I try my hand at reviewing music: Metal Hammer Festival, Spodek, Aug. 12 (Chris, you should've been there)

Ah, rock-nothing quite like a good arena rock concert. I may listen to a lot of country, jazz, and blues these days, but I never forget my hard rock/metal roots. (Ok, my real roots are musicals, Linda Ronstadt, and Billy Joel, but my adult listening habits began with Guns N Roses and AC/DC.) Last night at the Spodek I went to the Metal Hammer Music Festival and despite Chris Cornell's cancellation due to "strained vocal cords" it was a great show. Both Polish and international bands played, and here's how it went.
First, Fair to Midland. An unfortunate name in my opinion, practically begging smartasses like me to revert to the original expression to describe them: fair to middlin'. And that's being generous. Typical of opening acts, they sucked. While all of them seemed to be competent musicians and the lead singer had an impressive range and a variety of vocal effects, their songs lacked structure and left the impression that each member had written his part in isolation, without consulting the others. They had no sound, just sound. In many ways, with their pointless flailing and random headbanging, they seemed a parody of a metal band, like a too-long, bad SNL sketch (wait, isn't that a triple redundancy?). You could see the bassist thinking, "Oh, yeah, now I bang my head, now I stomp around . . . When do I have to jump again?"
Next up was a Polish band, Delight. They were that too, competently fronted by one of those rarities in metal, a woman. I love female leads in metal bands, and they were such a relief after the histrionics of Fair to Midland. Actual melody and structure, though they'd probably do well to ditch their keyboardist. They were quite evidently having a good time up there, and while none of their songs was truly exceptional, neither were they bad or in any way pretentious. They rocked within their limits, delivered a solid performance, and just seemed happy to be there. Delight's best number was a pretty hard cover of George Michael's "Careless Whispers" which definitely benefited from distortion, power chords and driving bass riffs. Most endearing was the way the singer thanked the crowd after each song, with real sincerity, a change from the usual perfunctory thanks or the occasional hostility you sometimes get.
Best performance of the festival however, goes to the Polish band Coma (click the "download" link to listen. Doesn't actually download). These guys rocked heavy and hard. Well-crafted, layered songs, full of those thunderous beats and riffs that rip open your chest and rearrange your pulse. A truly great, charismatic frontman, the singer sweated and screamed, strutted and stepped around the stage with purpose and power. Each song was delivered with the intensity, urgency and desperation of the condemned, as if the noose was already around his neck and these last few seconds were all he had to say a lifetime's words.
Beyond the music and the singer's stage presence though, was the love. Poland is a pretty big place, but even though I don't think Coma is at all local to this area, the atmosphere was that of a hometown show. The crowd loved them and they loved the crowd. It was palpable, visceral love, reminding me of the early 90s Seattle shows I went to, especially Pearl Jam. A very special rapport, not just adoration and adulation, or even mere enjoyment, but that sense that the band is your voice, expressing your feelings, combined with the knowledge that you are all rooted in the same time and place, really sharing the same emotions and experiences. It's a powerful thing, this kind of audience feedback, and Coma responded to it with everything they had.
The next act I just couldn't take seriously. A Japanese metal band, whose primary market, judging by the high-pitched screams from the pit, is preteen girls, Dir En Grey were at first laughable, then tedious. As with Fair to Midland, I found myself wondering if this wasn't some kind of comedy act, as virtually nothing about them seemed genuine. Purely aping the stereotype of metal bands, in this case some variant of death/thrash, without irony or understanding. Musically their songs were multi-polar (I know, technically you can only have two poles, but this is the most apt way I can put it), swinging randomly, abruptly, and totally pointlessly from one state to another, the lead singer basically just alternating between the three screams in his arsenal of noise while careening around the stage like one of those little bouncy-balls. At one point, he put one leg up on a metal box, bent over screaming so far that I was instantly reminded of how Sabriel looked while licking her genitals. Now and then they'd happen on to a decent beat or riff, but inevitably they'd do their Jekyll/Hyde transition back into asinine noise within a few bars. Ultimately, we left to go get a hot dog.
Finally, after an eternity of Dir En Grey, and a longer break than usual (during which they played Medeski, Martin, and Wood and Ween's "Piss up a rope," making me and maybe three other people in the arena really happy), the headliners came on, Tool. They delivered a workmanlike performance: they came, played hard, professional, and tight, and punched out right on time. Musically, not a thing to complain about; visually, I feel they substituted lasers and video screens for actual performance. The lead singer wasn't even directly lighted for the entire hour-long set, which at first seemed like a cool effect, then just got boring and frustrating. All the band members had their part of the stage staked out, and never moved from it (ok, the drummer has no choice, but the others might have done something). Overall, nothing to complain about, but then, nothing to rave about either.
At the end, it was just great to be at a show. Got to hear some new music, feel that bass breaking down my cellular structure, ate overpriced food, and smell the sweat and smoke of thousands of strangers. Ah, good times. This one last thing did keep bothering me though: when I was younger, we held up lighters when the lights went down, especially for ballads or anthems. I gotta say, the greenish glow of cell phone displays is a poor substitute, and it's not even a tribute or salute, but trying to get yet another low-quality picture to post on MySpace, as if we needed that. Sigh.

"When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes." -Desiderius Erasmus

Ah, visits from friends. I had my first ever visit from home, Rico and Loran, who dropped by (after some persuasion on my part) on their European tour. (What's the matter with the rest of you? A year and a half I've been here.) I showed them the mean streets of Sosnowiec (ok, the pubs) and beautiful buildings of Krakow (ok, we went to some pubs there too). We also went to Auschwitz (Oswiecim), which is difficult and depressing and necessary. But that for another time.
Since they love bookstores as much as I do, we went to the only primarily English-language store in this part, if not the whole of, Poland, Massolit Books (ul. Felicjanek, Krakow). If I have anything approaching a religion, it is worship of the written word, and while it's a great bookstore in its own right and in any country, as an English-speaker abroad, the sheer volume literally brought on the agony and the ecstasy. Ecstasy at the sight of so many good books, agony at the knowledge that I could only take a few home with me.
I had heard of this place from my friend Patrick, and had deliberately avoided it on all my previous visits to Krakow. Money was tight for a long time, and I knew I would spend far more than I could afford. So this was my first time, and it was all I could have asked for, and more.
Firstly, they sell (and of course, buy) used books. I love the smell and feel of old books, the sense of history and travel and adventure that clings to their pages, coffee stains, sun-yellowed edges, odd underlinings and margin notes. It reassures me that reading is not a solitary experience--I always imagine the prior owner(s) and where they were, who they were, what they thought, etc. And while we will never meet, we share these words. Just beautiful.
Second, it's everything a bookstore should be. None of those sterile, upmarket shelves like a Barnes & Noble, Borders, or Empik (the Polish equivalent), all of them matching each other and the paint and the carpet and the professional signs; no piles of Dan Brown or Danielle Steele or whatever Washington insider's tell-all that lots of people will buy but just read the NYTimes Book Review article is current this week. No, Massolit is one of that vanishing breed: old, creaky, somewhat unstable shelves arranged in too small a space, hand-lettered signs thumb-tacked to the edges; a small cafe of three tables and five chairs, serviced by a two-group espresso machine, a small selection of bagels and a studious-looking cashier/server/doctoral candidate. All of it crammed into a warren of rooms connected by hallways narrowed by more shelves, flyers and posters for local events, apartments and zines. Backstock is stacked on the floor or on top of the shelves, adding to the undercurrent of tension whenever you pull a book out. Old, well-loved, saggy armchairs and sofas. You know the place. You feel at home here.
And thirdly, selection. They have good buyers at Massolit. Something on everything, and everybody can find something. Politics, sociology, history, a surprisingly large children's section (featuring an illustrated treasury of Roald Dahl that caused physical pain to leave behind), contemporary and classical fiction, science fiction and poetry, mysteries and literary criticism, all of it.
Finally, price. A mass-market paperback in English (usually of the Brown/Steele/Grisham variety) averages 50zl (about 20US) at Empik. Trade editions of good books are 20-24zl at Massolit. I really almost started crying.
Needless to say, I still spent too much, yet came away feeling I should have gotten more. This gets me to what I wanted to say here. Among my treasures was a collection of essays by Stanislaw Baranczak, a literary critic in exile during the 80s. I haven't been able to read many Polish writers, as most bookstores (strangely enough) only carry their works in Polish. These essays are from that turbulent, eventful, and very important period of change, not just in Poland, but across Eastern Europe. In one of them, titled "The New Alrightniks" he quotes a Russian emigre, Vassily Aksyonov. Written in 1987, I found this quote to be still accurate, for both cultures mentioned (expanding the Soviet viewpoint to include all of Eastern Europe, in the same manner that Baranczak used it). Here it is, without further comment from me, but I invite everyone else to offer their thoughts (make sure you click the "comments" link, not the email link).

In the Soviet Union we pictured Americans as "citizens of the world," cosmopolitans; here we find them to be detached, withdrawn, sequestered in their American planet . . . In a closed society like the Soviet Union, public interest . . . is directed outward, while in open, democratic America it is almost wholly inner directed. The outside world interests Americans much less . . . Despite the iron curtain the Soviet Union is in many ways closer to Europe than Europe's closest political and economic partner, America.

Vassily Aksyonov, In Search of Melancholy Baby, 1987