Recently in the "Music" category...
I am so annoyed. The band that optimized my love of music during college completely and utterly sucked.
A few months ago when I found out that the Sisters were playing in Seattle I was incredibly excited. I blogged about it. My boss even decided to come along with me on my recommendation.
However, upon arriving at the venue this evening, El Corazon, I realized that the band had obviously come down a few rungs - it’s one of the smallest venue I’ve been to, probably with a ~300 capacity.
Anyhow, I was still upbeat.
At around 9pm they came on stage.
I say “around”, because I have really no idea. We were in the bar and was expecting some sort of thunderous noise when they came on.
We went into the venue proper, and it was packed with ~300 expectant fans.
All I could see was dry ice. And two silhouettes. I could vaguely make out one guy pretending to play guitar and one guy pretending to be Andrew Eldritch.
Seriously.
They were lip syncing. Just playing the CD and pretending to play along. Eldritch wasn’t even competent at lip syncing. It was so obvious.
It was pitiful.
And on top of that, it wasn’t even loud. I was having conversations with those around me about how much it sucked and how the band of our youth had just sucked $35 from each of us.
And how they, or rather Eldrich, had just lost us all as fans.
Most people just headed back to the bar where the bartender was on the phone to her boss explaining that they shouldn’t pay the band as you’d have a better experience just listening to the CD in your car.
What a way to burn out as a band - sucking your fan base dry and subtracting 300 people from it one gig at a time.
Ticket bought. I am so going to this gig!
Note that I said “ticket” and not “tickets”. I don’t believe I know anyone locally that will join me…
Kev, fancy a visit to the states?
I’m a huge audio geek, but just prior to the house move last June, I upgraded to Vista. I’ve been very happy with Vista - it’s worked well.
But with one exception.
I can’t get any of my audio gear to run with it.
This hasn’t been a problem up until now, as I’ve been way busy with other stuff. I’ve been letting my podcasts lapse and just noodling around with my guitar and other audio gear offline, not recording anything. But now, my esteemed amigo and I plan on collaborating long distance on some song writing.
This means I need to get it all running again.
The hub is the EMU 1820 which I use to get all audio into and out of the PC. First of all there weren’t any drivers, but now the drivers exist but bluescreen my Vista box during install. I’ve never managed to get drivers installed for the UAD-1 either. I haven’t even tried to get Cubase running.
Which leaves me with a conundrum.
Do I just downgrade to XP? I know it will all work, but I do love the UI in Vista. Do I actually use Vista though? Nope. Just a few games, Skype and Firefox. For everything else I use my MacBook Pro and my Linux box.
Downgrade I go… See you on the other side…
The quite exceptional Jonathan Coulton, him of Code Monkey fame, rickrolls his entire audience.
Keep listening after the rickroll though, First Of May is great!
I picked up this shirt back in college from a Skin Games gig. Kev may well remember that evening…
What astounds me is two-fold:
- That the shirt has lastest this long.
- That the shirt is older than a bunch of people that work here.
Anyhow. Great band. Great memories.
So the bar I just attended had a pretty good cover band playing. Standard classic rock. Not too bad and definitely not loud at all - if fact I think they could probably have cranked it up a couple of notches as I could still hear the conversation on the next table.
I stepped outside for a moment and heard a valley girl wannabe say “Oh ma god, could they turn it down a couple of octaves, I can hardly hear myself think!’
Her comment was wrong in so many ways that I leave it up to you, dear reader, to uncover them.
On Wednesday night, Nabila and I attended the opening night for Teatro ZinZanni at their new, permanent home in Seattle. This was my third ZinZanni, and man was it great!
The show was awesome, the food (by Tom Douglas), spectacular. A real treat.
Teatro ZinZanni is a big night out unlike any other, a three-hour whirlwind of international cirque, comedy and cabaret artists all served up with a five-course feast designed by celebrated Northwest chef Tom Douglas.
An ever-evolving and constantly changing production, Teatro ZinZanni combines improv comedy, vaudeville revue, music, dance, cirque and sensuality into a dizzying and colorful new form that is never quite the same from evening to evening. The fast-paced action of the show unfolds above, around and even alongside the audience as they dine on a gourmet meal. Teatro ZinZanni is guaranteed to dazzle.
It’s such a great experience - a three hour show where your waiters are the performers; superb acts in the middle of the dining area; great ambiance; incredible music; a wonderful venue that transports you back to a world of cabaret with a distinct European flavour.
What more could you ask for?
If you’re in the area, you have to go.
Just buy a ticket.
Or three.
Now.
The video from Andy Summers’ talk at Google in now available at YouTube.
Enjoy. Some portions not safe for kids…
What a great way to start the week. Andy Summers was at Google in NYC this morning to talk about his new book I’ll Be Watching You - Inside The Police 1980-83 and his photography. We video conferenced into the talk.
This was a double treat for me - first, I’m a huge fan of Andy Summers the guitarist and second, I had no idea that he was such a great photographer.
Wow.
The talk was very amusing too - with lots of small anecdotes about life on the road.
Anyhow, just one more great thing about working at Google :-)
The talk should be up on YouTube later - I’ll update this post when it’s available.
Update: The video is now available.
It’s unusual if I head to Seattle twice in a month, but twice in one day? Entirely uncharacteristic.
Saturday started off normally for the Lacey family with a trip to Arena Sports in Redmond for Soccer practice. Julian runs around playing soccer and complaining that he can’t score a goal (on his own, he’s got pretty good skills), whereas Jazzy really gets into the two year old class.
As soon as that was over it was a quick trip home for a snarnie and juice and Julian and I headed over to Seattle for the 2007 Bolla Grape Stomp at the Festa Italiana at the Seattle Center.
You see, my pal Andy had signed myself, himself and herself up to compete. Team name? Grape Balls of Fire.
We were in the first heat and won! Astounding. The incumbents were in our heat and we beat ‘em!
After hosing ourselves down - it’s a messy business, Julian and I took the winnings and headed over to the Children’s Museum for an hour or so.
Fast forward a few hours and I found myself heading back over to Seattle, this time solo, for a gig I’d been looking forward to for a while.
The Arctic Monkeys. Not a bad performance - great lightshow, but the acoustics really sucked. The vocals were bouncing all over the place. If you haven’t heard them yet, go and pick up a CD now.
Probably the nicest surprise of the gig were the supporting act, VoxTrot - great energy. They really engaged the crowd - unlike the Monkeys.
Sadly, I felt that the Monkeys were just going through the motions.
This guy is a genius. How come I haven’t heard of him before?
Richard Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine. I’d go to see him just because of the name.
I want to see him live. Shame I only found out about him tonight. After his show kicked off in Seattle…
[Tip’O’Hat to my wife for the link]
Harmonix Rock Band. Want. It. Now.
[Tip’O’Hat to Kim for the link.]
Well, maybe it didn’t eat my hamster, but Guitar Hero 2 for the Xbox 360 certainly ate up five hours of my life last night.
From Wikipedia:
Guitar Hero II features many popular real world Gibson, Epiphone, and Kramer guitars, including the Gibson Les Paul, Gibson SG, and Gibson Explorer. Oddities such as the double necked Gibson EDS-1275 and unusual looking Gibson Corvus also make an appearance. Several available finishes are also recognizable from popular guitarists, including Zakk Wylde’s bullseye Les Paul. As play progresses, several custom shaped guitars become available, although some are notable in the real world such as the USA and Battle Axe (a similar looking bass was played by Gene Simmons). Basses, such as the Music Man StingRay, Gibson Thunderbird, and the Hofner bass are also available for co-op play.
I plugged the cool guitar controller in at around 9pm last night, and it wouldn’t let me put it down until 2am this morning. This game absolutely and completely, err, rocks!
I played through six of the eight sections on easy before switching to medium and playing through the first two sections before my right hand literally started locking up. The music selection is great as is the gameplay.
Getting a power boost and then activating it by rotating the guitar so the neck is vertical is just genius - you guitar players out there know what I’m talking about!
A great game and I can’t wait to get in some more shredding tonight.
CJ, you need to get this now so we can indulge in some multiplayer action!
So I took some photos of the band Breadline, a local blues band, just over a year ago when they were performing at a local bar.
Nice guys, great music.
I offered to email them with links to the photos, which I did, and they asked if they could use the photos with appropriate attribution, which I was more than happy to agree to.
Now look at their site, compared to the photos that I took.
There’s no link from the pictures to my source images and, to add insult to injury, absolutely no attribution at all. Anywhere.
Update: I’m blind. I’m named as a source for the photos at the bottom of the page, but a link sure would be nice… Ooops!
A bunch of cool stuff was announced at the Steve Jobs Show this morning, including a couple of things that I found really interesting.
First up is iPod Games - Casual games on your iPod. Very cool and yet another outlet for the rapidly growing casual games industry.
Second was the integration of CoverFlow into iTunes.
Other than that, there’s cool new hardware including a direct play for the Media Center space, and a bunch of new iPods.
Oh, and the UI upgrade in iTunes 7 is very sleek.
The gig on Thursday night went wonderfully. Well, apart from a few brain farts on my part when my fingers refused to play the right things on command.
Thanks to everyone for coming out - it’s been too long my friends.
And thanks to the other “Steve Lacey” and his bride to be for popping along.
It was a bitter/sweet night - great music, great friends, but the end of an era. We’ve been playing for five years and written some great music - our gigs were 99% original music.
Anyhow, CJ and I have now validated that we can exchange and work in the digital space via Cubase, so the music will continue!
Photos from the night are up on Flickr, but I particularly like the ethereal hand action on this one…
Or is I Will Follow You Into The Dark by Death Cab For Cutie not one of the most beautiful songs ever written?
This Thursday night will be the occasion of Spank’s final gig.
Due to the imminent departure of our lead guitarist and vocalist extraordinaire, CJ, to pastures new north of the border (well, Toronto, to be precise) practice night in Bellevue will be a tad impractical.
So, come out on Thursday night, June 8th, to the Central Club in downtown Kirkland. Enjoy the festivities and pick up a limited edition CD.
Well, limited in the sense that we only made 500 of them!
We’ll be playing from around 9pm until whenever playing mostly original stuff. It’ll be fun.
