slowdive: classic or dud?

April 24 - Teenage Fanclub (Fairfax High School)
April 25 – The Charlatans (Palace)
April 28 - The Sugarcubes (Palace)
May 9 – Catherine Wheel (Whisky A Go Go)
May 18 – Blur (Palace)
May 28 – Ride with Slowdive (Coach House)
May 29 – Ride with Slowdive (Palace)
May 30 – Ride with Pale Saints (Palace)
June 2 – Pale Saints (Whisky A Go Go)

Not to forget the Cure twice at the end of June that year.

Time of my life…

I don’t make that many shows anymore, since moving back to Los Angeles, because 1) in San Francisco they were right outside my door and didn’t have to drive miles and miles. 2) Ticketmaster can go to HELL!

*I know ILM hates OCS but they were a great live band and became much better as the years went on. Everything doesn’t need to be new and inventive all the time, stealing from the best is OK every once in awhile.

I don’t make that many shows anymore, since moving back to Los Angeles, because 1) in San Francisco they were right outside my door and didn’t have to drive miles and miles. 2) Ticketmaster can go to HELL!

In order -- remember hearing about it, missed it, saw it (but it was the Wiltern!), missed it, saw it (I remember Damon ambling out on stage with the Moz quiff and everyone going "MORRISSEY!"), missed it, saw it, saw it, missed it (so annoyingly because the Red House Painters opened!).

In there, though, I did see the Wedding Present/Poster Children, Verlaines/Yo La Tengo, and Soundgarden/Swervedriver/Monster Magnet.

i'm not sure you'd get much out of a guitar tab though :)

"MOJAVE 3: DUD OR CLASSIC DUD?"

is there such thing as changing a posts title?

OTM. Maybe it's all in my jead but I do think the sound has been impoved nicely, adding texture here and there, and I'm glad to have 'So Tired' and 'In Mind', but jeez talk about awful packaging. But that's the original cover afraid (the superior black one was for the susbequent US domestic release).

is there such thing as changing a posts title?

but all of their albums are great. the last one will be treasured by many someday. it is hard to convince people of this. i think i will go listen to it now. the first song is so 'let it flow'.

they do need to stop making solo albums.

mojave 3 albums are great. i listen to them a lot more than slowdive, who i adored. do i really need this re-issue business? i have all the albums, the early EPs on vinyl, and some mega-track thing called 'staring at the sun' or somesuch i snagged from slsk...

Slowdive have always been among my all time favourites, very influential for me, and I still absolutely love their music.

Souvlaki is a favorite for a lot of people, because it's them starting to be a *little* less full-on shoegaze, but not entirely. Pygmalion is kinda the art favorite, their Durutti Column tribute to a large extent.

Who do Slowdive most sound like? Well, jeez, in a way they ARE the ultimate shoegaze band! (MBV are in their own universe but obviously none of the other gaze bands could exist without them as an example.) As friend Stripey once put it to me years ago, "They'll be the band that most people will claim as an influence because they're both so atmospheric and so accessible." And she was right.

So basically -- mixed male/female vocals, often singing together, sometimes separately, LOTS of digital delay and zoned-out ambience, total goth fetish as well (early eighties Cure basslines in particular). Again, though, this is the earliest stuff in particular.

One thing that a lot of people forget about the band -- they could be LOUD. Saw them three times and while, again, they didn't achieve MBV levels of volume, they were definitely trying to really crank it up.

Whereas Lush and Ride, who are the first generation (i.e. not MBV) bands who I think of as utterly definitive of the genre seem to have fallen by the wayside.

Maybe that's because of the derivative tails on the end of their shoegazing careers (Britpop, Oasis, etc.) Or maybe because Slowdive hit the cliches the heaviest, so those looking for those cliches will be made happiest by them.