Aftershock 2014 (or Eat My Dust?)

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This last weekend was spent with my daughter at the Aftershock 2014 music festival in Sacramento, CA. How it came to be that I was there, alternating between disgust and jubilation is a tale I will tell.

Polina has become a fan of a particular Japanese rock band by the name of One OK Rock. Back in February, One OK Rock came to the U.S. for the first time to play a few concerts. We drove to L.A. for the weekend just so she could see the band (a whole other adventure worthy of it's own tale). Come June, One OK Rock was the line-up in the 2014 Vans Warped Tour, and so we traveled to see them again (again, another adventure worthy of it's own tale).

Based on those experiences, I has miraculously rekindled my youthful love of going to concerts and music festivals that were so prevalent in my life during the late 80s and early 90s, but which had somehow faded in importance. Looking around for more, I found the Aftershock music festival playing only some months away in September, and promptly purchased tickets. 

Like most music festivals I suspect...you come for the headline acts, and are surprised and delighted to discover new bands. In this case, I was drawn in by AWOLNation (previously posted about here), Bad Religion, Godsmack, The Offspring, Rise Against, Rob Zombie, and Weezer. For the record, with the exception of AWOLNation which had a terrible live performance, it was so worth it, especially Rob Zombie who put on one hell of a show!

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During Saturday's performance, the band which I was unfamiliar with and which stood out most to me was Viza (pictured above). Viza calls themselves International Rock, but the term I coined with Polina while watching was, Mediterranean Metal. They manage to combine Southern and Eastern European melodies and instruments with rock music, all fronted by delightfully original lyrics.They are a unique band, with their own sound, demanding attention. At some point, I will do a proper review of at least one of their albums (I purchased all of them), but I will leave you with this note; Viza seems to be the spiritual successor to Oingo Boingo (my all time favorite band). If you are interested, check youtube for them, and visit their website: www.experienceviza.com

Image found on the Internet.

Sunday's performance, on the other hand, brought another band to the fore, almost in opposite to Viza. This band is called Black Stone Cherry (pictured above). They hail from Kentucky and trade in good-ole'-fashioned rousing rock music. When most of the early sets of music all featured bands trying to out-scream each other on Sunday, it was refreshing to find a band who sang, sang well, and backed it with rocking good music far and away better than anyone else at that point. Truly, this band knew subtlety and nuance with voice, guitar, bass, and drums, as opposed to the heavy-handed hammering of other bands. Please do check them out at: www.blackstonecherry.com

The downside? I suppose I could complain about the overpriced drink and food, and the criminal lack of merch (except t-shirts) that one had to wait more than an hour in line to get, but that is I suppose to be expected (though the Warped Tour did a better job of this). Truly, the actual downside to the concert was out of the hands of the bands or the organizers, and that was the heat and dust. Aftershock was held on a weekend where the heat reached in excess of 100 degrees, and due to the California drought, with the venue being an outdoor park, the grass had long since died. More than 32,000 people dancing and jumping about, kicked up enormous dust clouds that just choked my lungs and nose (and the voluminous clouds of pot smoke didn't help either) and covered everything and everyone in grime. 

Still, for every delirious near-heat-stroked moment, gritty-teethed grimace, or stunned-contact-high we experienced, it was so much fun, and I must admit to having let go of my inhibitions and danced, and jumped, and screamed, until I was horse in voice and my legs ached.

I will do it again.

-Brent

"Our moments of inspiration are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever and anon reminded of them." - Henry David Thoreau

Review: A Letter To Momo

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Today I had the pleasure to watch in theaters a charming, sometimes bittersweet and sad, sometimes hilariously funny, anime called A Letter To Momo.

The titular Momo is an 11 year old girl who recently lost her father to a sudden and tragic death, and must come to terms with her emotions, her mother's turmoil, living in a new place filled with new people...and three goblins. The title is a reference to a blank letter left by the father to Momo with only the words, "Dear Momo" written on it.

The emotional heart of the film is the struggle Momo and her mother have in coping with the loss of father/husband, unrequited love, and overcoming fears sometimes metaphorically, sometimes literally. This is balanced with the humor originating from the goblins and Momos interactions with them. The goblins have a reason for being there, a connection to Momo, but that is part of the mystery of the movie so I will not spoil it here. Suffice to say, they cause more (funny) trouble for Momo than they help.

The metaphor here is simple. Life most go on, with all the ensuing heartache and sadness and fear, but also all the reasons to keep laughing and smiling, along with basic human needs such as the need to connect to others and even eating. The empty letter is clearly a tabula rasa, a metaphor for everything unsaid in life, and wished we could have said, but it's also a metaphor for life itself. It can be overly sentimental at times, playing for laughs and fantastical at others, but it never crosses the line to maudlin or slapstick.

Like the best of anime films these days, the "camera" holds scenes and characters in frame for long moments letting us dwell on the beautiful background paintings, or subtle animation of facial gestures of characters. It is in stark contrast to most Western "cartoons" which operate at a frantic pace to keep the kids attention. A Letter To Momo ostensibly is being billed as a children's movie in the U.S., but it really isn't. It's a thoughtful movie for mature audiences with occasional moments of hilarity and a few awe-inspiring take-aways.

You won't find anything new in this film, and no, it won't dethrone Hiyao Miyazaki, but it is worth watching. I recommend it.

-Brent

Family Long Gone Part 1 (or who were they?)

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While on a recent hike through the woods of Truckee, I got to thinking about my grandparents, and how little I actually know about them, and the trivial, if anything, I know about my great grandparents. I found this odd. In Norse traditions, for example, it was nearly mandatory to recall the deeds of ancestors, but now…my children’s children will barely know me, and their children won’t even know my name. What an odd way humanity functions, progress and families in small windows of clarity, and the moment it passes, it passes not just into history, but obscurity.

In some small part, I suppose that is why I write this blog; To help my future grandchildren, and their children to have some connection to their past; To know who came before them; and not just dates and places, but some idea of who I was, what I loved, what I feared, what I wanted out of life; and who came before me. To that end, over the next couple of days or weeks, I will post some recollections of my grandparents, all now deceased, and my mother, also deceased. Hopefully it will be of some use in the future, and maybe inspire others to pick up the chain of history and reconnect the links to the future.

-Brent

“Allow me to ask you, then, how can man govern, if he is not only deprived of the opportunity of making a plan for at least some ridiculously short period, well, say, a thousand years, but cannot even vouch for his own tomorrow?” – Mikhail Bulgakov