(For Prefix)
After Fleet Foxes toured with Blitzen Trapper Erik told me that I should see them because they would make me melt, and they did (and not just because The Echo was entirely overcrowded, either.)
If you need melting too, you can download an MP3 of their song He Doesn’t Know Why direct from Subpop for free. That makes this my official most useful Countessian post ever.
PS — I’m on lastfm now. last.fm/user/countessofmaybe. Be my friend.
(Rancho Bernardo Inn, San Diego)
I’m sometimes a travel writer, which is lovely. You get paid to go to luxurious places and treated fantastically.
Sometimes you feel like you have two completely different lives, though, because travel writing pays very little. When you come home from your top-notch spa-resort holiday and realise you don’t have enough money to get your broken shoes fixed, it feels a bit confusing.
It’s a nice problem to have, of course.
A tertulia is “a kind of literary salon, only more fun” in 
Spain and Latin America, said the invitation from Laura.
“Our cheap domestic knockoff is really just an excuse to gather some of our most fascinating creative pals for conversation, confabulation, imbibification and — we dare to hope — a few performed works from the troubadours, jesters, songsmiths and assorted scribblers we count among us.”
Sometimes Downtown goes magical. I’m not kidding. Narrow brick alleys with fairylights balance out 90-degree heat beautifully. Cocktails and good company on beat-up corner couches help.
(The drink to which the title refers is the Orange Blush, pictured below. We wanted mojitos; they had no more mint. We requested a sweet-yet-refreshing mystery cocktail; the bartender was ingenious.)
I was very young and ecstatic. We drank the bottle of Black Label first, then he bought me funny-looking flowers at 2am in an all-night supermarket. I said I didn’t want them, but then photographed them endlessly anyway.
From the “I’ve never heard them; are they good? Oh! Good God! They’re great!” impromptu 
photo-pit dance party at Mess with Texas during SXSW to the “I slept in a swimming pool last night but I’m still jumping up and down with glee when Islands play” Coachella glory, I think I love Islands.
It was lovely to finally see them at their own show, even though the age of the audience made me feel really old and I’d somehow (quite mysteriously; suggestions on a postcard or the back of an envelope to the usual coordinates, please) dried out my contact lenses so much that taking pictures was physically painful.
Also, they reminded me that I do like music and I do like taking pictures and I do like my friends and I do think white shoes with black jeans are a trend I can appreciate. Thank you, Islands.
(For Prefix, which has fancy new watermarks that I quite enjoy.)
…is green and full of irregular shapes.
If it’s raining, though, you can go indoors and see lots of stolen treasures brought home by officially sanctioned pirates and stored at the British Museum.
Over the weekend — proudlybroughttoyoubyXanaxandSmirnoff — I found out that the reason the Ancient Egyptians drew their owl hieroglyph with a broken leg was to immobilise the cursed birdies if they sprung to life.
I also learnt the words for different sorts of owls in various African languages, thanks to Owl Pages, and that in Northern India hearing nine owl cries means good fortune, Tasmanian farmers who get caught running around naked in their fields can use the excuse that it’s the traditional method of scaring off owls, and that a pregnant Welsh woman who hears an owl will bear a blessed child, but a pregnant German just gets a standard baby girl.
(Hibou by the magnificent Marion M)
Also, Genghis Khan’s life was saved by an owl, once. Nice. In Cameroon, owls are too evil to have a name.
Anyone who’ll fix me up with an owl’s eye on a string around my neck, Morrocan style, will get an exciting prize.
PS — Shot Islands at the El Rey for Prefix last night and it was quite wonderful in every way.
Sometimes (most of the time) I’m sick to death of people trying to be original. I like shows where people dance and I don’t go to many, so I made sure to go to this one.
I also don’t go to many shows where one is liable to overhear perplexed drinkers saying “I know they’re French, but I just listened to some of them talking by the bar and they all sound so American!” Thank you, Les Sans Culottes.
I mean, merci beaucoup, or something.
And about the Detroit Cobras: I can’t remember the last time I saw a woman look good in thigh-high boots. I think if you wear them with a stripy jumper it makes all the difference.
Plus, anyone who inspires random blokes to yell my name in a public place is doing a service to Rachels everywhere, so merci beaucoup to you, Rachel Nagy, too.
(More than I could possibly stand to cut and paste here on Prefix.)
So, recently I’ve been trying to pretend I’m fourteen again.
First band I ever saw live (in a field, about to pass out from sleep deprivation, hunger and billion-degree weather) were Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci, when I was fourteen, and so here is a video of what Euros Childs has been up to recently, in lieu of anything I’ve been up to recently.
(I could write better when I was fourteen, honest.)
In a min I’m going to take pictures of Times New Viking. Recently I took pictures of The Detroit Cobras, Les Sans Culottes and some other bands, but I can’t really be bothered to do the cut-and-paste thing.
PS — It took me over a minute to correctly type the title of this entirely pointless post, so please savour it.
Mmm, punctuation.
The bus driver drove straight past Doheny even though I’d rung the bell in plenty of time. I raised hell and he yelled that I need to be more patient (?) at which point I stamped my high-heeled feet all the way to his seat and in my most English accent asked him what the fuck he was fucking playing at, not fucking stopping at fucking Doheny.
He stopped the bus and opened the doors in that delightful and entirely unlit stretch of Santa Monica that’s all lawn and no pavement. I trudged heel deep through the lush Beverly Hills lawn to help the elderly woman with a trolley full of shopping who’d fallen out of the bus (I couldn’t make this up) when the driver started pulling away before she’d finished staggering down the steps.
Anyway, Parenthetical Girls were really great and I quite coveted the singers hairdo and smart trousers so I was in a fantastic mood by the time Los Campesinos! took to the stage.
I might’ve enjoyed it more if it hadn’t been so demoralising to move around the room — just walking from one side to the other won me so many looks of hatred that you’d think I was drowning kittens or something. The Troubadour was nowhere near as packed as I’ve seen it on plenty of occasions, so it wasn’t that — there were just a lot of really mean-spirited twits in attendance. They probably didn’t get enough hugs as kids, poor things.
Los Campesinos! didn’t strike me at all as the sort of band that would ordinarily attract such unpleasant dummies (I mean, come on. The guitarist was wearing a Super Furry Animals shirt, and have you ever met anyone you didn’t like at a Super Furry Animals gig?) so I skipped home very puzzled.
