It List: Monday

Whoa, music is terrible tonight, man. What am I going to say about Sunny Day Real Estate or any of these terrible reunited 90's acts for that matter? I guess it's cool that they kind of sound like Peter Gabriel by their last record, right? I can't wait until today's scratchy, distorted groups with really rough recordings start releasing epic double albums with "big name producers." Trust me, that's coming at some point.

To put some of this reunion activity into perspective and the kind of money that's often involved, here's a quote from Greg Ginn in a recent interview with one of the only good alternative weeklies in the nation, The Austin Chronicle, on turning down a million dollar offer to reunite his most famous band for Coachella:

"I'm proud of Black Flag and all, but I'm not really interested in playing monkey for anybody – throw some coins in a cup, and I'll regurgitate some songs I wrote when I was 11 years old."

I think more artists should probably follow this philosophy. Even though I would pay to see a reunion show like the one Ginn is talking about, and I certainly have before, it's often a somewhat empty experience to dig in the trash and scrape the last bit of frosting out of the can. It's especially no good, when it was just trash to begin with.

The Dead Weather/Imaad Wasif (House Of Blues): The Dead Weather is the perfect soundtrack for the "weird, artistic guy" in his fraternity. Hey, that's an important role for some bands to play. Frat guys like feeling cool too.

Let me reiterate that "It Might Get Loud" is the worst two minutes and twenty five seconds I have ever witnessed in a movie theater. I was audibly making gross-out sounds and freaking out when I had the miserable experience of sitting through this preview on more than one occasion recently.

But this show will be a huge improvement over that film, and most of Jack White's other endeavors, since he will have to spend most of his time behind the drum kit tonight. Hopefully that will cut into his usual strutting around with his thin blues-rock posturing, and steam punk shtick. Less of any of these things would definitely be an improvement, except that you won't get to hear Meg White's drumming; that's the only redeeming thing in this peppermint-striped little universe and I'm not being facetious in the slightest.

Cool Out (The Cavern)

Artic Monkeys/The Like (The Palladium)