Diego Garcia Returns to Louisville!

Love this photo from METROMIX

Grumble, grumble... *stink-eye*

I'm still none-too-pleased with the folks over at Zanzabar, but it's very difficult to get around the fact that they're my favorite music venue in town. Oh... and TATER TOTS. Of course.

DO BETTER, ZANZABAR!

And there's no getting around the fact that Zanzabar is the only place to catch the return of Diego Garcia this weekend.

Garcia is once again headlining a night of music on April 14 at 9pm-- just five months after his last show at Zbar. I went to the last show, and it was pretty fabulous.  Just yesterday I was in the car listening to WFPK, and a song came on the radio, and I thought, "Why do I love this song so much? The moment it came on I was slammed by a wave of happiness." Turns out-- Diego Garcia song.  Great music. Nice guy. Chatted briefly with Diego after the show, and he gave me the softest t-shirt... hey, the little things count when you're a starving blogger.

Anyway, I emailed Diego a few questions about his upcoming show.  Here are his responses:

LOU: You're playing Louisville during the craziest time of the year in Louisville... the build-up to Derby. What are your impressions of the Kentucky Derby? Decadent and depraved or stately genteel tradition? Something in between?

DIEGO: All of the above. Tradition is beautiful especially when it's part of the land. Crowds are scary.

LOU: You last played Zanzabar on December 10. We're so happy to have you coming back so soon. What was your experience like atZanzabar and in Louisville? Did you have any time to hit the town at all? Did you get to eat at Zanzabar? Did you have their famous tater tots?

DIEGO: Zanzabar is beautiful. It's real. Again, another iconic building and location. The food was also unreal but this time i will make sure to eat after the show and not before! And yes, the tater tots are the real reason were coming back to Louisville

LOU: Lindi Ortega opened for you last time you were here. Wow. Who can we look forward to seeing open for you in April?

DIEGO: Not sure yet but Rumor has it the band "the tater tots" are opening.

LOU: For those of us who went to the show in December, what new can we expect this time around?

DIEGO: A few new songs I'm working on in the studio. Neil youngs harvest moon has also made its way into the show. As well as a new petty song. It's all cool.

How nice of a guy is Diego? He (or his peeps, rather) sent along a free download for you!  Here's "Roses & Wine," folks!

I am a Woman, and I love Nerd Culture: Zanzabar

Sonofabitch.

Yeah, I know I normally try to steer clear of expletives on this relatively family-friendly blog, but trust me, that's the most mild expletive I can come up with to describe my frustration.

Few things irk me more than when I go to bat for a person, an organization, what-have-you... only to turn around and realize that they've failed in some other, major, egregious way.

In my last blog post, I went to bat for Zanzabar over the idiocy that blew up in response to their (brief) decision to invite only U of L fans to view the game last Saturday. I defended their choice. And I said:

Zanzabar is my favorite place to see live music.  Their food is awesome. Fabulous beer selection. And best of all: TATER TOTS!! I'm totally looking forward to seeing Diego Garcia there again in a couple of weeks (April 14). I am sending the folks at Zbar my very best wishes for a NOT STUPID game day. I really hope that all this shizz is a bunch of online troll bluster. And I hope all this bluster doesn't scare people away from a great venue to watch the game. Godspeed, Zanzabarers!

This evening, the Guy and I were chit-chatting about said flare-up, and he mentioned that one of his female friends was a little bit pleased that Zanzabar was catching some sh*t about something because she was disgusted by their most recent LEO WEEKLY ad.

I had no idea what he was talking about.

But a little noodling on his iPhone produced this image promoting their pinball tournament. (The Guy, who was recently called "the funniest actor in Louisville" said, "But see... you couldn't even play pinball with her straddling the machine like that. She's covering up the bumpers.")

No, I'm not going to import it to the blog. I don't want that crap to grace these pages.

Seriously, Zanzabar? What the holy hell?

I am a woman, and I love nerd culture. And one of the many things I love about Zanzabar is all the nerdy shizz that they engage in. The vintage video games. The pinball tournaments. The spelling bees. The 70's promotional posters for Louisville that grace their walls.

But when they bust out the ugliest, most stereotypical pandering to nerd-dom, they've lost me.

I don't play pinball. But that's not because I am a woman. It's because I was born hand-eye-coordination challenged and that has been complicated by the lingering neuropathy associated with my chemo treatments a few years back. I wish I could play pinball. I wish I could play video games (although, I am secretly glad I can't... I'm just obsessive enough that I could see me getting so sucked in that my "real life" would suffer).

With this ad, Zanzabar is saying "'we assume that most of our players are [heterosexual twenty-something-year-old dudes], so we're not even going to pretend we care about anyone else.' That sucks. That's a problem. And that's what needs to start changing."

The quotes there are because I am quoting a particularly awesome episode of MovieBob's "The Big Picture" vlog called GENDER GAMES. The battle between feminists and nerd culture has been visited and revisted ad infinitum. And maybe I am biased because MovieBob is my cousin, but I think his take on it is particularly brilliant (embedded left).

Zanzabar-ers-- Stop it. Just effing stop it. Gender-ing a game as basic as pinball is lousy and cheap. Why is it that twenty-something-year-old hipsters these days seem to be as misogynistic as my sixty-something-year-old uncles?

Diego Garcia: Not Just An Atoll (Z'bar on Sat)

I don't blog all that much about music because here in Louisville we're lucky to have a lot of great music bloggers who get the job done.  But occasionally I get a press release from a musician's PR firm that kind of excites me.

This Saturday, Diego Garcia, formerly the frontman of the band Elefant, will be playing at Zanzabar. His PR people let me stream his solo album, and I was totally charmed. From the press release:

Diego Garcia has become one of 2011’s breakout new stars, with NPR calling his debut album ‘Laura’ “one of the top 25 albums of the year (so far).” The album has had an impressive response from radio, hitting #1 atWXPN in Philadelphia and #4 at tastemaker station KCRW in Los Angeles. With lush string arrangements and Spanish guitar, Diego Garcia’s poignant single “You Were Never There,” was recently featured as Starbucks ‘Pick of the Week’ (with 750,000 download cards distributed nationally). Prior to his successful solo career, Diego Garcia originally made his mark on the music scene as front man for the popular indie band Elefant.

Zanzabar is probably my favorite local venue, so I'm really excited for this show.  Below you will find a link to a free download of his song "Stay." We've been hearing Garcia a lot on WFPK; this is a fantastic time to see him in person.  Tickets are $12.  And with the kind of buzz he's been receiving, I wouldn't be surprised to hear that it sells out.  Maybe you ought to get your tickets in advance, huh?  You can do that here.

Doors at 8p; show at 9p. I'll see you there!

(Keeping my fingers crossed that I might have a ticket giveaway coming your way soon.  And maybe an interview in which I ask totally absurd questions.  In the meantime, check out Louisville.com's article by Allison Ray.)