- because I like it.
7) Everclear. Everclear was HORRIBLE. Or really it was just Art Alexakis. If you have ever seen someone do a really wretched job at karaoke, then you had the experience that I had watching Art.
Symptoms of Bad Karaoke (Or how Art fucked up):
#1- You do not sing all of the words in the song.
Singing 50% of the words is OK if you are driving in your car - rocking out to the band on the radio.
Singing all of the words takes a considerably larger amount of focus and energy, and it is why being a front-man is hard work.
#2- Something sounds wrong.
The volume of vocals to volume of music is off. The tune is off. ?? I don't know but we just shook our heads and said "this sounds horrible." This is also when most of the people walked out of the amphitheater- during Art's 2nd song.
#3- You sing too fast or too slow.
Art sang "Wonderful" too fast- and it did not appear to be on purpose.
Maybe there were more reasons why Art sucked- but we left by then...
Seeing Art was disappointing.
The other interesting bit was that it seemed like the guys in his band and in all of the other bands KNEW Art was failing. They came out and tried to help him sing. The gin blossoms guy basically had to sing ALL of Art's new song- with Art as backup. Then the Lit guy came out to help. It was embarrassingly bad.
At first I thought he just got fucked-up before the show so he could not perform as well high as he thought he was performing. Then I did some reading- and this guy is 50. J said it reminded him of seeing Old-Ozzy. What if you do a huge amount of drugs during a crucial stage of brain development (say age 8-14) and then you suffer the normal brain atrophy that occurs with aging - and you are fucked and unable to communicate or self-monitor.
Maybe that is what we were watching. It certainly wasn't Everclear.
*douche-role would be the character role, yes, but Douche-Roll could be the new offering next to the spring roll at tin drum. Can you see a rice-paper wrapped Mark McGrath?
UPDATE 7/17/12:
I did some additional searching and some people are saying that Art has performed this way since 2003, and his voice is shot because of vocal surgeries. Although he does have this problem of singing into the microphone. How do you explain that?
"his voice seemed to be the only real problem." But that would be a big problem if what you are contributing to the song is your voice.
*douche-role would be the character role, yes, but Douche-Roll could be the new offering next to the spring roll at tin drum. Can you see a rice-paper wrapped Mark McGrath?
UPDATE 7/17/12:
I did some additional searching and some people are saying that Art has performed this way since 2003, and his voice is shot because of vocal surgeries. Although he does have this problem of singing into the microphone. How do you explain that?
"his voice seemed to be the only real problem." But that would be a big problem if what you are contributing to the song is your voice.
2 comments:
Everclear played at my shitty little state college while I went there. A music snob friend ran into Art Alexakis at the nearest Steak n Shake that night. Apparently she got into a fight with him about whether Radiohead sucked or was awesome.
Aaand that's my Art Alexakis story. Goodnight.
I saw the show in St. Louis, MO. I personally thought Marcy Playground stole the whole show. Too bad they didn't get to play longer to make up for Art's 'issues'. He was plain embarrassing. Not only did he only sing about half of the words to his songs, he forgot the words once and had to start from the second verse!
The sound was horrible for the whole show. I won't bother next year!
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