Get Up, Stand Up

Re: the comment on last night’s post. When I invent my time machine (and trust me once my shipment of dilithium crystals come in I will be able to commence active testing) I would like whoever wrote that comment to find said time machine, travel to the University of Illinois campus circa 1993 or 94, make their way to Everitt Lab and find the tall, skinny kid with glasses. Wait, I’ll need to be more specific. Find the tall, skinny kid with glasses, a blue backpack and a Duke baseball cap. Once you locate him, please repeat word for word what was written in the comment. It might have made the years spent in the lab much more bearable if I knew someone considered it exciting.

Seriously, the only time anyone ever referred to anything I did as “hot” is when I set a circuit board on fire. We almost had to break out the fire extinguishers.



Wednesday Night Music Club: So I just got back from seeing Kathleen Edwards in concert That’s part of the reason why I posted the video but mainly I think Kathleen is so incredible that I can’t believe that everyone doesn’t know who she is at the moment. She is such a talented singer and songwriter that it makes you wish that this is what you would hear on pop radio as opposed to whatever American Idol wannabe now runs the charts.

The show was at Knuckleheads and I really need to go on a rant about this club. First off, the place is the musical equivalent of Brigadoon in that it is impossible to find and might not actually exist. The official website directions actually has you going more than a mile out of your way to find the place and you have to follow some very small signs to figure out how to navigate the neighborhood. If you miss a turn you are just plain out of luck. It is a roadhouse in the industrial part of town with train tracks running literally behind the club. If you can find it the place is awesome.

However, with the roadhouse design comes one very small flaw. Their stage is maybe a foot off the ground and in front of the stage there is this small open area, then some pillars and a low wall and then this big room with tables where everyone sits down to watch the show. This setup causes nightmares for me and has resulted in my being yelled at the last two times I’ve seen a band there.

See, I consider it a sin to sit down at a concert. Unless I am given a ticket with a specific seat number or the show is this mellow, acoustic thing where it is best meant to be experienced in quiet contemplation I want to be standing and bouncing around. Not only does that make me feel better but it makes the band feel better. You know you are reaching people when they are moving about. I’ll almost always stand (I make exceptions at times if I’d be the only person standing) and I feel that is the way people in every other venue on the planet would behave.

But here this is an issue. I started off fine. I found a pillar to stand in front of and figured that no one could yell at me for blocking their view because the damn pillar was still going to be there. But, some guy with a camera (and I’ll rant about people watching concerts through the viewscreen of a digital camera some other time) knocked me off of my perch so I stood to the side for about half a song. After which I was yelled at for blocking the view of the people behind me. Luckily, camera dude gave up his seat to knock me out of the way so I just stole his seat back. Still, I felt like a complete doufus sitting while Kathleen was rocking out but I did get to see several other people chastised for standing.

I stand for the encore and once again was told by the people behind me to sit down. Given that it was the encore I decided that I earned the right to be pissy and say “Or you could stand up”. That didn’t win me any favors with them. I’m sorry but we were in the midst of a great set by an amazing performer. Get off your ass and stand and dance and enjoy life. The Iguanas are playing there next week and I don’t know if I’ll go because I don’t want to have to deal with people giving me crap for a band whose entire mission in life is to make people happy by getting them to celebrate. You don’t sit during an Iguanas show. You just don’t.

So I’m asking for two things. First off, go out and buy a Kathleen Edwards CD. I’ve played a few of her songs here as part of the music club and I guarantee you that this will be one of your best music purchases in ages. Second, next time you go to a show stand as close to the stage as possible. If you want to just sit there and watch rent a freaking DVD and stay on your couch. The rest of us want to live in the moment we find ourselves in.

Signs, signs everywhere a sign

Author’s Note: The Wednesday Night Music Club will take place on Thursday this week. That would make it rather inaccurately named but there is a reason for it. I’m going to start my recap of the 2007 concert schedule tomorrow and one show can only be explained via a YouTube clip. It will be the coolest thing ever, just trust me on this.

There are a few concerts coming to town that I need to discuss. I have spent the past month without a single Ticketmaster order so I think I’m going through withdrawal. But there are some shows coming up that just astound me.

The first is that Blind Melon is coming to town in March. Yes, that Blind Melon. The one with the Bee Girl in the video. You haven’t heard much of them recently as their lead singer died from an overdose, I don’t know, around a decade ago. But they are reuniting and touring for a reason that I still can’t quite get my head around. Unless Shannon Hoon is somehow able to make what would literally be a miraculous comeback I don’t quite see why anyone would go to this show.

On the other hand we have what has become a Valentine’s Day tradition in Kansas City. Once again you have no need to think up a grand plan for the big day because the ultimate event is already booked. Yes; Valentine’s Day; Harrah’s Casino; Air Supply. This is the third straight year that Air Supply is playing here on Valentine’s Day. I think the show has sold out each of the past two years.

Now I’ll admit that I am not that well versed in the school of romance. I’m working on it (as my owning of The Mystery Method clearly indicates) but I can’t call myself an expert on what will melt a woman’s heart. Maybe all I need to do is go up to someone and go, “Hey babe, Valentine’s Day. You, me, Air Supply. We’ll even hit the Sizzler cause that’s how I roll.” For all I know it’s really that simple. True, I’d still have to sit through an Air Supply concert but given that from what I can gather relationships consist of mainly sitting through uncomfortable situations politely nodding while waiting for the other person to finally stop talking I think the concert would be good practice.

My other choice for Valentine’s Day is Tesla. Who are apparently still together. I have no idea if this will be a five man acoustic jam or not. You’re pretty low on the metal totem pole when you get down to Tesla, which seems to make them an even odder choice for a booking on the big night. If you won someone’s heart with a Tesla song they probably settled in for a life of monotony a long time ago. You really don’t need to surprise them with concert tickets.

Bleeding fingers and broken guitar strings

As most people know, I have a rule about not writing about work in the blog. Mainly because I’ve discovered that my company does not exactly posses a sense of humor when it comes to many issues but also due to the fact that spreadsheets don’t interest people the same way they do me. (But, come on, is there anything cooler than writing a macro?) However, for those people out there who know me in real life, remind me to tell you a story from last week. It might be up there with the time at my old job when I had the mayor of Chicago refer to me as an idiot during a press conference.

(Technically, he didn’t single me out specifically. He just called all of ComEd’s engineers “a bunch of idiots.” That is really uplifting to hear on the news as you’re leaving the office.)

So I went out on Saturday night to see Lucinda Williams in concert. As usual, just getting there was an adventure for me as I didn’t decide to go until literally an hour before the show and then went there wondering a) would I get a ticket and b) where the hell would I park? See, this is a new venue in town behind Grinders (a sandwich shop downtown) and I drove around wondering where to park until it just dawned on me to park in front of the Brick like I always do when I play trivia. It was a two block walk and worst case scenario I’d just hang out at the Brick. Did get a ticket to the show, though it was a pretty packed scene.

The venue itself is really cool. It’s just this big, open air lot behind this restaurant/bar and it looks and feels a lot like the venues in Austin. Like you wouldn’t be surprised to find that this was the furthest north venue for South by Southwest. Sound was decent but could have been better and the beer was not horribly expensive, which is a huge plus. While standing on mulch is slightly better on my legs than standing on concrete standing on uneven mulch on the edge of a slope for four hours without moving results in my legs screaming at me for several hours.

Charlie Louvin opened and he is just a legend in country music. I think every other song you hear on classic country radio is written by the Louvin brothers. He took the stage right as a storm front came through and it is rather interesting to hear the song “Atomic Power” sung while a 30 mph wind gust hits the stage. They had to stop the show for a while because the wind threatened to turn the stage into a kite. Show did get back on track with only a few drops of rain in between and Charlie’s set was cool. Not the greatest sound in the world, which isn’t surprising given the guy is in his seventies at least, but a memorable set.

Lucinda is still Lucinda. She exudes cool. Just this complete “seen it all, done it all, stayed true to myself the entire time” attitude that you can sense from the moment she walks on stage. One part of her show that does bother me a little is that she has a music stand with presumably the words and music to her songs on it and she has someone flip to the next song after every song. Now I have two issues with this. First of all, I wouldn’t think that it would be that difficult to memorize your own songs especially when you are touring behind them. On certain songs you could actually see her looking down at the next line and that just seems odd. I’ve seen people do that on songs they weren’t familiar with but not on songs that they actually wrote. The other part is why in the world does she need to have one of the sound techs walk on stage and flip to the page in the book where the next song is going to be? Is that an incredibly difficult task? Lucinda is incredibly talented as a writer, I’m pretty sure she could figure out alphabetical order.

All in all it was a pretty good night. Show was good, not the best I’ve seen but Lucinda always plays great music. Venue was cool enough that I’ll probably try to go see The Polyphonic Spree there in a few weeks, though I honestly don’t think the entire band can fit on that stage. If anything I at least got out in the fresh air for a little bit. Yes, the fact that I actually got outside over the weekend is sometimes cause for celebration. I’ll admit, I live a strange, fluorescent filled life.

The five random CDs for the week:
1) Pieta Brown “I Never Told”
2) Lyle Lovett “The Road to Ensenada”
3) Jay Farrar “Terroir Blues”
4) Bruce Springsteen “Lucky Town”
5) Kelly Willis “One More Time: The MCA Recordings”

Life in the front row

I’ve been in a concert kind of mood the past couple of days. I’ve gone to three shows in the past five nights featuring several bands that you have never heard of and one that you probably have. Since I don’t have much else to write about I guess I’ll do a few quick concert reviews.

Saw Garrison Starr and Abra Moore on Friday night. I’ve been a fan of Garrison’s for a few years now. She is another in a long line of female singer-songwriters that I find interesting. In Garrison’s case it is because of her Mississippi accent and sweet nature combined with a tough exterior. And cool tattoos. Sometimes all it takes is a show of confidence to make me interested in a performer.

She had one story that really struck me. She had played in Memphis the night before (and a Memphis to KC trek in one day is not fun) and she happened to run into someone she went to grade school and high school with and hadn’t seen since graduation. The guy went up to her and went, ‘Saw you were playing and I thought I’d come out and see the show.” To which she was grateful but she also thought, “Where the hell have you been? I’ve been doing this for ten years and I’ve released four albums.” Bear in mind that she was playing to forty people at Davey’s when she told this story.

That’s what makes me think of the music industry as an incredibly difficult gig. Garrison has been doing this for a decade, loading up her car and hitting the road and playing to small crowds. She’s made a little bit of a name but still only plays to a small crowd. That has nothing to do with her talent. It’s just the nature of the business. By the time Abra Moore, who had mainstream success at one point, took the stage the crowd was down to twenty five people and hell, even I left before the end of the set. That’s why I try to support artists whenever I can, it has to be tough to sing your life’s work to an empty room.

Saw Vedera on Saturday night and they are probably my favorite local band. They used to be known as Veda, but thanks to another band claiming that name they had to change theirs and lose a whole bunch of recognition in the process. In my mind, they are a group that suffers from the current state of the music industry. I know that people claim that the long tail helps out these small bands and provides them with better distribution but if this band was around in 1994 they would have been huge.

Because Vedera is a band that is made for videos. The lead singer (Kristen May) has a killer voice and stage presence and just happens to be very beautiful. She’s also not just that front voice, she also plays guitar and leads the show. The songs are bombastic and powerful and really sound as if they were taken from an episode of Alternative Nation. A decade ago you would have seen their videos on MTV late at night and they would have built a mainstream following. Now it’s actually tougher for them to make their break as there just isn’t a large outlet for their music.

Finally, I just came back from seeing Allison Krauss and Union Station. I’ll talk about this more tomorrow but if you want to talk about a band that is tight from the moment they take the stage, this is the band. They’ve been playing together for more than a decade and all of the musicians are at the top of their game (Jerry Douglas is freaking insane on the dobro.) It’s just an amazing show, so much talent in one place. Enough so that I’ll write a full post on it tomorrow.

This post brought to you by the Cruise World Order

This might be the strangest piece of graffiti that I have ever seen. I understand the idea behind graffiti. You get to show your artistic abilities in an urban environment, engage in self-promotion and stick it to the man by defacing helpless walls. But this one is pretty stunning. Now there is the possibility that Tom Cruise himself did this and this is his tagging style, which would be rather low key and refined. If not, then I am at a loss as to what this means. If it said “Rulez” or “Suks” afterwards then it would at least be a critique. Here it is just a statement. Maybe it is a part of some urban marketing campaign to raise overall Tom Cruise awareness to new heights. Or maybe some guy just thinks that Far and Away is a really, really great movie and wants us all to bask in the majesty that is the words “Tom Cruise”.

My fun Ticketmaster comment for the night. In a case of target marketing gone berserk over the course of twenty four hours last week I received emails informing me that I was eligible to pre-order tickets to two concerts. One was for Morrissey because you can’t keep me away from concerts by Englishmen who have been depressed for twenty years. The other was for Social Distortion. I am really, really trying to figure out how I got on both lists and whether I am the only person on the planet who is equally likely to be in the pit at a Social D show as he is to wear black on the outside because black is how I feel on the inside at a Morrissey show. I’m pretty sure I’ve broken whatever algorithm they are using as a part of their recommendation engine.

So I was at another concert tonight, this time to see Jack Ingram. Night started out the way a lot of my nights have recently with an abysmal opening act. That’s not quite fair on my part. The guy had talent and since it was a country show I should have expected country music but I do expect opening acts to sing their own songs. Not “Here’s a Travis Tritt cover, here’s a Brooks and Dunn cover, here’s a Big and Rich song” until I start banging my head against a wall because it is more pleasurable than listening to any of those bands. That’s the problem with lounging in the alt-country gutter, occasionally I find myself forced to listed to mainstream country and it is just god awful. Also, I just have an issue with people wearing cowboy hats in a non-ironic manner. Unless for some reason there has been a cattle stampede in the past few weeks there really is no reason for anyone to wear a cowboy hat in this town and consider a good look in anything but a retro hipster manner.

Anyway, Jack performed better than expected and I was only tempted to yell “Sell out” and “Traitor” once during the show. I’ll have to explain this. I first saw Jack back in 1999 when he opened for Kelly Willis. I’ve seen Jack play when there were maybe thirty of us in the crowd. He’s a talented musician and songwriter and I’ve talked to him after shows and he is a nice guy who really appreciates his crowd. Well, a year or two ago he cashed in his Nashville card and got on Toby Keith’s label and was able to have a number one hit. This means that he is now popular and playing bigger venues and opening for people like Sheryl Crow and Brad Paisley and making people like me wonder “What the hell just happened?”

It’s not that I fault the guy’s success because he sure has hell earned it. It’s just that by making that leap he lost some of what made him special. I’ll give him credit because even in a bigger venue his show was similar to when I’ve seen him in the past. He played a lot of his great old songs and his new material is pretty good. It’s poppy and has a Nashville sound but that sells discs. What kills me is that on his new disc (which he even said sold more copies last week than Electric sold in five years) he covers Hinder’s “Lips of an Angel” and uses it as his first single. I don’t care how he tries to push the idea that he thought it would sound good as a country song. Nothing Hinder does will sound good in any format. They are just a horrible excuse for a rock band. And covering them seems like such a sell out move.

That and the dancing girls who came on stage at one point. Actually, I doubt those were Jack’s. They were probably supplied by the record station promoting the show. While I certainly have no problem with scantily clad women dancing in front of me there is a hell of a lot of unintentional comedy watching them dance to a song called “Barbie Doll”. A song which has the lyric, “She’s really good looking but she’s got no heart at all.” It was a very meta moment. Still, he has remained the same appreciative, nice guy and while I’m stunned that someone I like has actually become popular it’s nice to know that it hasn’t changed him.

And as long as he closes his shows with Goodnight Moon I’ll always leave happy.

I remember it well...

(I’ve decided to try to make the blog a bit more multimedia intensive. Natalie is a little more adept at posting images than Julie was and I’m close to figuring out how to embed YouTube clips into my posts. Not sure if any of this will turn out to be beneficial but I’m hoping that pretty pictures distract people from my writing.)

Over the weekend I learned something that totally bums me out and will potentially ruin the concert I’ve been looking forward to for months. The news is that the lovely and talented Lisa Hannigan (pictured above) has left Damien Rice’s band. Or, as the official press release stated, “Their creative partnership had run its course.” Or, translated from press release speak, “They got into a screaming match that had been brewing for months and she either quit or was fired.” In the music industry, creative differences indicates that blunt objects were being thrown.

Sadly, this doesn’t surprise me because it was always strange to see that everything was recorded as Damien Rice when Lisa sang lead on a number of tracks. The opening track on his new album begins with Lisa singing the entire first verse. That, and the fact that labels were desperately trying to sign her, had to add a lot of tension to the band. And it had to be a pretty rough ending given that the story I read is that she did the sound check in Berlin in the afternoon and was out of the band before the set began that evening.

Of course, what bums me out is that I have tickets to see Damien in a few weeks and my goal was to be next to the stage and standing right in front of Lisa with the hope of her looking down, seeing me and going, “You know, I really should marry that guy.” (Yes, that’s how my brain works.) It should still be a good show but a huge element is going to be missing. I don’t even know how he’ll do some of the songs. I’ve heard a version of “I Remember” without Lisa’s vocals and while it is nice it definitely doesn’t have the incredible power of the original version. I guess I’ll find out when I see the show where I’ll be hanging out by the soundboard.

I did just come back from seeing Guster tonight in Lawrence. Not only was I one of the oldest people at this show but I was getting a contact buzz off of the magic marker fumes from all the hands they had to mark. While it is nice that it makes the line to get beer a lot shorter I really don’t like feeling that I am one step away from being on Dateline NBC when all I want to do is catch a band. The more that I think about it, the rule of “Half your age plus seven” as the acceptable floor for who you should even be looking at seems to be incredibly accurate.

The other thing is that this was part of Guster’s “Campus Consciousness Tour.” Which means that not only did I have to deal with slightly more hippies than usual I was also chastised for not living a carbon neutral lifestyle. There’s a lot of things that I am in life and that is not one of them. Chaotic neutral yes, carbon neutral not so much. I do want to help out the environment, just don’t state that the fact that I drove an hour to see your show was a horrible decision before the band even plays. Though after seeing the opening act I definitely was thinking that. There is a fine line between a passionate lead singer and a total douche bag and he was treading on the douchery side of the line. Also, twenty year olds shouldn’t be emulating Mick Jagger. Mick Jagger shouldn’t even bother emulating Mick Jagger anymore.

A different kind of hangover

I’ve slowly recovered from the events of last night. Every once in a while I still catch myself screaming, “No Rex! Don’t throw the ball!” At work I thought about it and decided that IM needs a new status icon. They have one for in the office and one for out of the office. What they need is one for “In the office but mentally devastated.” You know, something to let everyone know I might respond to questions with mutterings about a bullshit holding call.

Richard Roeper mentioned something that I thought about last night, which is that this is the first time I’ve ever seen a Chicago team lose a championship game. We’ve lost playoff games but until last night if a Chicago team was playing for the title they would win. I’ve never seen my team lose one of those games before. Well, except for my Illini against Carolina two years ago. And the Chicago Fire lost a title game as did the Bruisers in the original Arena Bowl. As did the Blackhawks in a Stanley Cup Final against the Penguins. And while this isn’t a Chicago team but I’ve seen Duke lose on Monday night on several occasions. So I guess what I’m saying is that a) Roeper was wrong and b) I should be pretty used to this by now.

(Haven’t talked about Duke much this season as I’ve decided that I can’t have a post that consists entirely of profanity. I’ve been following this team for twenty years and while this isn’t the worst team I’ve seen they certainly are the most annoying. They just aren’t fun to watch. The team that lost so many games that Coach K claimed that he was injured at least was interesting. This year’s squad just plays an ugly form of basketball. The Illini aren’t much better and watching them tends to result in damage to my apartment. And ND’s best player is off the team due to a pot bust. This just isn’t my year.)

So yeah, I’m not exactly in a great place mentally right now. It doesn’t help that I blindly assumed this morning that the coffee in the decaf pot was, in fact, decaf. I’m pretty confident that it was not. Or at least the fact that I spent the afternoon with no appetite, a blinding headache, heart palpitations and a slight feeling that my mind had become separated from my body would seem to indicate that this was the case. Yeah, when I say that I drink decaf because of doctor’s orders it really isn’t a joke. My body just can’t handle high levels of caffeine anymore.

That little fact has influenced more people’s impressions of me over the past few years than anything else. Not that people are watching me get coffee, it’s how I’ve had to live my life in the six years since I quit cold turkey. It’s why in B-School that people thought I was more of a nerd than I actually am. I was the guy who was always on top of every assignment. I’d start studying for tests days ahead of time. People assumed that this was because I was a grade grubbing geek. Ok, that might be true but mainly it was because I couldn’t stay up late the night before studying so I had to be prepared ahead of time.

Switching gears, I want to make a quick mention of some shows I saw over the weekend. Saw Lindsay Buckingham on Friday and John Prine on Saturday. First thing is that John Prine sold out and Lindsay didn’t, which makes absolutely no sense to me. Lindsay has sold tens of millions of discs as a member of Fleetwood Mac while John Prine, and I’m not making this up, used to deliver my mail. I liked Lindsay’s show better, mainly because he did something that is brave and kind of unexpected. He didn’t go up there and play a greatest hits set. He still played songs that everyone knew but he reinterpreted them and made them fresh. His version of Tusk sounded like it was being played by The Pixies. And the guy is just an insanely good guitarist. For someone who could literally phone it in at this point in the career the guy is still daring and rocking out. Really, really impressive.

Especially for a concert that I bought a ticket for because I saw the word “Lindsay” on Ticketmaster and instinctively pressed buy.