And I’m going to start responding to the things he says over on Suvudu, where he has begun a new blog series about the Pox Eclipse in all its myriad forms.

This first post is just a hello, so we’ll see what happens next. I’m not above a little recreational trolling …

• As is so often the case with bad movies, one death scene made all of the very silly Law Abiding Citizen worthwhile. By the way, don’t go to Phildelphia. They apparently respond to terrorist threats by assigning a lone district attorney to the case.
• Sick Boy’s unifying theory of life is confirmed when you consider that the same people wrote and directed Bachelor Party 2 as the original. This made all the more depressing by the fact that the original is such a low point from which to start your decline.
• Terry O’Quinn was a badass long before he played John Locke. (The Stepfather)
• I suppose I was foolish to expect more of Kiefer Sutherland in his directorial debut. I mean … he’s Kiefer Sutherland. (Truth or Consequences, N.M.)
• I’d never watched Hellraiser II all the way through, but the experience of watching it all the way through is almost identical to watching random scenes without context.
• Michael J. Fox as a coke addict and struggling writer is about as convincing as a five year old putting on his father’s business suit. Sutherland movie no. 2 for the month. (Bright Lights, Big City)
• To tell a tale of freedom-loving misfits, you shouldn’t free yourself from having a coherent script. Sutherland no. 3, this time Donald! (Steelyard Blues)
• Renaissance: Paris 2054 provided solid sci-fi and an interesting animation gimmick, but it doesn’t hold up to further thought.
• Tack an unsatisfying ending onto an otherwise unremarkable romantic comedy, and you got yourself a best-picture nominee. (Up in the Air)
• Sunkist soda is the implied villain of Precious.
• Rush was one of nine movies in the Sybil Danning Adventure Video series that I bought on VHS this month. My love for this kind of thing is why I will never be taken seriously by anyone ever.
• If Green Zone has been a little more interesting, it might’ve stirred up some “Why do you hate America!!?!?!?” controversy.

Denton, Texas’s NX35, originally a panel for Denton bands at SXSW, celebrated and produced a formidable first in what one could only hope becomes more in-town annuals March 11-14. I had attended the first Denton-anchored event and was experiencing this bloated annual with every bit of awe and elation as, I expect, those who had put it together must have also felt.

I grant that I was not likely as overwhelmed as they, but what I watched in my two days of the conferette was every bit the product of the myriad Facebook statuses I had read from organizers over the past year. Those statuses were my peek behind the wizard’s curtain. I read statuses used to corral the volunteers for the 130 plus band event, those that expressed frustration, exhaustion, or excitement. I read petty but honest board threads of posterior wound toward the band line-up, and I read both exasperated and controlled responses to that thread.

This year’s NX35 was indeed a success born of hard work and impressive community collaboration, though those stories are already being told and by much better informed writers. For my money, a mere $65 for four days of all-access entertainment, the story is of an annual attendant, a fan, his perspective and observations.

I drove into Denton from Lubbock, Texas, by way of 114/380, and I posit that a “hub city” in Texas without a connection to I-35 reveals a rather exaggerated and flimsy nomenclature. Anyhow, after dealing with car trouble upon entering the city and missing Steve Albini’s daytime interview—we followed it through Twitter updates from the side of the road—my girlfriend and I finally caught a ride to the Denton Record Chronicle building where wristbands could be claimed.

There were two volunteers wearing the black-with-white-print NX35 staff T-shirts that would become a common sight everywhere we walked, adding that the girl staff of J&J’s Pizza turned these into an impressive tube top-ish ensemble. Once we had claimed our bands from the scrambling volunteers, we walked out into 70-degree weather, forced by a small bluster of wind not enough to distract but enough to note.

Walking up Hickory toward the Square, just past Industrial, a street that is home to Dan’s Silverleaf, we passed a canopied Camel-blue outpost surrounded by a youthful crowd regaled in red and gray camouflage wife-beaters, thrift store tennis shoes, and the occasional, necessary blonde with the one hot pink scythe of bang whipping in front of her face.

We stopped a little past that to look through the program, which I can say was evidence that lessons had been learned from the first in-town event. Last year’s NX35 boasted glossy print programs with full color photographs and advertisements. This year’s was a much thicker paged program, printed on a more standard stock of paper with more standard, seemingly personal PC printers.

From where we stood, though, it was decided that the best attack plan was to eat and grab a beer. We were watching our budgets, as we had just paid a $75 dollar tow fee into town and had no clue what to expect for the impending car repair. The obvious choice from previous experience was J&J’s Pizza, for a reasonable $5.50 slice (two, really) and a $1.50 Schlitz. Joining us at the table was Mike West, lead guitar/vocals for Curvette. It was difficult to plan and presented us with the bind one finds oneself in at such an event. There are going to have to be some casualties, some missed shows. Our personal plan was to see The Jakeys at Sweetwater, The Angelus at The Hydrant, Record Hop and Health at The Boiler Room. As we walked out of J&J’s, dusk had begun to settle.

We were 45 minutes from the night’s shows to get started at 8 p.m. We walked across the square and found Sweetwater. The show was to be on the covered patio and indeed was. At the side and entrance doors were more volunteers checking wristbands. Residents without wristbands had open reign of the inside bar but were not allowed onto the patio. Table seating was available as we got there early, observing seats being arranged and sound being prepared by Brent Best of Slobberbone.

As more attendants entered, the feeling was one of anticipation and expectation. Large bulb, assorted color, Christmas lights were strung across the ceiling and added a near-tropical, warm atmosphere to the patio, which was a little far off from the grungier, more clubish rooms I knew we would experience. The patio had sufficiently filled to seating capacity by the time The Jakeys took stage.

Worth noting and especially here is that Michael Constantine McConnell of the Farrago’s Wainscot staff leads this Irish/Scottish influenced band. What we heard in that set was a seemingly interesting performance as an introduction to the heavily indie-influenced line-up of NX35. The Jakeys are worth noting to the extent of proving the diversity of the NX35 line-up. Here is a band of no less than seven performers playing extremely loose and raucous Irish tunes impressively informed by The Pogues, Iron Maiden, and respective other bands the performers are a part of including Warren Jackson Hearne and the Merrie Murdre of Gloomadeers and Pinebox Serenade.

After that packed performance, we were out into settled night accompanied on the Square streets by groups of other attendants rushing to the next club to catch any of a large selection of acts be it The Angelus (our choice) at the Hydrant, Mount Righteous at Andy’s, Jupiter One at Dan’s Silverleaf, etcetera, etcetera.

It was my first time to go into The Hydrant, a narrow coffee shop with clean, plush-looking booths to the right, three-deep and red. I couldn’t immediately figure out where music would be seen or set up. Still, I admit the coffee was a welcome dose after the initial rounds of beers we were already deep into. We found the narrow stairwell entrance at the back of the room where we appropriately ascended to hear The Angelus, a band boasting songs both dark and epically choir-swelling in intensity.

The audience was initially sparse, a few scattered pursuivants with their own styles of thick, black-rimmed glasses, denim jackets, and some ratted out hair. Specifically, I remember two characters who set their chairs directly in front of the band’s set-up, the one on the right, closest to lead singer, Emil, handing him a free iTunes card to “Hey, give us a listen man.” These characters, as The Angelus moved into damning guitar strikes accompanied by sleigh bells and Emil’s Morrisonesque vocals, head banged in an endearing and equally humorous, syncopated, fanboy rapture and were crowded by others by the third song.

We trekked next to The Boiler Room, where we experienced the imagined out-of-the-door line to the underground venue for Record Hop. So, here we can just kind of play out a sped-up stop-motion sequence where we’re moving finally into the door at which point a chipmunkish music on fast-forward in a walkman kind of squeal becomes soundtrack as the schedule was messed up and Record Hop had started early. Here, instead of ascending, you descend a staircase into a large basement room that is darkly lit. It’s actually quite nice. This was one of the most packed shows we saw all night. Still, I am happy to report that at every venue we attended fans got to the bar and back to the show as fast as possible, making access and procurement a torrentially fluid process.

After the Record Hop show, we rejoined at J&J’s to meet a friend and long-time musician of Denton, Warren Jackson Hearne. Shows were scheduled to end at midnight. At 12:15, we took our act to Dan’s Silverleaf, where apparently head organizers of NX35 and community musicians had decided to all meet for the closing of day 2. It was a great experience, kind of family reunion meets “Hey, hey, look over there. It’s . . .” and “What are you doing in town? Oh, NX35, right?” And to that extent, not entirely inappropriate to quickly nod Old Testament like with a few names. Included in the crowd was Justin Collins and Steve Hill of Burnt Sienna Trio, Chris Flemmons of The Baptist Generals and founder of NX35, Ashley Cromeens and Scott Porter of Record Hop, Warren Jackson Hearne, Tamara Cauble of Telegraph Canyon and Polyphonic Spree, Robert Gomez, Scott Danbom of Centromatic, and Mike Seman of Shiny Around the Edges, just to name a few.

So, that first of days for me encapsulated the energy of a music community playing host to fans both close to home and those from out of town. There was no business we went to the entire day where we did not see a NX35 volunteer staff shirt. There was no gig that did not boast a sardined audience. There was ne’er an ear that had not rung, ne’er a threat of sobriety.

Crowds, initially, were sparse. My commute from the so-close-yet-so-far Dallas suburb of Plano (a very 9-to-5 town) got me in 10 minutes before wristbands were to become unavailable. My short line was populated with a mix of earnest music seekers, disheveled hipsters competitively spouting one-liners at each other, two pretend lesbians I would later see making out for attention at the Snarky Puppy show, and Michael Constantine McConnell of The Jakeys et al. This was, I think, the only day of the conferette that Mike didn’t perform.

A quick walk across town, and I began to wonder how it had gotten so cold so quickly. I also arrived at Hailey’s to the happy news that The Bizarro Kids would be playing, as their scheduled venue had been suddenly shut down earlier in the day. Bad news for the venue, but good news for me. Now all the bands I wanted to see would be right next to each other.

The Bizarro Kids play a kind of 8-bit infused post-hardcore that, while not terribly original, has a desperate energy that makes one feel a bit giddy. The video that accompanies their show indicates that they’d agree with that assessment. By far my favorite new-to-me band of the night, the fact that they were squatting in another line-up’s schedule caused their set to be too short by half.

Saboteur followed shortly thereafter, playing a kind of noisy rock that, while possibly good, was not what I was seeking that night. Good luck for me – my decision to leave after one and a half songs set me up for perfect timing the rest of the evening.

Across the street at The Boiler Room, Kaboom took the stage a few minutes after I entered. “Aw, hell,” I thought, “this generic pseudo-punk is no better than what I just left.” Then vocalist Brad Santulli (I think) began to, well, vocalize. He is a small man with a high-pitched voice, like Geddy Lee being stretched on the rack. His disdain for the audience set a delightful combative tone, and the whole set made the hate centers of my brain happy.

Brrr. It’s even colder than it was an hour ago.

Then back to Hailey’s for The Crash That Took Me. Cute girls playing instruments well will always be enough to make my chauvinistic side like a band, especially when one of them plays a six-stringed bass guitar that’s as big as she is. They played a pleasantly infectious brand of art pop with violin, but they were plagued by sound problems and by the presence of their frontman, who as far as I can tell adds no value. I hope that he writes the songs and doesn’t just dance poorly while looking like a Danny McBride character.

Man, this smoke is making me light-headed.

Then back to The Boiler Room for Zorch, a keys and drums duo that brought in the noise and the stripped-down funk. With a couple experimental tracks thrown in, this Austin-based band was the kind of thing I was hoping to get out of the night. Of course, the free CDs helped.

Maybe I should’ve brought some ear plugs. I’m getting a bit of a headache.

Then back to Hailey’s for This Will Destroy You. Apparently the sound problems had only gotten worse, causing this usually very good band in this usually very good venue to act like, for lack of a better word, dicks. Their hostility toward the venue and the audience lacked the charm of Kaboom’s, and after the fourth vaguely homophobic exclamation about anal sex, I was unable to get into their soaring, throbbing, distortion-driven, otherworldly sonic blast. So I left.

OK, I know it’s Texas, but the temperature doesn’t just drop this quickly.

Then back to The Boiler Room for Snarky Puppy, a peppy jazz-fusion outfit that got the people dancing and the faux lesbians all horny. Full crowd … loud music. Despite an oddly mellow horn section and a bass player that can’t quite pull off his ambitious solos, the album tracks they played were tight and energetic and fully buoyed my lagging spirits.

So … Thursday night was spent between just two venues and yet covered such a variety of qualities, styles and tones that it felt like a full weekend’s worth of shows. It was the greatness of NX35 in microcosm, with only the most committed fans in attendance.

Then back home, where I discovered that the weather, air quality and volume had all been perfectly normal, and I had a 101.1 fever. So perhaps it was all just a wonderful dream …

Tomorrow: Rob King’s view of Friday night.

What I did experience was two febrile nights of venue-hopping greatness, a video dump of which I’m providing here.

For what it’s worth …

Thursday night:

Friday night:

Moving Pictures:

2/5 - Public Enemies | Stander
2/6 - Running Scared
2/7 - From Paris with Love | The Fourth Kind
2/9 - Stuck | Foul Play
2/10 - The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone
2/12 - Edge of Darkness
2/14 - The Wolfman (2010) | Spider Baby
2/19 - Boondock Saints
2/21 - Shutter Island
2/26 - Valentine’s Day

Selected Commentary

• Extreme close ups, overpowering music, and lingering shots made for a very strange movie about Dillinger. Public Enemies started to feel more like a mood piece than a narrative.
• You can’t ask for a better free-pass for criminality than resistance to apartheid. (Stander)
• John Rhys-Meyers’ complete lack of charisma was the perfect match for John Travolta’s stilted, forced charisma. But at least there were explosions. (From Paris with Love)
• Never, ever see a movie at a dollar theater in Garland, Texas. (The Fourth Kind)
• Hahahahahahah (Stuck)
• A lot of the humor in Foul Play just didn’t work, even for the time, but there were some pretty great Hitchcock homages and other great noir-ish flourishes.
• Warren Beatty as an Italian gigolo was kind of gross. The whole performance seemed masturbatory and unappealing, which I don’t think was the point. It didn’t help that the whole film was plodding and heavy-handed. (The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone)
• Mel Gibson being mean is still fun to watch. (Edge of Darkness)
• The Wolfman was a passable homage to the original Universal film, and not much more.
• Spider Baby (a.k.a. Cannibal Orgy) plays like parody of movies that hadn’t been made at the time of its filming. Jack Hill had to have some genuine off-kilter creativity to come up with it, and the involvement of Lon Chaney gives the thing a wholesome veneer that makes the final product all the ickier.
• I already used my non-verbal reaction for this month, so all I’ll say about Boondock Saints is that I bet the incidents of date rape and violence caused by “homosexual panic” are high among this film’s serious fans. Count me, however, among this film’s ironic fans.
• If Shutter Island is Scorcese’s tribute to Hitchcock, Marty was also paying homage to Alfy’s insistence (used as justification for The Birds) that a poor script doesn’t matter to a director.
• Relationships aren’t worth it if they’re going to force me to see things like Valentine’s Day.

Kudos, bureaucrats, for what promises to be the most expansive experiment in unreality ever achieved. If only F.M.I. had the reach and the budget …