More than any recent band performance, I’ve had more people ask for my comments about the Nik Fackler film Lovely, Still. I’ll be talking about it in length in this week’s column (which focuses on the film’s soundtrack and how it was made). The short answer is that it was a lot better than what I was expecting based on the film’s early word-of-mouth and various chatter from those associated with the production. Two days after seeing it, Teresa and I were still talking about it and what certain sequences mean or why Nik went in the direction that he did. We also did the obligatory search for the house used in the film (and found it). I suggest that you go see the film, which is playing at the new Marcus Midtown Theater through Thursday.

My experience with the Marcus theater wasn’t as… positive. I realize it was the opening week and that they still have a lot of things to work out, but come on folks, there are some basic things about running a theater that should be ingrained before you open the doors — things like good concession service and an explanation when your theater is offering something outside the norm.

Some background: The Marcus Midtown is a four-level entertainment complex of which only one floor is dedicated to the actual theater (level 3). There’s an entrance on the first floor, the Glo Lounge on the second floor, the actual theater and concessions on the third floor and a “VIP area” on the fourth floor (which I didn’t see) — all connected via escalators. Once inside, the complex feels like something you’d find in a big city (i.e., New York City). The lounge was bustling when we showed up at around 8 for the 9:15 screening. I talked to a couple people in the lounge who told me they weren’t there to see a movie, only to booze it up in Glo.

So the gripes… There are two kinds of seating at Marcus — CineDine and General Admission. If you want to try some of their restaurant fare, you have to have CineDine seating, otherwise you’re stuck with the traditional movie theater grub (hot dogs, popcorn, etc.). You can’t order the “good food” from the concession area. You also can’t order booze from the concession area. I assume it’s some sort of liquor license restriction. I guess you can get your beer at Glo and bring it with you? There certainly were a lot of people drinking beer/wine in the theater.

If (as we did) you get stuck with general admission seats, get ready for a horrible experience. GA seats are designated to the first three rows of the theater, below the stadium-style CineDine seating. When they designed the theater, they put these rows too close to the screen, so viewing is terrible from all three rows — a real Clockwork Orange experience, as I overheard one patron describe it. Don’t get GA seats.

Then there’s the concession stand. We ordered some hot pretzels and an Icee. It took 10 minutes to get the pretzels. The Icee ended up being a Sudsee — warm punch-flavored goo instead of, well, ice. Literally warm foam. The person running the concession stand apologized and promised to bring us a frozen one “in 10 minutes, as soon as they’re ready.” It never arrived. Again, you expect some turbulence during opening week, but not theft.

I’d like to tell you that the screening itself was good, but I’m still nursing my sore neck from the horrible GA seats. I want nothing more than for this theater to succeed, however until they get their act together, I’ll see you at the Dundee…

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I saw a lot of people at the Meat Puppets show at The Waiting Room Saturday night that I haven’t seen at shows in, well, years. It was an old school crowd in every sense of the word. The average age of the 200 or so fans on hand had to be somewhere in the 30s. Someone described the band as “the Grateful Dead of punk rock,” and that’s kind of what it looked like. The Kirkwood brothers themselves visually added to that hippie vibe, but musically it was anything but. While not the over-the-top arena rock that I saw in Austin earlier this year, the Meat Puppets still bought the noise with equal parts thunder and twang. Nice set, with no chit-chat between songs, just one song right after another. I left two songs into the encore. See photo.

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Tonight at The Waiting Room, it’s Har Mar Superstar with Bang Bang Eche. $10, 9 p.m.

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I’m foregoing music in the early evening tonight as I attend the Marcus Theater screening of Nik Fackler‘s feature length motion picture debut, Lovely Still. Marty Landau is supposed to be in attendance (Why couldn’t Nik also get yummy co-star Elizabeth Banks?). There actually is an indie music angle here: Bright Eyes’ members Mike Mogis and Nate Walcott scored the film’s music. And Nik is in The Family Radio (He’s the frontman). This also is the grand opening weekend for this new theater located at the Midtown Crossing development. I heard they serve booze. We’ll see. I’ll give you the skinny on the whole evening maybe this weekend but probably Monday.

Afterward, it’s off to O’Leaver’s for Honey & Darling, The Sleep Over and The Golden Mean. $5, 9:30 p.m.

Tomorrow night is crowded for shows.

The Meat Puppets take the stage at The Waiting Room with Little Brazil and Winston Audio. I caught the Meat Puppets at SXSW this past March, and it was quite a surprise. I was expecting a gritty acoustic rock sort of thing, but instead it was huge, grinding, arena rock — quite a spectacle, and very entertaining (and loud). $13, 9 p.m.

Down the street at PS Collective, the Filter Kings unveil their new line-up for the first time ever, with Jason Fergusen (ex-Sarah Benck/Robbers) on guitar. Filling in on drums is Scott “Zip” Zimmerman. If you miss it, you’ll be able to catch the same line-up next week at the OEA showcase. No idea on the cover, but it probably won’t be more than $5. Starts at 9.

Capgun Coup will be celebrating the release of Maudlin, their sophomore effort for Team Love Records, at a CD release show at “Old Orifice” Saturday night, according to the band’s publicist. It took me a while to figure what venue she was referring to, then it dawned on me that she was talking about The Faint’s old practice space at 2406 Farnam, where Ratfest was held this past summer. I’ve been listening to Maudlin for the past week, and it indeed sounds like a drunken house party, slurred and happy and ready to puke. Very garage-y. It’s also a leap forward from their debut album. The rest of the night’s line-up includes punk-rock legends Hercules, and The Pharmacy. No idea what it’ll cost to get you in, but it’s a fun little place to see a show. Capgun Coup embarks on a tour of the south and southeast starting Nov. 24 that concludes with a show at The Waiting Room Dec. 13.

Also Saturday night, The Stay Awake headlines a show at The Brothers Lounge with Falcon Crest (Twin Cities) and Baby Tears. $5, 9 p.m.

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Just posted, a feature on Har Mar Superstar that includes comments both from his alter ego/true self Sean Tillmann, and innocent bystander Denver Dalley. It’s right here.

I’ve interviewed Tillmann before, way back in ’02 and again in ’06 when he was touring as Sean Na Na, and knew I wasn’t going to get a lot out of him over the phone. He’s just not a phone interview kind of guy, which may explain why there are so few interviews with him online. Knowing this, I hit up Denver for the Technicolor, and got what I needed. Unfortunately because of space limitations, I left out how Denver got “ruffied” and lost control of his motor skills. And how he’s able to multi-task by having Sean pour shots directly into his mouth while he’s playing. And how he played their last show in L.A. barefoot in swim trunks and sunglasses. And how Project Runway‘s Tim Gunn was “genuinely concerned” for Denver after Har Mar’s Jimmy Fallon performance (which you can see right here) where he broke a fake-blood capsule in his mouth. And on and on…

I also left out some Tillmann comments, most notably, how he worked with Clark Baechle and Jacob Thiele to create “Creative Juices,” off the new Har Mar album, Dark Touches. The process involved sending tracks back and forth, adding melodies and vocals. The finished product has a distinctively “Faint” quality to it. The Faint boys also worked on a second song — “Just the Tip” — which didn’t make the album, but is available from a b-sides collection that you can get if you order Dark Touches through the Har Mar Superstar website.

If you go to Slowdown regularly, there’s a good chance that you’ve seen Tillmann hanging out. I know I have. “Yeah, I love Omaha,” he told me. “I try to make it down whenever I visit Minneapolis. It’s like a second Minneapolis.”

Anyway, check out the story, and then get your tickets to next Monday night’s Har Mar Superstar show at The Waiting Room for a mere $10.

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Tonight at The Slowdown it’s Matisyahu with Trevor Hall. The show is sold out, and I’m told it will be a real hippie scene, despite the fact that Matisyahu is a Hasid who sings reggae songs about his faith. Actually, that does sound hippie-esque. I may attend this. I’m on the list. It could be… colorful.

Also tonight, acoustic old-time-style bluesman William Elliott Whitmore returns to Omaha, this time to The Waiting Room with Hoots & Hellmouth. $10, 9 p.m.

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This column is a recasting of last Thursday’s blog entry with about 500 words added on the end. The Conor Oberst concert that I mentioned Monday (and is mentioned in the column) sold out last night. Game 6 is tonight…

Column 245: Safe at Home
Monsterless by choice…

This was supposed to be a review of last week’s Monsters of Folk concert at The Holland Center, but the “poets of our time” were up against the Yankees, and they didn’t stand a chance.

In their defense, there was more than a little uncertainty helping the Yankees in this battle. I’d had a conversation a few weeks ago with Monsters of Folk’s publicist about that Conor interview that never happened. At the time, the publicist said she was putting me on “the list” for the show, but it was spoken almost as an aside. I e-mailed her the morning of the show asking for confirmation, but never heard back.

Late in the afternoon I stopped down to the Holland box office to see if I was on the guest list, but they said they wouldn’t know until an hour before the show, and that I could just call down to confirm. But when I did, the grunt on the other end of the phone said the only way I was going to find out for sure was to drive downtown. A side note: I’ve had three bad experiences with the Holland box office in my critic’s capacity. Good thing I rarely attend shows there.

Anyway, while on hold with the Holland, the World Series was beginning. So: Do I drive downtown and possibly get turned away at the Will Call window, or do I stay home and watch the Yankees in Game 1 of the World Series?

It didn’t take long to decide. The Monsters of Folk record — which very likely will be at the top of a number of national critics’ “best of” lists — is somewhat boring. The thought of sitting in Holland’s pine-box seating for three hours listening to yawn-inducing singer-songwriter fare just wasn’t appealing — that is, if I even got inside the concert hall. But had I made it in, I probably would have been glued to my iPhone the whole time keeping track of the score, and hoping they’d just wrap it up so I could at least catch the last inning. And that wouldn’t be fair to Conor and his pals.

I need to clarify something: I don’t do this for a living. Never have. I occasionally run into people at shows or record stores or bars, people who have read my column or my website, who think that I make my living writing for The Reader. I guess it’s a reasonable assumption when the only way they know me is through my writing, but really, how much do they think freelance writers make, and do I really look that destitute?

All those years that Sex and the City was on the air, I always was amused that the heroine, Carrie Bradshaw, could afford to live alone in a Manhattan apartment on an income generated from writing a column for a local paper that wasn’t The New York Times. Think about that the next time you watch a movie based in NYC — could the protagonist really afford his or her luxury Upper East Side lifestyle based on his/her salary? Ah, but that’s why we go to the movies isn’t it, to suspend our belief in reality.

It is because I don’t do this for a living that I don’t have to go to every “significant” rock show, and certainly the Monsters of Folk gig will go down as one of the landmark shows of ’09, whether it was or not. In the old days, just a few years ago, I would have felt an overwhelming sense of guilt for missing the event; I would have felt a need to attend it just for “history’s sake,” and probably would have gone.

But these days, there are the other “distractions” that are taking precedent — like the Yankees. I’m finally beginning to get to that point where it’s becoming easier and easier to let myself stay home or do something else. Fact is I don’t — I couldn’t — see every significant on-stage performance; my life simply won’t permit it. The act of lifting my head off the warm, inviting pillow at 5 a.m. the morning after — my whole body vibrating with a sense of all-encompassing inner fatigue — is becoming too brutal. Keep in mind, most of the people that you saw last night at The Waiting Room or Slowdown or O’Leaver’s or wherever didn’t wake up until the rest of us were going to lunch.

There still are “can’t miss” shows, and I rarely miss them. Unlike his Monsters of Folk project, I won’t be missing Conor Oberst when he performs a solo set at The Waiting Room Dec. 22 as a benefit for a very worthy cause. I already bought my ticket.

This may not be what I do for a living, but this is what I do. Not because I have to, but because I want to. So if you see my writing — online or right here — talking about last weekend’s mind-blowing concert or ultimate let-down, it’s because upon weighing the plusses and minuses, the band came out on the plus side.

By the way, the Yankees lost.

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More interesting than the headliner are tonight’s openers at The Waiting Room. Pomegranates album, Everybody Come Outside (on Lujo Records), has been on my iPhone since it was released in April. If you dig, say, Tokyo Police Club or Vampire Weekend or Shout Out Louds, you’re going to love this band. Fellow opener, Minnesota singer/violist/keyboardist Anni Rossi signed to 4AD Records last year, and just got off the road with Camera Obscura. The headliner, Headlights, has come through Omaha a few times in the past (to both O’Leaver’s and The Waiting Room). This will be a helluva show that I’m going to very likely miss for reasons given above…9 p.m., $10.

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Tonight at Slowdown Jr., it’s Brooklyn indie band Bishop Allen (Dead Oceans) along with Seattle’s Throw Me the Statue (Secretly Canadian) and the quirky, cute pop of Darwin Deez (get there early). $10, 9 p.m.

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Friday night’s Whore Moans show at The Saddle Creek Bar was probably the loudest thing I’ve heard on that bar’s stage. I’m not sure why I’m leading with that, especially considering that the Seattle act was one of the better touring punk bands I’ve seen in a while — hard, heavy, with a pop sheen that kind of reminded me of The Towers of London but without the accents. The crowd of around 50 seemed properly perplexed and mesmerized — i.e., they mostly sat and stared, despite the fact that their clothes were rippling from the sonic waves rolling off the amps. Very loud, very good. Opener The Upsets did their usual snarling, grimy set of more traditional punk. The evening ended with The Shidiots, joined at times by members of The Upsets and a Whore Moaner or two — it was like a brotherhood of punk. See photo.

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Though it hasn’t been announced, tickets to the Dec. 22 Conor Oberst show at The Waiting Room went on sale over the weekend at the One Percent website (here). The $12 show also features Simon Joyner and Renee Ledesma Hoover, and I’m told the door money will go to a good cause. Get your tickets before this one sells out.

By the way, the same “cause” that is receiving money from the Oberst show also will be the recipient of money taken in for the Dec. 23 Mousetrap reunion show at The Waiting Room. It has been brought to my attention that Chris Hughes, one of the original vocalists for Beep Beep (whose performance as an opener for this show will be their last ever) will not be joining the band on stage as previously announced. To be honest with you, I had my doubts that something like that was going to happen, but I got the info from one of the horses’ mouths, so to speak.

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Tonight at The Waiting Room it’s Wu Tang Clan member Ghostface Killah with Fashawn, Skyzoo, Gaiden Gadema, & Maxilla Blue. $20, 9 p.m.

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