Geeks In Space #36

The only Geeks strip drawn in 2010. The second year that has passed by with me doing only one of these. Hooray!

Geeks In Space #35

This strip, like one I previously posted, is completely true. I've been to the school and seen the spot where the shooting took place. My dad said the gunman, as expected, went to jail, but no one knows what happened to him after that.

As for me, I'm still in Seattle and having a good time. I've seen some really interesting things which will follow in a themed mega-post.

Seattle And Tacoma

As promised, here is my first newsreel-of-sorts, coming to you live from the top left-hand corner of the United States; the state of Washington! I have visited the cities of Seattle and Tacoma, there is plenty more to see there than in this meagre blog post, but I'm holding some other stuff back for later, as it related to a different theme (a certain 1990s rock band that put Seattle alternative music on the global map...). You'll have to wait and see.

Okay, back to this. Below is a photo of the Seattle Art Museum. The statue outside moves its left arm to strike whatever that is in its right hand with the hammer. One of the few moving statues I have seen and it looks impressive, as well as providing a handy reference point for those in the city. I have been fortunate to get mostly fine weather for the 11 days I have been here; the day this photo was taken (Tuesday, November 8) was fairly sunny, for an autumn day.


On Wednesday night, November 9, I finally got to see my fave band ever (other than Nirvana) perform live at the Showbox in the south downtown area. They Might Be Giants played a 29-song set that I and the other fans had a great time singing along to. We found out later that John and John had been feeling unwell; no evidence of this during the show, as they put on a solid performance. John F. was ever the showman, telling jokes throughout, and handed out stickers of their new album cover at the end. The photo below is courtesy of Extremely Crappy Live Concert Photos, Inc.

On a side note, if anyone knows of a non-DSLR digital camera that can take decent (unblurred) indoor nighttime shots without flash, let me know. Don't say use your phone or you might get a toaster hurled at your face. (I'll post a review of TMBG's show with more pics on the China 5 Blog soon, as it's more music-related.)

Meanwhile, in the city of Tacoma, local glass artist and sculptor Dale Chihuly (born 1941) is doing amazing things in the medium of glass. Below is a pane from the Bridge Of Glass, a lengthy structure suspended over the length of a walkway near the Museum Of Glass. A riot of colours and beautiful rippled shapes all the way along and it's a shame it won't all fit into one photo. This section of the bridge reminds me of a huge lemon slice surrounded by multi-coloured sea jellies, pulsing gently.

Thanks to Bernard and Robert for providing me with a drawing challenge; they will both appear in a future Geeks In Space strip, which I'll scan and post in late January. Rob, yours is a bit more difficult as I have to learn to draw Jimi Hendrix, but I'll give it a go anyway!

China 5 Interview Unearthed

Y'know some people out there are cool enough to dig where China 5's coming from and to ask us questions about our music. With that, here's the cleaned-up-and-properly-punctuated transcript of a Japanese dude called DOUBLE*YAY (remember that name, he'll pop up again) talking to me and Pete online. Enjoy!

DOUBLE*YAY: Will you eventually get tired of band name?

Lychee: Probably. People read all sorts of things into band names, but it's just a word, y'know? Just a word with a number tacked on to the end of it. It don't mean nothin'. It's got nothing to do with the music.

D*Y: How hard it is to write songs?

Lychee: Well, writing a pop song, as in a "pop"ular song, as in a song that people can hum or sing to themselves, with a tune that remains in your mind, and lyrics not too banal or not too deep, you know, anything that doesn't freak out the listener and make them think the sky is going to fall in tomorrow, all that stuff, it is pretty difficult. That's not to say we don't have fun trying to do it, but it's a challenge to write a decent song that people might like as opposed to, say, a song that only we like. Because that's pretty much what we've done all along.

D*Y: What do you mean?

Lychee: Well you look at all our oldest songs. Who would they appeal to apart from the two of us and one or two of our friends? Not many people I would think. They're songs for us, by us, to borrow a naff slogan from the nineteen forties. Which is why they don't follow the same staid, weatherbeaten, cliched paradigms of songwriting formats of yore.

D*Y: My English is not good, could you explain last sentence please.

Lychee: No.

D*Y: Very well, I have been given a CD of you. It has 9 songs on it in poor quality. Still, the melodies are nice. Those songs are just my feeling. I wonder what will happen to those songs of yours.

Lychee: That's the Friends Of China 5 disc you've got there my friend! Keep it in a sacred place. Dip it in mayonnaise and bake it in your next lasagna. That CD is a true pop artefact.

Pete: Yeah.

Lychee: That disc was made before we had the technology to make audio files in high quality. Hence the crappy sound on that CD. The first three CDs we did were all recorded on cassette, you know. We're such dinosaurs we can even remember what it was like to dub off copies of cassettes on high-speed, and multi-track them. How about you? What year were you born?

D*Y: 1978.

Pete: Okay, same year as me. So, you know how you could double-track cassette dubbing, and triple-track it. That'd be pushing it. If you did it four times, it would start to distort the sound.

Lychee: Yeah, your vocals would go all chipmunky. Hence the first Lounge Act tape.

Pete: Give me a break man, it was 1994.

Lychee: Cassettes! We are ancient! I can't even mosh at concerts anymore. Crreeeeeeeeeak!

D*Y: So you have embraced new technology?

Lychee: Pretty new. But hey you're from Japan, so compared to your new technology, our new technology would seem primitive.

D*Y: Obviously.

Lychee: Smartarse. But getting back to that 9 track CD, we put our best songs on it, and then we realized that they aren't really pop songs at all. I mean there's instrumental waltzes on it for gawd's sake. Whoever heard of an instrumental waltz in the Top 10?

Pete: I like our instrumentals, but most people find them boring.

Lychee: Exactly. They want lyrics. Not anything special, they don't wanna understand and feel and be moved by the lyrics, they just wanna know that there were lyrics. Something to shout along to in a seedy nightclub after 88 shots of gin. Hence the banal, vapid pap that passes for songwriting these days.

Pete: But you're saying that like everyone loves mindless, moronic radio-playlist filler that can be sped up by 20% without cokeheads noticing. But surprisingly there are people out there who do love fine songcraft.

Lychee: Bull. Every time I turn on the radio it's the same old R&B/hip-hop crap.

D*Y: So why do you rap then Lychee?

Pete: Scorch.

Lychee: Yeah, I rap. You're right. But not all that blingy pimps n' ho's shit. If I write a rap, it's gonna be about something topical, political or maybe humorous to mix it up a little. I don't write tunes about how I was in the club and saw some hot chick and wanted to do her. 99% of all songs are about that. You can write songs like that while watching television. You don't even have to think. You just wave your pen in front of the paper and let the vacuous cliches pour out.

D*Y: One more question, can someone else join China 5 if they want?

Lychee: Sure. Just bring over salt & vinegar chips, some MAD magazines and imported Grape Fanta and we'll see you right.