Asobi Seksu

I've pretty busy for the past several days. I just closed on my house last Thursday so I've been moving out of my parents house one truckload at a time. My new house is on the opposite end of town but it's all highway so it's just 22 minutes. I actually don't have whole lot of furniture, but I do have a lot of books, dvds, and games. I bought a sofa set, dining set, and a coffee table in town, and then drove to Dallas to do some shopping at Ikea.

My main reason for going to Dallas was the Asobi Seksu concert in Denton. I was a little wary since tickets were only $8 and you can only get them at the door. I left Wichita at 3:30pm Sunday and arrive in Denton at 8:30pm and checked-in at the Motel 6 which was the first hotel that I saw off the highway. I was starving so I only had Chipotle on my mind. There was no wi-fi, but I still had access to google maps on my phone. Google maps would get in the vicinity, but then I'd have to wonder around lost to finally find Chipotle. The Dallas area breaks g.maps with all it's multiple names for streets. Trying to find the venue was even harder since it wasn't so close to the highway. I had to stop at an auto parts store to get pointed in the right direction. The venue, Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studio, was across the street from a concrete plant and it only had its initials for its sign.

The doors opened at 9pm and I arrived at 9:40 and the placed seemed dead. Only music heard was Gogol Bordello on the stereo system. Half of the place was a bar and next door was the stage. It was an ok size, could maybe pack in 80 people. I generally prefer smaller venues anyways, because you have a better chance of meeting the band. I got a long island, my normal drink and sat down. I finish half my drink before I had to get up because I heard the doorman asking if someone had a green Mazda truck, because their lights were on. I actually have a black Mazda, but I figured it was mine, since I had my dome lights on trying to reading the directions to the venue. I left my drink on the table. When I returned, another group had just sat down at my table, I invited them to stay since there was plenty of space. They ended up being really cool people. In fact one of the was the one that told the doorman about my lights. We talked for a couple hours, and I found out that I had some common Kansas and Tacoma roots with them. We stayed at our table and talked through the first act, The Antlers, which didn't go on until 10:45pm. They were actually pretty decent sounding. I decided to actually watch the 2nd act, Tyvek and one of my new acquaintances joined me for half of it. I did not like Tyvek, they were very loud pink rock. The singer basically yelled into the mic and I couldn't understand anything he said. He basically would have had the same effect if he was using a megaphone, though that could have been the fault of the sound guy and/or equpment. One interesting thing about Tyvek was that their drummer played the whole show standing up.

Asobi Seksu was finally up at 12:40am. They had several issues getting started. One of the first things I noticed about Asobi is how small their lead singer, Yuki Chikudate is. She couldn't have been taller than 4'10". Asobi was even louder than Tyvek, but they were still great. Yuki was a little too quiet on some songs. They alternated between old and new songs. I was little sad that didn't play Me and Mary or Walk on the Moon, but they did do Thursday and ended with Red Sea as expected. The last couple minutes of that song is just the band going crazy, towards the end Yuki gets on the drum and starts rocking out. They walked off the stage and left a guitar on with some loud reverb. I assume we were supposed to applaud during that noise to get them to do an encore, but I don't think there were enough people to make enough noise to be heard. That disappointed me, mainly because their set was only 40 minutes long. The headliner needs to play for at least an hour. Afterward I got them to sign an LP of Hush that I picked up there. I also got an acoustic album that I didn't even know was made, a t-shirt, and a hoodie.

The next day, I drove to 30 minutes away to Frisco, TX to go shopping at Ikea. Google maps didn't fail me this time, though with as huge as Ikea is, it's hard to miss. I had lunch there and I actually enjoyed furniture shopping for once. They had so many cool things there. I was only planning on getting a tv stand, coffee tables, and end tables, but being there, I splurged a little. I picked a bigger dining table with 8 chairs, even though I had just bought a small one a couple days ago, a shoe rack/bench, and a game able with 4 chairs that fit into the corners. All that stuff was able to fit nicely in the back of my truck and I felt the 11 hours of driving was definitely worth it. Though it really didn't feel really long to me, as long as I have music I'm pretty happy.