Good Weather For Airstrikes

Well, I’ve already reviewed Page France’s portion of the show and I’ve said pretty much everything new and of note that there is to say about John Vanderslice in my JV megapost, so this will be kept short and sweet.

The show was great. Honestly, I was more excited to see Page France, but it was Vanderslice and company who put on the better performance, though that’s to be expected given PF’s limited experience. Even though I came into the show only truly loving three JV songs (”Pale Horse”, “Trance Manual”, and “Exodus Damage”), I came out a much bigger fan than I came in. He’s just so damn likeable. Seriously, he’s one of, if not the nicest guy in music (granted, I haven’t quite met everyone yet). He took the stage early to chat with a couple of the die hard fans in the front, discussed some covers they wanted to hear him play before saying, “Well maybe I should play the songs you guys know before getting into that” and launching into his performance. The songs sounded great live, and I was standing directly in front of the moog (which sounded awesome, especially on “Up Above The Sea”), soaking up all of it’s synthesized glory. I had a setlist, but then misplaced it in the hellish mess thats assembled in my room since finals week began on Monday, but I can tell you that JV played every song you’d expect to hear, playing nearly everything from Pixel Revolt as well as old school classics like “Me and My 424″, “Time Travel Is Lonely”, and “Pale Horse” (the highlight for me), though sadly “Bill Gates Must Die” was left off the setlist (go here to view the cease and desist letter Vanderslice received from Microsoft regarding that song).

The highlight of the show was definitely John’s stage presence and interaction with the crowd; the witty inter-song banter was top notch. At one point he accused Ian Bjornstad, who tours with JV on moog source and wurlitzer, of doing lines of coke off of the moog and then sent him off stage to heat up the perogies in the back. After the show, JV manned the merch table like the personable-ass guy he is, talking with and signing CDs for fans. Music needs more people like this.

On an unrelated note, in an awesome (read: not awesome) turn of events my computer completely crashed (and I mean completely), leaving me mp3-less and questioning my will to live. This happens at an overwhelmingly inconvenient time, as it’s finals week and I have two essays due Friday that are nearly done but trapped in the icy grasp of my hopefully-salvageable hard drive. So yeah, wish me luck on all of that, but I’ll try to find externally-hosted mp3s and have Everett upload stuff and increase his posting frequency to keep the site running as smoothly as usual. Thankfully, Vanderslice has a huge library of his mp3s hosted at JohnVanderslice.com (seriously, the awesomeness never stops with this guy), so we’re set for this post. Below are my favorites from his vast library, new and old, including the brand new and fantastic Alias remix of “Exodus Damage”.

MP3s:
“Exodus Damage” - John Vanderslice
“Exodus Damage” (Alias Remix) - John Vanderslice
“Trance Manual” - John Vanderslice
“Pale Horse” - John Vanderslice [as heard on M3 Volume 1]
“Me and My 424″ - John Vanderslice
“Time Travel Is Lonely” (with Spoon) - John Vanderslice
“Bill Gates Must Die” - John Vanderslice

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 3rd, 2006 at 9:40 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.