Citizen Cobra reading / Baroness review

I've been a little preoccupied with staring at a word document and trying to cut down words and maybe remove sentences while making things easy for actors to say out loud AND also making sure the whole thing makes sense and is also funny.

See that run-on sentence? I can actually write LONGER run-on sentences. "Marathon-on sentences." And I fully expect actors to first memorize and secondly say these things. With proper emotion and feeding off each other. Because I am an unfeeling, uncaring, unsympathetic person trying to pass himself off as some kind of writing-guy.



(I would trademark that phrase if not for the fact that "marathon-on" comes off as a speech impediment.)

The theater company grabbed some actor-types and they read the pages as a "staged reading," which is a little more active than a table read, and thus more entertaining for anyone not involved with the production or theater world to begin with. The director apologized for no background music or light changes. I feel like a terrible person because I have been adamant about people sticking to the script, or at least sticking to the gyst of the script, so probably due to my tantrums these kind but confused theater people, who even after 7 years are still like bizarre aliens to me, TRY to please me. And because Catholic guilt has been bludgeoned into me, I have a hard time feeling pleasure.

HAHA, I kid. But I don't know why they apologized for not having music. Did they think I was expecting it? That would be unreasonable of me. I am unreasonable but this is an early stage and I refuse to start freaking out because someone didn't have a karaoke version of the GI Joe theme from the cartoon music cued up. How would that be possible? I gave them version 3.5 of the script like four days before they did a practice read. Such nice people. I wonder when my spaceship returns to take me home, with two of them packed away in my cargo bay for our intergalactic zoo.

It was amusing. It was also easy to tell who involved had never seen the show before, but that won't be held against them, as this was in no way a commentary on the stunt performance of people who read all FORTY EIGHT DAMN PAGES just two days prior. By the way, that's a lot of pages.

That's a SHORT script from me, which is even sadder.

This has given me the ammo to make some changes for what I really hope to be a final (fourth) draft. I think the thing flows well (it is unfair to criticize the flow to the readers who had only read it once before two days prior) and changed DO need to be made. I know what they are, and am doing so. This keeps me from writing even MORE things I'd like to get started on, but really that's just more blank word documents as I stop to look to see who is on facebook or what Andrew Sullivan thinks of Mitt Romney or whatever.

Blah blah blah writer wannabe blah blah blah whatever.

Hey:

BARONESS - YELLOW / GREEN ALBUM

Yes, this is a band that has a color coded theme to their albums. Their first is Red, their second Blue, the most recent is a double disc, Yellow / Green. I don't know if this is something they think of when writing the album and putting the songs in order, "you know, this whole thing feels Blue to me. Like, on the visual spectrum. Like I'm looking at light entering our atmosphere and blue makes it through." Or is it one of those things where they just couldn't think of an album title, "what do you wanna play tonight?" "I don't know, something from the Red one."

They get compared to Mastodon a lot. Probably because:
-they live in or around Atlanta
-they're heavy but the hipsters are talking about them
-their albums have this epic, almost concept-in-theme feel to them
-they rock?

I can definitely hear those similarities in their first album, some of it in their 2nd. I'm not sure what made them decide on a double album (the whole thing is less than 80 minutes long, so it could fit on one disc), but I would end the Mastodon comparison as of now and just enjoy them as their own brand of awesome dark rock.

Of the two, Yellow is the stand-out album that I will be listening to the most. Is "Take My Bones Away" a top 40 hit? It should be, because it rocks. It's also jam packed. There's like two awesome songs in here, a hard charging attack on someone who wronged the band, and then in the middle an awesome boogie that I hope the band has a choreographed dance while playing. That might seem awkward for most metal fans but I expect they are doing the same moves I am doing when I hear it.

The singer isn't what I'd call a golden voiced crooner and actually sounds a little off from the music, but it's still fitting. It's got a lot of spacey 70's vibe (and keyboards) here and there, such as in "Cocainium," and plenty of catchy riffage.

Green Album, not so much. Maybe I just prefer the Yellow album so much more that the Green side, with the exception of a few songs ("The Line Between") manage to stick out. They aren't as catchy as the stuff on Yellow.

When I say "catchy," I should mention that these guys aren't really mainstream. They are not writing aggressive guitar driven pop music. It's still metal and the guy is a little hoarse when he tries to actually sing, and you can easily get lost in the mellow and spacey bits. There's just a lot of out-there riffage that sticks in your mind on Yellow. So that's what I mean by catchy.

I had heard about them, and then my guitar player was gushing about them, so I bought this double album and really enjoyed it. I picked up Red and Blue shortly afterwards. This is definitely most accessible of the three. If you like Mastodon, though I don't think it's fair to just compare Baroness to them, you will still probably enjoy this album.

That's it for now.