weekend was indeed tiring, as expected. maybe combination of the heat and lack of sleep, but it took a lot out of me, and i crashed a few times yesterday. a short sneezing spell that hopefully is clearing up now.

we had another barbeque saturday, which was attended by at least twice as many people as the other one; at least half of them japanese. carla and her beau's-soeur rachel were the first to arrive, as i finished up a fruit salad and listened to the copy of brainfreeze that i finally managed to get onto cd.

mami, working on a japanese eggplant dish, managed to burn the oil that she was heating, which filled the kitchen and then the whole downstairs with stinky smoke that forced us all outside for twenty minutes or so, after setting fans to blow as much of it as possible out windows. but it was good to be outside. we took turns with the hula hoop and set up a 4' inflatable t-rex that mami brought home from work. actually, once we returned inside it took us too long to get out: guests started showing up, and everyone crammed into the kitchen, trying to help out with food prep, making it difficult to move around.

but things settled down. i chatted a bit with anthony kuhn, a fairly distant cousin of mine who lives in beijing and reports for npr and the l.a. times, and also with ans, the singer from skavoovie (currently author of comics such as zombre, an animal-loving zombie), and his girlfriend abby, who told me about weekly saturday afternoon $5 hardcore shows at abc no rio in new york (ben - interested?)

good barbecue - mini hamburgers (meat cookies) and superb grilled pork loin pieces, watermelon and ibc. around 3, we got the speakers set up outside, to rock when i was born for the 7th time, rei momo, and rings around the world. man, i had to skedaddle!

thanks to a friend of mami's named kant (after immanuel, with a cool einstein t and a nervous laugh) who dropped me off at harv sq., despite the long trip from red to green to kenmore, i was at axis shortly after 7, the scheduled start time for the rather early show (or so i thought at the time, although it now occurs to me that 7 isn't a completely ridiculous start time for a saturday rock show, even if 9 or even 11 is more typical.) and i got in with no problem, and almost to the front.

opening for Cornelius, and clearly very happy about it, were south ("we've been south," they said at the end of their set), whom i may have peripherally heard of. they're good. interesting guitar britrock, somewhere between the super furry animals and oasis, with a little radiohead as well. they did a lot of instrument swapping (the front guy was mostly bassist, but also played guitar, drums and bottleneck at times) which always makes me smile. the couple next to me had never heard of cornelius - they were there to see south, so there you go.

man, Cornelius. the process of playing point for dan to convince him to go to the show (he really wanted to, but decided to host a barbecue instead) got me even more psyched about the album and curious about how he/they were going to pull it off live. i was satisfied:

the set started out with a blank white sheet covering the whole stage. dripping noises and stage left/stage right guitar plucks (recreating the immaculate panning effects on the record) gradually revealed a groove, when the drums kicked in a light revealed cornelius' silhouette in the center of the screen. with the beat, he pointed his finger at a word which then as if magically appeared on the screen where he pointed: "at…here…now…cornelius…from…nakameguro…to…everywhere…hello……"

the sheet fell and they kicked into "point of view point," the lovely video clip for it, as projected in the background, only marred by the shortness of the venue, which meant that the bottom portion of the projection was soaked up by the band members heads. the band members: four japanese in short sleeve white buttondowns and skinny black ties; cornelius on guitar and other things, another guitarist, bassist/guitarist/keyboardist, and (female!) drummer/flautist. they all sang and played occasional whistles and bells, making a valiant effort to capture the kaliedoscope of noises on the album.

also, another guy on stage ran the visuals (these rival shadow and the beta band for the best video work i've seen at a rock concert - especially cool was one of a pair of fingers walking as legs past, through, and into an amusing array of household items.) and there was another guy, a fat white guy with a red beard and t-shirt, who i guess was triggering samples or something, but mostly seemed to be dancing around excitedly.

with minimal banter, they played down the first six or seven tunes from the new record. someone in the crowd said, matter-of-factly, "that was awesome." then, fun surprises from Fantasma, which i may have written off too soon (it's not a bad record, certainly, but i always find it impossibly disjointed): time-signature anthem "count 5 or six", which had us all jumpin' and thrashin', noisy tribute "clash," the glockenspiel sample polka "magoo opening," "star fruits surf rider" and some others that i vaguely recognized.

and some i didn't, including a theoretically hula-tinged number with background visuals taken from "blue hawaii" (elvis presley surrounded by hula girls.) in the middle of this, cornelius pulled a guy out of the audience, held on to his wrist, and moved his hand to play "love me tender" on theremin. note-perfect. absolutely amazing. and then he gave him a lei. that was awesome.

they got back around to point material, including the out-of-place "i hate hate" (sounds like the fucking champs destroyed by squarepusher or something), which was further opportunity for the band to show off their tightness (in order to pull of this music, you have to be ridiculously tight, and these guys did it - the drummer was really remarkable for her ability to hit all those crazy cues and odd hits and still groove.) and my late fave track, "brazil," which they took pretty faced and traded whistle solo for kazoo.

two of the more extraneous (that is, unspontaneous) encores i've seen followed (each only one song long, and in between them i saw corny telling the light guy not to turn the lights up, they were coming back.) oddly, given the flow of the set thus far, they didn't play the last two point tracks, but instead two from the previous album: "free fall" and that acoustic, beach-boys-y pop tune (in the middle of which they paused, in classic japanese fashion, to take a picture.)

yeah. so, awesome concert. i wanted to buy some merch but it was way overpriced ($15 for "do it again and again and again…" shirt, $15 for the lp, $10 for the 12"s.)

so i just t'd back to h.sq. found myself digging in the tower records used bin, which in addition to tons of copies of the same records (surprising, like 10+ copies of albums by jeb loy nichols and catherine wheel, and less surprising, like 30+ copies of the last stone temple pilots album) there are some surprising good deals, most the results of mispricing no doubt. i walked away with four discs, totalling $7, including two by someone called mocean worker, and a beck single import for $1.50. cool.