first off: I'm listening to To Mega Therion, Celtic Frost's seminal 1985 album, one of the first death metal records. somehow i missed hearing this record, or any by Celtic Frost, though I do know "Propagation of the Wicked" as covered by Sepultura. I'm in the mid-'80s section of Sound of the Beast, a history of heavy metal. Not great prose (a lot of simple sentences and high school-sounding, flowery descriptions), but quite informative. Anyway, the bit about Celtic Frost just came up, and I wanted to brush up.

The album is ok; not great, but i like my metal tight, and these guys are a bit sloppy. It's good to hear them, though, and to hear where a lot of other metal bands got their sound. Oh, and dig the Giger cover!

So anyway, as i was up late Friday night, i slept a bit later on Saturday afternoon than i had meant to. you see, The Black Fives were slated to play at Recycled Rainbow 9.0 on Saturday in Cleveland, a four hour drive away. thing is, after Gabe's blowout on Thursday night, he needed two new tires. i called gabe, and we were at a tire place within an hour and a half. after another hour we'd fed ourselves at the food court of a nearby mall, he had two new tires, and we were on our way to Cleveland. rather than go into details about the evening, you can just check out the 10/18 entry on stAllio!'s blog. (it's worth keeping up on anyway; he's a cool dude. like billy zane.)

I will say a couple things about the performance, though. First, the instrumentation:

Harold Knockworthy (a.k.a. Gabe): Korg Electribe; throat mic through Korg Kaoss Pad

Donald Spivak (a.k.a. schädel, yours truly): MicroKorg keyboard; mic'd baby monitor; cd player through Korg Kaoss Pad II

[yes, we like Korg. they should endorse us.]

This instrumentation stemmed from our desire to bring as little as possible on the four-hour drive. We normally have a lot more equipment than this. In a way, it was liberating: no relying on the droney ambience for this set. It forced me to adhere to the RR9 theme, which was "classic literature". I must admit that i didn't really like it, but hey, that happens when you vote sometimes (see: 2000 US Presidential election).

So yeah, i ended up doing a lot of reading through the baby monitor. I had brought Finnegans Wake by Joyce and Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom and Other Writings by the Marquis De Sade. I've not done that before, and I'm not sure how well it worked. The Black Fives are primarily (though not exclusively) an instrumental act, and I've not been involved in the vocal pieces Gabe has done.

stAllio! seemed to like it, though:

we were at least 3 hours behind by now, as the black fives performed in the basement. quahogs played with a baby monitor, reading literature and generating feedback, while gabe busted out the beats: nice hard sophisticated beats, just the way i like 'em. very good. we ran out to the car after their set so i could trade grant (sic; he means "gabe") a copy of true data for a couple copies of the black fives/fudgie & fufu split 7".

praise from him means something to me. really.

so, yeah, i think we ended up leaving there at like 4am, got back here at 8am sunday, and i crashed. hard.

sunday evening, while my friends were in Cleveland doing the radio show, gabe and i beat another level of Halo. relaxing.

nothing of import yesterday, though i did hang out with Megan for a bit at the Golden Lions Lounge, where Gabe and Jaymie were spinning cds. We're still friends; that's a good thing. I'm proud of my ability to be friends with exes.

had a normal workday today (tuesday); after work i met Baby Kitty at her house for some spaghetti while watching the first 1/3 or so of Ghost World. We had to scurry though, as we were catching the 7:45 pm showing of Garden State. She hadn't seen it; I had. I still like it, though I'm not sure i'll buy it when it comes out. That being said, though, it's a phenomenal first movie for Braff, and I'm eager to see more from him.

After that, more Fight Club audio book, and I finally got to chat with the Toast, who's in the future.

Time is so fake.