After two warmup gigs at London’s 100 Club and the Manchester Ritz, a re-formed Suede played the Royal Albert Hall last night (March 24) as part of the Teenage Cancer Trust Series. I know, I know. Another Suede post? I will not proselytize but I will not apologize.
The set list was as follows:
My friend Jon gave me a call this past week to talk about the death of actor Corey Haim. Growing up when we did, movies like ‘The Lost Boys’ and ‘License to Drive’ were rites of passage for us and Haim was our age, so despite his personal troubles, it felt odd to talk about him in the past tense.
I’m not going to pretend that I could mine any deeper insight into the cautionary tale of young actors gone awry that can’t be found in the countless number of articles and posts written in the wake of Haim’s death. But as we talked, Jon and my conversation turned from Haim to the John Hughes tribute during the Oscars, which featured such 80s Hughes staples like Molly Ringwald, Ally Sheedy, Judd Nelson, Matthew Broderick and even Macauley Culkin. We found ourselves winding down another path as we acknowledged the effect movies like ‘The Breakfast Club’ had on our teenage years. And we wondered, could movies like ‘TBC’ (as it will heretofore be called), ‘Pretty In Pink’ and ‘Some Kind of Wonderful’ be made in 2010? And more, do subsequent generations have their own ‘Sixteen Candles’ that hold the same place in their psyche as those iconic 80s movies hold in ours?
We often grow accustomed to things just… working, in our lives. Especially the small things. We power on our laptop and it boots itself up. We hit ‘Start’ and the microwave pops our popcorn. We pull a lever and a goose blares as a horn for our makeshift car put together with spare parts in a back lot by a bunch of street urchins. Wait, I think that last one was just in the Little Rascals.
I always wanted to ride with Spanky, Buckwheat and the gang on this thing.
When these automated tasks don’t go as expected, we’re usually able to work our way around them. But it’s still funny how some of the simplest of tasks not working can leave us utterly confused and lost, as I witnessed today.
When my blood was a bit younger, I used to think about how much cooler it would have been to have come of age five years earlier. While I grew up during that glossy decade known as the 1980s, I was just a little young to truly appreciate the bands I came to know and love, bands borne of the late 70s-early 80s post punk movement, until later. Now that I’m 37, I’m quite thankful to have that extra five years ahead of me. Still, my nostalgia and appreciation for many things 80s remains intact, so all it took was a phone call from my cousin Abby about an 80s prom party in New York City for me to dive headfirst into my closet in search of my long-lost parachute pants. Continue reading “Forever Young”
I love that creativity can come from anywhere and at any time.
Like many people, I do some of my best singing in the shower. I have brief moments where I think I’ve hit some transcendent note of a song I like, only to have those moments dashed when I end up choking on a mouthful of shower spray. Continue reading “Do It Clean”
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