wave to all my friends

this is for kristine, who told me that she misses reading my blog, although i can't fathom why. i am a very uninteresting person i think. but.. anyway, here are a few things i'm liking lately.

goodness/kim virant/and others at the tractor 5/23


i had so much fun seeing these guys on saturday night at the tractor tavern in ballard. kim virant is awesome - i highly recommend the song love ain't for the weak, i'm a little obsessed with it at the moment. goodness is also incredible - i'm sure i've written about them before. i adore the lead singer, carrie akre, and devour almost anything she puts out - be it goodness, hammerbox (her pre-goodness band, which i have started listening to a little... 'tis good, in my humble opinion), the rockfords, or, especially, her solo albums. an aside that really has nothing to do with anything is that when i moved to tacoma in june, 2001, the very first show i saw in seattle was kim virant and carrie akre at local 49, which was the vera project's all ages venue at the time.

plus, during most of the show, i was standing behind rick friel. if you've seen my posts about shadow, you probably know how much i like him. my inner teenager was excited by this. (i have no idea what that means, but it's late so i'm just going with it).

here's someone's video of superwise from the show. i think whoever made this must have been standing right next to me. you can see rick friel playing the air guitar. heh.


folklife and, sunny weather
i went to folklife today, which is a free festival at seattle center that basically kicks off the summer. to me, anyway. my favorite thing about living in seattle is probably all the summer festivals. and, it was sunny and warm today! bonus! here are some pictures:



perhaps my favorite part of folklife is the rhythm tent, where people go to basically sit in a big circle and play drums. there's just something about being part of that that is great. i spent about an hour there when they were doing west african drumming.

i also love the street performers; i don't particularly like the artists that play on the stages (just not my musical cup of tea), so i prefer to wander around and let whatever happens happen. really, at what other festival can you listen to a man playing the didgeridoo, walk ten feet and see a band playing the steel drums, and be passed by a guy carrying a washboard? heaven, i tell you.

eddie vedder
not only have i been on an into the wild soundtrack kick lately, but i have decided to see him not once, but twice next month. i had already planned on seeing him in memphis with my fanclub tickets. but as i was contemplating booking plane tickets and making hotel reservations, i had a crazy idea that i could make the whole thing into a mini roadtrip and also go to nashville. so off i went to ticketmaster with this hare-brained idea in my head, and lo and behold, a ticket for the 6/18 show in nashville came up! of course i had to buy it. so, that's that story. plane tickets to nashville are actually quite a bit cheaper than tickets to memphis. who would think that? i'm even more excited for this trip now than i was before. less than a month!!

superwise

i find it amusing that someone googled "meeting josh beckett" and found my blog. i guess i've written all those words, although certainly never together. (josh beckett, by the way, is my baseball boyfriend, although he doesn't know it... yet. heh)

anyway... back to your regularly scheduled programming. last night was the last of the four free concerts KEXP has had at the mural ampitheatre. i went to two - rocky votolato last week, and ms. led and goodness this week. due to a very tramautic dentist appointment, i missed most of ms. led's performance, although their last song was really really good, i thought.

but goodness was wonderful. a few entries ago, i wrote about seeing them at the showbox. that was one of the best shows i have seen in a long time (ok, ok, i have a horrible habit of saying that about every concert i see). it was great to not only see them again, but to be so close. *warning: i am not a very good photographer, obviously.





i couldn't really find many goodness videos on youtube, but i did find this one by the rockfords, which includes several members of goodness (including carrie akre, an incredible singer who i can't say enough about). if you have an eagle eye, you might also spot mike mccready (pearl jam).


speaking of mike, on wednesday i have a date with him at the tractor tavern. yay!

my weekend

i went to see goodness at the showbox last night. goodness is a band from the mid-late 90s who i found through carrie akre, who i'm sure i have posted about here before. she is an AMAZING (and that is an understatement after what i witnessed last night) singer who i first heard in 2000 when the rockfords, a band that included mike mccready from pearl jam as well as chris and danny from goodness, released their album (if you go to the link, do yourself a favor and listen to distress. wow). i LOVED that record, and started listening to carrie's solo albums because her voice impressed me so much (there are 3: home, invitation and her newest, last the evening). since moving to washington, i've seen carrie live 4 or 5 times and the rockfords twice.

despite not knowing all of the songs goodness played, they were wonderful. i can't remember the last time i saw a show at the showbox full of such energy from both the band and the audience. every time i've seen carrie live, she does this weird, charming kind of robotic dancing and jumping around the stage. during superwise, the last song of their main set, she told the audience to jump up and down, and by golly, i think that everyone did. the entire band was amazing.. i especially loved watching garth reeves, the guitarist, and fiia mccann, the bassist.

i was right; goodness will be playing at the mural ampitheatre on the 23rd (and it's free!) and then they're going to do another show nov. 22 at the tractor tavern.

there were two opening acts - the first one kind of cracked me up because his name was "buddy." nothing else, just "buddy." despite having my hands on the stage for most of his set, i could hardly hear him through all the chattering in the bar.

the second band definately did not have that problem. their name was, i think i have this right, "my life in black and white." they obviously had a big following (i think they're from portland). i liked them okay, but i kind of hate them for one of their lyrics that is stuck in my head: goodbye, farewell, i'll see you in hell. i don't remember the rest of the song, just those lyrics.

i slept in today until 9:30 (which is really late for me, even on a sunday), had breakfast, read the paper, and decided to go downtown. since they close the streets in pike place market to cars on sundays (as far as i'm concerned, they should do that every day of the week), i ate lunch at a little cafe there and listened to a man outside who was playing bob marley songs. afterwards, i went to a coffee shop and read some more of i capture the castle , a surprisingly good book that is the first novel for our book club at work. a lovely way to end a weekend that has, surprisingly, felt more like fall than summer.

at the moment, i am listening to the free cd subpop gave away at their festival a few weeks ago. it has a bunch of songs from albums that were released this year on it. have i mentioned that i am in love with blitzen trapper? they'll be at bumbershoot september 1. my favorite song on the cd, though, is by the gutter twins, who i sadly (and, again, speaking to my musical ignorance) did not pay much attention to until now. it's made up of greg dulli (afghan whigs) and mark lanegan (screaming trees), the latter of which has got to have one of the most interesting voices in rock music.

no retreat baby, no surrender

(from boston.com)

this is from the opening night of eddie vedder's east coast tour in boston on friday. this picture is currently rocking my computer's desktop. i'm wearing my tour shirt from april today, trying not to think about how much i wish i had been there (i know, i know, i just saw pearl jam a month ago..)

i can't believe it's already august. last night i had an urge to clean my apartment (very out of character for me, sadly). i rearranged the living room (which pretty much means moving the couch around, since that's the only piece of furniture i can move, really), swept, mopped, vaccummed, and thought about tackling my messy cd collection, but decided to save that for another day. i will admit that i did find a bag from easy street with a cd that hadn't been opened since i bought it in june 2006 (the receipt was with it). oops. guess i probably didn't really want that album to begin with.

looking at my unloved (from its appearance) music collection did inspire me, however, to listen to an album i haven't listened to in a few years - the rising by bruce springsteen. that, in turn, inspired me to watch the concert dvd from that tour, which made me remember seeing springsteen in tacoma in 2002, which made me sad that i missed him when he was in seattle a few months ago. this all also made me want to look for bruce springsteen videos online, and i found one of ed with bruce playing no surrender. i love this song, and forgot to mention the other day that it is also on my EV playlist. (an aside: i swear that i can remember once hearing ed vedder play bobby jean, but have no idea where it was from. does anyone know?)


here are some of the things i'm looking forward to this month:

next saturday, i'm going to see goodness at the showbox. very excited for that!

kexp is having four free concerts at the mural theater in seattle center. 8/15 is jessie sykes and the sweet hereafter, who i have never heard but have read good things about. 8/16 (my birthday!) is, i think, rocky votolato, who i really like. and i think that goodness are playing again on the 23rd, although i'm not positive. yay!

the 27th, of course, is mike mccready at the tractor.

bumbershoot! i always say i won't go all three days, but i usually end up going, so this year i just bought a 3 day pass (only 80 dollars if you buy before a certain date). off the top of my head, i'm excited to see band of horses, the black keys, lucinda williams, the blakes, old 97s, blitzen trapper, and a bunch of others i can't think of right now, plus i always see at least 2 or 3 bands i've never heard before but fall in love with (last year it was kings of leon and black rebel motorcycle club).