ALERT ALERT i might cut my hair!

While Strokesing on Brooklyn Vegan's Austin City Limits pics, I saw a face that registered as one of my favorites, but I couldn't quite make out WHO I was looking at... something was off!

Turns out Christopher Owens cut his severely side-parted locks. A little Sean Penn-ish, eh?

Of course The Strokes photos make me happy/wonder when the F they are going to give us a hometown show, but do you think JFats and Owens shared style secrets backstage? Talk about fashion icons! xoxox

GIRLS Webster Hall 4/3/10- Lust for Life

Brooklyn Vegan photos from the Girls show. Below, my video of "Lust for Life."

dreams can still come true

I've thought about GIRLS a lot for the past 2 days because I saw them on Saturday night at Webster Hall. What struck me the most was how awesome it was to see Album (and various other songs like "Substance" and "Oh Boy," etc.) performed live. The band sounded better than the recording, and it was really one of those organically pleasurable live shows where you can actually chill out and listen to the songs being performed FOR you after rocking out to them time after time alone in your bedroom dreaming of this moment. So thank you. Because for a "lapsed" Protestant on Easter-Eve, seeing Girls made me feel the presence of whatever ideas I might have about Christ left in my psyche and made me feel like I celebrated Easter in my own way. Leave it to me to feel spiritual at a rock show, but hey, people, you either feel it or you don't. I personally felt like seeing Christopher Owens sing "Lust for Life" was a true gift and one that I can feel grateful for having seen the rest of my life. So if Jesus had something to do with that... then thank you.

As for Christopher Owens himself... homeboy is totally the opposite of my usual flavor. He's blonde, Cobain-ish, frail, earnest, friendly and smiley, and generally what I would call "Vanilla." I don't mean that in a boring way. I mean that in the as the opposite to the Casablancas"Chocolate" way. Jules is the archetype for my favorite flavor: dark, brooding, perfectionist, mysterious, quiet, and intense. Owens is the anti-Jules. But I guess it's like real life. Yes, today I did buy a 50% off chocolate Coneja because post-Easter candy sales fuel the chocolate lust I hold in my heart, but there are some days when all I want is a vanilla malted shake. Think of Owens as that shake. And that's the metaphor for that.

LUST FOR LIFE

I still find it amazing that someone wrote a song that perfectly matches my true feelings at the exact time in my life that I felt them the most. Cannot wait to sing this song live!

let's just get away from here

"cause i only wanna be with you. yeah i only wanna be with you. yeah i only wanna be with you all of the time."

GIRLS at webster hall in a little less than 2 wks! get your side parts ready.

Heartbreak Hotel

Sometimes when you make your own situation imposible, then you just gotta stuff your head full of (not holes) sad songs that ironically make everything not worse but livable. Key word OKAY.

Girls: Can't wait to see them in April so they can sing the songs of my broken heart for all to hear and sing along to too.

The first cut may be the deepest but the last cut is always the worst. BITCH!

i wanna be your girl friend.

GIRLS Webster Hall 4/3/10

Hi! I haven't been this excited since the months before I saw The Strokes for the 2nd time... I am seeing GIRLS with John on April 3 at Webster Hall. Cannot, cannot, cannot wait! "OH I WISH I HAD A BOYFRIEND, I WISH I HAD A LOVING MAN IN MY LIFE!" Expect tons of photos and my hair done up in a super-severe side part.

This is an actual marriage proposal.

Christopher Owens, I love you. On his myspace page he says, "Even if nobody ever cares about you, you can always still care about somebody. We're all looking for love and meaning in our lives, i believe that."

Me too, sugar. Me too.

And he lists his heroes as Kurt Cobain and River Phoenix. Match made in heaven? I think so. Album kicked the ass of all other 2009 albums and wormed its way into my crummy, black heart. Buy it, bitches. And marry me, Christopher!

lust for life

2010 anthem.

Hellhole Ratface

who wants something real when you could have nothing?

I am in love.

Girls

Why?

I like boys that look like they've been to the edge of the sun-bleached fields of this disgusting Earth we call home and slept among the wildflowers. I like boys that look like they've been at sea for 2 weeks with only one pair of threadbare jeans and an old holey tee shirt (and no hair brush or scissors, of course). I like boys that haven't shaved because they can't find razors or better yet can't afford them. I like skinny tall maniacs who look like they've been at a battle site without sunscreen and/or shoes. I say I don't like drug addicts and will never date one again but my type's too tied up in weed smoking and coke fiending. I don't know why. Maybe it was the early exposure to Kurt Cobain.

So my latest obsession is Christopher Owens of San Francisco band Girls. Dude's gorgeous. In all the ways I have described above, and his mom was part of the same cult as the Phoenix (River, Rain, Joaquin, etc.) Family called Children of God. So he's probably been to the edge of the abyss and back.

His music sounds like he's waking up from some Valium-induced coma or finally breaking through the bad side of a nasty hangover (you know, those hysterical tremors.) His songs are so ultimately beautiful that I can deal with his talk of the wonders of morphine. The song "Hellhole Ratface" kicks ass in a "You Bleed You" by Lissy Trullie kind of way. But Album is pure California pop, dusted with a layer of melancholy that makes this sunshine music fit in a cool NYC fall afternoon bedroom cocoon as well.

Read up on Girls. Spin. Wiki. Dazed. Pitchfork.