Giant Robot Store and GR2 News
My ears are still ringing from seeing Black Breath last week (and my neck is kinda sore, too) but that hasn’t stopped me from going to shows. Last night was Soul Asylum at the Troubadour.
Besides the camaraderie and the creativity of making the print version of Giant Robot, what I miss most is getting free music. I loved opening bubble mailers full of review CDs with bios, stickers, and other stuff. Sure, 90 percent of it was shitty but I got exposed to a ton of great bands and people that way. Now I have to seek out new music just like everyone else.
That being said, sometimes I still get hooked up. Here’s some stuff I got from friends during my recent Comic-Con trip, with a radical split 7″ as a bonus.
This roundup of shows begins in San Diego, where I spent a long weekend for Comic-Con. Sorry, no partying with Dethklok or Andrew WK, but there happened to be a couple of rad shows at one my favorite venues of all time: The Casbah. Of course, there was Vivian Girls (above) but first came The Mattson 2 (below). A perfect way to cap off Comic-Con’s preview night.
It isn’t easy for the casual fan to acquire tickets to Comic-Con. Once you get in, it’s an ordeal to squeeze past the movie studio palaces with their big screens and giveaways. But if you are willing to put in the work, Comic-Con is still pretty awesome.
Preview Night. I don’t think I’ve ever seen preview night so crowded. Of course, the first place I went was the Giant Robot booth to see my great friend and conspirator, Eric Nakamura (top right). If you looking at the GR site, you know what I mean. Also there was ace cartoonist John Pham (top left) Why is it that I see certain L.A. friends only at San Diego? One more reason to go, I guess. On the bottom row are the two other places where I lurked. Not working the GR booth anymore, I can be that guy who hangs out at other people’s booths until it becomes uncomfortable. At Super 7, we talked with Brian and Scott more about hardcore shows than toys. And then there were Tom and Peggy of Drawn & Quarterly with Peter from The Beguiling. No bow-tie on Tom yet because the table was still a work in progress, without banners flaunting their world-class roster of indie, international, and classic comic artists.
If you ever listened to Bob Forrest’s radio show, you know he doesn’t give a fuck about social media. Yet I’m compelled to gush about last night’s screening of Bob and The Monster, Keirda Bahruth’s 2011 documentary about him. It wasn’t exactly in Sensaround, but there was a pre-screening Q&A with the director/producer, the L.A. punk/addiction specialist subject, and fellow treatment specialist Andrew Spanswick, moderated by KPCC’s health editor Stephanie O’Neill. Really compelling and important stuff, mostly about treating drug addicts, and you will eventually be able to stream it on the Pasadena City College radio station website.