Before the Foo Fighters concert, I was sitting around musing about how weird it was to be out at a concert while Tasha watched Eve.  I have the greatest wife in the world to allow me to do such crazy things as going to a rock show on a Sunday night, leaving her to diapers and feedings and whatever other fun things that the baby is able to muster up in my absence.  I figured this is the type of thing that I should be blogging about, then I had to tack on some dreaded words: IF I WERE STILL BLOGGING.

So I decided after the show, no matter how tired and deaf I was (am!) I would write something for the blog tonight.

The opening acts for the Foo Fighters show were Mariachi El Bronx and Cage the Elephant.  Mariachi El Bronx was so far off the chart for things I wouldn’t ever listen do that we didn’t even elect to go into the venue during their set.  I imagine there exists a slim reality where I could have walked through the entrance to the venue, been teleported into a strange parallel universe where mariachi music was hardcore and cool, so I won’t immediately say there’s no chance of me ever liking it… but it’s mathematically unlikely.

Several of my indie music friends should recognize Cage the Elephant, since they are a rather popular band.  I can tell you this: their sound guy hates everyone.  Their drummer and guitarists were quite capable, but the lead singer’s volume was way too high for the rest of the band and his vocal track borderlines on coked-out howler monkey so it wasn’t working for me.  It’s a shame too… I really wanted to have a good experience listening to them, so I could tell my other indie music friends how good they are… but it wasn’t working for me tonight.

Exhausted of lackluster music, I was relieved when the Foo Fighters came on.  Within their first three songs, they had the crowd engaged and were rocking it out.  They played “Learn to Fly” early and then promised that they weren’t one of those crappy bands that plays an hour and forty five minutes and is done, so we might want to call in sick to work tomorrow.  They finished their encore at 11:47 pm, having played almost two hours and forty-five minutes.  Dave Grohl doesn’t phone it in either… they were rocking it out the whole time.

The part that impressed me most was how the band engaged the crowd.  Dave Grohl took the time to call out individuals that he noticed enjoying themselves, happy birthday wishes to people with signs… he even implored all of the teenaged kids in the crowd to go buy guitars so there can actually be bands that use real guitars in the future instead of computer equipment.  There was so much good music to be had that it’s not even worth rattling off the list of songs… if you heard it on the radio and it was by them, they probably played it.  They also played tracks off of their new album, which seems to be very good.

Dave pointed out that one song “These Days” is his absolute favorite song he’s ever written.  He wrote it “in like a minute” and was playing the chords and working out the lyrics and realized that he was writing the song he’d been trying to write for 20 years.  It was a cool song, very introspective.  It’s worth a listen.

Suffice it to say, the Foo’s made up for the lackluster opening acts in a huge way.  If they come out here again, I’m not missing it.

Today was a strange day at work, I think that the lack of sleep is catching up with me.  I was having trouble getting through a particularly thorny bug, and after a long day of failed analysis I discovered that the problem was caused by bad data.  Argh.  I’m going to adjust my schedule so I get a little more sleep in hopes that this sharpens up my acuity a bit.

In other news, it’s time to start buying tickets for our summer concerts.  We’re cutting back so we don’t have to arrange as many sitters, but we’ve decided to make it worthwhile.  We just sprung for the VIP package for the Train/Maroon 5 concert, so we get to have a private meet and greet with the band.  We also get a hand-signed ukulele, VIP passes, prime tickets, the whole nine yards.  Normally this would be out of our budget, but we’re pooling our dates money between now and then in order to make it work.  Tasha and I are really excited!!

More soon!

After a sufficient rocking by Slash and Ozzy, I was dismayed to be marginally under the weather since then.  It’s been a general blah… slightly bad stomach, slightly clogged sinuses, slightly sore throat… so I’m going to take it easy tonight and rest up so I don’t get very sick.

So back to the concert!  I was very impressed with the guitar chops shown last night, between Slash and Ozzy’s new guitarist Gus G it was shred city.  It was really neat to get to see Ozzy in concert.  He opened the show with a hilarious video of himself inserted into popular movies, including Twilight and Iron Man.  He then proceeded to shamble around doing his songs with as much energy as a 62 year old man could muster, taking brief stops after each song to dunk his head in a bucket of water.  He also employed a fire hose full of foam that he used to douse the first 50 rows or so several times throughout the show.  He played a lot of Black Sabbath tunes, and it was a really fun time.

Here’s the setlist for Slash and for Ozzy.

Good times.

This is going to be an experience.  🙂

Headed to Alice 105.9’s 16th birthday party for a concert featuring Train! It is going to be GREAT!

Tonight PW and I are headed to Denver to see Meniskus at the Walnut Room.  I’m off to stuff myself with pizza! 🙂

At long last, tonight we get to see Muse!  We were supposed to go in March, but it got canceled at the last moment due to their inability to get farther than Vail in their tour bus due to snow in the mountains.  I’m looking forward to this show, I’ve heard it is one of the best live performances going right now.

This is the last concert in the 2010 lineup for us at this point, so it is somewhat bittersweet as a result.  I don’t know if we’re going to get to see too many shows for the front half of next year with the new baby coming, but that’s ok!  That’s it for now, more soon!

On Thursday night, PW and I headed down to the Fillmore to see Crowded House.  The band is fronted by New Zealander Neil Finn, so suffice it to say that my kiwi friends were very excited to get to see these guys.  Paul and I got there early, had a beer at the Cheeky Monk (down the road from the Fillmore) and then got to the show shortly after the doors opened.

The Fillmore looks as if it was an old auditorium, more suited for ballroom dances or proms.  Up at the front, there was a very peculiar band on stage named Paper Bird from Denver.  The group had a guys on standup bass, guitar/banjo, and trombone and was fronted by three girls.  They had a very harmonious sound and reminded me a lot of the sing-a-long movies from the 1930’s and 1940’s.  Thanks to the banjo and trombone they had a very bluegrass feel to them as well, something I wouldn’t have sought out but was happy to get to hear.  They have a song up on their website for free so you can hear for yourself, I found them very interesting and made for an entertaining opening act.

After their set was finished, Paul and I (mostly Paul) struck up a discussion with a middle aged woman who was standing near us to save a place for her daughter.  She explained that this was one of their favorite bands and she always listened to them while she was taking her daughter with her to work as a child.  Needless to say, she was excited and warned us that usually she dances a lot and liked to wave her arms around.  Both statements were true.  She ended up hugging and kissing (on the cheek) both Paul and I before the night was up, and she instigated most of the front rows to dance along to songs.  It was quite the experience.  Paul had some wise comments about how much mothers seem to love me, based on this experience and how much his mom likes me.

The band itself was really great, honestly a lot better than I expected.  I knew several of their songs, most notably “Don’t Dream It’s Over” as I grew up in the 80’s.  Neil Finn was very high energy, I was impressed by his guitar playing.  Since I’ve been interested in guitars for awhile now, I like to spot different guitars.  At several points during the show, Neil was playing a truly strange guitar that I’ve never seen before.  As usual when I can’t figure these things out, I forwarded it to John.  He couldn’t figure it out either.

After the show, I found out that it was an Australian guitar called a Maton Fyrbyrd and only 120 guitars were made between 1965 and 1966.  Follow the link and look at that strange thing!  The headstock is 1/2 classical and 1/2 electric… three magnametle (really?) pickups, Bigsby bridge and weird steampunk-style knobs.  It’s like someone picked out six guitars and photoshopped them all together.  The weird thing is that it sounded GREAT.  I can’t seem to find any for sale to know how much it would cost to get one, but I’m betting I couldn’t afford it anyway. 🙂

The show was great fun and we capped off the night by heading back to the Cheeky Monk so the rest of the group could have a few more drinks (I was driving, so I had water.)  There’s only one more show on the 2010 schedule for me, and that’s Muse in October.  More soon!

Tonight is the second-to-last gig that we’ve got on the schedule for 2010: Crowded House.  I’m not a huge fan (in fact, I only know a song or two) but the tickets were cheap and my buddy Paul wanted to go.  So I’m headed to the Fillmore auditorium for some rockin’ out, New Zealand style!

As I mentioned during my last karate post, they are renovating the dance studio that we use for our dojo.  They recently refinished one of the wood floors near the room we train in, so the place was filled with the hanging vapors of wood sealer and varnish.  Add to that the lack of air conditioning and I was cooking like a summer ham during the workout.

Last night’s workout was a tough one.  We did our monthly combination, which really got the sweat rolling.  We did some partner drills working on proper form while blocking, and I noticed that my stance and connection are getting better but my legs are still weak.  We finished up the night with many repetitions of Empi kata, which was fun considering how rarely I’ve done that kata since my Shodan exam.  Sensei Tarrant let me count through it a few times for the class, and I was happy that he provided the class some of the same pointers that I did as we went through it.

My tight hamstrings really made me suffer through this kata, though.  I got a knot in one of them as we repeated the opening sequence from Empi but I toughed it out.  I’m going to have to do some more stretching or something in order to loosen them up again, or else I’m going to end up blowing something out.  Nobody wants that.

I was drenched by the time the workout was over, which was a good feeling.  I ended up the night by going to my buddy PW’s house for a jam session, which was fun!  Now I’m headed off to a Green Day concert, more soon!