#berkeley's on fire tour

[bluewinnerangel]

FITF Tour exit songs

- NA LEG - Uncasville: Tina Turner - The Best

Gilford: The Smiths - This Charming Man

Laval: Petula Clark - Downtown

Toronto: Bryan Adams - Summer Of '69

Cuyahoga Falls: The Verve - Bitter Sweet Symphony

Sterling Heights: Shed Seven - Chasing Rainbows

Cincinnati: The Killers - All These Things That I've Done

Columbus: R.E.M. - The One I Love

Indianapolis: Joy Division - Love Will Tear Us Apart

Maryland Heights (St. Louis): Chuck Berry - Johnny B. Goode

Kansas City: Van Morrison - Moondance

Milwaukee: Johnny Nash - I Can See Clearly Now

Chicago: Earth, Wind & Fire - September

Minneapolis: Sinéad O'Connor - Nothing Compares 2 U

Council Bluffs: Buzzcocks - Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've)

Sioux Falls: Don McLean - American Pie

Seattle: The Smiths - There Is A Light That Never Goes Out

Vancouver: The Police - King Of Pain

Troutdale: Elvis Presley - Always On My Mind

Berkeley: INXS - Never Tear Us Apart

Los Angeles: 2Pac - California Love

Las Vegas: The Killers - Human

Phoenix: Spear Of Destiny - Liberator

Irving: The Doors - Hello, I Love You

Austin: Wheatus - Teenage Dirtbag

Houston The Woodlands: The Police - Walking On The Moon

St. Augustine: The Police - Every Breath You Take

Hollywood: Elton John - Your Song

Tampa: Pat Benatar - Hit Me With Your Best Shot

Atlanta: The Rolling Stones - You Can't Always Get What You Want

Nashville: Duran Duran - Hold Back The Rain

Charlotte: Lou Reed - Perfect Day

Raleigh: Van Morrison - Moondance

Columbia: Commodores - Easy

Boston 1: Boston - More Than A Feeling

Boston 2: Pixies - Here Comes Your Man

Philadelphia: Sinéad O'Connor - Nothing Compares 2 U

Asbury Park: Bruce Springsteen - Dancing In The Dark

New York: Queen - We Are The Champions (dj elf asked a fan to pick between this one and David Bowie - Heroes)

- EU & UK LEG - Hamburg: Joy Division - Love Will Tear Us Apart

Copenhagen: Queen & David Bowie - Under Pressure

Oslo: Green Day - Wake Me Up When September Ends

Stockholm: The White Stripes - Seven Nation Army

Helsinki: Elvis Presley - Always On My Mind

Tallinn: Smash Mouth - All Star

Riga: AC/DC - Thunderstruck

Kaunas: Elvis Presley - Can't Help Falling in Love

Krakow: Iggy Pop - Lust For Life

Łódź: Ramones - Blitzkrieg Bop

Vienna: Oasis - Supersonic

Ljubljana: The Killers - Smile Like You Mean It

Budapest: Bloc Party - Helicopter

Bucharest: Foo Fighters - My Hero

Sofia: Rage Against The Machine - Bombtrack

Bilbao: Pixies - Where Is My Mind

Lisbon: White Lies - Farewell to the Fairground

Madrid: Editors - Munich

Barcelona: At the Drive-In - One Armed Scissor

Turin: Lenny Kravitz - Are You Gonna Go My Way

Bologna: Bloc Party - Helicopter

Luxembourg: Pixies - Where Is My Mind

Antwerp: Queens Of The Stone Age - My God Is The Sun

Paris: Biffy Clyro - Bubbles

Amsterdam: Blur - Song 2

Cologne: The Libertines - Can't Stand Me Now

Prague: Jet - Are You Gonna Be My Girl

Berlin: The Cure - Friday I'm in Love

Munich: Fatboy Slim - Praise You

Zurich: The Strokes - Last Nite

Dublin: Inhaler - These Are The Days

Sheffield: The Killers - Mr. Brightside

Manchester: The Smiths - This Charming Man

Glasgow: The Snuts - Gloria

Brighton: Ramones - I Wanna Be Sedated

Cardiff: T. Rex - 20th Century Boy

London: The Libertines - Can't Stand Me Now

Birmingham: Boyz II Men - End Of The Road

- ASIA & AUS LEG - Jakarta: Iggy Pop - Lust For Life

Melbourne: Jet - Are You Gonna Be My Girl

Brisbane: The Temper Trap - Fader

Sydney: Oasis - Rock 'N' Roll Star

- LATAM LEG - Panama: Hard-Fi - Living for the Weekend

San Juan: Pixies - Where Is My Mind

Rio de Janeiro: Nirvana - Heart-Shaped Box

Like last time the plan is to keep editing this post as tour goes on - 2022 LTWT here

Apple music playlist here

[jazzyinspace]

⌚️

🤝

🔫

⭐️

Thank you! 🥰❤️

(You definitely asked me the toughest questions, which I know you did on purpose 🥹✨️)

⌚️ How old were they when they entered the vault? Were they born in there? Or alternatively, are they from Vault 76 at all? (if not, where are they from and how did they end up in West Virginia?)

Jeff is not from Vault 76, nor is he a vault dweller whatsoever. He was born in West Virginia to parents who were a part of the Appalachian Free States. However, he did experience life underground when he was around 8 years old. 

🤝 Do they have any other CAMP allies? (either in-game or added via headcanon)

Brian 🦩

Jeff met Brian at one of the lowest moments of his life. He was still trying to make sense of everything following his disastrous new beginning, all while trying to stay alive. 

Rather than choosing to live a somewhat peaceful life on the cliffs between Slocum's Joe and Arktos Pharma, Jeff left the safe haven that he built for himself and continued on his adventure.

Wilson Brother's Auto Repair became his temporary home base while on the road. And all was going well enough until the night when scorched hordes surrounded the building. 

Panicked, Jeff grabbed the rifle that he picked up in Berkeley Springs and commanded a lone plastic flamingo to keep an eye on the garage. In the same moment, he gave the flamingo a name: Brian.

Together, Jeff and Brian managed to fight off the scorched and save the garage; but, Jeff wasn't ready to face another horde at this point. So, the pair packed up everything and left, searching for another place to call home. 

Today, Jeff and his best friend Brian are constantly building/rebuilding, helping others, and going on adventures together. Their recent trip to Nuka-World on Tour (pictured below) was so much fun! 

Brian would tell you that along with being Jeff's most powerful ally, he is also the CEO and acting secretary of the Jeff Stone Complaint Department™️

Ralph 👽

One day, Jeff heard a crash from outside his C.A.M.P. and when he looked out the front door, he saw [REDACTED].

[REDACTED]

[REDACTED]

[Jeff is just as clueless, believe me]

Jeff has been on many adventures past and present thanks to his neighbor and good pal, Ralph 💫

🔫 What's their preferred weapon type? Is there a specific weapon they mainly use?

With the exception of his Fixer and Flame-ingo, Jeff is a melee specialist. Chances are, if it's one-handed or two, Jeff has brought it along with him on missions or otherwise. 

💙 Redd-Upper–most used 

💙 Shishkebab–most used in [REDACTED]

💙 Plasma Cutter 

💙 Samurai Machete 

💙 Blue Ridge Branding Iron–uses this during Riding Shotgun + Friendly Fire perk. (Kieran voice: Guard the Brahmin.)

💙 Sheepsquatch Staff 

💙 ProSnap Deluxe Camera–he gets startled sometimes! 

⭐️ The Free States?

Jeff was just a child amidst the growing tension between his extended family and most everyone. He would hear whispers of treachery and scandal and notice the accusatory stares coming from his neighbors. Much of this was beyond him at the time, yet still managed to upset him. 

With said tension and the threat of war becoming more of a reality with each passing day, the Free States sheltered underground. They remained there until it was finally safe to re-emerge and rebuild again. 

Post-war, Jeff was able to experience something that could resemble normalcy. The Free States made their home in Harpers Ferry and offered assistance to other survivors and their factions. Unfortunately, all of their efforts would come to an end with the emergence of scorchbeasts and the plague that ultimately spread throughout The Mire and beyond.

Jeff lost his mother and father, his extended family and friends. He was among few survivors of the scorched attacks and felt tremendous guilt because of it. 

(Not so much related to the Free States, but the following is for you, @jonnyonearth ❤️)

Jeff carried his guilt with him as he traveled across the map in search of folks like himself and safety. It was a difficult journey, but he was able to eventually find both of those things in the Forest–and yet his new beginning almost ended before it even started. 

A vault dweller turned wasteland nurse, Emily, found an unresponsive Jeff next to one of the saddest C.A.M.P. creations she had ever laid eyes on. She saved his life that day as her and another wastelander, a preacher, brought Jeff down to her clinic. Even in the present day, Emily still teases Jeff about the whole ordeal, especially the moment when Jeff realized he was sporting some strange gadget on his wrist. 

Jeff started to understand the Free States through holotapes, notes, and hushed stories shared over drinks. Among his personal belongings are Free States items that he has collected over the years. 💙

[denimbex1986]

'Is anyone else surprised by the popularity of Oppenheimer? The film has triggered a mammoth cultural explosion, igniting topics that range from the dangers of politicizing science, to the hermeneutics of the mushroom cloud, to the intricacies of IMAX, to AI military technology and “our Oppenheimer moment,” to the “subversive” nature of going to a movie theater in the age of streaming. Not to mention the whole “Barbenheimer” phenomenon.

Based on Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin’s 2005 biography, American Prometheus, Oppenheimer charts the brilliant career of its eponymous hero; but the career of director Christopher Nolan has a shimmer all its own. Nolan’s CV is every young filmmaker’s envy: artsy short film (Doodlebug), followed by bargain-basement debut that garners critical attention (Following); then a breakthrough art-house film that makes money (Memento); and finally off to Batman-land, rocketing Nolan from no-budget to mega-budget in just eight years. The rare director seemingly able to have it all, Nolan specializes in box-office blockbusters “pitched at the divide between art and industry, poetry and entertainment,” as Manohla Dargis wrote about The Dark Knight.

Nolan’s core obsessions were laid out in Memento (2000), a flashy neo-noir thriller that gave the term “retro” a whole new meaning. That film consists of short sequences that move forward but are arranged in reverse, tracking backwards in time from a revenge killing in the opening scene to the original crime that incited it. Memento’s devices of narrative uncertainty require some cognitive calisthenics on the part of viewers. In the two decades since, Nolan has returned to this sweet spot with films such as Inception (2010) and Tenet (2020), movies that reflected his abiding urge to drill down into, and manipulate, the fundamental structures of cinematic reality. No wonder a story about theoretical physics would attract him.

A three-hour biopic, Oppenheimer sets up as a bildungsroman, charting physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer’s education and character formation. We follow his youthful tour of European universities in the 1920s, where he meets science luminaries from Heisenberg to Niels Bohr; his eventual landing at Berkeley, where his ideas catch fire (an artful time-lapse sequence shows rising attendance as his classes become popular); and, finally, the unfolding of the Manhattan Project under his direction at Los Alamos, New Mexico. Well, not finally, in fact. A substantial chunk of the movie consists of layered-in testimony from two postwar political proceedings: a 1954 Atomic Energy Commission hearing to determine whether Oppenheimer would maintain his security clearance; and the 1959 Senate confirmation hearing of Lewis Strauss as Eisenhower’s Secretary of Commerce. Strauss was the man who hired Oppenheimer to head the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton, then subsequently subverted his career, apparently for reasons of personal jealousy and resentment.

It is a lot of ground for a movie to cover, and let me lay my cards on the table: amid near-unanimous critical acclaim for Oppenheimer, I second the dissenting vote of the ever-acerbic New Yorker critic, Richard Brody, who likened it to “a movie-length Wikipedia article.” In contrast with the elusive and profound aura that enwraps Nolan’s storytelling in his best movies, here the director takes a kind of History Channel approach, in which private lives are stapled to a public timeline. Thus, for example, the publication of an important physics paper by Oppenheimer in a science journal on September 1, 1939, is upstaged by a screaming newspaper headline, “War in Europe!” There are history footnotes, as when we briefly meet a Los Alamos physicist named Klaus Fuchs—history buffs will register the future notorious spy. Ethical quandaries arising from the prospect of bombing the Japanese are limned for us in meetings where stakeholders hash it all out, seminar style. “Is there no way to demonstrate it first?” asks one of the physicists. “Oh, we intend to demonstrate it in the most convincing way possible—twice!” barks General Leslie Groves, Los Alamos’s Army overseer. It all feels conspicuously…educational.

As for the character of Oppenheimer, he is supposed to present the tragic paradox of a civilized humanist who lends his talents to the harnessing of a violence that could destroy civilization. By way of characterization, we are given visual gestures that juxtapose his various passions and preoccupations—a look around his office disclosing T. S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland” along with prints of modernist art, followed by hallucinatory visions of cosmic particle-scapes set to thunderous music, followed by Oppenheimer quoting a John Donne sonnet to a baffled General Groves (an enjoyably gruff Matt Damon).

But what kind of man was Oppenheimer, really? A few stray moments in the film, clearly culled from the Bird-Sherwin biography, hint at a driven, impulsive, and eccentric bohemian with a dark side. In an early scene from his student days, he impulsively injects a disliked teacher’s apple with cyanide, and has to rush back later to avert calamity. Cyanide? Such behavior is so out of whack with the film’s portrayal of its protagonist that I found myself saying, “Really?”; and although General Groves calls Oppenheimer “theatrical, egotistical, and unstable,” we don’t see enough of these qualities in action. While Oppenheimer’s ethical dilemmas are laid out with teacherly clarity, his psychological and emotional complexities never really come into focus; oddly for a biopic, Nolan has made his subject less interesting than he was in life.

The one-note intensity of Cillian Murphy’s performance doesn’t help. Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema fills the screen with closeups of Murphy’s strangely unearthly face, set in a far-off, suffering gaze. This haunted and passive bearing is at odds with the reality of Oppenheimer’s power, and it is disconcerting to see Murphy’s wraithlike figure striding down Los Alamos’s dusty main street in his fedora like a sheriff in a gunslinging town. “He was founder, mayor and sheriff, all rolled into one,” one visitor recalls. “You are an American Prometheus,” Niels Bohr tells him. But we get almost no sense of any megalomaniacal dimension to his character.

Yet power and its mesmerizing allure lie at the heart of the story. The film scrutinizes the scientists’ justifications for developing a weapon of supreme destructiveness—first and foremost, the fear that the Nazis would get there first. As it turned out, they weren’t particularly close; Hitler mistrusted the science and pursued conventional weapons such as the V-2 rocket, and then the war in Europe was over. But the Manhattan Project had developed an unstoppable momentum, and in Oppenheimer apparently most of all. In Jon Else’s illuminating 1980 documentary, The Day After Trinity, British physicist Freeman Dyson recalls that “the dream somehow got hold of him—to produce a nuclear weapon.” And Hans Bethe, another key player at Los Alamos, adds that Oppenheimer “completely changed to fit the new role.” This change—what it drew on in Oppenheimer, and how it ramified—goes largely missing from Oppenheimer, and its absence vitiates the drama, reducing tragedy to mere chronicle.

The film is three hours long, yet the portrait of its protagonist seems sketchy, and one wonders how Nolan might have allocated time differently. Take, for instance, the decision to showcase the hearings from the 1950s. Presumably, the intention was to dramatize the emerging political dynamic of the Cold War, with its rituals of character assassination. But the resulting “action” is bureaucratic and dense. Nolan’s script takes us deep in the weeds of political infighting surrounding Oppenheimer, his nemesis Strauss (played with cool cynicism by Robert Downey Jr.), and the controversy over the physicist’s security clearance, including extensive testimony about a long-ago conversation with an academic mentor who proposed sharing info on the Manhattan Project with the Soviets, and whether this constituted treason. The director’s attempt to wring drama from all the political maneuvering reaches a bizarre climax when he sets testimony from the hearings to the same tumultuous, thunderous music that he used to dramatize the advent of the bomb itself.

Don’t get me wrong: there are some terrific moments when Oppenheimer succeeds in conveying a sense of awed horror, and of a moral recklessness bordering on the obscene, such as one scene in which the physicists place bets on the likely kilotonnage of the blast (Oppenheimer bets on three kilotons), with Enrico Fermi taking side bets on the likelihood of “atmospheric ignition,” which would incinerate all of New Mexico. And the film’s best moment occurs after the bombs are dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ending the war, when Oppenheimer speaks to a jubilant crowd in Los Alamos. To the audience’s thunderously stamping feet and shouts of “Oppy! Oppy!” the physicist starts a conventional victory speech—“the world will remember this day”—but suddenly breaks off. Silent, sweating, he seems to dissociate, as everything around him slides into the surreal: a scream; noiseless applause; a blinding light and a vision of calamity, with people sick and dying and covered in ash. The disorienting power of the scene conveys both the calamity of nuclear war and Oppenheimer’s inner turmoil, his nauseating sense of complicity.

Oppenheimer needs more of this scene’s surreal energy; strangely, for a Christopher Nolan film, it needs more strangeness. But right after that hallucinatory episode, Nolan cuts to a cover of Oppenheimer on Time magazine, and from then on reverts to History Channel mode, dutifully covering the political hearings, as well as a brusque interview with President Truman in which the physicist agonizes about having “blood on my hands” and is scoffingly dismissed.

After watching Oppenheimer, I streamed The Day After Trinity. (“Trinity” refers to Oppenheimer’s name for the bomb test site, inspired by a Donne poem, and the “day after” refers to yet another hearing, in 1965, at which Oppenheimer was asked about talks on halting the spread of nukes, and responded, “It’s twenty years too late. It should have been done the day after Trinity.”) It may seem paradoxical to suggest that a documentary more acutely conveys the tragedy of Los Alamos than a feature film does. Yet for me at least, it did. In the decades since the Manhattan Project, many commentators seeking to capture the dreadful awe that accompanied the advent of the atomic bomb have invoked Oppenheimer’s quotation from the Bhagavad Gita—“Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds”—and Nolan leans heavily on it, using it not once but twice. The documentary pursues the horror more subtly, in a banality-of-evil way. It contains a small but terrible moment, when the Manhattan Project physicist Robert Serber displays a section of a wall removed from a classroom in Nagasaki, bearing the outline of a window sash imprinted on it photographically by the blast. “You see the angle here?” Serber says, holding it up. “That shows you that the bomb went off at exactly the height it was supposed to.” And Serber can’t quite suppress a smile—quickly followed by a look of sickly confusion. All these years later, he still feels pride.

That look does more to evoke the scientists’ moral disarray than does the pose of abject contrition in which the last third of Nolan’s film freezes Robert Oppenheimer. Serber’s smile reveals candor about the thrills of scientific discovery, even as his sickened look betrays an awareness of what resulted when those thrills were channeled into the priorities of what Eisenhower himself would call the military-industrial complex. What does it mean—for science and its practitioners, for civilization itself—when mass death becomes, well, a project?

The enormity of such questions mocked even the formidable intelligence assembled on the team at Los Alamos. Recalling the shocking power of the July 1945 test blast for Else’s documentary, Frank Oppenheimer, who worked on the Manhattan Project along with his older brother, becomes suddenly anxious, repeatedly rubbing his eyes and forehead as he describes being stunned by the heat of the blast, twenty miles away. “It was terrifying,” he recalls.

In the presence of that terror, Else asks, what was the first thing the assembled physicists said to one another? Frank Oppenheimer pauses. “‘It worked,’” he says. And upon learning just three weeks later that the bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima? Again Oppenheimer offers that stricken look, and again, candor. “Our first thought,” he recalls, “was, ‘Thank God it wasn’t a dud.’”'

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This day in history

Tonight (May 2) I’ll be in Portland at the Cedar Hills Powell’s with Andy Baio for my new novel, Red Team Blues.

On May 5, I’ll be at the Books, Inc in Mountain View with Mitch Kapor; and on May 6/7, I’ll be in Berkeley at the Bay Area Bookfest.

#10yrsago Why “connecting the dots” is the wrong way to think about stopping terrorism https://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/02/opinion/schneier-boston-bombing/index.html

#10yrsago Homemade laser pops 100 balloons https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuceDT2R4f4

#10yrsago OpenWorm: an artificial life sim of an earthworm https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2013/05/openworm-artificial-life.html

#10yrsago Running on a long, deep pool of ooblek https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHlAcASsf6U

#10yrsago Jello Biafra and The Guantanamo School Of Medicine’s “White People and the Damage Done” https://memex.craphound.com/2013/05/03/jello-biafra-and-the-guantanamo-school-of-medicines-white-people-and-the-damage-done/

#10yrsago Easy win for publishing: network and systematize PR and marketing https://locusmag.com/2013/05/cory-doctorow-improving-book-publicity-in-the-21st-century/

#5yrsago Mashup Maker: Another entry for the Catalog of Missing Devices https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/05/mashup-maker-another-entry-catalog-missing-devices-eff-supporter

#5yrsago Facebook has repeatedly fired stalker employees, then covered it up https://www.vice.com/en/article/bjp9zv/facebook-employees-look-at-user-data

#5yrsago Oakland passes groundbreaking municipal law requiring citizen oversight of local surveillance https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/05/oakland-passes-strongest-surveillance-oversight-law-in-us/

#1yrago The Democrats’ self-immolating fetish for means-testing https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/03/utopia-of-rules/#in-triplicate

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in Mountain View, Berkeley, Portland, Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, DC, Gaithersburg, Oxford, Hay, Manchester, Nottingham, London, and Berlin!

[rainydawgradioblog]

Coming of Age with Foster the People

Torches, Supermodel, and the occasional Sacred Hearts Club song will always be the backdrop to my teenage years. I give way to nostalgia and lend myself to Foster the People as I transcend time.

It’s spring of 2017 again. I’m 13, acne-prone, and my hair post-pixie cut is an awkward length, but at least my music taste is good. My dad made sure of this, finding any opportunity to show me Blondie’s and Björk’s music videos. He loves watching YouTube videos. Ironically, that’s how he found Foster the People: through a University of Virginia campus tour, with “Pumped Up Kicks” in the background (weird origin story, I know).

We sit cross-legged on the grass at Chetzemoka Park, studying the lyrics to “Best Friend.” 

Feelings sleeping in the field again / But I can feel, I can feel, I can feel it's beginning to end

Yeah, premonitions smiling in the dark / Well, I can see, I can see, I can see the story's starting to arc

We hover over that last phrase. 

I focus on my father’s words, drowning out Mark Foster’s voice. He tells me I am witty enough to write television scripts one day. A rare compliment. Usually, he makes fun of me for talking like a “Gilmore Girls” character, oscillating between parallels of Jess’s sarcastic quips and Lorelai’s tantrums. I prefer to draw a comparison with music-obsessed Lane.

Whereas Dad likes “Fire Escape,” I’ve always been partial to “Coming of Age”—probably because throughout my time listening to their discography, I’ve borne witness to my own coming of age. Two years after picking at the Chetzemoka grass, “Imagination” is on repeat as I work my first job cleaning houses. Two Julys later, Dad and I drive through the Berkeley hills blasting “Are You What You Want to Be?” (not yet) through the speakers of his ‘92 Volkswagen Rabbit convertible. The top is down and my hair, well past my shoulders now, is blowing hazardously over my eyes. 

I blink and my teenhood is fleeting. It’s spring of 2023 now, and I’m on a suspiciously perfect first date. The sun relentlessly beams down on us as we curl up on a picnic blanket overlooking Lake Union. “Time to Get Closer” starts playing, and perhaps feeling inspired, I lean into him. He kisses me until I pull away gently, giggling. 

Farfetched dreams conceptualized in the grass. California joyrides. My first kiss. Foster the People was the soundtrack for these sweet, formative moments I tether myself to. 

…

The Album

At 21, I’m more of a music junkie than ever. My taste spans over 8,600 songs clustered together in a comprehensive Spotify playlist I add to daily. I’ve transformed the process of finding and listening to music into an active experience as I pause in grocery stores to Shazam tunes and seek out live shows. If I cheat and count individual artist performances at THING Festival, I have been to 57 concerts. My highest concert streak is three back-to-back weekends. I’ve seen shows in my backyard, 50 feet from where I graduated high school. I’ve hopped around Seattle venues, from Barboza to The Showbox to Tractor Tavern.

Foster the People’s Paradise State of Mind tour at The Paramount stands alone.

When the new album came out—the first one in seven years, aside from the Torches deluxe album in 2021—I was nervous I wouldn’t resonate with their music in the way I had as a teen. 

Yet I suppose it would be naive to expect perfect uninterruptedness. After a pandemic and the departure of two band members, it was inevitable that Foster the People would pivot. I should show the band more grace instead of clinging to what was; I, too, have had characters enter and exit my life, though luckily without it making headlines.

While I didn’t connect with Paradise State of Mind as a whole, “Take Me Back” and “Chasing Low Vibrations” reminded me of the existing continuity between current and past versions of Foster the People. These songs have the same layered neo-psychedelic sound and fusion of indie rock and alternative genres as the earlier albums, forming smile lines on my cheeks and coursing adrenaline in my body.

Foster the People’s music awakens something deeply human in me—raw, visceral, and alive. I knew that if I ever had the chance, I had to experience that energy in its truest form—live.

…

The Concert: Good Neighbours

January 25th was a day I’d blocked out in my calendar months before I acquired a concert ticket, just in case. Good Neighbours were on at 8, but doors opened at 7. When I arrived at The Paramount at quarter to 7—the only time I’m ever early is if I’m attending a concert—the lines were divided into VIP seating and regular entry, wrapping around opposite sides of the building. Visibly ecstatic, we all flowed in at once, filling the balcony and barricade alike in minutes.

This was only my second solo show, the first being Temples at Neumos. I’d tried to convince my dad to come up for the night, but those plans never came to fruition. Although I longingly cast looks at couples and friend groups swaying together to “Sit Next to Me,” I was ultimately glad to experience the concert alone. After all, my resonance with Foster the People’s music is rooted in my memories and sense of self.

Good Neighbours assumed the blue-lit stage right on time. Decked out in dress pants and a t-shirt tucked into a blazer, lead singer Oli Fox strutted and danced as he sang “Keep It Up,” establishing an upbeat, infectious stage presence the group maintained throughout their 45-minute set. 

Hailing from East London, Good Neighbours is an indie rock duo composed of Fox and Scott Verrill. In an interview, the band explained they were next-door neighbors in the same studio who made music separately until one day in 2023, they decided to collaborate. “That’s cute,” Fox joked in the interview about the way they met. He explained that their goal for 2025 is to continue working on their debut album.

Without realizing it, I’d heard “Home” and “Daisies” before watching Good Neighbours perform. The chorus of “Home” went viral on the internet before the song was released in January of 2024, and was often used as the backdrop for montages and other nostalgic compilations. 

Of their 11-song setlist, there was an even split between released and unreleased tracks. “Ripple” was unique. Dropped the night before their Seattle show—the tour’s opening stop—my city was the first to hear it live after its streaming debut. Of their unreleased songs, “Starry Eyed” was my favorite. It was catchy, romantic, and a perfect complement to Foster the People’s “Best Friend,” with layered harmonies and the intimate chorus line:

Look at you, look at me / Don’t you know that we could be starry eyed

By the time Good Neighbours wrapped up their set with “Daisies,” I, along with the other photographers, had been ushered out of the pit. I lingered as close to the barricade as I could, beaming with pride for knowing the song before tonight.

Halfway through “Daisies,” the girl standing next to me whispered a question. I later learned her name was Marissa and she’s been listening to Foster the People for about half her life, like me. She found out about them through her older sister, and “Houdini” is one of her favorite songs, though she’s a longtime lover of the entire Torches album.

“Are you the singer’s girlfriend?” Marissa asked.

“What??” I exclaimed, genuinely not hearing her.

“I said, are you dating the singer?”

Oh my God. There’s no way she just asked me that. “Girl, no, I’m just a journalist,” I laughed. “I wish I knew him like that.”

“Oh! I saw you in the pit and thought maybe you were with him.”

“I wish I could say that!”

Our interaction reminded me of Richy Mitch and the Coal Miners, who performed at THING Festival in 2023. My friends and I stood at the barricade, listening as a proud girlfriend’s dad hyped up the band—“the boys,” as he called them—explaining how they practiced in his basement and how he never realized they were this good. Moments like these unravel the context behind the music. Who are the important characters involved? What are they writing about? Whose basement do they practice in? What an honor for me to be mistaken for such an important character in Good Neighbours’ narrative.

The Concert: Foster the People

At 9:18 pm, the lights dimmed and the crowd erupted into cheer. The moment had arrived: Mark Foster was about to breathe the same air as us, bind strangers together and address us as a collective, serenade us in this liminal space with songs he released a few months ago and others he penned a decade ago.

Foster the People opened with “Feed Me,” a track from Paradise State of Mind that I wasn’t familiar with enough to immediately recognize. But when the unmistakable synths of “Helena Beat” hit, I screamed for a solid five seconds. The lights cast Foster in red as he turned his back to the audience, raising his arm in the air, then facing us again to sing. The crowd mirrored his movements, swinging their hands and belting the chorus in unison.

The band’s intricate instrumentation made it surreal to witness them play—strumming their guitars, pounding the drums, and tapping their feet in rhythm with the very music they’d created. In "Pseudologia Fantastica," the fusion of electronic and organic elements struck a chord within me, capturing the tension between illusion and reality. It was as if the music itself embodied the battle between fantasy and truth. I danced, feeling that push and pull within the rhythm.

I was relieved and excited to hear mostly older songs throughout the set. I didn’t need to do my usual “concert homework” with these tracks—they were embedded in my memory, and every note felt like a reunion with my younger self.

Between "Afterlife" and "Call It What You Want," Foster spoke to the crowd in a more serious tone. “I’m sick of all the fear and all the tension and everything that’s going on,” he confided to the 3,000 of us in the venue. “That’s why we play music: to express that stuff.” His words hung in the air as he prepared to express “that stuff” again.

“Houdini,” “Imagination,” and “A Beginner’s Guide to Destroying the Moon” tugged at my senses, unraveling memories of bus rides and walks and other in-betweens from when I first encountered these songs. My dream came true at 9:50 pm, with the opening notes to “Coming of Age.”

Someone told me once that half the excitement at a show is wondering if your favorite song will be played. There’s a euphoric rush when a song you love but didn’t expect to hear makes the setlist. “Coming of Age” was both. It’s not one of their biggest hits, but then again, neither was “Time to Get Closer,” which was also performed (and, naturally, made me think of that first date).

Yet surprisingly, as “Coming of Age” unfolded, I was not stirred by the past. I was an active participant in the moment, fixating on the warm-toned stage lights dancing in perfect sync with the chorus drums. Strangers on the balcony swayed their bodies, perhaps simultaneously reminiscing on and partaking in their own coming of age. Foster ignited a truly magical moment when he led a clap for the final chorus, only slightly interrupted by a devoted fan in front of me screaming even louder—and longer—than I was when Foster walked over to us. 

This performance was my coming of age—a decade of memories converging in a single night, stitched together by the songs that underscored every phase of my life. Foster the People knew this. They understood the weight of nostalgia embedded in the very existence of this concert. They were aware of exactly what we had come for: the oldies we never thought we’d hear live, the soundtrack of our past reclaimed tonight. And they delivered.

Of course, the obligatory encore ended with “Pumped Up Kicks” as a rewind and reference to the band’s coming of age. Foster blew a kiss and thanked us for the privilege of performing tonight in this iconic theater. After the show, I lingered, waiting for the magic to settle. I scored a set list and quickly realized each song was abbreviated: “Pumped Up Kicks” was reduced to “Kicks.” A casual shorthand memento.

The fragments of the night had already begun to slip into memory. 

[juliaanevillee]

Coming of Age with Foster the People

Torches, Supermodel, and the occasional Sacred Hearts Club song will always be the backdrop to my teenage years. I give way to nostalgia and lend myself to Foster the People as I transcend time.

It’s spring of 2017 again. I’m 13, acne-prone, and my hair post-pixie cut is an awkward length, but at least my music taste is good. My dad made sure of this, finding any opportunity to show me Blondie’s and Björk’s music videos. He loves watching YouTube videos. Ironically, that’s how he found Foster the People: through a University of Virginia campus tour, with “Pumped Up Kicks” in the background (weird origin story, I know).

We sit cross-legged on the grass at Chetzemoka Park, studying the lyrics to “Best Friend.” 

Feelings sleeping in the field again / But I can feel, I can feel, I can feel it's beginning to end

Yeah, premonitions smiling in the dark / Well, I can see, I can see, I can see the story's starting to arc

We hover over that last phrase. 

I focus on my father’s words, drowning out Mark Foster’s voice. He tells me I am witty enough to write television scripts one day. A rare compliment. Usually, he makes fun of me for talking like a “Gilmore Girls” character, oscillating between parallels of Jess’s sarcastic quips and Lorelai’s tantrums. I prefer to draw a comparison with music-obsessed Lane.

Whereas Dad likes “Fire Escape,” I’ve always been partial to “Coming of Age”—probably because throughout my time listening to their discography, I’ve borne witness to my own coming of age. Two years after picking at the Chetzemoka grass, “Imagination” is on repeat as I work my first job cleaning houses. Two Julys later, Dad and I drive through the Berkeley hills blasting “Are You What You Want to Be?” (not yet) through the speakers of his ‘92 Volkswagen Rabbit convertible. The top is down and my hair, well past my shoulders now, is blowing hazardously over my eyes. 

I blink and my teenhood is fleeting. It’s spring of 2023 now, and I’m on a first date. The sun relentlessly beams down on us as we curl up on a picnic blanket overlooking Lake Union. “Time to Get Closer” starts playing, and perhaps feeling inspired, I lean into him. He kisses me until I pull away gently, giggling. 

Farfetched dreams conceptualized in the grass. California joyrides. My first kiss. Foster the People was the soundtrack for these sweet, formative moments I tether myself to. 

…

The Album

At 21, I’m more of a music junkie than ever. My taste spans over 8,600 songs clustered together in a comprehensive Spotify playlist I add to daily. I’ve transformed the process of finding and listening to music into an active experience as I pause in grocery stores to Shazam tunes and seek out live shows. If I cheat and count individual artist performances at THING Festival, I have been to 57 concerts. My highest concert streak is three back-to-back weekends. I’ve seen shows in my backyard, 50 feet from where I graduated high school. I’ve hopped around Seattle venues, from Barboza to The Showbox to Tractor Tavern.

Foster the People’s Paradise State of Mind tour at The Paramount stands alone.

When the new album came out—the first one in seven years, aside from the Torches deluxe album in 2021—I was nervous I wouldn’t resonate with their music in the way I had as a teen. 

Yet I suppose it would be naive to expect perfect uninterruptedness. After a pandemic and the departure of two band members, it was inevitable that Foster the People would pivot. I should show the band more grace instead of clinging to what was; I, too, have had characters enter and exit my life, though luckily without it making headlines.

While I didn’t connect with Paradise State of Mind as a whole, “Take Me Back” and “Chasing Low Vibrations” reminded me of the existing continuity between current and past versions of myself. These songs have the same layered neo-psychedelic sound and fusion of indie rock and alternative genres as the earlier albums, forming smile lines on my cheeks and coursing adrenaline in my body.

Foster the People’s music awakens something deeply human in me—raw, visceral, and alive. I knew that if I ever had the chance, I had to experience that energy in its truest form: live.

…

The Concert: Good Neighbours

January 25th was a day I’d blocked out in my calendar months before I acquired a concert ticket, just in case. Good Neighbours were on at 8, but doors opened at 7. When I arrived at The Paramount at quarter to 7—the only time I’m ever early is if I’m attending a concert—the lines were divided into VIP seating and regular entry, wrapping around opposite sides of the building. Visibly ecstatic, we all flowed in at once, filling the balcony and barricade alike in minutes.

This was only my second solo show, the first being Temples at Neumos. I’d tried to convince my dad to come up for the night, but those plans never came to fruition. Although I longingly cast looks at couples and friend groups swaying together to “Sit Next to Me,” I was ultimately glad to experience the concert alone. After all, my resonance with Foster the People’s music is rooted in my relationship with myself.

Good Neighbours assumed the blue-lit stage right on time. Decked out in dress pants and a t-shirt tucked into a blazer, lead singer Oli Fox strutted and danced as he sang “Keep It Up,” establishing an upbeat, infectious stage presence the group maintained throughout their 45-minute set. 

Hailing from East London, Good Neighbours is an indie rock duo composed of Fox and Scott Verrill. In an interview, the band explained they were next-door neighbors in the same studio who made music separately until one day in 2023, they decided to collaborate. “That’s cute,” Fox joked in the interview about the way they met. He explained that their goal for 2025 is to continue working on their debut album.

Without realizing it, I’d heard “Home” and “Daisies” before watching Good Neighbours perform. The chorus of “Home” went viral on the internet before the song was released in January of 2024, and was often used as the backdrop for montages and other nostalgic compilations. 

Of their 11-song setlist, there was an even split between released and unreleased tracks. “Ripple” was unique—dropped the night before their Seattle show, the tour’s opening stop, making my city the first to hear it live after its streaming debut. Of their unreleased songs, “Starry Eyed” was my favorite. It was catchy, romantic, and a perfect complement to Foster the People’s “Best Friend,” with layered harmonies and the intimate chorus line:

Look at you, look at me / Don’t you know that we could be starry eyed

By the time Good Neighbours wrapped up their set with 'Daisies,' I, along with the other photographers, had been ushered out of the pit. I lingered as close to the barricade as I could, beaming with pride for knowing the song before tonight.

Halfway through “Daisies,” the girl standing next to me whispered a question. I later learned her name was Marissa and she’s been listening to Foster the People for about half her life, like me. She found out about them through her older sister, and “Houdini” is one of her favorite songs, though she’s a longtime lover of the entire Torches album.

“Are you the singer’s girlfriend?” Marissa asked.

“What?” I said, genuinely not hearing her.

“I said, are you dating the singer?”

Oh my God. There’s no way she just asked me that. “Girl, no, I’m just a journalist,” I laughed. “I wish I knew him like that.”

“Oh! I saw you in the pit and thought maybe you were with him.”

“I wish I could say that!”

Our interaction reminded me of Richy Mitch and the Coal Miners, who performed at THING Festival in 2023. My friends and I stood at the barricade, listening as a proud girlfriend’s dad hyped up the band—“the boys,” as he called them—explaining how they practiced in his basement and how he never realized they were this good.

Moments like these unravel the context behind the music. Who are the important characters involved? What are they writing about? Whose basement do they practice in? What an honor for me to be mistaken for such an important character in Good Neighbours’ narrative. 

…

The Concert: Foster the People

At 9:18 pm, the lights dimmed and the crowd erupted into cheer. The moment had arrived: Mark Foster was about to breathe the same air as us, bind strangers together and address us as a collective, serenade us in this liminal space with songs he wrote a few months ago and others he penned a decade ago.

Foster the People opened with “Feed Me,” a track from Paradise State of Mind that I wasn’t familiar with enough to immediately recognize. But when the unmistakable synths of “Helena Beat” hit, I screamed for a solid five seconds. The lights cast Foster in red as he turned his back to the audience, raising his arm in the air, then facing us again to sing. The crowd mirrored his movements, swinging their hands and belting the chorus in unison.

The band’s intricate instrumentation made it surreal to witness them play—strumming their guitars, pounding the drums, and tapping their feet in rhythm with the very music they’d created. In "Pseudologia Fantastica," the fusion of electronic and organic elements struck a chord within me, capturing the tension between illusion and reality. It was as if the music itself embodied the battle between fantasy and truth. I danced, feeling that push and pull within the rhythm.

I was relieved and excited to hear mostly older songs throughout the set. I didn’t need to do my usual “concert homework” with these tracks—they were embedded in my memory, and every note felt like a reunion with my younger self.

Between "Afterlife" and "Call It What You Want," Foster spoke to the crowd in a more serious tone. “I’m sick of all the fear and all the tension and everything that’s going on,” he confided to the 3,000 of us in the venue. “That’s why we play music: to express that stuff.” His words hung in the air as he prepared to express that stuff again.

“Houdini,” “Imagination,” and “A Beginner’s Guide to Destroying the Moon” tugged at my senses, unraveling memories of bus rides and walks and other in-betweens from when I first encountered these songs. My dream came true at 9:50 pm, with the opening notes to “Coming of Age.”

Someone told me once that half the excitement at a show is wondering if your favorite song will be played. There’s a euphoric rush when a song you love but didn’t expect to hear makes the setlist. “Coming of Age” was both. It’s not one of their biggest hits, but then again, neither was “Time to Get Closer,” which was also performed (and, naturally, made me think of that flawless first date).

Yet surprisingly, as “Coming of Age” unfolded, I was not stirred by the past. I was an active participant in the moment, fixating on the warm-toned stage lights dancing in perfect sync with the chorus drums. Strangers on the balcony swayed their bodies, perhaps simultaneously reminiscing on and partaking in their own coming of age. Foster ignited a truly magical moment when he led a clap for the final chorus, only slightly interrupted by a fan in front of me screaming even louder than I was when Foster walked over to us. 

This performance was my coming of age—a decade of memories converging in a single night, stitched together by the songs that underscored every phase of my life. Foster the People knew this. They understood the weight of nostalgia embedded in the very existence of this concert. They were aware of exactly what we had come for: the oldies we never thought we’d hear live, the soundtrack of our past reclaimed tonight. And they delivered.

Of course, the obligatory encore ended with “Pumped Up Kicks” as a rewind and reference to the band’s coming of age. Foster blew a kiss and thanked us for the privilege of performing tonight in this iconic theater. After the show, I lingered, waiting for the magic to settle. I scored a set list and quickly realized each song was abbreviated: “Pumped Up Kicks” was reduced to “Kicks.” Very fitting.

The fragments of the night had already begun to slip into memory.  

By Julia Neville

[mrrockcandy]

I Saw Them When (INSERT NAME HERE) Played Lead

Sometimes you know that it will be the last time. Other times it comes as a surprise, a shock maybe. When a soldier in a rock group leaves that group, for whatever reason, it affects everyone involved. It could signal the end of an era. Or the start of something new and bigger. I watched a few bands go through this and lived to tell about it.

The Dave and Sam Show

Can't I like BOTH? Big names on my list are the lead singers who left. It’s hard to imagine a band continuing a successful career AFTER replacing the main voice. Well, Van Halen sure did. On September 14th, 1982, I finally got the chance to see Van Halen perform live (Cow Palace, Daly City CA).  Four years after their debut album burned the wax out of my ears. They had become my favorite band by this time. Listening to them was fun but seeing them live was transformational. Lead singer David Lee Roth was unbelievable in his heyday. While never considered a great singer, he is definitely considered one of the best front men in rock history. My favorite DLR moment comes out of the darkness of the Cow Palace that night. Right after the announcer asks us to welcome "The Mighty Van Halen!" , the stage explodes in bright light, the blonde lead singer can be seen high in the air, in mid-jump, off the drum riser. My love for VH continued, even after Dave left. Roth’s replacement, Sammy Hagar, brought an established entity into the VH fold. Many fans, even to this day, resent Hagar’s time with Eddie and Alex. The band’s style did change slightly but that was Eddie's natural evolution. Van Halen was actually more commercially successful with Sammy. Both eras are kick ass. Regardless, old men, like me, still argue about it.

Now I'm Here

Unlike David Lee Roth, who is still walking the earth, some artists didn't quit or get fired from their band. Some, tragically, died in the middle of their careers. I saw Freddie Mercury and  Queen perform in 1982 (Oakland Coliseum Arena, CA ) on the Hot Space tour. This tour was the last time Freddie played in North America. Freddie’s stage presence was unique and magical. Every move was a picture. His perfect voice was as good in person, if not better, than on record. The Queen set list is a trip through the popular music of my adolescence. The concert was a blur of action. An immense stage, banks and banks of lighting, smoke and a very loud guitar filled the Oakland Arena. But Freddie stood out. No one took their eyes off of him.  After Freddie died in 1991, the world mourned along with the band. The demand for Queen music persisted. It wasn't until 2004 that they dared to reunite. The quite-capable Paul Rodgers (Free, Bad Company) agreed to stand behind the mic. Queen + Paul Rogers lasted 5 years (1 record, many, many miles on the road)

Queen + Adam Lambert during their "Rhapsody" tour appearance on Aug. 22, 2019. Adam Lambert sang with Brain and Roger as part of "American Idol" in 2011. Then, years later, he repeated the act at a show honoring the band. That gig turned into a much longer one. Lambert hit the road with Brian May and Roger Taylor for a HUGE Queen tour. He fit perfectly despite his age compared to his band mates. Lambert displayed just the right combination of respect and vitality to Freddie's masterpieces. No one could have done better at honoring and celebrating Freddie Mercury. This may not even count. I saw Jefferson Starship with 3 original members of the Jefferson Airplane. The key, for me, was Grace Slick. Granted this was many years after the Airplane set the psychedelic world on fire. Pretty damn cool to hear Grace Slick singing "White Rabbit" in 1984 (Greek Theater, Berkeley CA) . It brought a little of that 60’s vibe to the 80's concert experience. Her voice never faltered. 

He Stopped Believin'

Steve Perry of Journey performing at the Rosemont Horizon in Rosemont, Illinois, May 21, 1982. (Photo by Paul Natkin/Getty Images) Another man, nicknamed the “Voice”, fronted a local band. This local band went from obscurity to full-blown superstardom right under my nose. Even though they originated in my backyard, I first saw them on TV in 1978. They were on a PBS show, out of Chicago, called “Soundstage”. The band is Journey and the ‘Voice’ belongs to Steve Perry. There is one important thing to remember about Steve Perry: his incredible voice sounds no differently live than on record. A true crooner for a generation with a range not usually found in a rock band. Journey was the soundtrack of my high school years.  I was lucky enough to see and hear Perry sing with Journey twice. It wasn’t enough. Steve Perry split from Journey in 1987 The band was dormant until Perry returned in 1995 to record a new album. A full reunion and tour was planned but never materialized . Journey pushed on because their music had a resurgence. The band went through a few lead singer replacements but never caught the fire again. The music will always speak for itself and Journey songs are part of the American fabric. Currently, the band is fronted by its longest-tenured replacement, Arnel Pineda. Arnel has an unbelievable story. He was plucked from YouTube (and the Philippines) by Journey guitarist/founder Neal Schon to front the band. The band continues to enjoy healthy touring success with Arnel singing his heart out.

Same Makeup, Different Guys

KISS original members Peter Criss (left) and Ace Frehley (right) were replaced

My first concert t-shirt I first saw KISS in 1979. It was the Dynasty tour.  I had been waiting 3 years to see my heroes. My 15 year old head exploded that night. They were still in full costume and face paint in those days. So many firsts, both good and bad, happened to me that night. KISS originals Ace Frehley and Peter Criss were still in the band in 1979. The show was spectacular. The tour was the last with the originals until 1996 when they reunited. After these two members left (were fired), the band replaced them. KISS continued to record and tour for many years without 2 of the founding members. The replacements lived through KISS’s decision to take off the makeup. Then had to sit on the sidelines while Gene and Paul reunited with Ace and Peter for a Reunion tour. Finally the band decided that the replacements would wear the face paint of Ace and Peter. The band embraced it’s past and toured before and after the COVID pandemic. They officially calling it quits 4 years later. Stay tuned!

Tragedy Strikes

Street Survivors Last album by the original Lynyrd Skynyrd Lynyrd Skynyrd was 2nd on the bill of my first-ever rock concert. It was the summer of 1977 and Peter Frampton was headlining a Day on the Green stadium show. Frampton was the attraction for me.  I knew some of Lynyrd Skynyrd's radio hits but I didn’t appreciate the band until a few years later.  I remember singing along to “Sweet Home Alabama” and “Freebird” and enjoying the whole experience. Tragically, later on this same tour, the plane carrying the band crashed on it’s way to Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Killed on impact were lead singer and heart of the band, Ronnie Van Zant and Steve Gaines, along with backup singer Cassie Gaines (Steve's older sister), assistant road manager Dean Kilpatrick, pilot Walter McCreary and co-pilot John Gray. Such a tragedy. There are some fantastic videos of the band from the show I was at. I only wish I had focused more on Skynyrd that day.

Just Missed These Guys

There are many times that I have seen a band playing with the replacements of an original member. Sometimes it’s even a replacement of the replacement. However, I have missed many notable originals. Cliff Burton died in a bus crash that his band mates survived. Amazingly, Metallica pushed on. I have enjoyed every decibel of every Metallica concert. I still wish I had witnessed Cliff Burton on bass.

Bon Scott and Brian Johnson AC DC I also missed Bon Scott singing lead for AC/DC. Scott's replacement, Brian Johnson, has been the recipient of the bulk of AC/DC's success. But, as is often the case, AC/DC would never have reached that success without Bon Scott. I never saw Keith Moon playing the drums for the Who. To be fair, I was probably a little too young to see these last two.

Ozzy and Randy I was hoping to catch the Ozzy the next time he came around. Randy Rhodes played guitar for Ozzy Osbourne. He was a brilliant player. I had my chances to see him live and I missed them. By the time Ozzy came back around, Rhodes was long gone.  I suppose that the lesson learned is to never take anything for granted. Enjoy those live moments at concerts. Those times are fleeting. You may be witnessing history. And give those replacements a break!! Read the full article

[limerentdeath]

Last of five BL shows. Show felt meh till end. Last song I jumped on the stage. Then Greg fire breathed! I waited like 1.5 hours for him after. Got to talk to him and Reba. Told Reba that I went to the Manson show in Tacoma and she was like “omg that was my favorite one.” I said the venue was perfect and she said “it really was”. Before that Greg said something about me stage diving and I told him how I chickened out in Berkeley so I had to do it and he said something along the lines of “hell yeah, that’s what you do.” This was all while he was signing stuff for people. He started to walk away so I hit his arm and asked for a hug. He gave me a big long one and said “I love you” and told me they were announcing another tour in two days. (Mitch had told me the same thing earlier. He said it was happening in spring and that I would find out sooner rather than later.) He also looked me in the eyes and said thanks for the frog figurine. Then he ran off with his friends. But first he kind of lingered, walking while facing towards me thanking me for coming to his shows. Again. So he thanked me multiple times. This was the second time where he was trying to run off yet still paused and thanked me even though he already had. Happened last year too. I can tell he really appreciates me.

[musesmusingz]

Attention-Grabbers and Cacophany

The October sun is setting at UC Berkeley’s Greek Theater, and the amphitheater is buzzing in anticipation. Hordes of young women in synthetic flower crowns and Dr. Martens pack the floor, pushing and shoving towards the stage. As the sun sets, Lana Del Rey gracefully steps out under pink spotlights. The woman I had idolized since my preteen years was no longer just an image on a screen but was now twenty feet in front of me. She looked angelic in her peasant blouse and skinny jeans. I didn’t know how lucky I was to be there— she would go on hiatus after this tour. Soon she swung over the audience on a flowery swing, holding the microphone out to the adulating masses, smiling as we shouted the lyrics to Video Games.

~

            Taylor Swift has been on the lips and cell phone screens of every American for the last year. Recently her jet-setting, carbon-emitting ways brought her 9,000 miles from Tokyo to Las Vegas to support her boyfriend, the Kansas City Chiefs tight end, Travis Kelce in the Super Bowl. The two were photographed kissing after the Chiefs’ victory. Their intimate moment, surrounded by an army of cameramen, deeply immersed in the crowd, is the 2024 equivalent to Eisenstaedt’s V-J Day in Times Square. I’m not sure privacy exists anymore.

~

            Deep in the woods, off the Washington coast, the Hoh Rainforest resides inside Olympic National Park. The rain from omnipresent rainstorms trickles down through the Douglas Firs, Western Hemlocks, Sitka Spruces, and Western Red Cedars, like gentle wet sequins, and tickle your nose saturating your clothes. The Hall of Mosses trail isn’t even a mile long, yet its gently inclined mossy loop seems to exist beyond any measures of time and space. Lush canopies and old growth swaddle you into a safe, green embrace, surrounded by undergrowth and banana slugs. The only reminder of the outside world is a plastic placard of Mary Oliver’s When I am Among the Trees staked into the mushy ground. In stillness, on the overgrown forest floor, life buzzes around you in shades of green.

~

            The shooting at the sports bar had everybody shaken up. Every body hit the deck. Let the bodies hit the floor! Drop it like it’s hot! 25 shots fired at 1 AM through the outdoor patio at Jackie’s in Southeast Portland, zero deaths and zero injuries. That should have been the news headline. Is it not snappy enough? Would carnage have made it newsworthy? There was no evidence in the news. Nothing but a Reddit thread asking if any neighbors heard the shots fired. Fifty bodies huddled on the sticky ground, circling the silent DJ booth, debating whether to call their loved ones. But no one died, so it clearly doesn’t matter. Are foliage half walls bulletproof? Where did the security go? Portland isn’t known for its clubbing scene, so why the fuck did I go to the bar?

~

            This year’s Milan Fashion Week was littered with banana peels, candy wrappers, whole eggs, and soda cans on the AVAVAV catwalk. The designer planted haters in the audience—actors armed with artillery loaded with garbage. Models stumbled and fell, slipping and sliding on the trashy runway laid out before them. The designer made a statement on hate and the fashion industry as her runway show descended into filthy chaos. Hateful Instagram comments passively scrolled by on large screens, overwhelming the audience with grimy, hateful text and imagery. The hate was real, but the medieval tomato-throwing was staged. Spectacle and staged anarchy will always be on-trend. 

~

            There’s an urban legend in California that it’s a legal offense to pick a wild, California poppy. The rich orange blooms pop sporadically in road medians and sidewalk cracks, teasing and begging to be picked. Pavement, condominiums, parking garages and urban development in the 20th century killed the abundance of orange that once painted hills with a lush brush and covered meadows with a blanket of wild grasses. Californians are more likely to see a poppy on a postcard than dancing in a dense patch. California is a temperamental muse. She’s plagued with earthquakes, fires, droughts, and the mystique of the Santa Ana Winds, but she’s also blessed with wildflower season and superblooms. The long dormant Arroyo Lupines, Canterbury Bells, Desert Primroses, and California Poppies reemerge, carpeting the rolling hills. The wild poppies reenter the scene, welcoming the spring, and tempting kids to pluck their ripe flowerettes.

[chrisryanspeaks]

Toro y Moi’s Bold New Chapter: Hole Erth Album + Tour Dates

Toro y Moi returns with’Hole Erth’, a striking new album that showcases Chaz Bear’s evolving sound and influence on the modern rap scene. Along with the album release, Bear has dropped two visually captivating, narratively connected music videos for “Madonna” and “Babydaddy,” both directed by Kristie Muller. In “Madonna,” shot with a night vision camera, Toro y Moi captures a lovestruck confession, while “Babydaddy” offers a glimpse into the exotic dancer routines that inspired the track. Together, these songs — the former featuring Don Toliver — highlight *Hole Erth* as the first Toro y Moi album to fully embrace Chaz Bear's impact on the contemporary rap landscape. Across 13 tracks, *Hole Erth* merges anthemic pop-punk with melancholic, autotuned rap, creating a fresh sound that feels timely yet deeply rooted in Bear's musical past. From his early influences in punk and emo to his notable production work for major rap artists, this album serves as both a bold reinvention and a reflection of Toro y Moi’s longstanding musical journey. Chaz Bear himself reflects on this pivotal moment, saying, “ALBUM #8 aka *HOLE ERTH* is now out. Thanks to everyone who's been with Toro through all the many stages and eras. I hope this chapter ignites a fire within, something true and unique to you.” To celebrate the release, Toro y Moi is hitting the road for a North American tour, with stops in Los Angeles, New York City, Las Vegas, Miami, and his biggest headlining show to date at Berkeley’s Greek Theater on October 25th. Stream *Hole Erth* and dive into the new music videos for "Madonna" and "Babydaddy" now (see below), and catch Toro y Moi live in a city near you. Upcoming Live Dates ^ = support from Zack Fox + = support from Kenny Mason 9/20 - Los Angeles, CA @ Hollywood Forever ^ 9/27-28 Las Vegas, NV - A Big Beautiful Block Party 10/3 - Queens, NY @ The Knockdown Center 10/18 - 10/19 - Miami, FL @ III Points Festival 10/25 - Berkeley, CA @ Greek Theatre (with Aminé) + Read the full article

[audiofuzz]

Toro y Moi’s Bold New Chapter: Hole Erth Album + Tour Dates

Toro y Moi returns with’Hole Erth’, a striking new album that showcases Chaz Bear’s evolving sound and influence on the modern rap scene. Along with the album release, Bear has dropped two visually captivating, narratively connected music videos for “Madonna” and “Babydaddy,” both directed by Kristie Muller. In “Madonna,” shot with a night vision camera, Toro y Moi captures a lovestruck confession, while “Babydaddy” offers a glimpse into the exotic dancer routines that inspired the track. Together, these songs — the former featuring Don Toliver — highlight *Hole Erth* as the first Toro y Moi album to fully embrace Chaz Bear's impact on the contemporary rap landscape. Across 13 tracks, *Hole Erth* merges anthemic pop-punk with melancholic, autotuned rap, creating a fresh sound that feels timely yet deeply rooted in Bear's musical past. From his early influences in punk and emo to his notable production work for major rap artists, this album serves as both a bold reinvention and a reflection of Toro y Moi’s longstanding musical journey. Chaz Bear himself reflects on this pivotal moment, saying, “ALBUM #8 aka *HOLE ERTH* is now out. Thanks to everyone who's been with Toro through all the many stages and eras. I hope this chapter ignites a fire within, something true and unique to you.” To celebrate the release, Toro y Moi is hitting the road for a North American tour, with stops in Los Angeles, New York City, Las Vegas, Miami, and his biggest headlining show to date at Berkeley’s Greek Theater on October 25th. Stream *Hole Erth* and dive into the new music videos for "Madonna" and "Babydaddy" now (see below), and catch Toro y Moi live in a city near you. Upcoming Live Dates ^ = support from Zack Fox + = support from Kenny Mason 9/20 - Los Angeles, CA @ Hollywood Forever ^ 9/27-28 Las Vegas, NV - A Big Beautiful Block Party 10/3 - Queens, NY @ The Knockdown Center 10/18 - 10/19 - Miami, FL @ III Points Festival 10/25 - Berkeley, CA @ Greek Theatre (with Aminé) + Read the full article

[silencedrowns]

so. one pair of my grandparents were both history buffs, so they did a vacation tour of civil war battlefields. as one does when you are a history buff and also a weird artist. they literally found someone with this thing on their porch and asked “how much for the cannon?” and apparently the answer was reasonable because the guy actually sold them a civil war union naval salute cannon. which they got shipped from the east coast all the way back to California somehow. it’s one of the things I inherited and I cherish it greatly, even if moving with it is an absolute bitch and a half because 1) it is a cannon and therefore weighs a fuckton and 2) it is a cannon and therefore a weird shape AND IT PIVOTS. also it took a hell of a lot of legal research when I had to bring it across state lines as to whether or not I can like, actually have it legally let alone cross multiple state borders (the answer to both is yes cause it’s super old).

as far as I know it’s still capable of being fired, although it hasn’t been used since the 1960s when my grandfather somehow bribed the campus or something to let him fire cannon blanks on the UC Berkeley football field

so yeah you just need some WEIRD grandparents in the 1950s who tour battlefields and buy civil war cannons and then leave you their prized cannon because they know you love the thing

did I retweet that last post just so I could leave some cryptic tags about owning a cannon in the tags for other people who look through tags to be puzzled by?

yes I did. and yes I really DO own a cannon. it is 100% legal to own an 1800s salute cannon and have it in your living room as a fun decoration. and since I really do in fact own a cannon that’s exactly what I did with mine.

[fueledbyramen]

SWMRS' US run of their Berkeley's On Fire tour starts today! If you haven't gotten tickets yet, check out THIS Topsify contest for a chance to win your way in! 

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This day in history

I’m at the LA Times Festival of Books this weekend!

Today (Apr 23) at noon, I’m on a panel called “Covering Silicon Valley” with Winddance Twine, moderated by Wendy Lee from the LA Times.

On Sun (Apr 24) at 11AM, I’m signing for California Book Club at booth 111. At 12:30, I’m doing a panel called “The Accidental Detective” with Alex Segura, Margot Douaihy and SJ Rozan

==============================

#20yrsago Movable Type launches TypePad https://web.archive.org/web/20030603160143/http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/news/0,12597,942024,00.html

#20yrsago Rheingold’s “Technology Innovation and Collective Action” at ETCON https://craphound.com/hlretcon2003.txt

#20yrsago Eric Blossom and Matt Ettus’s talk on GNU Radio at ETCON https://craphound.com/gnuradioetcon2003.txt

#20yrsago Notes from Wireless Routing and Multi-Hop Architectures at ETCON https://craphound.com/meshetcon2003.txt

#15yrsago Anti-teen noise-weapon comes to the USA https://web.archive.org/web/20080429232132/https://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/04/23/teen.be.gone.ap/index.html

#15yrsago EMI: backing up music files online is illegal https://consumerist.com/2008/04/22/emi-says-you-cant-store-your-music-files-online/index.html

#10yrsago Early American tombstone euphemisms for death https://www.vastpublicindifference.com/2008/08/101-ways-to-say-died.html

#10yrsago China Mieville’s turn-it-to-11 high weirdness reboot of “Dial H” https://memex.craphound.com/2013/04/23/china-mievilles-turn-it-to-11-high-weirdness-reboot-of-dial-h/

#5yrsago Colorado Senate Republicans introduce legislation to fire, imprison striking teachers https://www.denver7.com/lifestyle/education/colorado-senate-bill-seeks-to-punish-teachers-with-jail-time-should-they-go-on-strike

#5yrsago The used cars that Europe sends to Nigeria are filled with illegal, toxic e-waste https://collections.unu.edu/eserv/UNU:6349/PiP_Report.pdf

#5yrsago The BBC finally admits that MI5 secretly vetted its employees, an open secret for generations https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-43754737

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in San Diego, Burbank, Mountain View, Berkeley, San Francisco, Portland, Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, DC, Gaithersburg, Oxford, Hay, Manchester, Nottingham, London, and Berlin!

[karmic-vibes]

If I Can Dream

25 - While I Can Dream

art credit: @lazylittledragon on tumblr / lazyjunebug on twitter

cw: emotions :’)

a/n: this is the LAST chapter/installment of this fic. i may post more little one-shots to add to the steddie dad multiverse (ie w the new addition of Theo 🥺💕), but for the main story, this is it, folks. i hope you enjoyed the ride!

Year: 2006

“Okay, do you have your phone?” Eddie asked.

“Yes, pops.”

“Your guitar?”

“Yes.”

“Your bedding?”

“Yeah.”

“Your–”

“Eddie! We have been through this list a million times! She has everything!” Steve interjected.

“Jesus, alright… do you have–”

“Edward!”

“Christ, okay, let’s go.”

The family piled into the rented U-Haul and started their journey to UCLA. Bobby had been dreaming of moving out to California for as long as she could remember. She begged and pleaded with her fathers to move, but they told her that they should stay put while she finished school. 

Now that she was college age, the world was her oyster. She initially wanted to go to UC Berkeley, but she was waitlisted, so she had to resort to her safety school: UCLA. “Safety school” was a reach, as both universities had an acceptance rate of less than 30%—the boys were beyond proud, to say the least.

Throughout her rebellious four years of high school, the boys worried about her getting into any colleges at all. But to find out that she was accepted into one of the top universities in the country, they were left speechless.

“I told you she didn’t get any of your bad traits,” Steve teased.

And he was right.

Despite being sneakier than a ninja, and constantly back talking her fathers, Bobby Judas Harrington had impeccable grades, stellar extra curricular activities, and an exceptional entrance essay.

All thanks to Eddie.

Her grades were a result from being able to focus from her ADHD medication and her dad’s unmatched, under appreciated brain (which was used to learn music in an unbelievably short amount of time and write campaigns no one else could’ve dreamed of).

Her extra curriculars, which ranged from marching band, to Hell Fire, to her independent garage band, to being credited as a producer on a Corroded Coffin album, to even working part-time as a waitress at a local restaurant on the weekends. She showed a balance between school, fun, and work like no other.

Then her essay—it was arguably the best UCLA had ever received. While most wrote about rewarding times they had whilst volunteering, or how hard they worked in high school—Bobby wrote about her unconventional upbringing and how it shaped her into the person she became.

How having two dads, one being transgender (and famous) affected her. How both her parents were young when they had her, and how that didn’t stop them from being the best parents they could be. How deeply the two cared about her, more so than most conventional parents cared for their children. How having two godmothers (and no godfathers), two singular grandparents, and a gaggle of aunts and uncles (who weren’t even related to her) helped raise her.

It was touching. It was unique. It was authentically Bobby.

While the last few years were a challenge, raising an angsty teenager in a house with no one who could relate to her—they managed to create the best Munson or Harrington to ever exist. They couldn’t even believe it themselves. How they were unable to do it for themselves, yet they helped raise a daughter who essentially became a genius in secret astounded them.

They were proud, to say the least.

On the long, grueling ride to the campus dorms, the boys cherished every last second they got to spend with their daughter. After all, they wouldn’t be seeing her again until thanksgiving. The three of them were smushed, shoulder to shoulder, in the rental. The boys beaming—Bobby, not so much.

“So, pops,” Bobby started. “You gonna start touring again now that I’m gonna be in college?”

“Possibly,” he sighed. “The rest of the band has kids now, so we’ll have to work around them.”

“Would you come play at my school?”

“If they ask us,” he chuckled.

“Would you guys consider moving out to California?”

“I thought you wanted to be far away from us,” Steve teased.

“I want some independence, sure, but I’m still gonna miss you guys.”

“We’ll miss you too, Bee, but… I dunno if we can leave everyone in Hawkins behind,” Eddie honestly answered. “Especially with Wayne and Pattie being a bit older. I wouldn’t wanna be too far from them.”

“No, I understand,” she sighed. “It’s gonna be so weird being away from everyone.”

“I know. I don’t know what we’re gonna do without you,” Steve smirked. “What did we even do before we had her?”

“Like I’m supposed remember?” Eddie grinned.

“Let’s have a second kid—start fresh. After all, we’re only forty and thirty-nine,” Steve teased.

“Hey!” Bobby laughed.

“If you think I’m doing all that again, then you must be crazier than I thought, Harrington,” Eddie warned. “I’ll consider a dog, though. Possibly a cat.”

“Oh, okay, yeah that’s a good idea.”

“Let’s give it Bobby’s room.”

“Hey!” She giggled. “I’m still right here!”

“We know, bug.” Eddie jokingly nudged her arm. “You could never be replaced. You know that.”

And she did know it. She knew she was irreplaceable. She knew, no matter what—even now that her parents were old and gray—she was their baby.

Their first day of driving was coming to an end in Texas. They booked a crummy hotel room to sleep in for the night and told themselves they’d be back on the road first thing in the morning.

The second day of travel was more or less the same—everyone crammed shoulder to shoulder in the U-Haul, desperately trying not to kill each other. The boys endlessly argued over directions, saying that the GPS didn’t know it’s ass from its elbow, and Steve yelling that it didn’t have either (so, of course, how would it know?).

The day before Bobby was officially dropped off at college, they stayed in a hotel near campus, so they’d be able to sleep in prior to moving day. That evening, Steve was asleep as soon as the sun set, but Eddie and Bobby couldn’t doze off to save their lives.

“Pops,” Bobby whispered.

“Hmm?” he hummed.

“Wanna go outside by the pool? I can’t sleep.”

“Sure,” he shrugged. “I’ll grab a couple beers. You want any?”

“Do you even have to ask?”

“That’s my girl,” he chuckled.

The pair slipped out of the room, making their way outside the hotel. They occupied a few pool chairs, popping open the overpriced bottles of beer.

“You ready for tomorrow?” Eddie asked.

“Are you ready?”

“I mean… yes and no. Yes, because I’m excited to see you grow up and be on your own. No, because… you’re growing up. After tomorrow, dad and I are officially empty nesters. We’re not gonna know what to do with ourselves,” he quietly laughed.

“You’ll figure something out.”

“You’re a good kid, Bee, you know that, right?”

“I try,” She grinned. “Papa?”

“Yeah?”

“What happens if I don’t like UCLA?”

“What do you mean?”

“What if I don’t like the school? What if I wanna come home?”

“Then you come home and we find a school that’s right for you,” Eddie shrugged. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“You won’t think I’m a quitter?”

“God, no, pumpkin, of course not. You’re doing something no Munson or Harrington has ever done. That alone is something to be proud of. And if you don’t like it, then you don’t like it.”

“What if this whole thing was a mistake? Moving out here?”

“You know, Bee…” Eddie sighed as he took another sip of his beer. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life. I’ve sold drugs, I’ve done drugs, I’ve skipped school, I’ve cursed dad out countless times. Hell, I’ve nearly even kicked him out once or twice. I have made so many mistakes. But you? You’ll always be my best one. Not all mistakes are bad, love bug—some just may be the best thing to ever happen to you.”

“I was a mistake?” She teasingly gasped. “Now here I was, thinking I was thoroughly planned.”

“Yeah,” Eddie snickered. “A pair of twenty-one and twenty-two year olds thoroughly planned you. You’re funny.”

“I try,” she giggled. “I’ve only learned from the best.”

“Damn straight.” The two clinked their bottles. “Shit, love bug… you’re a grown up. Where’d all the fuckin’ time go?”

“I’d ask you the same thing.” She weakly smiled, plucking a gray curl from Eddie’s head.

“Ow, you bitch,” he laughed. “God help your father. I don’t believe in Heaven or hell, but if there is one, dad’s going straight to Heaven for putting up with the two of all all these years.”

“We’re not that bad.”

“Bug, we’re the worst.”

The two chatted the night away until the hotel staff told them the pool area was closed. They headed up to bed, still tossing and turning, dreading the morning. When the sun rose, and it was Bobby’s check-in time, the family hauled themselves to UCLA to send their daughter off into adulthood.

They spent several hours moving everything into her cramped freshman dorm, but none of them cared. In the end, it was more time they got to spend together. Once the final box was unpacked, the boys offered to take Bobby out to lunch, to which she happily agreed.

The family gathered together, for what would be the last time for the next few months. Hours passed without any of them realizing—they were together; they were happy. Nothing else mattered.

When the boys dropped Bobby back off at her dorm, they wrapped her in huge tight enough to kill. While they wanted their little one to grow and flourish, they simultaneously couldn’t bear to live life without her. Alas, they broke free, sending their not-so-little girl off to be on her own.

“We love you, pumpkin,” Eddie whispered.

“I love you guys too,” Bobby sobbed.

“Stay safe… say no to drugs,” Steve mumbled into her curly hair.

“Unless you grow them yourself.”

“Edward!”

“Fine, sorry! Don’t do drugs, or whatever.”

“Call us if you need anything. Day or night.”

“I know, daddy.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“Bye, love bug.” Eddie reluctantly pulled away from the hug, admiring his little twin.

“Bye, papa.”

“Don’t do anything I would do.”

“I know,” She giggled. “Oh, and uh… here…” Eddie moved his hair out of the way, unclipping his guitar pick necklace. “Take care of this for me, bug.”

“Papa, I… I can’t take this,” She whispered. “Sure you can,” he shrugged. “It’s good luck.”

“Thanks, pops,” She teared up.

“Okay, bye for real, gorgeous girl.”

“See ya guys. Call me when you get home safe.”

“We will…” Steve pouted.

She wrapped each of them in one final hug before running into her dorm building, officially fleeing the Harrington nest. Steve and Eddie clung to each other, silently crying, mourning the closed chapter in their lives.

“Well shit,” Eddie sniffed, “what the fuck do we do now?”