I have a bit of a luxury problem.
There is a sound development job waiting for me in L.A. and it means I would need to go there for about a month. Fundamentally, that’s nothing to complain about, apart from the headache dealing with visa paperwork will cause me. But hopefully that won’t be too bad with a big company like this backing me. The problem is that I don’t know where to live. I can get a hotel sorted out, but that would cause some extremely unwanted political family issues with my aunt who lives in Santa Monica. If I were to stay in L.A for a longer period, she’d get that I need to get my own place to stay, but when the matter is living in a hotel for thirty days, in her mind, that’s out of the question. For me on the other hand, staying at her place at all, while working, is not going to be a good idea. Mainly because I don’t have a license and I’m not in the mood for taking a two hour bus ride to echo park every day. The options boil down to this: either I take the job, stay until summer at least, and god knows what I’ll be doing between march and june, living on money that won’t last past the first month. Bummer that my trust fund got lost in the mail , huh (*hinthint* daddy: Kool aid is not part of the food circle, and the hipbones poking holes on sweaters I inherited from my little brother are not stick-on accessories I wear just for fun)? Or I skip the gig, and keep working on my pro’s and cons list for other godforsaken places, where living is cheap or I have a long term working situation lined up. At the moment I’m actually leaning towards the latter, but sort of hating it.
I used to get horribly disappointed by live shows during a number of years. And I guess I still would if I hadn’t forced my expectations to constantly remain in a kind of hibernating state. Maybe my sense of appreciation was ruined at an early age, as I was growing up in the last breath of Norrlands hardcore scene.
My hometown was mostly busy wasting way to much time on nurturing a small town complex of huge proportions. But as common in such context more than anywhere else, this fuelled some people to do whatever they could to drown the sounds of the steelwork, and melt the weight of year-round winter depression. There would be two shows a week and I would without hesitation sacrifice a toe or two to make sure I’d be at every single one of them. It wasn’t only hardcore or punk gigs, but no matter what, they all had in common that they would be like a severe blow to the gut, and whether they got me moshing or I was mesmerized in that fuzzy pop kind of of way, it would leave me trembling for days to come.
I don’t really know what happened. I moved away from Luleå and since then it’s rare that I experience anything even close to what it was like during those years. I’ve slowly started to embrace the idea that I probably just don’t like live music and that if I don’t want to be disenchanted with my favorite bands, I’ll be safest staying as far away from shows as possible.
image of HTRK’s pretty machines from space time paper pages. I was too impatient too wait for permission to use it, but fingers crossed that I get to!
There are som exceptions though. And one of them was a gig with HTRK, when they were supporting act for The Liars. As it was quite a long time ago now, I don’t think I could do it justice by trying to explain how and what made this gig so great. And honestly, despite HTRK being a brilliant new discovery, I didn’t start listening to them properly until very recently. But, as it now turns out, they’re from Melbourne. So here we go, it’s first pro in the list of my options on places to go during my sabbath from Stockholm. Or, places to go instead of shit cold New York rather. Though I’d find it rather silly to move to a city just because a band I like is from there. But if my past is anything to go by, living in a place with good live bands, can’t be that bad a life. So maybe I’ll just have to go with being silly. Cool is overrated anyway.
Based on vice’s fashion report montreal, paris and new zealand seems to consist of the least visually annoying people. Please suggest other pros and cons for these places to help me decide where my bi-yearly, random move to the other side of the world, shall take me.
Yes, there’s a perfectly good reason to why I’m spending a saturday night (or anyt other night or time of the day for that matter) reading vice. But no, I’m not going to tell you what it is.
