Beefamato / Theater Fire House Party

It’s beefy! It’s tomatoey! It’s BEEF-A-MATO!
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The Theater Fire Live at a Swiss Ave House Party!

After hanging out and playing a bit of Guitar Hero at Bill Sebastian’s birthday party, I hurried over to some house party on Swiss Ave to check out the last half of The Theater Fire. I like The Theater Fire.

After the set, when all the kegs were spent, I went over to the freezer to grab a beer for me and Nick (of TTF) and was promptly shot down. With a stern shake of the head, a confident college student bluntly stated, “I don’t think so.” For some reason I immediately started chuckling and retorted: “But it’s for the band. The Theater Fire.” And with the same stern look came the coup de grâce: “They’ve already been paid.”

I’m glad I’m not twenty-one any more; otherwise, my feelings might have been hurt.

Filed under: Music, Pop Culture, The Theater Fire

The Theater Fire.

“We hate it when our friends become successful…”

…Unless they’re talented. I vaguely know one or two of these guys and was happy to learn of them from David’s Lowery’s blog. The band’s called The Theater Fire and I can’t wait to see them live.

Filed under: Music, The Theater Fire

The Hand That Feeds

It seems quite a few people have been raving about the new single from Nine Inch Nails, “The Hand That Feeds.” This new single, from Trent’s new album due out in May, With Teeth really doesn’t impress me. I mean, it’s good–don’t get me wrong–but it’s not great. The lyrics are interesting–very political–but it’s not inspiring at all and Trent sounds old and outdated. There’s nothing revolutionary about it and for a man who averages about a record every five years, I’d expect better.

Alas, I’ve always had “a warm place” in my heart for Nine Inch Nails. I remember when The Downward Spiral came out (this Downward Spiral, not that Downward Spiral). I remember listening to that CD over and over: blasting “heresy” in my back yard, bicycling with friends to the mall with my oversized Sony Discman, reverberating my speakers with “mr self destruct” so that everyone could hear the distortion. I wrote an essay on “ruiner” as a freshman in G/T English. I turned my mother on to “a warm place.” Me and my girlfriend at the time claimed “hurt” as our own. And then there was always “closer.” Not only did I obsess over the music by listening to it, but the lyrics, the sounds, everything about the music, inspired me to write an amazing amount of poetry. Spiral after spiral after spiral full of poems that I would later perform at Slam Poetry events, impress hot chicks with, and sing in my high school garage band.

When I was a freshman in high school, this beautiful senior in my English G/T class shared a tape with me–it was Pretty Hate Machine. Given my sources were limited at the time, I had never heard the album. I was intensely entranced by the entire album and still play it religiously to this day.

When I was in junior high, a friend of mine let me copy Broken. I wasn’t aware of Nine Inch Nails at the time, but “Happiness in Slavery” was an instant hit with me. I’d sneak out and go to the park late at night and sit in the tire swing and literally play the tape for hours and hours.

Finally, in college, The Fragile came out. I really enjoyed that album and, although I don’t listen to it near as much as his other albums, part of me thinks that’s his greatest achievement. I don’t have the same love for it because it didn’t change my life like the others. And that’s what I’ll assume of the new album. It’ll be great. I’ll buy it, but I don’t find myself loving it. I don’t think it will move me like his albums before. But I still can’t wait to get it.

Buy the Single
Buy the Album

Filed under: Music, Nine Inch Nails