Saturday night was the farewell performance of Aspera. Over the last few years, many of the members moved from Philadelphia to NYC making it difficult to stay together. The show was an incredible performance, mixing their layered keyboards, noisy MBV-ish guitars, and electronic drum sounds as they played a wide selection from their most recent, post-Oh Fantastica material to an early song from Peace. Incidentally, I hosted their cd release party in 1998 for that debut album at Circle of Hope in Philadelphia where All Natural Lemon and Lime Flavors, Antarctica, Jejune, Piebald, Asteroid #4, Damien Jurado, Dave Fischoff, Danielson, and Pedro the Lion had all played. There are no firm plans for what will happen yet, but if the new material is any indication, there will still be music in some form for their futures, collectively or individually. The Aspera Back When Love one-sided LP on btv will be the last official release from the band.
On Friday night, I went with 10 friends to see a sold out showing of Fahrenheit 9/11 which was the top movie in box office revenue and is now the top grossing documentary of all time. Whether conservative or liberal, you owe it to yourself to consider the ideas presented in this film because everyone is going to be talking about them. I was impressed by how few Moore-style shenanigans were in the film and how often he just lets the footage speak for itself. It is a chronicle of the Bush presidency from the controversial election stealing to recent times. For me, and perhaps others, the most damning critique of Bush comes from the mother from Flint, Michigan who has always supported the military, with both a son and daughter who served in the armed forces. Her son was killed in Iraq and she emotionally deals with both her loss and the war. Equally damning is the actual media footage of Bush and his cabinet justifying the invasion on the premise of their being weapons of mass destruction and then a later interview of two elderly women asking each other where the weapons are.
:::scott:::