Argle Bargle or Fooferall?

Muse at the United Center - March 12

2010-03-14T08:37:00.000-07:00

My two-month long concert drought ended Friday night at the United Center (of all places), with a show I had very high hopes for Muse with Silversun Pickups at the United Center.

I had high hopes since Muse haven't played Chicago since Lollapalooza 2007, where they put on an incredible performance to a surprisingly large and appreciative audience. They've only released one new album since that time, last year's disappointing (for me anyways) "The Resistance," so at least they weren't making the rounds between albums just collecting a paycheck.

Of course, since the 2007 show, the band had become even more popular, because of some book called Twilight about sparkly vampires or something like that. Oh well, at least a good band is benefiting from the free promotion.

The show was opened by Silversun Pickups, a L.A. band that I've been a fan of for a few years now, but have only partially seen live once, catching the end of their set at Lollapalooza last year. They were largely being compared to the Smashing Pumpkins as they were breaking out 3 years ago, but their most recent album, "Swoon," and their live show do prove that the comparison is a bit too much.

The band were in good humor, playing through all of their expected songs, and even asking the two sides of the stadium to have a competition to see who could use their flashes from the cameras and phones more to make a big light show for them as they started their great "Swoon" track, "Panic Switch." They closed the set with their biggest near-hit to date, one of the best songs to play on Rock Band or Guitar Hero, "Lazy Eye," and got the crowd pretty well hyped for what was to follow.

The Pickups had apologized halfway through their set, since there were three large towers behind them on stage that block them from the back quarter of the stadium. It became clear as soon as Muse started what the purpose of these towers was. The three members of Muse each stood on a mini-stage halfway up each tower, with video screens covering the rest of the towers with interesting visuals.

They of course opened with their great song "Uprising," the first track off of "The Resistance," with its great driving bassline pulsing through the song, while the screens gave off images that were closer to a political rally than a rock concert. They followed with the title track from the newest album, and soon they revealed another trick and had their three mini-stages lower to the main stage for them to give more room to move throughout the show.

The rabid, loyal crowd loved every moment of the show, and were rewarded as the band of course delved into some of their past great material, especially from their great 2007 album, "Black Holes and Revelations." I knew we were looking at a great show, when around the fifth song, "Supermassive Black Hole," I looked at the guy controlling the video on the screens, and he was rocking out as much as anyone in the crowd. On almost any given tour, when you look at a member of the road crew, they usually look about as excited as someone working on their taxes. But even a guy who's been on the road with the band for a few dates was enjoying every minute of the music on the stage.

While wowing the crowd with the incredible visuals and nearly flawless performance, the band threw in some old classics ("Hysteria,""Helsinki Jam") while still placing their emphasis on the new album. Some of the new songs which drag a bit on the album came off impressively well live, such as the Queen influence "United States of Eurasia." They also brought an amazing laser show with them to back up all of the video, and it was used to fantastic effect on such songs as "Starlight."

After the incredible one-two punch of "Time is Running Out" and "Plug In Baby," the band took their first and only break of the night, after barely stopping for almost an hour and a half straight. They opened their encore with "Exogenesis: Symphony, Part 1, Overture," but then blasted the doors off the place with "Stockholm Syndrome," and wrapping everything up predictably, but no less perfectly, with the classic "Knights of Cydonia."

It's been a long time since I've been able to say this, but I know for certain that was one of the best concerts I have ever seen. It was easily in my top 10 ever, perhaps in my top 5, we'll see as I think about it more. I guess it's a pretty good sign when it's only March 14th, and I already may have seen the best concert of the year.

Muse is a world-class band at this point, no question about it, and they seem to be ready to take on the mantle of Biggest Band in the World at this point. Matthew Bellamy could be the guitar hero of his generation, and bass player Chris Wolstenholme provides the incredible backbone to most of the songs, with absolutely fantastic playing heard on songs like "Hysteria." Drummer Dominic Howard did a great job of tying everything together, and being the one member of the band who took the time to say "hello" and "thanks" to the crowd at least.

It's sad that it's probably going to be another 2 or 3 years before Muse is back here again, but I guess sometimes it's best to not want too much of a good thing. Or a great thing I guess.

Best Albums of 2009 - The Top 10

2009-12-17T08:07:00.000-08:00

10. Flaming Lips – Embryonic – I have to give the Flaming Lips a lot of credit for this one. They could have easily churned out another album’s worth of the big, bizarre pop they’ve been pushing for a couple of years now, since they are at the peak of their fame and could have made plenty of cash doing it. Instead, they made what has turned out to be a very difficult and dense album that is closer in sound and spirit to the strange material that launched their career. They allowed themselves to experiment, and the results turned out very well, with the highlights being “Watching the Planets” and “Silver Trembling Hands.”

9. Pearl Jam – Back Spacer – It’s easy to take a band like Pearl Jam for granted at this stage in their career. Much like the Flaming Lips, they could just make another album’s worth of decent material and cash in on the huge tour that would follow that. Instead, after freeing themselves from the major label system, they went on to create probably their best album of the decade. They plow through 11 tracks in the blink of an eye, with “The Fixer,” “Gonna See My Friends” and “Supersonic” reminding us why they were on top of the rock world for quite a while. Bonus points to the show “FlashForward” for perfectly using “Unthought Known” beautifully through the opening of one of the key episodes of the entire season.

8. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavillion – This is the band every hipster has been bending over backwards to praise in the last two years, but this is the first album of theirs that is worthy of so much praise. The band is all over the map on this one, at times jammy, rocky, dancey, trancey, and just plain out there. It’s too bad they didn’t give a damn about their Lollapalooza performance this year, because it would have been great to see them attempt some of these songs live. “My Girls” and “Summertime Clothes” are deservedly being praised as two of the best songs of the year by far.

7. Passion Pit – Manners – This was the breakthrough band of the year based on this cd. Main man Michael Angelakos wrote an ep’s worth of material as a gift to his then-girlfriend for a Valentine’s Day gift. It didn’t work, but instead the ep made the rounds online, and built up a huge amount of hype around the band waiting for their debut album. “Manners” is the result, and it’s a pretty amazing start. The first half of the record is flawless, absolutely irresistible dance rock, with fantastic “Make Light,” “The Reeling” and “Little Secrets” are perfectly designed to get a crowd dancing, while a gorgeous song like “Moth’s Wings” show they’ll be able to do more beyond the dance music as they move forward from here. The only drawback with this one is that the album becomes a bit forgettable in the second half, minus the lone carryover from the previous ep, the bizarre, swirling “Sleepyhead.”

6. Metric – Fantasies – Emily Haines, the lead singer of Metric, pulls off the rare feat of being sexy and sensual without beating people over the head with it, like most modern female music icons (well, she kind of does in her guest appearance in the video for Julian Plenti’s “Games For Days,” but we’ll ignore that). On “Fantasies,” Haines leads the band well through the dance rock of “Satellite Mind” to the pulsing “Help I’m Alive,” wrapping it up with the massive rumble of “Stadium Love.” And how can any indie rock male resist her voice singing a lines like “Who’d you rather be/ The Beatles or the Rolling Stones?/ Come on baby play me something/ Like 'Here Comes the Sun'"? Pretty impossible.

5. Weezer – Raditude – After two very disappointing albums, Weezer returned to their glory with the awesomely titled “Raditude.” With a little outside help, featuring Butch Walker on his second great production and songwriting work for the year, and the main members of All-American Rejects, the band sounds rejuvenated and happy to be playing poppy, upbeat rock once again. “If You’re Wondering If I Want You To (I Want You To)” is just as perfect of a pop nugget as can be expected between Walker and Weezer, and the other album highlights like “I’m Your Daddy” and “Let It All Hang Out” live up to the legacy of Weezer’s greatest songs. Yes, the band even flirts with Indian music on “Love Is the Answer” and hip-hop rock with “Can’t Stop Partying.”

4. Manchester Orchestra – Mean Everything To Nothing – This was a solid album from top to bottom by an Atlanta band I knew very little about before this year. This album has it all, massive hooks, big fist pumping choruses, from the powerful opening duo of “The Only One” and “Shake It Out” to the equally powerful closers “Everything to Nothing” and “The River.” The surprise is the emotion buried within the lyrics, especially in some of the quieter moments on the album. The album contains the most beautifully sad lyric of the year in the centerpiece of the album, “I Can Feel a Hot One,” which I don’t know the story of, but it is haunting nonetheless: “To pray to what I thought were angels/ Ended up being ambulances/ And the Lord showed me dreams of my daughter/ She was crying inside your stomach/ And I felt love… again.”

3. Grizzly Bear – Veckatamist – Besides Animal Collective, the indie rock community has another icon for this year, and that is Grizzly Bear. They’ve been touring regularly since their previous album, and somehow went into the studio, and quickly knocked out this impressively arranged and details work in no time, and were right back out playing it live. The four member band writes and performs incredible harmonies, with main man Ed Droste providing the most incredible voice in the band. The influence of the Beach Boys’ “Pet Sounds” is noticeable here, which is quite a compliment since that is my favorite album of all time. “Two Weeks” is definitely one of the best songs of the year, and the album concludes with the livelier “While You Wait For the Others” and “I Live With You,” before concluding with the gorgeously delicate “Foreground.”

2. …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead – The Century of Self – After a disappointing turn on their last cd, the Trail of Dead returned in a major way with this year’s “Century of Self.” Like A Place to Bury Strangers, they are best when they are functioning like a force of nature, whirling around like a tornado in “Isis Unveiled,” seeming to sputter out before springing back to life and whipping themselves into a frenzy once again. Throughout the album, the band can switch from the majestic to the pummeling and right back again and make it work. What’s possibly even more impressive is that the cover art is a pen and ink sketch done by the main frontman Conrad Keely.

1. Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca – This album is about as artistic and complex as it gets in indie rock, before it trips over the line and goes from being enjoyable to just be self-indulgent and academic. Let’s put it this way, if you actually believe that Nickelback are in fact the group of the decade (thanks for the link Brian), then this is not the album for you. The instrumentation is precisely arranged, the vocals are precisely layered and performed, the rhythms seem to turn different time signatures on and off on a whim.

Band leader David Longstreth is rumored to be something of a dictator in his efforts to record the sounds in his head, and thankfully the fruits of his labor were worth the negative press that may get him. The highlight of the album is the 3 of songs at its center. “Stillness is the Move” is a great slow thumping song, sounding like Prince making a lazy dance track, which then gives way to the gorgeous, string heavy “Two Doves.” A thumping bass beat then leads into “Useful Chamber,” which cascades beautiful, intricate harmonies around the thumping beat, before nearly randomly exploding mid-song into a rock freakout, jarringly switching back into the thumping beat again, before exploding once more to the freakout. It’s a very difficult and standoff-ish album, but if you can give it a chance, you will be richly rewarded.

Best Albums of 2009 - Number 30 to 11

2009-12-16T04:57:00.000-08:00

30. The Avett Brothers – I and Love and You – Much like Owl City, the Avett Brothers are apparently heavily influenced by one of the best albums of this past decade, except in their case it’s “Heartbreaker” by Ryan Adams (SERIOUSLY people, if you do not own that one, go out and get it). Their album runs along the same y’alternative lines as that classic, with the occasional rave-up like the potential hit “Kick Drum Heart.”

29. Eels – Hombre Lobo: 12 Songs of Desire – Not the best release from E and his band, but his twisted stomping take on the blues is usually pretty enjoyable.

28. Taking Back Sunday – New Again – Another solid set of “emo” pop-punk from this New Jersey group finds them gravitating towards that dreaded “m” word for a punk group, “maturing.”

27. Mastodon – Crack the Skye – A great album’s worth of mind-bending, pulverizing metal riffs wrapped around bizarre lyrics supposedly about Rasputin, among other things. Good stuff.

26. Dashboard Confessional – After the Ending – I still contend that Dashboard main man Chris Carrabba is one of the best lyricists of his generation, and I believe this is one of the best albums he’s had in the past few years. It helps that another of my favorites, Butch Walker, produced the album, and they even gave fans a treat by releasing the album both as a plugged in and as an acoustic version.

25. Art Brut – Art Brut vs. Satan – Eddie Argos and co. once again plow through another hilarious set of sloppy punk, bringing his witty lyrics and non-singing delivery through more great tracks like the title song and “Alcoholics Unanimous.”

24. Matt & Kim – Grand – A great, gleeful album from the duo that is the sonic equivalent of downing a bag filled with pixie sticks and washing it down with a can of Red Bull.

23. Dan Deacon – Bromst – Equally as hyper as Matt & Kim, but much more experimental and genre defying, “Bromst” again sounds like Deacon taking dance music, putting it in a blender, and fast forwarding the results of that sound.

22. Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix – This one probably would have ranked higher, but I’m now holding a grudge against Phoenix for playing only 4 songs at the XRT Holiday show this past Friday night. “1901” and “Lysztomania” were just about as perfect as pop songs got this year though.

21. Ida Maria – Fortress ‘round My Heart – Although the album loses too much steam by the end, “I Like You So Much Better When You’re Naked” and “Oh My God” were also among the best songs of the entire year. Very anxious to see where Ida Maria will go from this one.

20. A Place to Bury Strangers – Exploding Head – A massive, rumbling entity, making rock sound more like a force of nature than anything. Heavy on the influence of the Jesus & Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine, and then heavier on the volume. Will be very interesting to see live next year, with a very solid pair of earplugs in tow.

19. Mew – No More Stories are Told… - These Danes put together a beautiful and fascinating space out, sounding something like a twisty, turny message of peace from an alien race. An alien race that can rock, that is.

18. Brand New – Daisy – Brand New is another band that was once considered “emo,” but has thankfully moved on and proven that is not a dirty word in rock anymore. This is their third great album in a row, proving they are in my opinion one of the most underrated bands in the country at the moment. Great, brutally powerful rock when they want it to be.

17. Wilco – Wilco (the Album) – This was an average album for Wilco, but I’ve said it before, an average Wilco album is better than 99% of most bands’ best efforts. The problem with the album was the two star players in the band, drummer Glenn Kotche and guitarist Nels Cline, were held in check for the majority of the album. They were allowed to shine on the excellent “Bull Black Nova,” while other highlights are the amusingly titled fan salute “Wilco (the Song),” and the great ballad “You and I” with Feist.

16. Yo La Tengo – Popular Songs – YLT are a maddening group, live they can be one of the best bands in the world, or one of the most disappointing. There was a string of years early this decade where they moved away from their psychedelic jams towards quieter and introspective material. On this newest album, they seem to want to reconcile these two opposing forces, still touching on their jam side with great songs like “Here to Fall” to the quieter “More Stars Than There Are in Heaven,” with great oddball pop diversions like “Periodically Double or Triple” thrown in between.

15. The Antlers – Hospice – This is the album that is the mystery long shot for me that somehow turned out to be one of my favorite albums of the year. I pretty much bought it only after seeing a very glowing review on it on Pitchfork and nothing else. That turned out to be a pretty good move, since this is a unique and rewarding album that definitely has depth that will only be revealed by many listens. It reminds me the most of the Arcade Fire’s debut cd, although the bands share little in terms of sound, it’s more about the spirit of the album. This isn’t a cd I’d recommend to everyone, it’s a difficult, dense work, but very rewarding for anyone willing to take the risk.

14. Green Day – 21st Century Breakdown – If “American Idiot” was Green Day’s “Tommy,” than this was their “Quardrophenia,” slightly less focused and not quite as strong, but definitely with some standout tracks. “21 Guns” (Bella’s first song she can sing in Rock Band) and “Know Your Enemy” are obvious choices for some of the best songs of the year, but this again shows that Green Day’s ambition is remaining high, and the results are still very enjoyable.

13. The Raveonettes – In and Out of Control – This band has yet to make a misstep, and this is another great addition to their catalog. It takes a special talent for a band to make songs with titles like “Suicide” and “Boys Who Rape (Should All Be Destroyed)” sound like bubbly happy songs to be sung while driving to the beach. Add on top of that, the first single “Last Dance,” a song about helping an addict, sounds like it’s the happiest song the band has written yet. It’s brilliantly deceptive mopey rock at its best.

12. Thursday – Common Existence – This was near the top of my list for most of the early part of the year. Thursday, much like Brand New, are a band that started in the “emo” scene, but have continuously evolved over the last few years, and have put out a string of three fantastic albums in a row now. The band can work up a whirlwind of guitars, and focus it into a flat out pummeling force, best seen on the closing track “You Were the Cancer,” written when the lead singer thought he might have had stomach cancer.

11. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – It’s Blitz! – This is another album that was strong out of the gate early in the year. From the terrific one-two punch of the openers “Zero” and “Heads Will Roll” to the gentle ending of “Little Shadow,” the YYY’s once again do a great job of blending punk intensity with dance floor insanity.

Best Albums of 2009 - Numbers 50 to 31

2009-12-14T20:40:00.000-08:00

It was once again an excellent year for music, here’s my list of my top 50 albums for 2010, with one exception.

I’ll preface the list by explaining my rules once again. I (with extremely few exceptions) will never pay more than $10 for a cd. I’ve got very stores and website I purchase from, and my view is that if a band/label isn’t willing to make the effort to put their cd out for $10 or less, then I’m not going to bother picking it up.

I also don’t believe in just downloading albums/mp3’s, since this takes away a certain degree of ownership and investment in the music to me. I’ve probably downloaded hundreds of songs, but honestly only listen to a small fraction of them. I’ve downloaded two brand new songs by my favorite band, Radiohead, this year, but have honestly only listened to each song a small number of times, since they’re only stored on my computer. Call me old fashioned that way I guess.

On to the list….

50. Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago – This is the exception. The album was actually released in early 2008, but didn’t find a wide release and audience until early this year. The story behind the album is well documented, singer/guitarist/songwriter Justin Vernon was in another band which broke up, so he moved a bunch of gear and recording equipment into a cabin in Wisconsin, and over a winter wrote and recorded this masterpiece. It perfectly captures the feeling of sitting by a warm fire in the middle of a cold, snowy winter day, with gorgeous and unforgettable songs like “Skinny Love” and “Re: Stacks” throughout. Since this missed my 2008 list, this gets tacked on to this year since I enjoyed it throughout the year. On a side note, you can download the entire final show of the band's tour for free, which has every song on "For Emma," here.

49. PJ Harvey and John Parish – A Woman A Man Walked By – This one still doesn’t live up to the majesty of Harvey’s previous masterpiece, To Bring You My Love, but it’s a thousand times better than her last album at least.

48. Chevelle – Sci-Fi Crimes – The metal-esque Illinois band put together another respectable collection of songs, and thankfully they’re getting away from the heavy Tool influence that dominated their early music.

47. The Hold Steady – A Positive Rage – I usually don’t put live albums on my best of the year lists, but I was happy to make an exception in this case. This disc very well captured a great Halloween performance at the Metro in Chicago by the formerly Minneapolis based rockers, the only drawback is that it was recorded before the tour for their great album Stay Positive, so only one track from that album was played there.

46. White Rabbits – It’s Frightening – The debut album by White Rabbits is a nice appetizer to the next album by Spoon, since the cd was produced by Spoon’s main man Britt Daniel. The lead track “Percussion Gun” is one of the best double-drummer tracks of the year.

45. Titus Andronicus – Airing of Grievances – This New Jersey band owes a great debt to the most famous rocker from their state, as they infuse the Boss’s anthemic rock with a healthy dose of punk spirit.

44. Silversun Pickups – Swoon – I had such high expectations for this album, based of their previous great breakthrough, Carnavas, that I was setting myself up for a letdown. There’s still some good songs, and “Panic Switch” is actually one of my favorites of the year.

43. M. Ward – Hold Time – The half of the band She & Him that I’m not in love with released another solid album this year, with his distinctive voice shining through his folky rock.

42. Muse – The Resistance – This was another album that I had massively high expectations for, but unfortunately it was a bit of a letdown as well. “Uprising” still probably has my favorite bass line from 2009 at least. Very appropriate that they will be touring with the Silversun Pickups in 2010, I believe they are calling it the “We Let Scott Pacyna Down” tour. I can’t wait to see the shirts…

41. Tom Waits – Glitter and Doom – Another exception to my “no live albums on my list” rule, this is a great collection of performances from Waits’s last trek, with his grumbling, growling voice sounding as great as ever. The bonus disc of him telling his rambling stories (along with the special bonus hidden track “Picture in a Frame”) make it worth the purchase alone.

40. Julian Plenti – Julian Pletnti is Skyscraper – The solo debut project by the lead singer from Interpol sounds, well, exactly like Interpol. It’s a pretty good appetizer for their next cd, whenever that will happen.

39. Compilation – Dark Was the Night – This disc is a who’s who of the indie rock world at the moment, including several of the bands near the top of my list for this year. The only drawback is that it was SO light and fluffy that it could be dangerously close to being a cure for insomnia.

38. Lily Allen – It’s Not Me, It’s You – Thankfully Allen moved away from the heavy ska influence of her first album, and is starting to carve out more of an identity for herself. Despite the fact that it might be her last album, depending on who you believe.

37. St. Vincent – Actor – An album that is a imaginative rework of a soundtrack to the old Disney movies, this shows great potential for the songwriting and musicianship of main member Annie Clark.

36. Tinted Windows – Tinted Windows – The power-pop “supergroup” featuring members of Smashing Pumpkins, Fountains of Wayne and, um, Hanson, gels really well and crafts some solid rockers.

35. Living Things – Habeas Corpus – A great set of pissed off, fist pumping, stomping blues from the left-leaning St. Louis band.

34. The Thermals – Now We Can See – This Portland punk trio put together another rumbling, powerful album, supposedly from the perspective of a corpse.

33. Bob Mould – Life and Times – The quality of Mould’s solo releases was declining in recent years, but thankfully this year’s cd reversed that trend, with Mould’s best set of songs this decade.

32. A Camp – A Camp – Nina Persson, normally the lead singer of the extremely underrated the Cardigans, is one of those singers who I could listen to while they were singing the phone book, and I would love it. Thankfully, in her side project with her husband here, the songs were much more interesting than that, giving her strong material to shine through.

31. Owl City – Ocean Eyes – I, like many people, have been anxiously waiting for 6 years for the Postal Service to finally make a follow-up to their incredible debut, Give Up. Sadly, since Ben Gibbard has been busy with Death Cab for Cutie, among other things, that hasn’t happened. Apparently Adam Young, who basically is Owl City, has been anxiously waiting too, so much so that he created an album that could easily be the follow up to Give Up. The only flaw with this disc is the extremely cheesy lyrics, which get in the way of the otherwise great music.

R.I.P. Grandpa Matt Pacyna

2009-12-13T22:11:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately, last week we lost my grandpa Matt. He had been fighting some mysterious illnesses for a while, and in the last month, we kind of knew that the end was near for him. Thankfully, pretty much our entire family was able to get out to see him, and without directly saying so, we were able to say our goodbyes before things went completely downhill.

At the funeral, my sister and I discussed our favorite story about our Grandpa. I was 9 or 10 years old, and as a treat, my grandparents offered to drive my sister and I to the Museum of Science and Industry, which is just south of the downtown area of Chicago.

We lived in Franklin Park at the time, which is right smack next to O'Hare airport. On most weekends back then, you could probably make the drive from our house to the Museum in maybe a little under an hour, probably more given the usual traffic. So we figured we'd go for the trip, spend a little time at the Museum, and then head home for dinner.

Our trouble began when my Grandpa announced that he was going to take "a short cut" to get to the museum. Now my sister and I were obviously too young to drive at the time, so we didn't exactly know all of the best ways around the city at that point. So we sat in the back seat, and figured he knew best.

That usually hour long drive somehow ended up turning into a THREE HOUR DRIVE before we finally somehow ended up at the Museum, slightly before its closing time. We ended up somehow driving around parts of the city and suburbs that we didn't even know existed before we finally made our way there. My sister and I had a great laugh all the way there, and the idea of a "Grandpa short cut" would forever be cemented in our minds.

Thankfully Bella got to see her great grandpa a few times in her life, and she got to see what a sweet and kindhearted man he was. We all hope he's gone on to a better place now, and is taking the best Grandpa shortcuts to all the places he's been, all the places he's ever wanted to go, to the homes and hearts of all the friends and family who have loved him. Take care Grandpa.

Weezer/Jack's Mannequin/Motion City Soundtrack at the Aragon 12/1

2009-12-03T06:22:00.001-08:00

After an actual month of November with no concerts (blame the economy), I went to the Aragon Brawlroom on Tuesday night for a show I had pretty high hopes for, which was Weezer with Motion City Soundtrack and Jack's Mannequin.

Weezer has the dubious distinction of being one of two bands that are on the Top 5 list of the best concerts I have ever seen, and the worst I have seen as well. The big question was which version of the band was going to show up for this show.

Their best show I saw, which was one of the best I've ever seen, was a small tour they did early 2001 as a previewto their Green album, which was to follow later that year. The band had completely dropped off the radar, mostly due to lead singer/songwriter Rivers Cuomo having a bout of depression and locking himself in a room for most of the 5 year period between that and their previous album, the exceptional "Pinkerton." They decided to play the Metro and a few other select venues just to get out playing again before the album was released, also as a thank you to their fans for sticking around. They played an incredible set packed with all of their best material, and looked more appreciative and happy to be on the stage than almost any other band I've seen.

On the flip side of the coin, a mere 4 years later, I went to see them at the Aragon on the tour for "Make Believe." The album was a pretty big disappointment, and sadly the tour reflected that. The show was pretty much a total paycheck show, which just meant they showed up, played what they had to play, and left. All of the joy and exhillaration from the Green album show was completely gone, and they were only there just to collect the big check from the show.

While waiting to find out which of those Weezers would be there at the Aragon on that night, I got to see a couple of bands I haven't seen in a while to pass the time. I should note that the music they had playing between bands was one of my favorite bands, Sigur Ros, so that was a sign definitely pointing in the right direction.

Somehow, first up was Motion City Soundtrack, a band I've loved for 7 or 8 years or so now. The Minneapolis-based power pop/punk band has made some incredible songs, and are an amazing live band in their best moments. They've dropped off the scene for over a year now, I wasn't sure why, but it appeared to have something to do with their amazing drummer, Tony Thaxton.

MCS has a new album out in January, so I was hoping to hear a few new songs to tide me over til then. The band instead plowed through a greatest hits set, churning out most of their best tracks from their albums "I Am the Movie," "Commit This to Memory" and "Even if it Kills Me," with one brand new song tossed in at the end. Their half hour was over in a flash, but thankfully the band was in prime shape, and will definitely be worth seeing again when they are back in support of their new album.

Next up was Jack's Mannequin, a piano-based power pop band that was put in the middle spot of the lineup, when they would have been better off opening the show. I guess the move made sense, somehow more people in the crowd seemed to know their music more than MCS.

I really liked Jack's Mannequin's last album, "The Glass Passenger," so I was going to give them a chance at least, but after MCS's energetic set, JM felt pretty boring and uninspired. I'm assuming they have something new on the way, since they will be back in Chicago in February, but I could tell, and none of the songs I didn't know that they played are making me run out to pick up the cd when it's out.

Finally, Weezer was ready to take the stage. My question of which version of the band would be there was quickly answered, when the band opened with a tease of the opening riff from Van Halen's "Hot for Teacher," then went right into some sludgey metal-ish instrumental, before going right into "Hash Pipe." One of the interesting things off the bat was that the band's drummer, Pat Wilson, was now mainly playing guitar and keyboards, while they brought out a touring drummer with them for most of the songs.

This freed up Cuomo to be more of a lead singer/cheerleader than he had in the past, and surprisingly he took to the role well. He ran all over the stage throughout the set, even doing one of the new songs, "Let It All Hang Out" entirely while immersed in the front row of the crowd.

The band delivered all of the expected classics ("Surf Wax America," "Undone," "Perfect Situation," "Dope Nose"), and did manage to throw in a decent amount of songs from their excellent new album, "Raditude." They brought on a fan from the crowd to share the vocals of "(If You're Wondering If I Want You to) I Want You To," which could have been a lot of fun, but the woman sharing the vocals was frozen and didn't look like she was enjoying herself too much.

They then played the amusing party anthem "Can't Stop Partying" from the new cd, and had Cuomo performing the rap portion in the middle of the song. I have to give him credit for taking some big slugs from what appeared to be a bottle of tequilla without any adverse affects. After that, Cuomo disappeared off the stage while the rest of the band performed a spot-on cover of Pink Floyd's "Time," with Wilson nailing both the vocals and the guitar lines perfectly.

We found out the reason Cuomo disappeared shortly after that, he secretly snuck to the back of the venue and sang the entire new song "I'm Your Daddy" while perched atop the soundboard at the back of the venue.

As another enjoyable moment, the band came out for the encore all wearing Blackhawks jerseys, and after plowing through "Pork and Beans," they went into their mash-up cover of MGMT's "Kids" and Lady Gaga's "Pokerface" that they have been doing at shows for the past year. They again played "Kids" perfectly, and made it more fun than when I saw MGMT play it at Lollapalooza last year. Then midsong Cuomo snuck up to the balcony to the side of the stage, put on a long blonde wig, and hillariously mocked Lady Gaga for the portion of her song.

Cuomo then came out and looped all of the instruments by himself until he was playing most of "Island in the Sun" completely by himself, til the rest of the band joined him mid-song. They closed up with "Buddy Holly," and all 5 band members pounded on the drums to close out the show.

The band definitely looked like they were having a good time this time around, and the feeling was infectious. Despite the fact that the covers they played took up set time that could have been used for even more of their best songs, it seemed to give them more of a sense of freedom and enjoyment than they may have had in the past.

On a side note, this is the third or so show I've seen at the Aragon in the past year. I used to honestly despise going to the venue, but these past shows have shown that this is a very respectable venue once again. The sound at this show and all of the previous shows has been great, much better than the echo filled sludge like it used to sound. I have to tip my hat to whoever made that change, but I won't regret heading back there again in the future.

Trail of Dead/Secret Machines at Logan Square Auditorium

2009-09-28T21:01:00.000-07:00

After the Thursday show at the Bottom Lounge two nights before, I was hoping that the Friday night show was going to get me back into the grove and make me stop feeling like an ancient old man at the shows. I headed to the Logan Square Auditorium with very high hopes, and luckily those were met.

There were three bands on the lineup that night, the new Chicago band Pool of Frogs (who I knew nothing about), and co-headliners the Secret Machines and ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead. I got there pretty early and grabbed a spot right at the front of the stage, and didn't need to move from there the rest of the night.

I had never heard of Pool of Frogs before Friday night, so I had no idea what to expect, but I very quickly became a big fan of theirs. The band played fairly straightforward rock, but much like Matt & Kim a few weeks before, you can tell they were greatly enjoying what they were doing, and looked like they were having the time of their lives opening the show.

On top of that, they had one of the best new performers I've seen in a while. Their drummer, Will Duncan, is a complete madman who reminded me alot of Jack Black if he played the drums, and their set was fun enough just watching him go nuts for the half hour or so. They'll definitely be a band to watch, and I know I'll be seeing them again in the future.

Next up was The Secret Machines. I had last seen them at Lollapalooza 2006, where they played a midday set in the baking sun after the release of their debut album. The band is a trio, but the most outstanding member is their amazing drummer, Josh Garza. I definitely picked the right spot to stand that night, since I was surprised to find that Garza was setting up his drum kit right on the edge of the stage directly in front of me, close enough that I could have rested my hand on his bass drum, although I was not worthy to do so.

Garza turned out to be a very nice guy, he politely warned everyone standing close that he was about to do a soundcheck for his drums, so he suggested that everyone ought to put in their earplugs at that point. It was definitely a very wise idea, or my ears would still be ringing four days later. I have to give him credit too, he spotted a guy two or three people down from me who was passing out midset, and he tried to pass a bottle of water to the guy to keep him from passing out. Pretty impressive for a guy drumming like a maniac the rest of the time.

The band surprisingly opened with the closest song they've had to a hit, "Nowhere Again," and the vantage point I had was like having a master drum class done 3 feet away from me. The band skipped around their three albums during their 50 minute performance, but when they wanted to get the crowd going, they always went back to the songs from their great debut. When the set was nearly over, a guy next to me who was dangerously teetering on the annoying jackass/really spirited fan line was begging Garza to have them play their best song from that album, "First Wave Intact." Garza shook his head like it wasn't going to happen, setting off a minor wave of disappointed groans, then launched into the dinstinctive drumbeat that opens the song.

"First Wave Intact" is an incredible live song, it starts slowly with a great drumbeat with a droning bass line, and slowly over about 6 minutes builds into a massive, earth rumbling conclusion. Garza and the rest of the band performed it perfectly, whipping the front rows of fans into a frenzy.

After a short break, it was time for the Trail of Dead to take the stage. I've seen them several times in the past, they can either be one of the best bands you can see live, or they can be a bad sloppy mess, all depending on the level of alcohol they've taken in before showtime. Judging by their performance on Friday night, they probably didn't have a drink for a good week before the show, because they were solid and firing on all cylinders.

The band, which has grown into a six-piece, even with two drummers, took the stage quickly and opened with "Isis Unveiled" from their fantastic album from this year, "The Century of Self." The song is like a cyclone swirling madly into itself, then seemingly dying out, before exploding open once again. With barely a moment's rest, the band then tore into "It Was There That I Saw You" from their landmark album "Source Tags & Codes," with the roller-coaster song whipping along at breakneck speed and threatening to rumble off the tracks at any point, but managing to tear all the way to the end.

Trail of Dead, with main leader Conrad Keely steering them on, continued to play a solid set, varying between the most recent album and "Source Tags," with a few highlights from another album, "Worlds Apart," thrown in. Another highlight of the set was when the band managed to get the crowd to be absolutely silent along with them, then they without warning exploded into the furious opening of "Will You Smile Again For Me." Another highlight was when alternate lead singer Jason Reece took over the mic for his standout track from "Worlds Apart," "Caterwaul," which after about one line of the song he jumped into the audience and spent the remainder of the song singing it from the pit, while doing his part to keeping the shoving and dancing going there.

The band wrapped up their set with a couple of songs that were pre-"Source Tags" as a treat for their long time fans, keeping the thriving pit going to the very end of the night. Despite their old reputation, not a single instrument was damaged during the entire night, which is not how their shows ended in the old days.

In all, this was a pretty incredible night of music that will probably never happen again in Chicago, so I was pretty thrilled that I was there to see it. It was definitely the best concert of the year to date. To top it off, I got news from Michele that our newest nephew was born that night as well, so it was a good night for the world all around.

The Highs and Lows of the Bottom Lounge

2009-09-27T21:34:00.000-07:00

Hello once again, can't believe it's almost been two months since my last update, guess it's time to do a little catching up.

I've been heading out to a bunch of shows as of late, including two recent ones at the Bottom Lounge, a bar/club that's been hosting shows for a year or two now just west of the Loop. I first went there about a year ago to see M83, and the big problem I had with the place was that they had rows of speaker cabinets hanging from the ceiling that blocked a large chunk of the viewing area from the floor.

I first went back about two weeks ago to see the piano/drum duo Matt and Kim, who I had to miss at the Pitchfork Festival this year to save our spots while Michele and Bella tried to check them out. I know you probably think you've never heard of the band at all, but I promise that if you've seen the commercials for the new show Community, or if you saw the right Heineken commercial, you've heard their songs.

I first saw Matt & Kim I believe at Lollapalooza 2007, when they were a very last minute addition to fill a couple of suddenly empty spots in the schedule. They had just released their debut album, and looked like they were both having the time of their lives playing to one of the biggest crowds they ever had to that point.

The band has been building a loyal audience since then, based around their goofy, giddy blasts of poppy punk. The band has been gaining recognition as well, both in the previously mentioned commercials, as well as video plays for the great newer songs "Daylight" and "Lessons Learned" from this year's Grand. They even won a MTV video award for their great video for Lessons Learned, but sadly it wasn't telecast, so Kanye couldn't interrupt them. Oh well.

The good news is the duo was just as giddy and thrilled to be playing as they were two years ago. I've been going to concerts religiously for about 15 years, and in all that time I don't think I've ever seen two people so happy to be performing. It's an infectious energy that their young crowd eats up and feeds right back to them throughout their short set.

The band had about an hour to play, but they could have easily played every single song they've released on two albums, plus a cover or two in that entire time. So the band instead had fun dancing around and frequently breaking to tell the crowd how happy they were to be there and thanking everyone for being a part of it. After closing with "Daylight," both band members even jumped into the crowd to "dance" with them the rest of the night, which basically mean them getting shoved around constantly while people tried to take pictures with them.

About a week and a half later, I headed back to the Bottom Lounge to see Thursday, a great New Jersey band I haven't seen playing live in about 5 or 6 years unfortunately, despite the fact that they've put out three fantastic albums in that time. The last time I saw them, they were playing on the side stage in a parking lot at a Q101 festival, and the guitarist got so into the first song, he didn't notice where he was, and fell off the stage a good 7 or 8 feet to the concrete below. To his credit, he got right back up and finished the entire set despite the fall. At least at the Bottom Lounge, if he fell again, it would only be about a three or four foot drop.

There were 4 bands on the lineup that night, and thankfully the show started around 5:30. Of the three opening bands, only the middle one, I believe their name was Broken Windows, was worth watching. They reminded me of Girls Against Boys, minus their whole disco rock angle, with a bit of Queens of the Stone Age thrown in.

Thursday took the stage around 8:15, which was shockingly early for a headliner. They plowed through "Resuscitation of a Dead Man," their opening track of their newest album, "Common Existence." They jumped around their catalog, focusing on alot of track from their two previous great albums, "War All the Time" and "A City By the Light Divided." The band's lead singer, Geoff Rickly, was a great band leader, as he threw every ounce of energy he had into every song, looking like he was nearly going to hyperventilate at some points in the night.

Despite his performance, something seemed a bit off with the band overall. The songs just sounded muddy live, it was hard to decipher the lyrics live, and rest of the band just sounded sludgy and it was hard to tell one song apart from another.

I was nearly one of the oldest people in the audience in the show, and seeing that alot of the crowd was still going nuts and loving the show was actually making me wonder if I was losing it. I'll chalk that up to either it being a Wednesday night in the middle of a long, busy week, or just one bad show night out of a good streak, but I was wondering if it was time to slow down on seeing concerts after that. Thankfully, I went to another show two nights later that quickly changed my mind. More to come on that.

Lollapalooza 2009 - Last Thoughts

2009-08-12T15:45:00.000-07:00

Here are some odds and ends from the weekend that was:

Biggest Balls Call #3 - The Gaslight Anthem, choosing to play their two hits to date, "The '59 Sound" and "Great Expectations" mid-set, instead of closing with them like most other bands would.

Biggest Balls Call #2 - The Yeah Yeah Yeahs opening with one of the quietest songs, "Runaway," off their new album, instead of trying to grab the crowd with a big loud number. Pretty brave for a band who people were questioning whether they should be headlining.

Biggest Balls Call #1 - Band Of Horses, stuck starting their set 20 minutes due to Lou Reed dragging on too long, decide to keep going with their set while headliners Jane's Addiction (with Lolla mastermind Perry Farrell at the lead) began their set right across the field. Not just that, but BoH continued to play for at least 15 minutes at the same time as Jane's.

Funniest Moment of the Weekend - Being stuck behind a young half naked couple making out like they're on the Titanic and it's going down, during the incredibly romantic cover of N.W.A.'s "Bitches Ain't Shit" during Ben Folds set ("Bitches ain't shit but ho's and tricks/Lick on these nuts and suck the dick"). Glad to know romance is still alive in the next generation.

Strangest Sight of the Weekend - Seeing Ronny "Woo Woo" walking around the BMI stage during Band of Skulls' early set (it's a Chicago thing people)

Time of First Beastie Boys Cover - 8:45 on Saturday, as Nick Zinner from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs throws in a snippet of the guitar line from "So What'cha Want?" during "Phenomena"

Best Seemingly Incredibly Short Set - TV on the Radio, whose hour long set seemed to pass somehow in only 15 minutes

Worst Unintentionally Short Set (not their fault) - Hockey, who were first up on the Playstation stage on Friday, and due to power problems, barely got two songs out before their time was up

Worsth Intentionally Long Set - LOU REED.

If I Had a Dime - For every Tool shirt on Saturday, I could have easilly paid for my $170 weekend pass.

Worst Potential Sunburn in Process Competition - Ida Maria vs. Los Campesinos! It was the fair skinned girl from Norway vs. the fair skinned lads from Wales in a competition to see who would be a roasted red by the end of their set. The winner: The leader singer from Los Campesinos!, who was a nice cherry tomato red by the end of his hour. His reward, a great bit bottle of aloe.

Medal of Honor - Goes to guitarist Randy Randall of No Age, who played through his entire set after dislocating his shoulder the night before.

Number of Times I Was Offered Shrooms or Weed - Once, during Animal Collective's lousy set. Guess they would have helped.

Greatest Wind EVER - The one that suddenly ripped through the crowd in the middle of Passion Pit's closer "The Reeling"

Strangest New Trend I'm Apparently Too Old to Understand - A bunch of kids (okay probably 17-18 year olds) snuck in a big gallon sized bag with a tap on the side of it that must have been filled with Kool-Aid I'm sure. Before anyone could drink out of it, they had to slap the side of it to make the sound like slapping someone's ass. We didn't understand it, but Brian and I plan on drinking like this anywhere and everywhere we go from now on.

Best Surprise Drum Solo - The one done by Bon Iver's drummer during "Wolves" which on record sounds like a roomful of drums being set off by a floor filled with mousetraps going off, was recreated amazingly well by only one guy live

Best Potentially Annoying Audience Member - The "Lollapop" guy in the front at the Ida Maria set, who I've seen in past years, mainly because he brings two huge spray bottles filled with cold water and showers the audience as much as possible just for the fun of it.

Best Seemingly Sincere Compliment By a Band - The Constantines singer, in the middle of tuning his guitar, stops while hearing Living Things roaring on the main stage, and says "Who is that? They're pretty good!"

Worst Compliment By a Band That Really Doesn't Seem Sincere - Almost every single band who said that the crowd was the greatest one ever.

Most Unnecessary Near-Encore - "Poet" Thax Douglas, standing practically on stage during Bon Iver's set after reading one of his "poems" at the start, looking like he was more than ready to read a second one

Best Impersonation of What Their Photos Would Look Like the Next Day - Kings of Leon, who barely moved throughout their set, so much that the photos I saw of the band were practically videos of their performance

Band MVP #3 - Silversun Pickups drummer Christopher Guanlao, whose fantastic playing and flailing arms and hair make for a great visual centerpiece for the band

Band MVP #2 - The lead singer of Friendly Fires, who madly danced and flailed around in the scorching midday sun like he was in a dark nightclub

Band MVP #1 - The piano/backup vocal/extra drum player in Manchester Orchestra, who when he wasn't adding to the band's sound, was playing the greatest set of air drums I've seen in some time

Lastly, Siblings I'll Most Likely Be Seeing Play at Lollapalooza 2017 - This set of kids we saw taking a rest in the middle of Sunday

Lollapalooza 2009 - Day 3.1 Dan Deacon/Deerhunter/No Age at the Logan Square Auditorium

2009-08-12T14:47:00.001-07:00

Yes, despite spending the entire day standing in the brutally hot sun, and already having heard over 30 hours of music in 3 days, I was still ready for more after leaving the Lollapalooza grounds. I got on the Blue line, and headed to Logan Square to catch what was hopefully going to be one of the more interesting shows I've seen in a while.

Three of the bands at Lollapalooza, Dan Deacon, Deerhunter and No Age, were on a small tour for a few weeks, and held their final date on Sunday night after their Lollapalooza performances. There was an interesting twist to the tour, instead of all three playing their normal sets, all three bands were set up at the same time in the same space, and all were playing together.

At least the impression I got was that they would all be playing together throughout each others' songs, to make this a very unique tour that would probably never happen again. However, it was slightly different than I thought, all three bands basically took turns playing, starting with Deerhunter, then No Age, the Dan Deacon, and followed that pattern for the rest of the night.

I was pretty much completely exhausted by this point in the weekend, but I managed to find a spot near a wall and was able to sit then prop myself up for the remainder of the night. They unfortunately decided to have 3 performers open the set, but thankfully each only got 20 minutes. The first two made some droning noise that went on for most of the 20 minutes and was nothing to note. The third guy was decent, he performed only with singing and with a drum, at least he was more tollerable than the previous two guys.

Things got pretty interesting from that point on. The marching band that performed with Dan Deacon at his Lolla set filled the center of the already crowded room, and proceeded to play 3 or 4 songs of their own while moving carefully through the crowd.

From that point on, it was time for the main event. The set started with Deerhunter going first, and they played a slow building song that took a while to get moving. Next up was No Age, who again cranked through one of their speedy stomping numbers in no time. They were then followed by Dan Deacon, who immediately whipped the crowd into a jumping dancing frenzy with another of his crazy dance tracks.

It was obvious from that point on who the real star of the evening was, and who the majority of the crowd was there to see. While Deerhunter and No Age took another turn, the marching band quietly filtered in again and filled in the already cramped space that Deacon was performing in. They then blasted through "Woof Woof," which was already a highlight on the main stage, and was even crazier in the confined space of the Logan Square Auditorium.

After that, even Deerhunter's lead singer Bradford Cox admitted he had the impossible task of following Deacon's insane song, and didn't even try to match his energy, instead playing a slow, mostly solo song with only his guitar. After another No Age track, Deacon again stepped up, with the marching band still surroudning him, and again attempted the interpretive dance circle routine that he did so well at his Lolla set during "Of the Mountains."

The crowd was so insane during part of the song, while they were all jumping up and down together, that I swear the floor of the Auditorium was bowing and could have collapsed at any point. And how I didn't develop seizures because of the crazy lights Deacon was using, I will never know.

After one more round, of songs, with the other bands getting an extra song or two in, Deacon had one more track, and he busted out "Wham City" from his previous album "Spiderman of the Rings" and drove the crowd into a further frenzy. After that, there was time for another song, and the other bands decided to play together, but nothing could match what had just happened before that.

It was pretty much 1:30 am by the time that happened, and it was doubtful much else was going to happen from there, so I took that as my cue to call it a weekend, hop back on the train, and head towards home and throw my exhausted carcass onto the bed. I think I heard rougly 35 hours of music all weekend long, it was a very memorable and great time all around.

Lollapalooza 2009 - Day 3

2009-08-10T20:36:00.000-07:00

After a good 6 hours of sleep or so, I was ready once again for another full day of music and sun and heat for the Sunday lineup at Lolla. In the past few years at Lollapalooza, Sunday was usually the weakest lineup of all, giving fans a good chance to pick and see maybe 2 or 3 good bands in the day, and get plenty of rest for the other hours of the day.

That was definitely not the case with this year's lineup. Sunday turned out to have the best lineup of the weekend, having some interesting band to see almost entirely from 12:30 til the close at 10 pm. It was also of course the hottest day of the past few months, so it was going to be a day of balancing rest from the sun and getting close for some views of some good bands.

I actually somehow managed to get downtown around 11:30 again despite being out so late the night before, so I decided to check out a few bands I've never heard of til the schedule really kicked in. First up on the tiny and very well shaded BMI stage was the Nashville band Mike's Pawn Shop. I had no idea what to expect from them, but was very happy with what I heard.

They were a harder punk-pop type band that was a sound that was badly missing from the weekend otherwise. Not only were their songs good, but you could tell they were actually excited to be there and were putting every fiber in their beings into impressing those who wandered over to their set. I'll definitely be checking them out again at a future show.

Next up, I headed to one of the north stages to check out the Sam Roberts Band, who are apparently HUGE in Canada. I guess it's for the same reason Jason Mraz is so popular here, pretty much completely inoffensive, safe rock that really wasn't too memorable an hour afterwards. It was a good time to get a big ice cream cone and a little extra rest in the shade while the sun was as brutal as it got all weekend long.

Shortly after that, the schedule started getting packed, and it was time to get moving around the grounds. I started on the north end by checking out the heavily buzzed band Friendly Fires, since I heard a song or two of their trippy dance rock before the festival. They were actually really good live, they got the crowd moving early on in the extremely brutal heat and sun, and their lead singer definitely was one of the best performers of the weekend, as he danced and flailed around with every song and gave it everything he had despite the brutal heat.

I stayed at their set for about 15 minutes and was very impressed with what I saw, but I had to head to the south end of the park to catch the remained of the set by Ra Ra Riot. Their gentle swooning songs are ideal for a festival setting, but it was a bit too gentle for such a brutally hot day. I found a good spot to rest in some shade while their set finished, since there was a lot more to see in the day ahead.

I met up with my friend Brian once again to complete our Lollapalooza weekend and rib sandwich fest, and our next stop was Bat For Lashes on the other south stage. I've heard both of the band's albums, and like what I've heard, but knew it was going to be a bit difficult to pull off in a festival setting. The band, which is basically main member Natasha Khan, is widely compared to the likes of Tori Amos, Bjork and Kate Bush, which I consider to be pretty high praise.

The songs were great and all, but once again, the oppressive heat made it extremely difficult to keep interested in the intricate songs. We had to find a spot in the shade near the stage and hear what we could for the remainder of the set while Cage the Elephant blared their generic alterna-rock from the nearby sound stage at the same time. I wouldn't mind seeing Bat For Lashes in a sit-down theater, but that was too rough on Sunday.

It was then time for one of 2 breaks left in the day where there was nothing I was too interested in seeing. Since we had to choose between the Arcade Fire rip-off Airborne Toxic Event and Brits Kaiser Chiefs, who had one or two songs I've liked in the past, we headed up towards the Kaiser Chiefs, and listened to them while we secured a good spot for the Raveonettes, who were up on the other north stage next. I would say that the Kaiser Chiefs were good there, they did put on a great high energy midday set that the crowd did seem to eat up.

We then were into the best part of the day, and possibly the best part of the weekend. First up was the set by the Raveonettes. They pretty much played the exact same set as they did the night before at the Empty Bottle, but it didn't matter, since it was 20 times louder at Lolla than in the smaller club, which is ideal for their massive wall of sound. The band did seem to be enjoying themselves in an actual set played during daylight hours, which I never thought would ever happen. I believe I even saw them crack a smile, which is another first in the 6 years I've been seeing them.

Before the Raveonettes started, we had another of our most amusing festival moments of the weekend. We had a spot very close to the barricade at the front of the stage. Usually, the security guys they have working at these points are forced to stand around and grimace at the crowd before pulling down crowdsurfers or threatening to kick other peoples' asses. However, the guards at the front of the stage at the Raveonettes' set were offering to dunk peoples' hats in the cool buckets of water they had, and they soon began taking dozens of bottles of ice cold water and doused everyone they possibly could remotely near the stage. It got to the point where I was so soaked that I looked like I went on a water ride at an amusement park. Everyone in the crowd of course loved it, and it was a rare treat to see these guards enjoying themselves as much as we were. I tip my hat to them once again.

Since I had seen their set already, I hoofed it after about 20 minutes back to the south end of the park to check out the set by Dan Deacon. Now, I knew from reading on Pitchfork about his concerts for the past few years that they were usually pretty crazy experiences, and usually involved alot of audience participation. His songs are great too, the best way I can describe most of them would be to take your average dance rock band, put their cd on fast forward, and then put that cd player in a blender, and you'll get close to the sound of his shows.

I guess before we got there, Deacon was fighting with the sound people over some technical glitch, but everything was off and running by the time we got there. Deacon, who usually plays a series of keyboards and effects pedals, was joined by a large marching band and other odds and end players to make an incredibly unique experience. His first audience participation experiment was to have the massive crowd form a big circle by holding arms and forming a giant snaking archway, and then he wanted the crowd to run through the archway and continue it as long as they could, while his bizarre dance rock on meth was blasting in the background.

It worked well, with smiles all around on the participants as well as everyone watching. He then had the crowd spread out to make a huge empty circle in the front near the stage, and he had a friend of his go into the center of the circle. He then asked his friend to lead an interpretive dance to "Of the Mountains," and asked those all around the circle to exactly mimic what his friend did. It actually worked very well and was again very entertaining to watch while the manic music filled the air, and that was shortly followed by the largest salvo of plastic bottles I think I've ever seen at one time.

All in all, it was definitely one of the most fun and unique sets of the weekend by far. Deacon, who looks about as much of a rock star as Kevin on The Office does, did an incredible job of keeping the crowd all worked up, and for a while, everyone seemed to forget about that nasty weather and all that business.

We the headed to the furthest south stage to check out some of the set by Vampire Weekend, and to meet up with our friends Jenn and Mike. I really liked VW's set at the Pitchfork Festival last year, but quite honestly, after the insanity and genius of Dan Deacon's set, I really didn't pay much attention to VW at all this time around.

We did find Jenn and Mike and hung out and chatted for a bit. They had managed to get a pass to the prestigious exclusive cabana area near the south stage, and offered to get us free food and drinks while we were there. However, we are so loyal to our Robinsons Rib Sandwiches, that we actually passed on the free food, since we were still yet to have the final delicious rib sandwich of the 2009 festival. Now THAT is dedication.

We took off early to get a spot for the last of my greatly anticipated sets of the weekend by Passion Pit on the Citi stage. For those that haven't heard of them yet, Passion Pit have become huge on the internet in the past year for their insanely catchy dance rock. Lead singer Michael Angelakos wrote an ep's worth of songs for a former girlfriendf or Valentine's Day a few years ago, and even though they apparently didn't work with her, the songs became a huge sensation, leading to the even better debut album "Manners."

The street surrounding the Citi stage was as crowded as I've ever seen it, probably as jammed as it was for Girl Talk's insane set there last year. We were in the middle of the crowd, and there was no hope of getting out, so I don't know how far back it went for sure. The band opened with "Make Light," and never slowed down for the next 45 minutes from there. Despite the sun was beating down as bad as it was the entire weekend, the crowd went nuts and was jumping up and down and dancing with every song, with highlights like "Little Secrets" and "Moth's Wings."

One of the most odd and incredible things happened during Passion Pit's set as well. After making it through 40 minutes of sweat soaked oppresive heat, during the closing monster track "The Reeling," right at a point where most of the crowd had their hands in the air, a gigantic wind swept through the crowd that somehow felt 20 degrees cooler than the stagnant air around us to that point. The crowd was shocked, and then more invigorated to finish off the incredible set. It was one of those sets that make standing out in the sun and heat for an entire weekend worth every single moment and more.

After the insanity of Passion Pit's set, we needed a break to catch our breath and regroup. We got some fantastic fruit smoothies (if you ever get to have a Maui Wowi Fresh Hawaiian smoothie, do it!) to cool off, and then stuck around the Citi stage for our final round of bands. Our plan was to first start at Deerhunter's set at the Citi stage, then head to the north end to check out some of the set by legened Lou Reed, then see some of the set by the magnificent Band of Horses, then head south to cacth part of the set by Silversun Pickups, before wrapping up the festival with the closing set by the Killers. But all good plans are doomed to fail of course.

We started at the Deerhunter set, and it was fine, not too exciting. It could partially be blamed on lead singer Bradford Cox having a flu or something (he claimed to be buzzing so hard of a B-12 shot that he got that the crowd members' faces all just looked like blank flesh to him). The band's wall of guitars didn't have the same punch on this stage as it did earlier in the year when I saw them in a tiny club in Florida, but at least they gave it a good effort.

We then headed back to the north end for our solemn duty of savoring the final Robinsons Rib Sandwich of the 2009 Lollapalooza festival. We took our time, since seeing Lou Reed wasn't an extreme priority, and enjoyed every last bite of it and took plenty of photos to mark the occasion. (And yes, to the good folks of Robinsons, we are still anxiously awaiting our free sandwiches for all of the advertising for your delicious, fantastic product)

We got to the north end to hear some of Reed's set, and since it was around 7:10, we were expecting to hear about 20 minutes, and then move on to the majesty of Band of Horses' sweeping epics. However, that was not to be. After about 5 minutes after our arrival, Reed and his band went on a good 10 or 15 minute streak of pure feedback drenched noise, and then somehow around 7:30 or so, they kicked back in to another song. The song dragged on for a few minutes, and by 7:45, 15 minutes already over their alloted time, with Band of Horses ready to start their set, Reed kicked into his biggest hit, "Walk on the Wildside." Amazingly, the song didn't drag on as long as I expected, but BoH still had to wait 20 minutes to start their set.

They finally took the stage and rewarded those who patiently waited through Reed's noise to such great songs off the bat as "Great Salt Lake" and "Is There a Ghost." They sounded majestic once again, and their heavily Neil Young-inspired sound sounded fantastic blasting out into the night sky.

We did want to see some of the Silversun Pickups, and despite feeling very sorry for BoH for them getting screwed by Reed, we headed to the south end. It turned out we missed some of the most interesting events of the weekend, as the headliners Jane's Addiction still went on at their scheduled start time of 8:30, including a ridiculous helicopter flyby to start the set. Despite all that, BoH kept on playing, even continuing their set while Jane's Addiction was starting their set on the same field. That took some brass balls, especially since they kept going for 15 minutes or so, so I applaud them.

We did get to the south end to catch the end of the Silversun Pickups' set, and got there right in time as they started their great new song "Panic Switch," and followed it with a fantastically massive taken on their previous hit "Lazy Eye." True, like most people say, they do owe a huge debt in their sound to the Smashing Pumpkins, but unlike the Pumpkins in the last few years, the band sounded fantastic live, and definitely proved that they were capable of delivering a great set in a prime spot at such a festival as Lollapalooza.

We then stayed to listen to most of the set by the somehow gigantically huge Killers. I can admit that I like the band, but I do agree with most critics that despite how great many of their singles are, they have yet to make a truly great album from beginning to end. The band had a great light show, and kicked off with "Human," and didn't waste any time peppering their set with their big hits like "Somebody Told Me" and "Smile Like You Mean It."

I don't know if it was the exhaustion of being in the sun so much for the previous two days, or just the proper end to an insane weekend, but the crowd around us at the Killers' set was one of the most amusing ones we have seen. There were definitely some of the whitest people I've seen dancing around us, and there was one woman in particular who made the Elaine dance from Seinfeld look like proper ballroom dancing in comparison. Yes, it was so amusing, we even had to record a video of it.

I did end up leaving the Killers' set early, partially out of exhaustion, but also, yes, because I had yet another show to attend that night. I said my goodbye to Lollapalooza, got some photos of the grounds and the gorgeous night sky in the city, hopped on the train and headed off to my final destination of the weekend.

Thanks once again Lollapalooza, you kicked my ass, and I loved every minute of it.

Lollapalooza 2009 - Day 2.1 - The Raveonettes at the Empty Bottle

2009-08-10T19:38:00.000-07:00

As with last year, the 10 hours of baking in the sun and seeing a constant stream of bands (16 by my count) was once again not enough for me, I decided to head out to one of the local clubs for one of the official Lolla aftershows going on around the city.

Longtime readers might remember that I decided to do the same thing last year at the Double Door, but the results were not so great. I braved it again this year in the hopes that things would run alot smoother, and that I might actually be able to see a headliner play before 1 AM.

I went to go and see Living Things again at the Empty Bottle, as they were opening for another band I love, the Raveonettes, at the Empty Bottle. It took me a little while to get back to my car from the L that I took, then only about another 15 minutes or so to get to the venue from where I parked. The fun part was then driving all around that neighborhood for a good 10 minutes until I could find a good place to park about a mile away. Good times.

I got into the venue around 11, and Living Things were already on. I thought the show was supposed to start at 11, so I wasn't too worried about it. However, it turned out that they had been on since around 10:30, so I missed almost all of their set and only got to see 3 songs. It was okay, since it was 3 songs I hadn't seen at their set at Lolla, including a stomping "I Owe," which had singer Lillian Berlin planted in the audience, passing around the mic to have some help belting out the song's chorus.

Thankfully for me and my 35 year old knees and feet, the Raveonettes set up pretty quickly after that. The good news also was that the Raveonettes' record label were videotaping their performance to put out there somehow when their new album comes out later this year. I was standing right next to one of the cameramen, so it'll be just like watching the show from my perspective in some parts.

I've been a fan of the Raveonettes ever since they first broke through here in the US in 2003. Their a Danish band, and the best way to describe their sound is to take a guy/girl group from the 1950's, and have them sing with a band recreating the massive wall-of-guitar sound made by bands like Jesus & Mary Chain in the 1980's and 90's. And how can you not love any band who intentionally wrote every song on their debut album in the same key?

The band is essentially only guitarist/singer Sune Rose Wagner and guitarist/co-lead singer/goddess Sharin Foo (who bumped into me while she was walking to the backstage area, which I have to assume means she is in love with me), and they vary who they have backing them tour to tour. This time around, they did have a percussionist and bass player, which they haven't had in a couple of years.

The band started off with some of their better album tracks, and quickly moved into some brand new material, which they said was being played for the first time anywhere. The songs didn't stray far from their formula at all, which is fine since they do it so well.

They did play most of their best songs, including "Attack of the Ghost Rider," "Aly, Walk With Me" and "Great Love Sound," so it was a very special treat for the fans not just for the new material, but to get to hear the best of their old stuff as well.

They pretty much finished within an hour, which pretty much meant that was the set they'd be playing the next day at Lolla, so it was a good sneak peek of what to expect out in the blazing sun the next day. And the good news is that by 1:15, the show was over and I was on my way home to finally get off my feet, and rest up for one more day at Lollapalooza.

Lollapalooza 2009 - Day 2 More Pics

2009-08-10T14:59:00.000-07:00

More photos from day 2, including Ezra Furman, Miike Snow, more Living Things, and of course, the second rib sandwich!

Lollapalooza 2009 - Day 2

2009-08-10T12:39:00.000-07:00

It was going to be a completely different day at Lollapalooza on Saturday, since I walked out of the door of my house and was slapped in the face by a warm muggy day. Guess the poncho wasn't necessary anymore...

Saturday was looking to be a pretty full day, with a pretty decent break halfway through, but with lots of heat, sunshine, and walking ahead. I got there early around 11:30 and watched a few minutes of Band of Skulls on the tiny BMI stage, but wasn't too impressed. I did a quick sampler that hour, starting first at Chicagoan Ezra Furman & the Harpoons' set on the north end, which came too close to the Violent Femmes at times for me.

After a quick stop for Robinson's Rib Sandwich number 2 (with a piece of pulled pork thrown in, bonus!), I headed to the south end and caught a few minutes of Thenewno2, a.k.a. the band featuring the son of George Harrison. The advance word made it sound like they would be more electronic or trippy or something, but it pretty much sound like standard indie rock from what I heard. I then stopped for a few minutes at the south stage to watch some of the Low Anthem. They weren't bad, sort of folky-rocky/country-ish, but not much else to speak of there.

Next up on the biggest stage was Living Things, out of St. Louis. Unfortunately, they are as well known (if they are known at all) for their left-leaning politics as they are for their stompy blues-rock, which shouldn't be the case since their music is strong enough to stand on its own. The band focused on their songs from their strong album from this year, "Habeus Corpus," which was a very good thing, since it got the day off to a great start with infectious fist-pumping songs like "Let It Rain" and "Brass Knuckles."

We did leave their set a little early, since I would be seeing them later that night at another show (more on that later). We then headed to the smaller Citi stage to catch some of the Constantines. The Canadian band came off a bit like Spoon to me, but that is a very good thing.

We then headed over to watch some of the set by Miike Snow (no, that is not a typo). The band is a collection of 3 big producers I guess, two of whom wrote some big songs for Britney Spears and such. Luckily, their music was much more interesting than their bio. They started off wearing Phantom of the Opera-esque masks and all black otherwise, they wisely took off the masks after a few songs since they were staring directly at the blazing early afternoon sun. They provided the one case of dance-rock that I'd end up seeing that day, so that worked out well.

Next up was another of my most anticipated acts of the weekend, Ida Maria. She's from Sweden, and released what is still one of the best songs of the year by far, "I Like You So Much Better When You're Naked," from her great debut cd "Fortress Round My Heart." Wearing a shiny gold dress, the pale skinned singer lead her band through a high charged set again directly in the brutal midday sun.

They hit almost every song on her debut in their short set, closing with the best tracks, "I Like You.." and "Oh My God." Ida Maria encouraged her audience to get naked during the first track, with limited results since most people were too hot to do much more than stand and watch, but the audience still gave her a hearty response to her impressive set. She's another future star that we'll be hearing much more from in the future.

As soon as Ida Maria was finished, I got to the far north end of the grounds as quickly as I could to catch the last half of the set by the Welsh indie collective Los Campesinos! I had seen them back in February at the tiny Logan Square Auditorium, but their sunny, bright indie pop was made for the sunshine of an outdoor festival. The band played a joyous, highly energized set, with the main singer getting as deep into the audience as the barricades would allow and later stage diving as well.

I also have to give them credit as well, at the end of their set, two of the band members crowd surfed as well, and one almost made it all the way back to the soundbooth, which definitely took the award for the longest distance crowdsurfing at Lolla 2009.

I headed back to the south end of the park to catch part of the set by Chairlift on the Citi stage. They didn't do much for me when I saw them at the Metro in the spring, but playing out in the sun and the open air seemed to help and bring more life to the breezy songs. That and getting to see their lovely singer/keyboardist Carolyn Polachek out in the sun certainly helped as well.

We also stepped over to the nearby big stage to catch some of the set by Gomez. Their songs definitely made me feel like we had briefly stepped into a big outdoor festival in England instead of Chicago, but the blazing sun didn't let me forget that for too long.

After a food break, things were going to start picking up and require much more movement across the grounds. We first started back at the Citi stage to watch some of No Age, a guitar/drun duo who have been getting loads of hype from Pitchfork. Unfortunately, the set wasn't to be as lively as it may usually be, since the guitars had separated his shoulder the night before in a "dance-off" at one of their shows. The few songs we stayed for were fine, but they may be worth seeing again when the guitarist has recovered.

We headed back again to the big nearby stage to watch some of Glasvegas, another British band that would be more at home there singing soccer anthems than they were in Chicago. Their set didn't do much for me, the songs seemed a bit too similar after a while and weren't distinguishable from many of the other bands we were seeing that weekend.

We headed to the north end again for another big set of the weekend by TV on the Radio. On the tail end of their tour in support of last year's amazing "Dear Science," the band played to a packed lawn enrapt in their music. The only problem I had with their set is that somehow I thought they had only played a few songs, looked at my watch and noticed that somehow 40 minutes had already passed.

I guess it was too much of a good thing or something, but their set was over before I even knew it. They did hit some of their biggest songs like "Dancing Choose" and "Golden Age," but had to pass on some of their better songs like "Family Tree" and "Lover's Day" due to the time limit. I'd rather have the band go back to write a follow-up rather than coming back on tour again, but I won't get my hopes up.

We then hauled ass to back to the south end once again to catch as much as we could of the set by the heavily hyped Brooklynites Animal Collective. Their music on cd can be very difficult, as it can be very dense, repetetive and droning at times. Their release from this year, Meriwheather Post Pavillion, is their most accessible album yet, and compared to some of their older stuff, it sounds like a Hanson album.

Unfortunately, the band didn't take advantage of its prime spot closing the second stage before Tool played on the big stage. They played a blobby mess of droning noise, going 5 or 10 minutes at a time in their hour long set before an actual song was discernable. As far as I know, they didn't play their two best songs from this new album, "My Girls" and "Summertime Clothes." They didn't do much on stage either, since they mainly stuck behind their computer consoles while psychedic vidoes played over the big stage screens. It's too bad, I had really high hopes for this set, but they chose to go the hard route. When even Pitchfork was criticizing them for their set, you know something was wrong.

We headed back up to the north end once more, to catch the closing set by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, who stepped in at the last minute when the Beastie Boys had to drop out. Although it was debated, the band turned out to be an excellent choice to fill the spot. Even though they've been around roughly the same amount of time, the YYY's showed the Kings of Leon how a band as young as them could rise to the status of true headliners, as frontwoman Karen O was a great center of attention. Her theatrics were enough, but the massive guitars of Nick Zenner and the powerhouse drums of Brian Chase were enough to keep the crowd entertained.

They only had 3 albums to draw from, so it was going to be a miracle for them to fill out the hour and a half time slot they had. That meant they hit every solid song possible, from the latest hit "Zero" to "Gold Lion" and "Y Control" from their debut. The one spot that I thought the stumbled was with their biggest song, the lovely ballad "Maps." They decided to do the song acoustic, robbing it of the great drum beat and storming guitars that liven up the song. Otherwise, the band proved they had every right to be there as headliners, and will most likely be there again in the future.

I headed out as they were finishing their encores, but my night was not over yet. More to come.

Lollapalooza 2009 - Day 1

2009-08-10T10:26:00.000-07:00

The 2009 Lollapalooza weekend kicked off on Friday, and unfortunately the weather was going to be the key issue of the weekend. Friday rain was predicted all day long, then Saturday and Sunday were looking at very bad heat, the worst we've had in a very mild summer. So with plenty of preparation (a poncho on Friday and plenty of bottled water the other days), the weekend was off and running.

The weather predictions were dead on as I got there on Friday, but I headed straight for the stage that would host one of my first anticipated sets of the weekend, but Atlanta's Manchester Orchestra. The band is touring on their outstanding album from this year, "Mean Everything to Nothing," and gave the rain-soaked crowd a great welcome with a solid set of anthems like "Shake It Out," "I've Got Friends," "Everything to Nothing," and the powerful closer "The River." They were definitely a great highlight of the weekend, and they were just the first band I saw.

Next was the first of three fantastic Robinsons Rib Sandwiches, and a trek all the way across the festival grounds to the largest stage on the south end of the park for another very anticiapted set by New Jersey's Gaslight Anthem. Their 2008 release "The '59 Sound" proved to be one of the biggest surprises of the year, coming out of nowhere to deliver a solid set of Springsteen flavored anthems.

The band did not disappoint, despite the rain coming down even harder than before in the day. They plowed through the majority of the album, even playing their singles "The '59 Sound" and "Great Expectations," which is pretty brave for a young band to not close with them. They threw out salutes to some of their heroes like Elvis Costello and the Clash, and closed the powerful set with the album closer "The Backseat," proving they are definitely the real deal, and we'll be hearing much more from them in the future.

My friend Brian and I then walked quickly through the rain back to the far north end to try and catch as much of the set by cheesehead band Bon Iver as possible. Bon Iver's fanstatic 2008 album "For Emma, Forever Ago" did not make my best of 2008 list only because I couldn't find it cheap anywhere, but once I got it, I have not stopped listening to it. It's a gorgeous acoustic record that's as close to you get to peeking into someone's diary as you can without doing it.

For once Brian and I were lucky that the Chicago "poet" Thax Douglas read one of his "poems" before they started, so that delayed them enough so that we could get there when they started. For those of you outside of Chicago, Douglas goes on before bands, does a "poem" named after the band, and then does a "poem" that has the exact same meter and meaningless jumble of words that all sound identical, and yet he gets applause and gets to keep doing it. I don't quite understand.

Bon Iver proved they could pull off the delicate album live, beefing up some of the songs with electric guitars and two percusionists. Main man Justin Vernon's high croon was clear and powerful live, despite yet another strong round of rain dampening their set. Songs like "Skinny Love," "For Emma," and "Re: Stacks" worked well even in the large outdoor setting, and "The Wolves" even ended with a surprising drum solo.

Thankfully it was a short walk to the next stage to see Ben Folds. His piano rock was hopefully going to be a good antidote to the hours of rain we'd been standing through, and thankfully it was. He and his band cranked through a great set, with standouts like "Effington," "Rockin' the Suburbs" and his hillarious cover of NWA's "Bitches Ain't Shit" working pefectly in a festival setting.

Since he only had an hour, his setlist was pretty limited, skipping great songs like "Not the Same" and his biggest hit "Brick" in favor of other upbeat tracks. He did throw in a couple of nuggets for fans of his Ben Folds Five days, with "Kate" and the closer "Army."

Once again, we thankfully just had to turn around to see the next set by Fleet Foxes. Their gorgeous debut album was another of my favorites from 2008, but the rain was still pouring down and had turned the lawn into a giant mash of mud and grass and garbage. Too appreciate Fleet Foxes the best, you need to be able to sprawl out on the lawn and let the sun beat down on you and soak it all in, but the gloomy weather wasn't making that an option on Friday.

Instead, we decided to head to the south stages to catch some of the set by Crystal Castles. I've only heard one or two of their songs, but what I know of them is that the shows usually end in some sort of disaster or another, so it was worth seeing something risky compared to the calmer, more mellower stuff we were seeing to that point. We caught about 20 minutes of their set, and about half of that time was spent with them either fixing technical issues, or with their lead singer picking a fight or yelling at some audience member or someone. I read that I guess someone tried grabbing her microphone while she was diving in the crowd, no idea. The last song pretty much sounded like her mic was off anyways, so I have no idea.

The day for me had pretty much peaked by that point. After a dinner break, we watched a few minutes of Peter, Bjorn and John, who despite having some really great poppy songs, just don't interest me live. We also heard some of the Decemberists while we were making our way to the north end of things, and I still don't undrestand why critics love them so much, I just don't connect with them.

Next up was Chicagoan Andrew Bird, who somehow got the plum hour plus set leading up the night's closer. His whimsical, dare I say artsy-fartsy, violin based songs were fine, but they got repetetive and indistinguishable from one another by 3 songs in, especially when half of them had whistling mixed in throughout.

I decided at that point to wander over to the new and improved DJ tent that Perry Farrell had set up this year to watch some of Simain Mobile Disco. The area was really well done, it was much more elaborate than in years past, and provided a good spot to relax on the grass. It also provided a spot to hear the same thumping beat repeated for a good 20 minutes or so, so I didn't spend too much time there.

Last up for the night for me was Kings of Leon. I really love the band on album, they really have some fantastic songs, and I think they have moved on well to making big stadium anthem type songs like "Sex On Fire" and "Use Somebody" from their days as a southern stomping rock band. The problem is, despite how great they are on record, they are a bit of a bore live. The band members barely move, if at all, while performing the songs, and there wasn't much else going on visually to help them out.

I did stick around for half of their set, they did sound good and all, but it wasn't enough to hold my interest. I knew I had two very long days ahead, with intense heat to boot, so I called it a night and headed home.

Pitchfork Festival 2009 Day 3 pics

2009-07-22T18:03:00.001-07:00

Pitchfork Festival 2009 Day 3

2009-07-22T14:52:00.000-07:00

We packed everything up once again and headed back on the L for one more day at the Pitchfork Festival on Sunday. This was the day I was looking forward to the most, since they had one of the most outstanding lineups that day of any concert, and the best by far of any of the Pitchfork festivals to date.

We grabbed the same spot on the lawn early, which again turned out well since the volume was not turned up, and the sun decided to make more appearances on Sunday, but still was not hot at all thankfully. It definitely seemed more crowded on Sunday, but that was mostly because there were more families and people camping around us waiting for the big headliners of the night.

The day started off with the bizarre and amusing band the Mae Shi, whose punk/rap/noise/dance sound was pretty amusing. At least it was sort of the band, they basically broke up shortly before the show, and that wasn't the full band lineup playing, it was more the other band half the members split into or not. Too confusing to explain, but one of the highlights was one of the guys begging Pitchfork to actually review their cd from this year since they were playing their show. Bella even busted out a few dance moves during their set, so that was pretty amusing.

Next up was Frightened Rabbit, a Scottish band who are probably on the verge of a big breakthrough. Despite some early Spinal Tap-esque gear problems, the band finally got everything together and put on an impressive set for the early afternoon crowd. Their heart-on-their-sleeve rock was a nice early taste of some simple rock for the long day left ahead.

Next up was Blitzen Trapper, a band I was interested in seeing, since the one song I heard from them in advance reminded me of early Bright Eyes material, which was a pretty good thing. The band didn't translate well live to me, they just sounded pretty generic and repetetive again, there was nothing really to distinguish them from dozens of other similar bands.

After an hour break for another not too interesting rapper (Pharoahe Monch), the rest of the day looked to be a standout from there on. I was hoping to get to head over to the smaller side stage to catch some of the set by the band Women, but didn't get to. It was too big of a problem, since next up on the big stage was one of the bands I was most looking forward to, Portland's The Thermals.

The trio play simple straight-on pop punk, returning to Chicago after a recent show in support of their newest, "Now We Can See." I've seen them a couple of times in the past few years live at a tiny club, so it was interesting to see how they would switch things up for the big outdoor stage. Sadly, for some reason, they decided that this meant doing a bunch of covers. Four of them to be exact, including Nirvana's "Verse Chorus Verse" and songs by Green Day and Sonic Youth. They did dip into their newest album and the previous great one, "The Body, The Blood, The Machine," but the covers just seemed to throw the set off and made it seem like they were trying to persuade fans who had never heard their stuff before, instead of an audience like Pitchfork where many people probably knew them.

Next up on the big stage was The Walkmen, who in their best moments reminded me of one of my idols, Tom Waits. Their sound hasn't changed much over their three albums, if anything, it has gotten mellower and slower sadly. Their minor hit "The Rat" was the only lively moment in an otherwise pretty sedate set, but their mellow set made for a good midday listening.

I made another brief stop at the small side stage to try to catch some of the Japandroids, since their release from this year nearly got a rare 10 out of 10 from Pitchfork. They were only a guitar player and drummer, and could have been interesting, but I left after only a song due to the quality of the bands on the main stages.

I was very happy to see the next set by the French electronic dance/rock band M83 on the big stage. I last saw them back in November at a small club near the Park we were at, and they really impressed me back then, so it was great to see them getting much greater exposure as the sun was shining brightly on their stage.

The band surprisingly opened with one of their biggest songs, "Graveyard Girl," starting it off very slowly, then building it into the massive shimmering version from their album. Their swirly songs definitely were one of the big hits of the entire festival, and the two dance numbers the broke out at the end had one of the biggest crowd reactions of the entire weekend. The three band members took a well deserved bow together at the end, once again showing their extreme gratitude and appreciation after gushing and thanking the crowd several times during their set.

I had to miss the Vivian Girls on the side stage due to M83's set, but I can pretty much guess how the female punk trio's set sounded without being there. The next hour had a pretty tough decision for me, I had to choose between Grizzly Bear, whose new album is definitely growing on me and is a great live band, and Mew, who's album from a few years back was a favorite, and this was the first chance I've had to see them since then.

Thankfully Grizzly Bear made the decision pretty easy, since they put a couple of shows at the Metro in September on sale just before the festival, so I listened to a couple of songs of theirs before heading to the side stage for Mew. Grizzly Bear are a puzzling band, they play very delicate songs based around great vocal harmonies, and there's definitely a strong influence by the Beach Boys circa their Pet Sounds era. Usually, a band like that is much better off in the studio, since it is so difficult to replicate those songs live, but Grizzly Bear is actually the opposite. I've enjoyed their live show several times now, and thankfully their newest album, "Veckatemist," (coincidentally on sale at Best Buy for $8 this week, pick it up!) gives them better material to perform live. The songs I did stay for were great, they were able to replicate the new songs live very well.

I headed over to the side stage, and luckily made it while Mew was starting their set. They were playing the opening instrumental to their last album, a great track which leads directly into their hit "Special," and they did just that live. Their singer has a great voice on album, singing some pretty high alto parts for most of the songs, and he was actually able to pull it off very well live. They continued to go right into the song "The Zookeeper's Boy," which follows "Special" on their album, without missing a beat.

They had a really great live sound, especially being stuck on the smaller stage. Their next gig in town is opening for Nine Inch Nails on their supposedly "final" Chicago performance, I'm betting that the crowd there will actually enjoy it.

Finally, the night wrapped up with the band everyone was psyched to see, The Flaming Lips, one of my top 3 favorite bands in the world. The Lips were making this a very special set, since they too were allowing their fans to vote on their setlist like the Friday night bands, and they were going to thereby be out of the routine show setlist they have been doing for a good 6 or 7 years straight now.

It was pretty funny for me, since I was very excited to take Bella to her very first Flaming Lips show. I held her while they were beginning their assault, by unleashing dozens of huge balloons into the crowd, while the stagehands inflated singer Wayne Coyne's giant ball to walk on the crowd once again. I looked at Bella while all this was going on, and I swear her eyes were about to pop out of her head.

After a digitally altered video of a naked woman dance and basically birthed the main members of the band, they were off and running with their classic set opener "Race for the Prize." After a few speeches by Coyne, the band truly did honor the fans' votes, and mixed up their set with some much older material that they haven't performed live in at least a decade. They also broke out some new songs from their new album "Embryonic," which won't be out til September, so that was a great treat. Especially the song that Coyne sung while riding on the shoulders of one of his road crew members dressed as a gorilla. No, I am not making that up.

Predictably though, the fans ended up voting for their most popular songs as the ones they wanted to hear ("The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song," "She Don't Use Jelly"). Coyne was in very good spirits, acting as the cheerleader and singer as always, and was happy to praise the city he loves and the festival as well. They closed with a fantastic and majestic version of "Do You Realize??," bringing the festival and the weekend to an unforgettable close.

This was definitely one of the best concert weekend festivals I've ever been to, it was very well organized, and the crowd was fantastic, there to hear the music and to take care of each other in between sets. It's going to be a major effort for Pitchfork to top this next year, but I can't wait to see them try again.

Pics from Pitchfork Day 2

2009-07-21T21:31:00.001-07:00

Pitchfork Fesrtival Day 2

2009-07-21T20:47:00.000-07:00

Day 2 was our first complete day at the Festival. Again, the weather was pretty cooperative, but rain was very possible that day, so we packed up plenty of gear, hopped Bella on the train, and headed into the city for a full day of music.

We got there nearly right at 1:00 for the start, and things already started off much better than last year. We nearly walked right in to the gate this time around, when last year we were stuck in a line half a block long just trying to get in while the opening bands were playing. Since we knew the sun wasn't going to be beating down on us all day thanks to the cloud cover, we found a good spot near the soundbooths for the two main stages and set up our chairs and blanket and settled in.

One of the biggest complaints around about the weekend was that the sound level wasn't loud enough on the lawn, but that really worked to our advantage. Since we had Bella there, we obviously didn't want to have her anywhere where it was too loud, but we were there very close to both soundbooths, and the sound was mostly very clear and tolerable, and pretty much never got dangerously loud. I guess everyone's loss was our gain.

We started off listening to two new bands that were getting some hype, Cymbals Eat Guitars and Plants and Animals. Both were fine for an early afternoon festival set, can't really remember much from either, but they were enjoyable as early background music. One of the highlights of the weekend followed them immediately, the Canadian art punk band F-cked Up.

The lead singer of F-cked Up is a big 300 pound bald dude who calls himself Pink Eye, and who we came to see has probably the hairiest back in all of rock. I say this because after about one song, he took his shirt off and spent the rest of the sent leaping into the crowd. When he wasn't actually in the crowd, he was right up on the barricades, and pretty much never set foot on stage the rest of their time.

What he lacked in vocal ability (aside from screaming and yelling), he more than made up for in energy and charisma. The band capably plowed through the tracks, while Pink Eye was the whirlwind center of attention, making himself one with the audience while leading his band through a rampaging set. It was a classic set of punk energy, a perfect festival midday set to get things going.

Next up was another band I was very interested in seeing, the Pains of Being Pure at Heart. They came into the festival heavily hyped, and their swirling guitar sound was being compared favorably to My Bloody Valentine. They were pretty enjoyable, playing to one of the biggest crowds they had ever played to. The band seemed a bit mellow out in the big open field, and I would guess they would come off completely different in a smaller venue. Definitely one to watch.

From that point on the, the quality dipped for a few hours on the main stages. Final Fantasy was a "band" that consisted only of one main member, a guy who played almost every note on only a violin or keyboard, and used effects pedals to loop his music and accompany himself. It wasn't bad, but belonged more on the smaller side stage instead of one of the more interesting bands there.

Yeasayer followed him, again another very heavily hyped band. This was unfortunately the point of the day at which the clouds finally decided to let loose and give us the only real rain shower of the day. I didn't really care for Yeasayer, nothing really grabbed my attention during the set. I did try heading over to the small side stage to see if the band Wavves would actually perform, as their previous live show ended in a complete onstage meltdown, and the main guitarist/singer had broken his arm in a skateboarding accident earlier in the week as well. I waited for a few minutes, but as their set time passed, I figured it wasn't worth the effort and headed back to our chairs. From what I could hear from their stage, it sounded like the right decisions.

After a dull set by rapper Doom, the penultimate band on the main stages was by yet another heavily hyped band, Beirut. I will say for one or two songs, their sound could have been interesting, as they used a pretty wide array of instruments. However, their sound got very repetetive and dull, and never rose beyond that. Michele and Bella took the time to go over to the side stage to try to catch the set by the most giddy band on the Earth, Matt and Kim, and I texted and told her I was extremely jealous of them.

Matt and Kim's manic piano/drum duo make for great power pop/punk songs, and their set at Lollapalooza a few years ago by far made them the band that was the happiest I have ever seen playing EVER. Unfortunately, the side stage was jam packed for their set, so Michele and Bella weren't able to see much. Bella really wanted to see them though, mostly because they had a woman playing the drums. They stuck it out as long as they could and loved what the heard, but headed back to wrap up the night.

Last up on the main stages was one of my current favorite bands, the National. Their last album, "Boxer," was one of my favorites of this decade, and their set at Lollapalooza last year was my favorite of that weekend, despite other heavy hitters on the bill like Radiohead, Wilco and Nine Inch Nails. The National have been extremely busy over the last year, mostly handling various side projects (most noteably the benefit compilation Dark Was the Night), but thankfully they must have been working on new band material as well.

The band did debut a few new songs in their closing set, while still of course hitting their previous great material like "Fake Empire," "Ada," and "Apartment Story." Lead singer Matt Berninger was again the MVP, cooly and calmly crooning out the majority of the set, but exploding when called for on "Abel" and "Mr. November." There was some doubt if they could handle closing out the fest, but there was little doubt left after the end of their night.

Pitchfork Music Festival Day 1

2009-07-21T14:28:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, we attended one of my favorite annual events, the Pitchfork Music Festival. It takes place in a park just west of the Loop in the city, and it's a family friendly event that we've even taken Bella to the last three years in a row.

From 2006 through 2008, it was a bit of a challenge, since almost every day in those years the temperatures chose to soar to 90 and 100 degrees and above. Thankfully this year, thanks to the very wonderfully cool summer we've had in Chicago, the high temperature the entire weekend was only about 78 degrees. It was already a perfect weekend based on that.

I went solo on Friday night, since there were only four bands playing, and I was only concerned with seeing one of them. The festival kicked off with the Chicago instrumental group Tortoise. Sadly, they weren't very interesting, even as background noise while waiting for the next group, which was the band I wanted to see, Yo La Tengo.

I've been a fan of Yo La Tengo for something like 15 years now, and they are a very frustrating live act, because they can be among the best live bands out there, but also among the most boring, depending on the night. The bands that played on Friday night all agreed to let the fans who bought tickets vote on their set lists for the night, so one way or another, this was going to be a unique and interesting set.

They opened their set slowly, with 3 piano based songs, but thankfully one was their classic "Autumn Sweater." Once the guitars were brought out, things were guaranteed to get lively. One of my highlights for the weekend happened around their fifth songs, when they played "Cherry Chapstick," a guitar blast that I've never had the chance to see them play live. The rest of the set had some interesting selections ("Mr. Tough," "Tom Courtnay"), but somehow they didn't have my favorite song in the set, "Blue Line Swinger," which I thought was always very popular live.

They did play a new song from their album which will be released in Septemeber as a break in the action, and closed with another guitar monster, "Sugarcube." Ira Kaplan, the band's guitarist, is one of my favorite players of all, and it was a thrill to be up against the stage to see him play up close again. I only wish they would add a YLT song to Guitar Hero or Rock Band, since they would need ot add an accelerometer to measure how much you are swinging the guitar around while it is off your neck while you are doing solos in the game. Wishful thinking.

Yo La Tengo was followed by what was hyped as the biggest set of the weekend by the critics, which was the return of Chicago punk legends the Jesus Lizard. I've heard a few of their songs in the past, which never did much for me, and have never seen an of their shows, which were supposed to be legendary. This is the first time they've played the city in nearly 10 years, so they anticiaption was high.

I hung toward the back, it probably would have been alot more interesting up front, but I didn't feel the need to be up there. I'm pretty much apparently the only person out of the approximate 17,000 or so who were supposed to be there who was unimpressed by the set though. It got pretty repetetive, and I'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between any of the band's songs at all. Lead singer David Yow was amusing to watch at times, as he leapt in and out of the audience, but that can only go so far.

After the Jesus Lizard were the night's headliner's Built to Spill. I have liked some of their stuff, but their most recent album left me really cold. Since the food lines were pretty long (there was only one food vendor since it was the shortest day of the festival), and since I was beat from the work week, and lastly since it was actually getting near 60 and I had on shorts, I admit that I wussed out and decided to head home for the night before Built to Spill started. I knew I had two fantastic days of music ahead, so I didn't regret the decision too much.

Green Day at the United Center

2009-07-17T21:55:00.000-07:00

I finished off our little vacation weekend by going solo to the United Center to see Green Day. Their newest cd, "21st Century Breakdown," isn't as great as their previous cd "American Idiot," but they can be forgiven for that since that was a career pinnacle.

The show was opened by the New York band The Bravery, who I have to give a lot of credit to, since they are creative and original... at finding new ways to suck. (Sorry, borrowed that joke from Triumph the Insult Comic Dog). They are the one band out there who prove that the whole dance rock sound that is big right now can be really lame and uninteresting. Well done guys.

I don't know who's scheduling idea it was, but Green Day then didn't take the stage until 9 PM on a Monday night. There were a lot of young kids in the audience, so I don't know if they all made it through the show or not, but I wasn't thrilled about that since I had to wake up at 5 the next morning. Oh well, enough about me.

The setlist pretty much stuck exactly to what they have played at every other stop so far on the tour, which is fine since they had a huge video display behind them, and plenty of pyrotechnics timed in sync with the show. The first part of the show focused on the newest album, with the strongest tracks leading off. After touching on a few of the highlights from America Idiot, they then plowed through most of their biggest hits from their earlier days.

The band did keep it pretty fun for the most part, they literally got the audience involved as much as possible, by bringing some fans up to sing verses from "Longview," and by giving one very young fan the chance to play all of the guitar lines in the American Idiot standout "Jesus of Suburbia."

The only problem I had with the show (aside from the late start time, being Mr. Old Man) was that alot of the singalong parts got dragged out way too long, and there were about 10 too many "heeyyyyy ooooohhh" chants that dragged on too long. Plus, for the second time that I've seen them, they drag out "King for a Day" and make it into a medley with "Shout," and that ends up taking up about 10 minutes of show time that could have been spent playing anything else off of American Idiot, like "The Death of St. Jimmy" or "Whatshername." Oh well.

It was a great show, they probably broke a few curfew laws in the process, but proved once again that they are one of the top bands in the country right now.

Our Mini-Minnesota Trip

2009-07-16T19:42:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, we packed up the car and headed up to the almost Great White North for a quick mini-weekend in Minneapolis. It was a dual purpose visit, first to visit our friend Molly, who we haven't seen in quite a while, and second, to see the Basilica Block Party, which featured a few bands we were big fans of.

It was a pretty good drive, no complaints, Bella handled it like a pro. Of course she didn't take a nap til the last half hour or so, but that's life. After arriving at Molly's and settling in, we got right back in the car and headed to downtown Minneapolis for the Block Party.

We were there on Friday for one reason, to see the reunion of one of our favorite bands ever, the Jayhawks. They're pretty important in this family's history, since Michele and I had our very first date at a Jayhawks show on October 4, 1997, at the Metro in Chicago. It was the second version of the band, after one of the two main members, Marc Olson, had left the band to go solo.

The Jayhawks were also extremely important to us, since we used their classic song "Blue" as our first dance at our wedding. I would say that anyone who attended our reception would remember this, but from all reports, everyone there was so obliterated by the end of the night, most people couldn't remember much at all. Ahhh, open bars...

Anyways, this was the first US show that the original version of the band had played since around 1995 or so, so this was definitely worth the trip. They sounded like they hadn't missed a week together, and were spot on with their beautiful harmonies as always. They of course stuck to almost only playing songs from their masterpiece, 1995's "Tomorrow the Green Grass," and their previous great effort, 1992's "Hollywood Town Hall."

It was fantastic to hear the original band playing such great songs as "Two Hearts," "I'd Run Away," "Sister Cry" and "Walking on Down the Road," but I was crossing my fingers in the hopes that they would play anything off of their post-split albums "Smile" and "Sound of Lies," just to hear how they would sound with Olson's vocal harmonies added in. Sadly, that didn't happen as I guessed.

Despite a brief rainshower, the show was still a joy to witness, especially of course "Blue," performed with the Basilica's choir providing backing vocal harmonies as well. And with barely an encore, it was over before we knew it, and the band was back in the vaults of our memories.

Bella was a trooper, she made it through the whole night way past her normal bed time, dancing and jumping around and having a good time the whole way through. After a night's rest and a tour of the city, we headed back to the Block Party for night two on Saturday night.

Saturday ended up being more of a mess, since there were 4 bands we were interested in seeing. Since this is only really a block party, the stages were not staggered in their set times, as they are at Pitchfork and Lollapalooza. Instead, basically the two large stages operate at the exact same times, and you are forced to choose between which bands you want to see.

It was a gorgeous day, so on top of it being Saturday, that drew out many more people to attend day 2. We first stopped at the same stage we watched the Jayhawks on to watch some of the set by Minneapolis natives Tapes 'N' Tapes. Their herky-jerky sound comes off very well live, but we weren't able to stick around very long, since we had to hike to the other stage for our next band.

We then went to the bigger stage to try to see one of our favorite live musicians, Matt Nathanson. Sadly, ALOT of other people had the same idea. We stood in a spot barely halfway up the parking lot the stage was on, and by the time Nathanson hit the stage, we were completely surrounded, to the point where most of those walking by barely cared that we had a small child in a stroller. So after about one song, we bailed out and headed to the back for some room and air.

Nathanson is a great performer live, with great catchy songs and hillarious stage banter in between. I'm not sure how many times I've seen him in the past 5 years, but it's probably at least once a year. The sad thing is that I can pretty much predict the exact set Nathanson plays every time, right down to the covers that he throws in mid-song. Since I've seen him do that all before, we decided to head back to the other stage to get a good spot for the closer for the night, who we were anxiously looking forward to as well.

The closer for us, while the Counting Crows were closing the big stage, was another Minneapolis based band, The Hold Steady. The band has been on the road for almost a year supporting their fantastic album "Stay Positive," and this was the third chance I had to see them this year. The first chance was on what turned out to be the coldest night in the past decade at least in January, which I had to pass on because of that. They also played last month at the Taste of Randolph on Father's Day, but we passed on that as well since we knew we'd see them in Minneapolis.

The band did not disappoint, they were once again spot on and proudly took the title of the Greatest Bar Band in the World for 2009. They stormed through great tracks like "Constructive Summer," "Yeah Sapphire," "Sequestered in Memphis" and "Stay Positive," while working in some of their older songs like "Chips Ahoy!" and "Southtown Girls." It was a pretty nice touch to get to hear these songs of bar denizens probably blocks from the very bars that inspired them.

It was a very fun weekend, we all had a great time and hope the lineup is nearly as good next year so we can head up there once again. Hopefully I'll post some of our pics to follow.

Our Latest Concert Weekend

2009-06-26T12:26:00.000-07:00

We decided to kick off Bella's concert season with a bang, with not one but two concerts in three days! It would have been 3 in 3 days, but we woosed out and didn't go see the Hold Steady on Sunday since we'll be seeing them in a few weeks.

We headed down to the Taste of Randolph Street on Saturday on what turned out to be one of the first real days of summer. Of course that meant everyone and their brother were heading downtown as well, so the drive in was loads of fun. Once we got there, we found a good shady spot and spent the night hanging out with some our friends.

We got to see the Posies, who I never really paid attention to before and didn't that night much either. They were followed quickly by a band I haven't seen in almost a decade, Urge Overkill. UO was a great Chicago band that made possibly the greatest album ever by any band from Chicago, Saturation. They could have played the majority of the album and the crowd would have loved it, but instead they actually played a lot of new material along with the Saturation tracks and some older stuff.

The last time I saw UO, they were pretty sloppy to say the least, but they were surprisingly on that night. The new songs sounded good too, so it wasn't a case of running to the bathroom or getting a drink while the new stuff was on. No idea when a new album will be out though.

We finished off the night with the new "supergroup" Tinted Windows, which features members of Fountains of Wayne, Smashing Pumpkins, Cheap Trick, and, yes, Hanson. The band performed exactly as expected, which is a good thing, as they pretty much knocked out their entire album of power pop nuggets in barely a half-hour. There was a decent sized contingent of young girls still screaming for the guy from Hanson, but it was easy to ignore. Bella loved the band, so much so that she said she'd be asking her mom to play their cd in the car on the way home from school. Knowing Bella, I have no doubt she'll remember to ask.

After a very good Fathers Day to rest, we hopped on the L Monday night and headed downtown again to see a show at the gorgeous Pritzker Pavillion in Millenium Park. There were two acclaimed indie rock bands there, Dirty Projectors and Sea and Cake. The best part of all was the show was free, so it was definitely worth the effort.

We first let Bella hop around for a while in the cool fountain thing they have outside of the park, so she was extremely happy about that. We parked ourselves on the lawn and listened to the Dirty Projectors, who weren't bad, a little difficult to get into, but could be better with a few listens. After their set, we took Bella back out to the fountain for another good round of hopping around the giant puddles.

We checked out the Sea and Cake after that, they were still good this time around as when I saw them at Pitchfork last year. It was a very cool thing to see bands like this playing for free in such a gorgeous venue on such a perfect night.

Side note: There's apparently a lot more "security" there at the Pritzker Pavillion for these free shows than there was for the previous shows by Wilco and Tori Amos that we have seen there. They must train these guys very well though, early on when we got there, I took Bella to the bathroom, and was stopped at the door and told I could not go into the men's bathroom with her. Reminder, we are talking about my 3 YEAR OLD DAUGHTER!! After a minute or two of discussing this, he finally told me there was a family bathroom on the other side of the pavillion, so instead of waiting with him for his supervisor (and having Bella's bladder burst), I walked as quickly as I could to the other bathroom. I hope the city of Chicago was able to sleep better Monday night knowing that that bathroom was safe from my 3 year old daughter.

We Finally Did It...

2009-06-26T12:24:00.000-07:00

We finally decided to flush Bella down the toilet. At least she was happy about it.

The Lollapalooza 2009 Schedule

2009-06-17T09:47:00.000-07:00

Once again, the annual tradition of one of my favorite days of the year has just occured. After weeks of waiting, the schedule for the 2009 Lollapalooza weekend is finally up. As I've written before, this day is annually as exciting for me as a combination of christmas and the day people fill out their NCAA basketball tournament brackets is for everyone else. So once again, a good solid hour of my work day was spent on this.

Overall, I'm very pleased with how the schedule has turned out. I was dreading that they were going to put every band I wanted to see at the same time, but luckily things are spread out (with a few exceptions), so I should be getting my money's worth that weekend.

That Friday, August 7th, will start early at 12:15 for me, with Manchester Orchestra, an emo-ish band, on the north side of the grounds. I'll then walk the mile or so to the south end of the park, of course grabbing my first (of several) Robinson's rib sandwich of the weekend along the way, and getting a good spot to see one of my most anticipated sets of the weekend by the Gaslight Anthem. It'll then be a fast walk/run across the grounds once again to make it to the north end to catch all of the also highly anticipated set by Bon Iver. Here's hoping that I'll actually be able to hear his/their set this year, as opposed to Pitchfork last year.

Luckily, I will be able to just turn around to catch then next set by a favorite, Ben Folds, who I haven't seen in a few years. Then, thankfully on the same side of the field again, I'll be able to see another set by Fleet Foxes, who didn't do much for me at Pitchfork last year, but whose album since then became one of my favorites of 2008. The rest of the night will be easier, I'll stroll to the south end again, most likely picking up rib sandwich #2, seeing a bit of Peter, Bjorn and John's set (despite their disappionting set at Metro a month or so ago), then heading back up north again to round out the night with sets by Andrew Bird (second to last? Really??), and Kings of Leon.

Saturday may not be as bad as past years thankfully. It'll start around 12:45, with another set by Living Things, whose bluesy T-Rex flavored stomp was enjoyable at Lolla a few years ago. After fueling up with most likely rib sandwich #3, I'll head to the smaller street stage to see another anticipated set by Ida Maria, whose debut album from this year is getting a lot of play in our house. I'll hustle north to catch as much of Los Campesinos! as I can from there, then head back south to watch Chairlift, even though they too were a bit disappointing a few weeks ago at Metro.

Thankfully there's an hour break right at dinner time where two bands I can't stand, Arctic Monkeys and Coheed and Cambria, will be playing, so definite rib sandwich #4 there. I'll definitely check out the set by lo-fi punks No Age, then head up north slowly to get a good spot to see one of the bands I'm most excited for all weekend, TV on the Radio, winner of the highly coveted Scott Pacyna Album of the Year award for 2008. Unfortunately, they scheduled another band I'm dying to see, Animal Collective, immediately after TVOTR on the south end of the grounds, so that will be a fast mile run to see as much of their set as possible. Thankfully, that will be a short night for me, since I don't care about Tool or Beastie Boys, who are headlning, so I'll actually head home early that night. Unless I attend an aftershow somewhere of course.

Sunday is actually the busiest day for me, which is the first time that has happened in the last 4 Lolla's in Chicago. It'll all start at 12:30, to see Ra Ra Riot, an orch pop band I was supposed to see in FLA in March, until the festival they were supposed to play at was cancelled. Next, it'll be a short walk to check out Bat For Lashes, a British band that mixes some of the best parts of Tori Amos and PJ Harvey to good effect.

After a short break with no one I want to watch, I'll have to make a decision between two bands I was really looking forward to. On the north end is the Raveonettes, a great Danish band who sound like a 50's girl group backed by the Jesus & Mary Chain, or the south end has Dan Deacon, an electronic artist whose live shows are supposed to be on par with Girl Talk's live shows in terms of spectacle and fun. This is the hardest decision of the weekend for me, we'll see which one I go with later.

Another decision follows that time slot, with Vampire Weekend going against Neko Case. Case has an absolutely amazing and gorgeous voice, but her song quality has always left me a little cold. I just saw VW at Pitchfork last year and highly enjoyed their set, but I don't know if they'll be playing the new material they are currently recording at this show. I'll most likely go with VW, mostly for the proximity to the next set by Passion Pit on the smaller side stage.

Passion Pit is the last of my highly anticipated sets of the weekend, as their debut album from this year is already one of the best of 2009, and they're riding a massive wave of hype and buzz into this show. Their infectious dance rock should make wading through the massive crowd that will be at their set worth it though. after a brief side stop to watch some of Cold War Kids, and yes, consume one of the last Robinsons rib sandwiches of the weekend, I'll head back to the same small stage to catch Deerhunter, whose set opening for Girl Talk in FLA greatly impressed me, and we'll see if they can continue impressing me here.

My last schedule conflict of the weekend follows that, with Band of Horses going against Silversun Pickups. I've really wanted to see SSPU, as I missed them at Lollapalooza two years ago. However, their release from this year, "Swoon," has left me pretty cold and didn't grab me as much as their previous album, so I'll most likely go with the Neil Young-inspired bombast of Band of Horses. I'll close out the weekend by catching most of the Killers, half while there and half while walking to take the train home.

Looks pretty good, I count 7 must see bands for Friday and Saturday each, then 9 on Sunday, so 23 bands I'll be making every effort to see, along with the ones I'll randomly see while killing time, walking around and eating even more rib sandwiches. Guess I should start working out now to prepare.

3 Concert Reviews for the Price of One!

2009-06-15T09:53:00.000-07:00

Since I'm slacking so much on blogging lately, I figured I'd cram three recent concert reviews into one post. Yes, it's been a while since the last time it happened, but I went to 3 concerts in a week last week. Okay, technically 3 concerts in 8 days, but that's still pretty good.

First up was St. Vincent last Sunday at Metro. St. Vincent, like Nine Inch Nails and Smashing Pumpkins, is basically a one-man band (or woman in this case), with Annie Clark being the main member. She's a former member of the giant Polyphonic Spree band, but that is true of roughly 20 other people as well, so that isn't what makes her stand out.

I first saw her open for the National at their show in Chicago following the release of their brilliant album "Boxer." She really impressed me then, she performed solo with some prerecorded and looping stuff, but was pretty impressive with what she could pull off live. This time around, in support of her newest album "Actor," she was touring with a full band in tow, which detracted in some ways from her original impressive performance, but filled out her sound and allowed her to be more creative.

The show was opened by the Philadelphia band Pattern Is Movement. The band was amusing since they looked about as much like rock musicians as the fat guy sitting in that cube next to you at work. However, they managed to mesmerize the crowd with their complex rhythm, using only a drum set and keyboard to keep the crowd silent and entranced for a good half hour.

St. Vincent took the stage shortly after that, performing as a five piece, including band members switching between woodwinds, guitars and keyboars as the songs needed. Clark is still great as the center of the band, as her lulling guitar strumming would give way to outbursts of strangled guitar and would settle back down again with little warning.

Side note: I'd tell you what songs I enjoyed the most that she did, but I can't because I haven't bougth any of her cd's yet, since they are very difficult to find and can't be found for less than $15, so that breaks my no-cd-over-$10 rule.

St. Vincent's set was very enjoyable though. Clark says that with her latest album, she watched a bunch of the old Disney cartoons like Sleeping Beauty and imagined rewriting the soundtracks. You can tell this in her new songs, as they moved from lulling harmonies to sharply contrasting jagged passages and back again. She is definitely an artist to watch to see how she will grow and mature from here.

Friday night brought a very different set from British punks Art Brut at Schuba's. The band, touring on their recently released (and awesomely named) "Art Brut vs. Satan," wrapped up a 5 night stand at Schuba's that night, having played a different set each night of the week. Their main member, singer Eddie Argos, is known for writing hillarious lyrics and basically talk/singing them. He also embraces the "anyone can do it" spirit of punk, which he wholeheartedly encourages his audience to do every time he plays.

The show was opened by a new California band called Dusty Rhodes and the River Band. No, sadly, it's not THAT Dusty Rhodes, it's instead some younger dude with an affinity for giant afros. Sorry, but the Mars Volta are the masters of that. DR's set was pretty bland, tried to blur some genre lines (70's rock, country, whatever else), but didn't do much either way. They are perfect for a summer street fest band (which they ended up playing the next day in Chicago), since you could easilly ignore them and move on to the next thing.

Art Brut took the stage and didn't waste any time as always. You can always tell the band is having a great time, and Friday night was no exception. They played a good chunk of songs from the newest album ("Alcoholics Unanimous," "DC Comics and Chocolate Milkshakes"), while sprinkling in a few classics from their debut "Bang Bang Rock & Roll," including the classic "Emily Kane."

The band fittingly threw in a cover of the Ramone's "the KKK Took My Baby Away" as one of their encores, and was jovial and chatted and joked with the crowd throughout the night. It's pretty sad that most people still have no idea who this band is yet, but then again, as Argos sings in "Demons Out!", "the record buying public shouldn't be voting!" Art Brut will be back in Chicago later this summer at the Green Festival in August, definitely do not miss them.

Last up was Metric at the Metro last night. Metric is a Canadian dance/rock band fronted by the lovely Emily Haines, whose newest cd "Fantasies" is already a stand-out for one of the best of 2009.

There were two openers last night, Smile Smile and Sebastien Grainger. Smile Smile is a duo who played guitar and piano, with some pre-recorded drum loops helping them out. They came off well, their harmonies were pretty good and they seemed to be enjoying themselves as well. They were only on for about 20 minutes, so they didn't get much time to impress, but they did well with what they had.

Next came Sebastien Grainger and the Mountain. Grainger was half of the duo Death From Above 1979, who were poised to become a big breakthrough band, but instead broke up in 2006. Grainger, who played drums in DFA1979, has moved out from the kit and is now playing guitar and singing in his new group. His new stuff is much more dance rock than the sludgy stomp of DFA, and it fit in well with the sound of Metric. For some reason though, the crowd did not seem to connect to Grainger, despite his pleas to get them dancing and to loosen up.

After a brief wait, Metric came out to a welcoming crowd. The band kept its focus on this year's great cd "Fantasies," playing all but one or two of the songs from it. Most of the songs translated very well live, losing some of the dance grooves here and there, but it was not a problem. Emily Haines is an excellent lead singer, she reminded me alot of Shirley Manson from the early days of Garbage, as she would stalk around the stage, make plenty of eye contact with the crowd, and just generally looked like she was having a really good time and wanted to be there.

They did throw in a few older songs to make their old loyal fans happy, but they showed with the set that they are firmly set in the present and are even ready to look more to the future. Their closer "Stadium Love" was epic, and a great sign of where they could go from here.

It was a very good week of concerts overall, 3 for 3 ain't bad. We're taking Bella to her first concert of the year this weekend at the Taste of Randolph Street to see Urge Overkill and Tinted Windows. We'll see if the streak keeps up.

Bella's New Favorite Pasttime

2009-06-08T11:34:00.000-07:00

Bella has recently become a huge fan of playing Bags in our yard now, that is probably going to be her big obsession through the summer, besides riding her bike.

I know, I know what you are saying, "oooh, Bags, that's so 2007!" Well, considering Bella was barely 1 back then, deal with it!

And yes, the Froggy Boots are very critical to her bag throwing style, aim and precision.

Should have some other updates coming this week, including (hopefully) the Lollapalooza schedule later this week. Crossing my fingers now...

Finally Done!

2009-05-19T14:11:00.000-07:00

It took 2 years, but I finally finished my classwork for my Associates' degree in Engineering. At least I think I'm all done, assuming all the prerequisites are covered as they should be and all that fun stuff.

I join the massive ranks of those out there who have degrees in both English and Engineering. I know, we're a dime a dozen nowadays.

I may continue on and actually try to get a Bachelors degree in Engineering as well, we'll see. My school, Harper College, works through Northern Illinois University for this program, so alot of classes would be covered, but I'd have a lot more work to do. We'll see how motivated I end up staying on that front when the time comes.

I think Bella's going to be completely thrown off having her dad home every single night from no on, I don't know if she's going to know what to do with herself. I'm sure she'll figure it out though.

The other good news for us is that somehow Bella finished potty training for the most part already. She was fighting us on doing the #2 business in there for a long time, but somehow a switch just seemed to go off, and she was fine with it and has done it there ever since. That's made our lives much much easier lately, as any parent will know. Of course it sometimes means 3 or 4 bathroom breaks during dinners out, but we'll live with that.

Lots of plans ahead in the upcoming weeks, we are more than ready for the summer ahead!

Bella at Great America 2009

2009-05-04T20:36:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday, we were able to dodge some major thunderstorms and got some quality time at Great America, which my wife's company had only to themselves for the day.

We only got about 4 hours there, since the storms lasted til about 1 and the park closed at 5. Bella took full advantage of the time, she went on as many kid rides as she could, all by herself, and went on one of the big rides with us too. She would have gone on the Viper with me, but she's unfortunately 9 inches too short at the moment. So in other words, by this time next year, I'm sure she'll be getting on.

I was also extremely proud because the day before, we decided to show Bella some Looney Tunes cartoons to see how she'd like them. She absolutely LOVED them, and kept asking to see more of them, and was laughing her head off the whole time. She definitely loved Bugs Bunny too, so we timed it well before she saw him at the park the next day.

Lots going on in the month ahead, so enjoy these pics in the mean time.

Lollapalooza 2009 Lineup (So Far)

2009-04-22T05:31:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, they finally released the lineup for Lollapalooza 2009, and I'm very happy with what I see. For the moment.

By my count, there are around 28 or so bands that I will be making an effort to see that weekend, and that only really includes one of the 6 main headliners. The problem that this brings up is that means everyone I went to see is in the "middle tier" of bands, which means that they will basically all be scheduled at the same time against one another, and I'll be forced to pick between 2 or 3 bands I want to see at a time, which will drop down the number of bands I'll actually get to see to something like 18. Oh well, I can live with that.

The ones I'm looking forward to the most so far:
Kings of Leon - The only headliner I care about, I've loved their last three albums, and they put on a good set at Lolla in 2007. I'm assuming they'll be on against Tool or the Beastie Boys, so they'll have a decent sized crowd, but not the biggest.
Rise Against - I will now be able to say that one of my classmates from high school will be playing a main stage at Lollapalooza. I'm assuming they'll be on before Tool, so the crowd may get a bit ugly, but it shouldn't be missed.
TV on the Radio - Winners of the extremely prestigious 2008 Scott Pacyna Album of the Year award, this is the first chance I'll get to see them since that release. The reviews of their set at Coachella have been glowing, so that's another can't miss.
Vampire Weekend - They were great at Pitchfork Festival last year, I'm hoping they'll have a few new songs to play this year.
Neko Case - I've seen her live before, she has an astounding voice, one of the best in rock, but the song quality wasn't there to match. Her new album from this year finally gives her some better material to work with.
Animal Collective - Touring on one of the more adventurous releases of the year, should be an interesting psychedelic shift from most of the bands that weekend.
Band of Horses - A great live band who I haven't gotten to see somehow since 2006, their Neil Young influenced guitar rock always sounds tailor made for a beautiful outdoor summer night.
Ben Folds - I enjoyed his last album more than most, he's always an entertaining live act, and that should be a great time for a sing-along or two.
Fleet Foxes - I didn't hear their album before their set at Pitchfork last year, so I'm looking forward to seeing them after spending alot of time with that one. Should be an excellent mid-day break to rest in the sun and bask in their harmonies.
Silversun Pickups - I believe they were at Lolla in 2007, and I had to pass on seeing them due to one of the difficult schedule decisions at the time. I'm 99% sure I'll be going with them whoever they are scheduled against this time around.
Crystal Castles - A Canadian electronic act whose live shows usually end up being a mess one way or another, should be worth checking out.
Bon Iver - I tried seeing them at Pitchfork last year on the side stage while Spiritualized were drowning out their sound, but there was no chance of hearing their delicate music at that time. I've just caught on to their fantastic cd from last year, will be another great set to relax in the shade and unwind with.
Deerhunter - We just saw them open for Girl Talk in Florida, and they nearly blew our eardrums out with their swirling, massive My Bloody Valentine inspired sound. Should be interesting to see them try it again on the Lolla stage.
Dan Deacon - His set will be what Girl Talk's set was last year, highly audience interactive and massively hipster infested. Loved his album Spiderman of the Rings, haven't heard his new one yet, should be very amusing.
The Raveonettes - I love this no-frills group, but much like the Twilight Singers last year, it's going to be a crime seeing them out in the sun.
The Gaslight Anthem - As I said in my list of my favorite albums from 2008, this Jersey band came out of nowhere and impressed me with their Springsteen influenced heart-on-their-sleeve rock. This is one of the most anticipated sets of the entire weekend.
Ra Ra Riot - Orchestra rock, heard great reviews of their set opening for Death Cab For Cutie last week.
Bat For Lashes - One of the young female rockers picking up the torches of PJ Harvey and Tori Amos, her new album has gotten great reviews. She'll also be competing for the highly coveted prize of Hottest Chick at Lollapalooza, along with Sharon Foo from the Raveonettes, Neko Case, and the ladies from the next two bands.
Los Campesinos! - Saw them back in February, lively pop-punk, should make for an early energizing set to start one of the days.
Chairlift - Going to see this band open for Peter, Bjorn and John tomorrow, their song "Handstands" was stuck in your head thanks to an iPod commercial, their lead singer is going to have all of the sunburnt guys swooning early in the day.
Ida Maria - She is new, still need to listen to her cd, but her infectious performance on the Tonight Show last night, dedicating "I Like You Better When You're Naked" to other guest Hugh Jackman, showed she had a pretty good sense of humor and seems to have a lot of fun playing her music.
Living Things - Saw these guys back at Lolla 2006 I believe, their T-Rex influenced blues stomp rock was fueled by their anti-Bush hatred at the time. We'll see how they do now without him to rage against.

Won't know the schedule for the weekend until mid-June most likely, so I have to really cross my fingers now that they scheduling gods are very kind to me.

Our Summer Concert Season 2009

2009-04-13T11:11:00.000-07:00

We've already started lining up our concert weekends for the upcoming summer, guess we are getting a little anxious. Looks right now like Bella is going to getting a full dose of concerts in the months ahead!

Our summer concert season will begin July 10th and 11th, when we'll be taking a road trip up to Minneapolis to visit our friend Molly, and to check out the Basilica Block Party there. It's an annual outdoor show they've had there for a while, but this year there's a special treat. The band the Jayhawks, whose song "Blue" was the first dance for Michele and I at our wedding, will be reuniting and playing their first show since around 1997. They'll also have the Black Crows, Counting Crows, Matt Nathanson (another of our favorites), and one of Bella's favorites from Pitchfork last year, The Hold Steady. Should be a very cool getaway weekend.

The next weekend, and the one I'm looking forward to the most right now, is the Pitchfork Festival July 17th through the 19th. I'll be going solo on Friday night, which should be an interesting night where four bands (including one of my favorites, Yo La Tengo) will let everyone who bought a ticket vote on what songs they want to hear that night, and their setlists will be based on the results. Bella and Michele will be both be going with Saturday and Sunday (this will be Bella's third year there in a row), and we're really looking forward to see the Flaming Lips, one of my favorite bands, closing out the festival that Sunday night, among many other great bands.

We'll be taking it breather for a bit then, and only having one day of music on Saturday, Aug. 1st, where we'll be heading down to scenic Tinley Park to see the Warped Tour. The entire day is made up of punk, pop-punk, more punk, heavier punk, screamy punk, and for a little variety, some punk. It's a lot of fun though, the bands never have any idea what the lineup will be each day, the biggest names get just as much stage time as the newest kids just starting their band up, and it's just a great way to see lots of music and find new bands. Who knows, we may even have to dye Bella's hair just for the occasion.

Last up is the big one, the one that's still a mystery at the moment, Lollapalooza. This one is a mystery at the moment, since the lineup has not been released yet, but I already have a ticket for myself anyways. We'll be deciding about bringing Bella (and Michele of course) based on what bands end up being there and what days they end up playing. The list of bands will be announced next Tuesday the 21st, as you can guess I'm just slightly anxious to see that. There's a pretty reliable rumored list of some of the top names out there though that you can see here. If this list ends up being remotely true, I'm going to be a very happy boy that weekend.

We still have to make it through a few weeks of spring of course til the summer season starts, we're hoping to add a few dates here and there (and Bella really wants a Death Cab for Cutie ourdoor show of course!), so we'll see what else we end up attending as the year rolls on. Expect a overjoyed rant from me on Tuesday the 21st though...

The Ting Tings at Metro 4/5

2009-04-06T09:51:00.000-07:00

I got to sneak out Sunday night in the middle of our latest rain/snow/sleet/who knows what else storm to head to the Metro to see the Ting Tings. Long time loyal readers will remember that they performed at Lollapalooza last August, and put on a starmaking set that was hard to match. I'm proud of both of you for remembering that.

The Ting Tings are simply a girl/guy duo from England who put out their debut last year, and thanks to a heavilly played iPod commercial, quickly rode a wave of buzz. They opened the main stage of Lollapalooza in the 12:30 pm slot, where several hundred Rage Against the Machine fans were already camped out save their spots for their idol's set, which wouldn't be happening for another 8 hours.

Keep in mind that the majority of RATM fans are not the most open minded of people, as evidenced by the near riot that broke out during the set that night. But due to the energetic performance and catchy pop-punk of the band, the was somehow swayed, clapping and dancing to the Ting Tings' music.

After a few months of support for their debut, the Ting Tings returned to Chicago to the packed Metro. They brought the band Hottub with them as their openers. At first I was dreading the worst, since first two hairy dudes came out and started laying down some beats, and were quickly followed by three women who then began to rap. At first it seemed like an odd pairing to have the two bands together, but it became apparent why they made the choice.

Hottub ended up putting on a fun, highly energetic set that more than made up for substance with energy and enjoyment. The three women ran all over the stage, jumped into the crowd on several occasions, and two of the members spent a good chunk of time in the crowd. I really couldn't tell you what any of the songs were about, but it really didn't matter, since they band had such a good time playing, and the crowd followed suit as well.

After a pretty short set-up time, the Ting Tings followed up and nearly matched Hottub's energy level. Lead singer/guitarist/super hottie Katie White was of course the center of attention, running around the stage in a tiny black dress and knocking out the band's two chord melodies, or banging on an extra bass drum, whatever what was needed at the time. (Sadly, they weren't allowing flash photos during the set, since Katie would probably be blinded by 100 cameras going off at her during the show)

The only unfortunate thing about the Ting Tings' set was that it was nearly identical to their set at Lollapalooza. They only played songs from their debut, and not one single new song was played otherwise. I was hoping by now they'd have a few songs ready to go, but it didn't appear that this was the case.

They again closed a very extended version of "That's Not My Name," with the crowd eating up every second of it. After barely an hour, the band was done and gone. They proved they're definitely a band to watch, and it will be interesting to see where they go from here, when they can probably write a song with more than two chords in it.

Bella's Birthday Cake Part 3

2009-03-29T08:40:00.000-07:00

Still catching up on the pictures, sorry folks...

The Saturday after Bella's actual birthday, my sister and her family came up to visit Bella and have some quality cousin play time. Bella loved it, of course, especially the Hullabaloo game they gave her that they spent a good solid hour playing (note to any other parents out there: this game is worth its weight in gold!).

The weather was pretty nice that day, so we were able to go out to the big park by our house and let the girls go nuts there for a while. Bella's very anxious for the weather to warm up so she can have her mommy and daddy spend hours pushing her on the swings. Ah, can't wait for spring.

Lastly, the shirt Bella is wearing is a classic I found at Target right before Bella's birthday. It's hard to read on the picture, but it says:
Reasons why you might confuse me with a Rock Star:
1. I can scream really loud
2. When I don't get my way, I throw a temper tantrum
3. I'm up all night
4. You can't completely understand what I'm saying
5. No one else can pull off this hairdo.

I swear that neither Michele or I had anything to do with the creation of this shirt...

Bella's Birthday Cake Part 2

2009-03-24T18:17:00.000-07:00

Yes, Part 2 of Bella's birthday cakes for her 3rd birthday. Part 1 was the cupcakes she helped to make while we were down at Grandma and Grandpa's house. This time around, she made a birthday cake with mommy while daddy was off at class. We of course then had a piece after I got home, after she had her favorite meal of, what else, mac and cheese for her birthday!

Florida Pics Part 4

2009-03-22T07:56:00.000-07:00

Here's the last of the pics from our trip to FLA. These are from SeaWorld, including Bella watching the Shamu and sea lion shows, Bella and I on her second roller coaster trip, and Michele petting a sloth's butt. Good times.

Florida Trip Part 3

2009-03-19T10:02:00.000-07:00

For the second half of our visit to Florida, we packed everything up and headed northing to Orlando to take Bella on her first visit to Disney World. After a pretty quick drive, we got to Disney World just before lunch time.

We must have picked the right day to go, despite it being spring break for alot of families. We got a pretty decent parking spot and got in the park with no problems. I thought for sure we'd be waiting in lines for an hour for pretty much any ride at all, but the longest we ended up waiting was about 40 minutes, and that was for the Peter Pan ride!

Bella loved the Magic Kingdom of course, she got to go on the carousel a few times, then the Dumbo ride, the Magic Carpet ride, It's a Small World, the Peter Pan ride, the Pirates of the Caribbean (which freaked her out since it's pitch black dark most of the time now), the car driving ride and a monorail type ride.

Most importantly of all though, Bella went on her first roller coaster ride at Disney! She really, really wanted to go on the kid sized roller coaster that they had at the Sesame Place park we went to in August, but she was just under the height requirement. All of those months of eating mac and cheese and pizza must have paid off, she definitely made the height requirement this time around.

She made me go on with her, and we practically walked up to the ride with no line. She wasn't afraid at all, she was super excited to go on. We went on, of course the ride barely took a minute, but she was smiling and laughing through almost the whole ride. As soon as we got off the ride, the first words out of her mouth literally were "I LOVE ROLLER COASTERS!"

So I was very proud of course. We stuck around to the end of the night, for what we thought would be the big parade at the end. It turned out to only be a big fireworks show, but Bella didn't care, she had a huge smile on her face though that. You can pretty much see how happy she was by the last picture below.

After we braved the stampede out of the park, we got into the car, and by the time we got to the exit, Bella was passed out like a rock. We got to the hotel a few miles away, put Bella in bed while Grandma kept an eye on her, and we went to get a very late dinner at the Checkers which was across the street from the hotel. The only problem with this is because of the retarded way the streets are set up there, it took us a good 15 minutes just to get across the street. Didn't matter, we don't have Checkers near us up here, so we always make the effort to go while we're in Florida and get plenty of their awesome fries.

We got up the next morning and decided to head over to SeaWorld, since Bella loves sea lions and penguins so much. We had another very good day there with excellent weather once again, Bella got to see more seals, whales and dolphins than we could shake a stick at. Michele and I even fed a bunch of sea lions at one point, which Bella enjoyed since she got to hear them all barking at us for a while.

After a trip back to the hotel, and a little time in one of the pools, we decided to have a big dinner at Maggiano's that night. "BIG" being the operative word. We did their family style dinner, had more food than I care to remember, and did a pretty good job of polishing it all off. Thank god it's getting warm up here now and I can go and run it all off again.

After one more night of good sleep, we packed everything up and headed to the airport. Once again, I don't know if we just had the luckiest time in the world, but when we got to the Orlando airport that Saturday afternoon, we walked right up to the United counter, quickly through security, and were pretty much at our gate in 20 minutes. Slight difference from O'Hare there.

It was an excellent time though, a very good warm up for Bella's big 3rd birthday week. Thanks very much again to Grandma and Grandpa G for everything.

Florida Pics Part 2

2009-03-16T18:15:00.000-07:00

Post-Vacation Update

2009-03-15T15:16:00.000-07:00

We are back, we just spent 10 days in sunny and thankfully not hot Florida visiting Michele's family and doing all sorts of touristy things.

Our trip didn't get off to a great start unfortunately... As we were getting out of our car at O'Hare at 6 AM last Thursday, Bella tripped over a curb on the way into the airport and bit her lip pretty badly. So we weren't even at our gate to take our plane, and our poor girl got her first bad bruise and cut. Good times.

Luckily, that was the only bad thing that happened from there on out. Once our plane got off the ground, we made excellent time down to Miami. We even got there before the expected arrival time, so sadly I'll never know how the masterpiece "The Express" ends. Crap.

We took it easy at first to let Bella heal up, but ended up hitting the Miami zoo early on in the trip. Bella enjoyed it alot since we got a 4 person bike that Michele's parents and us powered while Bella navigated the park. We got to feed some giraffes ourselves, although Bella was too scared to do it herself.

We thankfully were able to have a couple of date nights out thanks to Grandma and Grandpa G. Bella made it extremely easy on them too, since she passed out while watching movies with them two of the nights. We did get out to see Watchmen on Friday night, I thought they did a fantastic job of translating it to the big screen, which I thought would be impossible. Don't know how much people who weren't fans of the comic would love it though.

We also got out to see Girl Talk play a small club in Fort Lauderdale to make up for the big festival that got canceled that weekend. It was good to see the show there, since the place I saw him at in Chicago held almost 2,000 people, and this place probably held 500. The band Deerhunter opened the show, they were very good, but I swear they were playing at My Bloody Valentine volume levels in a club that tiny. Of course I forgot our earplugs, so that was a painful but enjoyable set. Girl Talk did another fun, crazy set, but it just wasn't as good as the Chicago show in November for some reason I can't put my finger on. It might have been being close enough to see the 17 year olds wiping the sweat off of Gregg Gillis and wiping all over themselves and licking it.

The weather was absolutely perfect the whole time we were there, barely above 80 and sunny the entire time. We hit the beach a few times as a result, especially the beach Bella loves since it has a playground on the beach.

We took advantage of one more date night to finally get out to see Slumdog Millionaire. We're only about 5 months or so behind when I wanted to see that, so we finally knocked that one off of our list. It's pretty redundant to say it's an excellent movie as you've probably heard by now, we just took a while to get a chance to see it.

The last part of our Fort Lauderdale/Miami portion of our trip was another visit to the Miami Seaquarium. We really like that place alot, they have a very good sea lion show that Bella really loves, and they have a cool show with an Orca whale swimming in the same pool with a pair of dolphins that is really great too. Bella loved it all once again, so that was time well spent.

More to follow with our adventure up to Orlando, and Bella's first trip to Disney World...

Bella's paddleball skills

2009-02-19T16:56:00.000-08:00

Check out Bella showing off her extreme paddleball ability.

Happy V-day!

2009-02-14T08:56:00.000-08:00

Time to catch up on some pics and updates...

Last weekend, Bella got to go to a birthday party for one of her buddies in her daycare, Chip. They had it at one of those Pump It Up places, where kids run around in those bouncy things for an hour and wear themselves out for the parents. It's what we call a win-win situation.

Bella was happiest being the moon bounce type room the whole time, she wasn't too concerned with going on the slide, but she did get a few slides in before we went home.

They of course then had cake, and Bella got to sit near one of her "boyfriends," Frankie, during that. As you can see by the pics, Bella took her sweet time finishing her cake, and was pretty much the last one in the room still eating it, so that was pretty amusing.

It Finally Happened...

2009-02-08T16:48:00.000-08:00

Believe it or not, I've finally done it, I finally bought a new car! Yes, after people have been hearing me talk about it for a good solid 2 years at least, I figured that was enough of a build-up to the big event.

Last Thursday, I finally went and bought a new 2009 Toyota Prius. Those I talk with alot know that I've been looking to get one of these for ages, and finally the stars all aligned properly, and hell is probably freezing over as we speak, so plan accordingly.

It all worked out in my favor rather well. Up until a month or two ago, it was impossible to find a Prius anywhere in stock around Chicago, since people were still freaking out about the gas prices and the novelty of the car, so I would have had to put down a deposit and wait six months to get one then.

One of the dealers near me suddenly had 8 of them in stock recently, blame both the bad economy and the much lower gas prices, it all turned into good news for me.

Bella loves the car, she just calls it the Blue car right now. It's got plenty of fun distractions, like a screen that constantly shows our fuel consumption and power usage moment by moment, and that sort of thing.

I'm very, very happy about it now, it's been worth the wait. And by the way, anyone in the market for a 1997 Chevy Cavalier, you now know who to talk to.

I'm a Very Sad Panda...

2009-02-03T11:22:00.000-08:00

Because of this news article...

As I wrote before, I was greatly looking forward to this festival, and already had our flights booked and everything. Crap.

There goes Bella's first festival, and first chance to see Death Cab for Cutie, for this year.

Princess Isabella

2009-01-25T07:05:00.000-08:00

Here she is, Princess Isabella...

Bella's Adventures in Chicago

2009-01-13T18:14:00.000-08:00

Trying to catch up on old pics we haven't posted...

The Friday after Christmas, it was miraculously over 50 degrees somehow, so we took advantage of that and hopped on the L and headed downtown so that Bella could see all of the lights on Michigan Avenue and all that good stuff down there.

She had a lot of fun, she was thrilled enough riding the train, so everything else was cake. We bundled her up really well in the stroller, even though it was warmer, so everyone had a laugh seeing her like that.

Bella even made it easy on us and helped us push the stroller toward the end of the night. Once again, child labor, a beautiful thing.

Our First Music Festival of 2009

2009-01-08T10:43:00.000-08:00

Yes, the year is only 8 days old now, but we've already got our first music festival of 2009 planned out!

We'll be heading to Miami, FL, for the Langerado festival on March 6th through the 8th. The festival isn't exactly on par with Lollapalooza, the biggest names are Bella's favorite band Death Cab For Cutie, Ryan Adams, Broken Social Scene, Dashboard Confessional, and yes, Snoop Dogg, but that's okay with me. Yes, Bella will be there rocking out with us as much of the weekend as possible, seeing as she'd be pretty pissed if we went to see her favorite band without her.

We'll get to spend a couple of days hanging out with Bella's grandpa and grandma while we're there too, so that will be good. Plus we are hopefully planning to visit a certain Kingdom while we are there for the first time for Bella too, we'll see about that.

So that will be the first of three definite (Lollapalooza and Pitchfork again for sure this year) festivals for us, plus possibly a fourth, depending on how decent the Warped Tour lineup is by the time that rolls around. Expect many pictures after that trip of course.

Our First Highlight of 2009

2009-01-01T20:47:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year everyone...

We had a pretty mild New Year's Eve, just stayed at home and let Bella stay up late, then watched the tv coverage of the ONE major network covering it in Chicago of the clocks hitting midnight in the east coast and Chicago. I guess the networks really need to throw all that money into more crappy reality shows or something instead. Momma's Boys anyone?

Anyways, we woke up this morning, and after a few Caillou episodes, we headed off to have brunch at one of our favorite restaurants, Mon Ami Gabi. Our main reason for going was if you had the brunch in your pajamas, you would get a gift certificate worth the value of your brunch towards a future meal. Since we usually end up there at one of our big annual events, we figured this was definitely worth the trip, let alone the entertainment value of having a brunch in a nice restaurant while wearing our pajamas.

Bella, being the ham that she is, got plenty of laughs and "awwws" during the brunch. She managed to chow down the majority of a big waffle, two mini donuts, and half of my fries. What a girl.

To top things off, we decided to walk around Ikea on the way home, still with the three of us in our pajamas. We definitely got quite a few looks and comments, that was worth the trip just for that.

A pretty good start to 2009 all around...

Bella's Adventures in Snowland

2008-12-29T17:49:00.000-08:00

For those not in the Chicagoland area, feel comfortable in knowing that we got hammered with snow for a few weeks this month. We had probably 4 or 5 pretty good sized snow storms, probably totaling something like 12 or 15 inches of snow overall.

I'm being a cheap bastard and am refusing to get a snowblower, passing it off on the excuse that I need the exercise in getting myself close to a heart attack while shoveling 3 or 4 inches of snow at a time.

Of course this has been great news for Bella, she's had many chances to throw on her snow suit and ride her sled and throw lots of snowballs outside. We had enough snowfall that I was able to make a pretty good sized snow mountain for her to play on right in front of our house. I would guess it was probably 5 feet tall at its max.

Then, out of the blue starting on Friday, we had two days of 50+ degree weather, and all of the snow went bye-bye, leaving a giant water stream in our front yard. I'm pretty confident Bella will have another good foot of snow to play in soon enough, and for me to break my back shoveling.

And yes, we're working on getting Bella to learn how to shovel. Gotta love child labor.

Lots of Pictures to Catch Up On

2008-12-29T16:39:00.000-08:00

I'll be having a photo bonanza over the next few days to catch up on alot of the pics we've taken over the holidays. We've pretty much had 4 christmases at this point, the first with my friends from the high school years (yes, the people that actually knew me when I had short hair that somehow became an afro), then with my sister's family, then the real christmas with just us and Bella, and lastly with a bunch of friends from Michele's work.

First up are our shots from our family christmas with my sister's family and our mom. Bella was very psyched to spend most of the day with her cousins Jenna and Megan, including a planned sleepover (which basically meant trying to get Bella and Megan to actually fall asleep in the same room).

The girls had a lot of fun, and Bella actually did a decent job of sharing her toys and everything. They were of course all very psyched to open presents, when they weren't begging to play the Wii that is.

My Favorite Albums of 2008 - Numbers 20 to 1

2008-12-21T21:36:00.001-08:00

After a slight delay, I present to you, my top 20 favorite albums of 2008:

20. Phantom Planet – Raise the Dead – The band that started as a outlet for Jason Schwartzman to moonlight from acting to play the drums has consistently been putting out great alterna-rock, with the latest showing that they’ve spent a lot of quality time listening to The Bends-era Radiohead.

19. Terrible Twos – Jersey the Giant - The second album from the New Amsterdam offshoot was another great chunk of music for kids that the parents can love as well. And they have the distinct honor of being the only band to have a song called “Great Big Poop” on their album this year. (well, the only band THIS year anyways)

18. The Mars Volta – The Bedlam In Goliath – One of alternative rock’s most adventurous bands once again put together a great album with amazing instrumental performances and bizarre near-inscrutable lyrics, sounding like Santana trying to jam with a punk progressive rock band.

17. Nine Inch Nails – The Slip – One of the two albums on my top 20 list for the year that could be downloaded for free, this was once again a solid, focused effort by Trent Reznor and his cohorts.

16. Vampire Weekend – Vampire Weekend – The album that easily wins the award for the most heavily debated and hyped release of the year, it proved to be one of the few times that the hype was pretty justified. Mixing punk, African rhythms and the influence (and shout-out) of Peter Gabriel, the band proved to be a perfect soundtrack to sunset on a lawn on a beautiful summer afternoon.

15. Raveonettes – Lust Lust Lust – Another release from early in the year, the Raveonettes again fused their Jesus & Mary Chain meet a 50’s girl group sound into an exhilarating set, with great track like “Dead Sound” and “Aly, Walk With Me” throwing their girl/guy vocals into massive walls of guitars.

14. The Kooks – Konk – This is one of the times when seeing a band live took some love out of an album for me unfortunately. Konk is a very solid set of Brit-flavored power-pop, but their bland run-through of half the album live took some of the love out of the album for me. Oh well.

13. The Gaslight Anthem – The ’59 Sound - One of the three best debut albums of the year, this was a pretty lucky find for me. I pretty much picked this one up since it was very cheap at Best Buy, and it turned into one of my favorite albums of the year. The band is very young, heavy on the histrionics a la Dashboard Confessional, with much more of a worship of the early Bruce Springsteen albums. A very solid album, I expect good things from them in 2009.

12. Kings of Leon – Only by the Night – Pretty shocking that this is already KOL’s fourth album, the band is still drifting away from their dirty southern rock that launched them and favoring the anthem heavy arena sound of their previous album. Works very well, especially with “Sex on Fire,” one of 2008’s best songs.

11. Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes – Another of the best debuts of the year, this Seattle based band showed a heavy love of the harmonies of the Beach Boys at their best, while giving us a good reminder of how good the new My Morning Jacket album should have been. “Oliver James” has the most amazing vocal performance of the year, sounding like the nearly solo vocal song could have rattled the walls of the studio during the recording.

10. The Whigs – Mission Control – The last of a solid set of debut albums for 2008, this Atlanta trio brought back the power trio, with hints of Buffalo Tom and Ryan Adams breaking through in spots. The band also features one of the best new performers of the year, drummer Julian Dorio, whose kick drum forms the backbone of “Right Hand of My Heart,” another of my favorites from 2008.

9. The Stills – Oceans Will Rise – Yet another great Canadian band, the Stills put together another great album’s worth of songs giving us evidence of what The Band might sound like circa 2008.

8. Flight of the Conchords – Flight of the Conchords – By far the best intentionally funny cd of the year (and thus bypassing Scarlet Johannson and her unintentionally hilarious debut cd), the HBO comedy duo’s debut cd featured songs that weren’t just hilarious, but were also able to stand up to many, many listens throughout the year. And more importantly, you will learn the true reason why they are called “business socks” thanks to this cd.

7. Death Cab for Cutie – Narrow Stairs – For a while, this was looking like it was going to be my favorite cd of the year somehow. Not DCFC’s best cd by far (see: Transatlanticism), but it was still very strong in many spots, especially the gorgeous “Grapevine Fires” and the entrancing 8-minute-plus single “I Will Possess Your Heart.”

6. The Hold Steady – Stay Positive – This is the first confirmed case of my daughter picking out a band and liking them before me, and getting me to like them because of that. I had heard some of the Hold Steady’s music before the Pitchfork festival this year, and was underwhelmed by what I heard, despite the mounds of glowing reviews by critics. While the band was playing at the festival, Bella had me pick her up and pointed toward the stage so that she could see and hear them better.

I bought Stay Positive shortly after that, and after a couple of listens, was completely hooked. The band definitely gives off a Springsteen vibe, much like The Gaslight Anthem, except with more of a dark side and an emphasis on the darker side of town. The band somehow turned “Subpoena’d in Texas/Sequestered in Memphis” into one of the best choruses of the year, and didn’t stop there. They live up to their reputation as the best bar band in the world with fist-pumping anthems like “Yeah Sapphire” and the title track,

5. Girl Talk – Feed the Animals – I never would have guessed that this was going to be one of my favorite albums of the year. When mash-ups started becoming popular, along with dj’s in general, I laughed it off since it wasn’t “real” music played by people with actual instruments. One listen to Feed the Animals (which, as I have mentioned several times before, is still available here completely for free), and that completely blew that opinion out of the water.

Gregg Gillis, aka Girl Talk, does an absolutely incredible job of pulling together songs that have absolutely nothing in common and making incredibly catchy and hilarious dance tracks from them. I will never be able to hear songs like Rick Springfield’s “Jessie’s Girl,” Big Country’s “In a Big Country” or NIN’s “Wish” thanks to what he has done with them on this album. It’s an absolutely amazing re-imagination of songs we have been hearing for the past 30+ years.

4. Sigur Ros – Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust – I’ve made it no secret that Sigur Ros is one of my favorite bands in the world, so I was a tad bit biased going into this one. I always treat their albums with an open mind, since you never know if it will be exceptional as usual or something more middle of the road.

I was pleasantly shocked after hearing the spirited openers “Gobbledigook” and “Inni mer syngur vitleysingur” that the band actually sounded HAPPY! Well, as always, the lyrics were sung in the Icelandic band’s made-up language Hopelandish, so for all I know he could have been singing about beating baby seals with his starving family’s last piece of bread, but I’ll be damned if it wasn’t peppy and happy sounding otherwise!

The band was up to their old tricks later in the cd, with the sprawling, crawling beauty of songs like “Festival” slowly revealing themselves. The band also gets the award for Best Sneaking of Photos of Naked Asses Into Most American Major Retailers with the cd’s cover, although most stores used a very strategically placed sticker.

3. Bloc Party – Intimacy – With Bloc Party, you pretty much know what you are going to get with a cd, much like Sigur Ros, but in a completely different way. This was probably the cd I was most likely to busy a speaker with in my car this year, with their jittery and propulsive dance-rock hybrid pouring out at a spastic pace.

The opening tracks “Ares” and “Mercury” get things off to a great, breathless start, and the music only lets up in a few weaker points throughout the rest of the way. My other favorite track is “Ion Square,” which starts slowly off a synthesizer riff and builds slowly with a disco beat into a massive roar, surrounding some of frontman Kele Okereke’s most personal and revealing lyrics yet.

2. Local H – 12 Angry Months - After DCFC, this was looking to be my favorite album of 2008. I’ve been a fan on and off of Local H ever since their debut album back when I was in college, especially around their previous best album, Pack Up the Cats. 12 Angry Months takes a place in the hall of Great Breakup Albums, being fueled by the breakup of frontman Scott Lucas with his longtime girlfriend.

Lucas’s venom is apparent on humorous tracks like “February: Michelle (Again)” and “March: BMW Man,” and hits a high-point mid-album with “May: The Summer of Boats.” Lucas’s songwriting is definitely strengthened in this emotional and pain-filled year long assessment of the breakup, near reunion and eventual acceptance of moving on. A definite can’t miss album.

DRUM ROLL PLEASE: My pick for the best album of 2008:

1. TV on the Radio – Dear Science – I was completely shocked and baffled to see that the two publications whose music reviews I laugh at the most, Rolling Stone and Entertainment Weekly, both agreed with me on the pick for the best album of 2008. I’m not sure if that means that I am losing my edge, or that they are finally coming around and getting some sense, we’ll see. I’m hoping it’s the later.

I can basically say with the latest album by TV on the Radio, Dear Science, that it was a case of love at first listen. I knew from the first time I heard the cd that it was definitely something special, and that it was definitely going to make my list of the best of the year. I’ve praised their past albums, but had a problem with the very dense nature of their compositions, since they seemed to be making a very dense mass when they could have opened things up a bit and let it breathe. Thankfully, they must have been reading my suggestions all along (I have no doubt that is the case), and the result is this spectacular album that is absolutely incredible.

Bringing to mind everyone from R.E.M. (with the speedy verses of their single “Dancing Choose” bringing to mind “It’s the End of the World as We Know It”) to Prince (with the falsetto vocals on “Crying” and the funky riffs of “Golden Age”), the band once again swirled their influences of doo wop, alternative rock, rap, and just about everything else into a mesmerizing collection of 11 tracks. The other highlights are the gorgeous and patient “Family Tree,” and the spirited closer “Lover’s Day,” which I thought at first sounded like a fantastic marching call-to-arms that would have made the perfect soundtrack to the next president’s inauguration, but just turned out to be a great song about f-cking.

This cd is an instant classic and should not be missed. Every acclaim they have received is earned, and they deserve many more for such a great work of art.

Favorite Albums of 2008 - Numbers 43 to 21

2008-12-17T20:56:00.000-08:00

These are the runners up to my top 20 favorite albums of 2008, in no particular order, I present numbers 43 to 21 on my list:

Ben Folds – Way to Normal – Not his best album, but pretty amusing in spots. Plus the title track will now be my theme song for every car ride to visit my sister in Normal, IL.

Ra Ra Riot – The Rhumb Line

We Are Scientists – Brain Thrust Majesty

The Ting Tings – We Started Nothing – An album of power-pop that was so infectious, the guy/girl duo got Rage Against the Machine fans who were willing to spend 8 hours baking in the sun to dance and clap along to their set at noon at Lollapalooza.

Spiritualized – Songs in A & E – I didn’t expect to like this one much, but it’s impressive. Kind of like Pink Floyd, if they all made an album after spending a year recovering from a near-death experience in the hospital.

Tokyo Police Club – Elephant Shell - Almost all of the songs sound identical on this, but it doesn’t matter, they all sound great

Jack’s Mannequin – The Glass Passenger – The first album back for mainman Andrew McMahon after recovering from leukemia, still manages to be relentlessly sunny and upbeat through much of the album

Fujiya & Miyagi – Lightbulbs - "Vanilla, strawberry/Knickerbocker glory." How can you argue with lyrics like that?

The Gutter Twins – Saturnalia – A very welcome return to form for Greg Dulli, with great assistance from Mark Lannegan

The Futureheads – This is Not the World – Somehow this was ragged on by their former champs at Pitchfork, but I like this one more than their previous albums. Moves at a breakneck speed and barely lets up throughout.

Rise Against – Appeal to Reason – Another solid set, but getting a little repetetive

The Wombats – A Guide to Love, Loss & Desperation - “Let’s Dance to Joy Division” is the best tongue-in-cheek dance song of the year (ignoring all of the Girl Talk cd anyways)

Snow Patrol – A Hundred Million Suns – Not quite up to par with their two previous albums, but still pretty good in spots.

The Tossers – On a Fine Spring Evening

Albert Hammond Jr. – Como Te Llama?

Kanye West – 808’s & Heartbreak – It’s really like listening to one half of a couple venting after their breakup, but the passion keeps it interesting.

MGMT – Oracular Spectacular – Sadly their set at Lollapalooza proved that about 75% of the credit for the quality of this album belonged to producer Dave Fridmann. Still a solid album.

Lykke Li – Youth Novels

Ladytron - Velocifero

M83 – Saturdays = Youth – This was a case where my appreciation for the album was much greater after seeing the band live. “Graveyard Girl” was one of my favorite songs of the year.

She & Him – Volume One – My girlfriend Zooey had to make it on the list somewhere. I’m sure she’ll be very flattered.

1969 – Maya – It’s a shame that Butch Walker doesn’t put out his best material under his own name anymore. The opening track “Wreck Me” is better than anything on his last two solo albums

R.E.M. – Accelerate – A good reminder that when they want to rock, R.E.M. can still make a very solid album

Soon to follow: my favorite albums of 2008, numbers 1 to 20

Jingle Bells a la Bella

2008-12-15T11:38:00.000-08:00

Hello all,

I'm finally free from my classes for a while, so I'll be posting plenty in the next week.

To start it all off, here is Bella's version of Jingle Bells for your holiday enjoyment!

Happy December

2008-12-03T11:48:00.000-08:00

I've fallen behind on my blogness as predicted, so here's a quick update:

We had a very good Thanksgiving, we were mainly thrilled to be able to stay home and not go to work for once, but the turkey and all that good stuff helped too. We went to Grandma P's house for turkey day, let Bella run around like a maniac for a few hours, then chowed down on plenty of food. Good stuff.

The next night, we decided to get the first Madagascar movie from Netflix for Bella to see how she'd like it, in the hopes that we could make our second attempt at getting her in to the $2 theater near us once the sequel is there. (Our first attempt taking her to Wall-E, failed miserably).

Little did we know what a hit it would turn out to be. (See the photo for one of her laughing fits) Bella basically laughed as hard as we've ever heard her laugh for the ENTIRE MOVIE. She did not stop laughing the whole time. So we sent that back to Netflix, and went and bought it at Target for a while $6 the next day.

My semester is nearly over at school, if all goes as planned, I'll be done next Saturday, which will be fantastic. Next semester is thankfully not looking nearly as bad, and hopefully I should have everything wrapped up by next summer.

We put up our christmas tree in record time this year, thanks to Bella helping out mommy greatly. I got our outside lights and snowmen up thankfully before we got our first 3 inch snowfall of the year, so that was very good timing. Looks like we're getting another dose of snow in the next hour or so, so it's going to be a fun drive home for us.

M83 at the Bottom Lounge - Nov 21

2008-11-23T07:30:00.000-08:00

Last Friday I went to the Bottom Lounge on the near west side to see two bands, M83 and School of Seven Bells. It turned out to be a pretty good night, so it ended up being worth standing outside in the 20 degree weather for it.

First off, a note to all of the Chicago venues out there: If you have the start time of your show marked as 9 pm on your website, on the tickets, and pretty much anywhere else that the info is available, THEN START THE SHOW AT 9 PM!!!! That does not mean don't open the doors until 9 pm, especially during the winter when people are freezing their asses off outside. Obviously, the Bottom Lounge was guilty of that last night, as the Metro has been many times before as well.

So this was actually my first trip to the Bottom Lounge. I believe it opened early this year or late last year, so it' still relatively new. They've been booking alot of really good shows there, so I'm sure I'll be back there soon enough. Thankfully it's a three block walk from a Green line stop, so that is always good news to me. I would guess it holds maybe 500 people or so inside, so it's not a huge place, which is always good.

I do have one big complaint about the interior setup of the venue. The stage is set up so that the left and right 1/3 of the stage have the PA speakers hanging from the ceiling. The problem is, that they have a speaker box that hangs almost all the way down to the stage, and I can tell you that the lowest point is about 6 feet, 1 inch from the ground. How do I know this exact height? Because I'm 6' 2", and my head was right against the bottom of the speaker cabinet the whole night. As you can guess, this cut off a chunk of my view of the stage, so I can only imagine how bad it is for anyone behind me, or even further to my side right on the stage.

So anyways, on to the music. As you can guess from me being stuck outside a lot longer than I planned, the show started at 10 pm instead of 9. First up was the band School of Seven Bells, who I was actually looking forward to seeing. The band has only three people, one of them being Benjamin Curtis, formerly of the band Secret Machines, the other two being sisters from some other band I've never heard of.

The only time I've seen Secret Machines was at Lolapallooza 2006 (the original full lineup anyways, not the current version of the band touring). They were great at that show, and Curtis's bombastic guitar was a key portion of their sound. Sadly, not much of that was seen at the School of Seven Bells set. Curtis was the only interesting thing about the band, as he spent his time tapping around on various footpedals while his fellow band members stood almost perfectly still and droned on.

The few enjoyable moments of their set came when the band made attempts to sound more like one of their influences, My Bloody Valentine. There was no drummer, they were only playing with recordings of bass and drums, but when they went more towards MBV's massive, swirling sound, it went better. They've got ways to go as a band, they'll need to come up with something a little more interesting from here on out.

M83 took the stage thankfully quickly after a quick set up. The band is from France, and the best way most people describe them is that they sound like the lost band on the soundtrack to every John Hughes 1980's movie. They'd fit perfectly between whatever Psychedlic Furs song is on the soundtrack, and right before the big hit song rolling over the credits. They have a very dreamy sound at many points, which gives way to massives washes of walls of guitars.

The band is basically one guy, Anthony Gonzalez, but the touring version was a four piece. They did a great job of recreating the dreamy sound of the songs live, thanks in part to Gonzalez's equipment, which looked half like a Moog and half like a computer of some sort. They jumped around between his last two cd's, and things dragged a bit at some points since some of the songs went on for a minute or two too long in some cases.

Midway through the set, they played their two "hit" songs, "Graveyard Girl" (from his new album) and "Teen Angst" from his previous album. I thought they might have peaked early because of that, but shortly after that, the set somehow morphed into a dance party once again, much like a live version of the Girl Talk show from a few weeks before.

It ended up being a very good time, and luckilly it wasn't a sweaty mess in the Bottom Lounge during the sets before the freezing walk back to the train station.

Battle of the English Majors

2008-11-19T13:06:00.000-08:00

The lovely Mrs. MookieDaddy and I have had a long standing disagreement over a certain word. Yes, when you have two English majors in a couple, this is the kind of thing that happens...

We've long debated the spelling of the word "meh," as in:
Person: "Hey Scott, what do you think of the new Butch Walker cd?"
Scott: "Meh."

For those not familiar with the word and its usage, it's about one rung below "eh" and one higher than "nah." There's a very distinct difference there I'm sure you can appreciate.

Michele, for the longest time, has insisted that the spelling of the word is "mech." I've insisted that this is incorrect, since when I think of "mech," I think of this. I've insisted all these years that the correct spelling is "meh," as proven by an episode of the Simpsons when the kids are asked what they though of something, and their reply was "meh," which Lisa even spells out specifically as "m-e-h, meh."

Well, I'm proud to say that I received official vindication this week, when this story appeared in the Chicago Tribune (story is also here through Yahoo if the Trib article is blocked).

It was a very proud moment for me, one I will savor for some time.

Scott: 1, Michele: 0

Big Bird in Dora Underwear

2008-11-17T19:55:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm sure that probably got your attention...

Home early from class tonight for once, so I have some time to write for once. Things are good for us once again, just crazy busy as always. Can't wait for Turkey day next week to head over to Grandma P's house and stuff ourselves silly with food. I think Bella is actually going to give me a run for my money in terms of the amount of food we'll be eating though.

Grandma G came to town for a little visit last weekend, it was a good time, Bella was extremely happy to spends lots of QT with Grandma, which doesn't happen enough. Bella even got to have a "sleepover" with Grandma and shared her big girl bed with her, and actually did not try kicking her out of bed throughout the whole night.

We're also working hard on potty training Bella at this point. She's responding pretty well so far, we're taking it slow though and not pressuring her too hard or anything. Michele bought her some Dora undies to encourage her to try it, and Bella decided to put them on her Big Bird doll with Grandma.

I'll be going to see a couple of bands I've never seen before at a newer bar in the city, the Bottom Lounge, on Friday night. I'll report after that one. Only about 5 more weeks left for me in this round of classes, I'll be ecstatic once that is done.

We'll hopefully post more soon...

Girl Talk at the Congress Theater 11/8

2008-11-10T06:31:00.000-08:00

On Saturday night, I did one thing I didn't think I'd ever be typing about on this blog or pretty much anywhere else: I danced for nearly two hours straight.

Good god, the thought of that still frightens me. There was a good reason for it though, the set by Girl Talk at the Congress Theater. I wrote a few months back about Girl Talk (and if you still have not downloaded Feed The Animals for free, shame on you!), and already saw him once at Lollapalooza this year, but it was just not right seeing him do his thing outside in Grant Park midday in 90 degree weather. The perfect spot for him was in a club at night, so I was very optimistic about this one.

I believe the Congress holds somewhere around 2000 people, and for the first hour or so, it looks like barely a quarter of that was there. And to top that off, about 99% of those were under the age of 18. I was officially going to be in Dirty Old Man status at that point, I was avoiding looking around too much because a) I didn't want to give the authorities any reason to come after me, and b) I didn't want to be remnded that I was driving a car before most of those in the audience were born.

As my friend Brian wrote on his blog, I sent him and Michele (she was at home with Bella and Grandma G) a text that only said effectively "I am f-cking old." We picked out a spot at the back of the venue next to the soundboard to stay away from the kids, and to have a less embarassing spot in case we did decide to bust a move during Girl Talk's set.

There were three opening "bands" unfortunately, so it was going to be a long haul til we got to Girl Talk. The first was a rapper and dj named Hollywood Holt. They were mildly entertaining, they put on a pretty energetic set that was pretty stereotypical for a rap set (a song about butts, put your hands in the air, when I say "this," you say "that," etc.). Little did I know that was going to be the brightest spot for a while.

Next up was a rap duo whose name I have to track down again, but it really won't be worth the effort to do that. You pretty much know what you are in for when a rap duo's opening song is "Krak Attack," and it sounds just about as good as you expect. The duo went on for about 40 minutes, and their set was so bad that Brian and I had more fun laughing at it than anything else. It was also sadly the second time this year I had to see the Krak Monster perform, since he did the same thing before Girl Talk at Lollapalooza this year. It's a very sad thing when I see the Krak Monster perform more times than Radiohead in one year.

After that painful experience, the room was pretty full, and we next had to watch the "punk" band Dead End. I'm being generous calling them a punk band, since they pretty much played the same song (and were the only ones to use instruments all night) that all sounded exactly the same for another 30 or 40 minutes. They may have played a song per minute or something, I don't even know, I was pretty numb by the end of it.

The crowd was pretty stoked by the time Girl Talk was ready to take the stage, which was right around 10 pm. So yes, I thought most of the kids would have to go home soon after that for the curfew, but they instead ended up being among the 40 or 50 people up on stage dancing throughout Girl Talk's 2 hour set.

Since pretty much all of you haven't heard Girl Talk (aka dj Greg Gillis) yet, again, it's only one guy who has hundreds of samples on a laptop, and he puts together songs that you would never guess in a million years would go together well, and makes fantastic dance music out of it. One way I can describe it is that he takes hundreds of puzzles, takes bits and pieces from each puzzle, jams them all together and makes a brilliant new puzzle, and continues to do this non-stop for 2 hours straight.

The crowd ate up every moment of it, from where I could see, the whole room was dancing almost throughout the entire set. The best way I can describe it is to think of when you see a person going to a concert or dance club in a movie, and everyone in the club is dancing around like crazy, it's one of the few times a concert is actually like that, except that it's not some annoying bass beat repeating constantly for an hour.

Thankfully the crowd that surrounded us by this point was the old farts (you know, 25 year olds), so I didn't feel as bad at that point. It's one of the few times I've seen a crowd that was genuinely into a performance from beginning to end. It's also one of the few times I've ever seen people bring cameras into a show, and had 95% of the pictures taken of the crowd themselves, not everyone taking pics of the performers on the stage. It was honstely one of the best concert crowd experiences I've had, it was people thrilled to be living in the moment and actually loving being a part of this thing at that point in time.

The crowd was in Girl Talk's hands from beginning to end, roaring any time there was a mild dip in the music, and saving one of the biggest roars of the night when a Time magazine cover with Barack Obama on the front rolled on to the screen. Call it a rollover of the thrill of Tuesday night, it worked either way.

There was a brief time during the middle of the set when somehow the sound in the venue dipped to about 50% of the volume from the rest of the set, and the crowd almost all stopped dancing at that time. Gillis noticed this after a minute or two, and once he and the people working the soundboard figured out the problem, the sound was back at full volume, and the crowd roared and danced along again. Gillis also took a moment or two during the show to note that despite playing to several thousand people at Lollapalooza and various other festivals through the year, this was his biggest show ever as a headliner, and he was ecstatic and extremely appreciative to the crowd for that.

After nearly two hours of insanely great music, Gillis, now stripped down to only his boxer shorts, jumped on to the crowd and crowd surfed his way all the way to the sound board right behind us. It was a great end to the night as he stood triumphantly on the soundboard while greatfully thanking the crowd for the night once again.

I could only think that seeing Girl Talk on New Year's Eve would be one of the greatest parties on Earth (aside from seeing the Flaming Lips on NYE 2001 as I did), but assuming that word will spread about shows like this, that will be tough to get in to see. Download Feed the Animals if you haven't already, and if you ever get the opprotunity, go and see him live.

Good times

2008-11-04T21:45:00.000-08:00

As you all can probably guess, we're pretty happy over here at la casa de Pacyna tonight.

It's going to be a very tough 4 years ahead for our country, but for the first time in a long time, I've got great confidence in the man who will be running the show. We'll just have to hope that it all works out the way they have talked about it to this point.

We couldn't have asked for a better gift on our 8 year anniversary. Even Bella decided to stay awake til 10:30, even though she wasn't watching her new President "Obamba" making his speech, she was saying "mommy" about 20 times into her wireless receiver. Oh well, I'm sure she just knew we should have been downtown in Grant Park celebrating as well.

We'll see how it all goes from here, but for the first time in a long time, I've got a great deal of hope for our country's future.

Good night everybody.

Happy Halloween!

2008-11-01T05:59:00.000-07:00

Bella had two costumes for Halloween this week. We brought the skunk costume (or as Bella says, "stunk") back from last year for the first part of Halloween at her daycare. She then was a princess butterfly for the actual day of trick or treating around our house.

Bella had a lot of fun trick or treating, we almost hit every single house on our block, which is a pretty long block, so our candy stash is pretty well filled for the next few months.

The first two shots are Bella trick or treating at Grandma's house, the others are on Halloween.

Best Way to Waste Time Today

2008-10-29T09:39:00.000-07:00

Seems as though the people at MTV have finally come to their senses and realized that they have a treasure trove of great material on their hands. No, I'm not talking about the first two seasons of The Hills.

They're finally putting up the videos they have amassed over 25 years online on a new website, mtvmusic.com. I'm assuming that this is definitely a work in progress, since I can't find some of my favorite videos of all time, such as U2's "All I Want Is You," or lesser known bands from the 90's that did get a song or two played on MTV, like the Chicago greats Fig Dish.

I was at least able to find two of my favorite videos ever so far, Sigur Ros' "Glossoli," and Nine Inch Nails' "Wish." Not the best audio or video quality, but hey, at least it's out there. I'll be wasting plenty of time tracking down some old videos on here for sure.

The eels on Nova

2008-10-22T10:26:00.001-07:00

I completely blanked, I meant to post that the documentary (Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives) on Mark Oliver Everett from the band the eels and his father, which I mentioned a few months back, was playing last night on Nova on PBS. Crap.

The good news is that they are repeating it a couple of times this week, at least according to the TV Guide online. I believe it should be on Saturday night at 9 pm, so set your DVR's (or VCR's if you have one of those old fashioned things), it is definitely worth seeing.

The hour long documentary follows Everett, better known simply as E, as he heads to the college where his father formulated theories that became the basis of the idea of parallel universes. It contrasts the academic brilliance of his father against the life at home for the family, which has helped E to cathartically write some incredible albums.

Also, if you go to this website, you can download 4 songs from the eels acoustic tour completely for free, but the download is only available until next Tuesday, Oct. 28th, so download it now!

Catching Up

2008-10-20T21:02:00.000-07:00

Have a few minutes to breathe finally, so might as well post...

Pretty much finished with my mid-terms in my classes at this point. Finished my first project for the semester, it's a lovely, incredibly useful crystal radio. Basically, in theory, it's supposed to pick up AM radio signals, without the use of any AC or battery power at all. Sounds good in theory, doesn't seem to work out that way though. Oh well, my teacher gave me an A anyways.

It was a good but pretty busy 3 day weekend for us. We took off Friday to take Bella to go and see the Disney tour thing going on right now, since it has people "performing" 3 of Bella's favorite shows: Little Einsteins, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and Handy Manny. Sadly, I say "performing" because every single moment was pre-recorded, and the "actors" couldn't even perform any of their actual lines.

Okay, I get it that you wouldn't want the guy in the Pooh costume trying to read his lines, but come on, you can't have the people playing the Einsteins and Handy Manny actually saying their own lines? Sad. (Oh, and if Bella or someone else her age is reading this, I'm completely wrong, they really were talking and singing their own lines, ignore me!).

Bella helped me out with raking a bunch of the leaves in our front yard, that was pretty fun. She dove into the pile of leaves about 20 times, and was trying to use the rake and put leaves in the bags the rest of the time, so that was a lot of fun.

I even got to go and vote on Friday while Michele took a nap at home. Of course I say Michele was the only one taking a nap, seeing as Bella has decided she won't nap at home on the weekends anymore. What fun. But Bella did help me out with the voting, she was the most popular person at the polling place near us that day. She was very happy to cast her vote for our future president "Obamba" as she says it.

Some new pics

2008-10-11T05:57:00.000-07:00

I've been neglecting to put some new pics up in a bit, so here you go. With Bella and mommy sick on and off the last two weeks, we haven't had a lot of chances to take new shots...

We did head back to the little farm near us on Sunday to pick out Bella's pumpkin for this year. Bella had fun as usual during that, they added a slide for her to play on this year. Plus, she got to do her (probably) last pony ride of the year, which she enjoyed again.

The first shot is her current favorite thing to do in the car, she just got a new plastic bucket, and decided to put it on her head and say "helloooo, buckethead!" to us while we're driving.

Broken Social Scene at the Vic - 10/9

2008-10-10T07:26:00.000-07:00

I just noticed that the Bush out of office countdown is almost below the 100 day mark. What a beautiful sight...

Anyways, last night I headed over to the Vic Theater in the city to see the great Canadian band Broken Social Scene once again, despite just seeing them at Lollapalooza in August. I figured it would be a pretty safe bet, since I've never seen them in a place as small as the Vic to this point, it has only been the two Lolla shows so far.

As a brief history lesson, BSS is a Canadian collective, with a rotating membership of around 16 or 18 members. Their most famous member to this point is Feist, who has been going on to bigger things in the last two years. The main members are Kevin Drew (who writes the best songs for the band) and Brendan Canning, who have both released "solo" albums in the past year, with the rest of BSS performing as their bands on their respective cd's.

The band Land of Talk opened the show, and their lead singer stayed on with BSS to handle all of the female vocals in their songs. There wasn't much to say about Land of Talk's set, it was pretty forgettable and uninspiring, expect for a few moments when the band decided to rock a bit.

BSS came on at 8:30, and much like Sigur Ros a couple of weeks before, decided to say damn the curfew, and played on to 10:30. Their set was very similar to the one they performed at Lolla this year, but unfortunately songs like "7/4 Shoreline" and "Fire Eyed Boy" lacked the energy they had there. They performed all of their "hits" (well, to their fans anyways) like "Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl" and "Cause = Time," but all around the songs seemed to be lacking in energy and excitement.

One of the few interesting moments came near the end of the show, when during one of Kevin Drew's solo songs, there was some feedback circulating around the stage. The drummer and Drew got into a slightly heated arguement, before walking off the stage together while two of the side members did a goofy little song by themselves. All seemed to be resolved after a minute or two, and the band concluded the show with some of their best songs, like "Ibi Dreams of Pavement" and "It's All Gonna Break."

It wasn't a great show, it definitely was not the best I've ever seen BSS play, especially since their performance at Lolla 2006 was incredible. Maybe they're just getting the early tour kinks out (this was only the second show of this leg of the tour), but we'll see how they do again next time.

One amusing side note: Drew, a noted Obama supporter (despite being Canadian) joked mid-set that he heard Illinois was a pretty strong McCain state. Only about a quarter of the crowd booed, I'm not sure if the other remainder were just stunned, didn't know that he was joking, or actually support McCain, but it was pretty amusing anyways.

I'm Changing My Name

2008-10-03T18:17:00.000-07:00

to Baretta Hockey Palin.

That's my name, according to the incredibly useful Sarah Palin Baby Name Generator. Check it out and find out your new name!

Happy October

2008-10-03T12:29:00.000-07:00

This will be shocking news I know, but we have been completely swamped as of late as predicted. School is going well for me, making progress, should be finished by the end of 2009 at the very latest as planned, so I'm pretty happy about that. Work has been crazier than ever as of late, but I guess it's better than the alternative.

We had one of those great parental moments last Thursday that you learn to treasure. We were getting Bella all ready for bed, got her jammies on and read her her stories. She was then getting ready to get off the bed for her attempted bathroom break, when she stopped for a second, then, without warning, proceeded to vomit all over the bed, herself, me, and a couple of her stuffed animals.

Ahhh, parenthood.

She's doing fine though, she must have just ate something her stomach didn't like. Bella's been having a pretty good week as of late, she's been a pretty happy girl, running around like a maniac and having lots of fun. We'll be heading out to the farm near our house (yes, there is one left) and picking out Bella's Halloween pumpkin on Sunday. Bella still isn't 100% sure what she wants to be for Halloween yet this year. We're trying to let her pick, but there's been nothing definite yet.

After my two concert week last week, I'll be trumping that with a three (yes, THREE) concert week next week. Thursday night I'll be going to see the great Broken Social Scene at the Vic, then the usually great My Morning Jacket (although the majority of their new cd is tossable) at the Chicago Theater, and then most likely The Kooks with the Whigs on Saturday at the Riv. I don't have much planned for concerts for the rest of the year, so Bella will get plenty of daddy time then.

Scary fact: Tomorrow (Saturday) marks the day 11 years ago that Michele and I went on our first date. Egads I'm old...

Two Concert Reviews for the Price of One!

2008-09-29T07:34:00.001-07:00

I thought I was going to have more time to write my reviews of my big shows this past week, but this weekend was insanely busy. I know, shocker.

First off was Sigur Ros at the Chicago Theater on Wednesday night. The band is in my top 5 favorite bands of all time (closing in on the top 3 even), so it's always a thrill to see them, especially at a place as perfect as the Chicago Theater. To make things even better, we got excellent seats for the show, very close to the front and on the front of an aisle, so I could actually move my legs and not feel like I was trapped in an airplane seat.

The show was opened by a band called Parachutes, who were actually pretty good, but that's mainly because they're the first Sigur Ros clone band that I've seen. Had I seent Parachutes at pretty much any other show or venue, I would have been very happy about their set, but since it was like seeing SRv2.0, when SRv1.0 was much better and waiting to play behind them, it got pretty frustrating.

SR finally took the stage at 9 pm, which made me wonder if this was either going to be a really short set (due to the 10 pm curfew), or if they were going to ignore that whole curfew thing. My frustration from the Parachutes set was instantly wiped away by the one single note which opens their magnificent song "Svefn g englar," the opening track to their astounding breakthrough Agaetis Byrjun. After the gorgeous 10 minute opener, they followed up with "Glosoli," the amazing opener to their also great album Takk..., which was the perfect one two "punch" (I have a pretty tough time using that word for another of their songs really).

After sticking to alot of older material in the beginning, the band settled in to showcase songs from their new great cd, Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust (meaning "with a buzz in our ears, we play endlessly" in Icelandic). Their new material fit in well with the older songs, since they have never really strayed far from their formula from day one, but who can blame them? The band brought out Parachutes to help them with the drums for "Gobbledigook," and closed with the always amazing Untitled #7 from their album ( ).

Yes, I'm really not making up these titles. I know, I could pretty much mash the keyboard and claim it's one of their songs or albums. In fact, here you go, here's a song from Sigur Ros's next album: q-3tug4jlg.

It wasn't the best SR performance I've seen, but it was still a pretty great one. I miss their opening band Amiina, who would help them with the odd instrumentation throughout their set as well. But the band was excellent as only a 4 piece anyways, so it wasn't a big problem.

On Saturday night, I headed to the dreaded Aragon Brawlroom to see My Bloody Valentine. The back story of this band is pretty interesting, Chicago music critic Jim Derogatis did an excellent job of summing up here. I say that I dreaded heading to the Aragon, since I have avoided being their for several years, since the sound is usuall horrible there, coming close to sounding similar to hearing a band play in cave, and not a good sounding cave at that.

The band Hopewell opened the show, and the only thing I can give them credit for is that they actually started early, which was a shock to me since I was expecting the show to run far behind schedule. I have no idea how they ended up opening for MBV otherwise, since their fairly generic and unmemorable sound was nothing like MBV's.

I expected MBV to hit the stage after a good hour or so wait at least, since they were supposed to have a massive sound system for this tour, and because the band is notorious for making fans wait for everything else (17 years since their last cd, 16 years since the last tour, etc.). The house lights actually went down at 9, to my amazement, but the band still managed to wait 10 minutes before taking the stage after that.

The sound of the show truly was amazing, I have never heard the Aragon sound that good, and I doubt that I have ever been to a show that loud in a venue of that size. The band spent the majority of the time on their masterpiece Loveless, with some older material mixed in as well, but nothing new, despite the claims that the band have possibly two albums' worth of material near completion.

My highlights were of course most of the tracks they played off of Loveless, with the opener "Only Shallow" being my favorite. The vocals were buried even deeper in the mix live than they are on record, where they already almost inaudible in the massive sea of guitars, so it was just as impossible to figure out anything they were saying live.

They played a solid hour set, then at 10:12 they actually said thanks to the audience, then launced into their closer "You Make Me Realize." I checked because I knew what was coming, the first two or so minutes were fairly typical massive pop, then the band went on to make an even more massive wall of white noise, going for 20 minutes (yes, TWENTY MINUTES) making the loudest noise I've ever head a band make. It was so loud, I could feel my nose, mouth, and even the pockets of my pants vibrating because of it. It sounded like a jet roaring at full blast (rumor has it their NY show clocked in at 124 decibels, just slightly above a jet engine at 120), then sounding like a tornado rumbling through and picking up that engine, then having a hailstorm pound on the jet engine, then getting even louder from there.

It was a pretty impressive display, at least for the first 10 minutes or so. It did get old after a bit before finally coming around to the pop sound again at the close of the song. If I didn't have my earplugs in (which the band was kind enough to donate pairs to the audience at the entrance), I'm quite certain I would have lost some hearing that night.

Let's hope the band doesn't wait another 16 years to tour once again. Well, at least if they do, I can take Bella with and she can see for herself next time.

Free Wilco Song

2008-09-23T11:49:00.000-07:00

Want a free download of a Wilco song? All it will take you is a simple promise that you'll vote in the upcoming election. Doesn't matter for who, just as long as you vote!

Click here, then you'll get an email with a link to the download after that. The track is a cover of Bob Dylan's "I Shall Be Released" done live in August with the band Fleet Foxes providing addition vocal backup.

Speed Racer

2008-09-22T10:26:00.000-07:00

Once again, catching up on movies from earlier in the year...

I watched Speed Racer on dvd this past weekend (technically Blu-Ray, but I won't brag). I can pretty much save you 2 hours and 15 minutes of your life and sum it up this way:

1. Get a large piece of paper approximately the size of your tv set. If you want to be a snob like me, make sure it is in the proper widescreen aspect ratio. A standard tv tube sized piece just won't do this justice.

2. Get the nearest 2 to 5 year old child you have handy access too, and hand them a large selection of those squeeze finger paint tubes, in as many colors as you can possibly gather.

3. Tell the child to splatter, mix, match, swirl, splatter and use any other technique to get as many colors on the paper at any time as they can.

4. Give said child at least two toy race cars. Doesn't matter if they look like the Speed Racer one, you really won't care. Tell child to pretend to have the cars race all around on the paper. Bonus points if they constantly make the cars crash into each other, bounce upside down off of each other, and break another other elemental law of physics.

5. Cut a picture of Matthew Fox and John Goodman out of a magazine, attach them to sticks, have the child occasionally wave those in front of you for 4 or 5 seconds.

6. Repeat step 4 for at least an hour and half.

You can thank me for saving you some of your time at least later.

A Good Week Ahead

2008-09-22T10:15:00.000-07:00

Loads of fun going on at our house this weekend, Bella got all better from her cold/fever thing, and was such a sweet little girl, that she decided to share it with her mommy, so Michele was sick all weekend. Fun times all around.

Bella and I took a road trip to exotic Sandwich, IL, with Grandma P (while Bella's mom stayed home and rested) to visit my Grandpa and Grandma, and so Bella could hang out with her cousins Jenna and Megan. It was a good time, Bella found a new love of both Cheese Nips and grapes, though luckily not in the same bite. She also got to climb around like a maniac in one of the McDonald's indoor playground things, and since she's not a fan of slides right now, she was stuck in a bubble about 15 feet above the ground for a while there.

I'm very excited about the week ahead, this is the week where I get to see Sigur Ros on Wednesday and My Bloody Valentine on Saturday. I'm pretty much as excited as can be for the Sigur Ros show, I'm already expecting this to be the best show of the year for me. You should definitely check out their new cd, which has a super long Icelandic title that I won't try writing, it is incredible as always.

I pretty much have to apologize in advance to my friends Brian and Lynn, who will be at the show with me. I can pretty much guarantee that at some point during the show, they can turn and look at me and will see me making the same face Nelson made when he was seeing Andy Williams on the Simpsons. They'll understand.

Classes are going well, I'll be building what is called a crystal radio soon in once class, which is basically a super simple radio that works without any power applied. Should be a good semester ahead.

One for Grandma P

2008-09-20T07:18:00.001-07:00

Had to show off Bella's new shirt, she was running around telling people about it at daycare yesterday...

Our Sick Girl

2008-09-16T08:32:00.001-07:00

We had loads and loads of fun this weekend... Unfortunately, Bella caught some flu or cold type bug on Thursday, and has been a pretty miserable little girl since then. She had a pretty bad fever Saturday and Sunday, so we also unfortunately had to miss out on the Terrible Twos show on Saturday.

We probably may not have gone to the show anyways, we somehow ended up getting a major downpour for pretty much a day and a half around our area. I've heard we got somewhere around 6 inches of rain during the storm system, so my lawn is finally much happier than it has been. We obviously didn't have it as bad as Texas did, but we definitely had some closed roads and soaked basements around us this weekend, so I guess Bella picked a good time to be a sick girl.

Bella and Mommy are still at home trying to get all better so she can go back to school and see all of her buddies (and yes, her boyfriends) again. The funniest part of this whole experience pretty much shocked us though. We've had to pump Bella with ibuprofin and tylenol around the clock to get her temp down, but somehow by Sunday, when we would try to give her more medicine, she would say "Mommy I'm fine!" We have no idea where that came from. She even said that today when Michele called into daycare to tell them she wouldn't be there again.

That kid is too damn smart...

SUPERCURL

2008-09-10T21:04:00.000-07:00

I'd like to introduce you all to: THE SUPERCURL!

As any of you who have seen Bella in, oh, the past year at least know, Bella has some pretty curly hair (thanks Grandma P). However, there is one lock of hair right in the center of her forehead that is only known as THE SUPERCURL.

We have no idea how this string of hair manages to be the curliest strand of hair on planet Earth, but it just is, and we must accept it and realize the power of THE SUPERCURL.

That is all.

My Month of Misery Begins

2008-09-07T20:40:00.000-07:00

I'm going to apologize in advance to everyone out there, since I"ll pretty much be incommunicado for the next month and a half or so at the least. I've just started a new semester at school, and in an effort to more or less sprint to an earlier finish to my Associates, I'm taking three classes this semester, so my Monday through Thursday nights are booked, as are my Saturday afternoons. Good times.

Add on top of that that we're doing some sort of super work flow improvement thing in my department at work that may end up meaning even more time spent for me at work somehow, even though I've already got all the class time, and ignoring the few hours in the week I get to spend with my little girl.

I've at least got some big shows coming up soon that I'm really anticipating that should make it all worthwhile. We'll be going to see the Terrible Twos once again this Saturday at Schubas, and we have very high expectations for that one. Bella loves their newest cd that came out last month, and she's already got most of the songs memorized, so that will be fun to see her enjoying that again.

A week after that I'll be going to see My Bloody Valentine at the Aragon. MBV are basically a band that released an album in 1991 called Loveless that changed the sound of modern rock at the time, and it took most bands a good 15 years to catch up to what they were doing. Sadly, they haven't released an album since then, and are finally touring this year after a 15 year absence from the road. Should be a pretty amazing show.

But most important to me is the band I'd probably say is my 4th favorite band in the world, Sigur Ros, who I'll be seeing at the Chicago Theater in about two weeks. Sigur Ros's shows are incomparable, there's no band in the world that is anything like them. The last show I saw them do at the Chicago Theater (back when Michele was pregnant with Bella and it was around the time doctors say the baby can hear in the womb) was one of the 5 greatest concerts I have ever seen, and you know that is saying alot. Their new release from this year is another great one, and it'll fit in perfectly with their previous material, so it should be an amazing night.

So I'll post when I can in the coming weeks, but expect me to be M.I.A. otherwise...

Grandma's 60th Birthday Celebration - Second Half

2008-09-02T19:59:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, we finished off the second half of Grandma P's 60th birthday festivities at our house. Grandpa and Grandma G were in town visiting that day, so we all had a BBQ in the back yard, and celebrated with some birthday cake. Of course the choice for the birthday cake decoration was pretty easy, as you can see...

Bella had fun as always, enjoying being a ham and showing off for everybody. She especially loved the blue icing from the birthday cake and the result of having it.

Happy birthday Grandma!

Grandma's 60th Birthday Celebration - First Half

2008-08-25T19:55:00.000-07:00

This Saturday, we started the celebration for Grandma P's 60th birthday with a gathering with my sister's family at Grandma's house. That was good news for us, since it meant Bella had plenty of time to run around like a maniac and get all of her energy out keeping up with her cousins Jenna and Megan.

In the first half of the afternoon, we hung around at Grandma's, and the girls played with bubble making stuff in the backyard, and then they helped my sister decorate the birthday cake for Grandma.

We then walked over to a park close to Grandma's house, and the girls again got plenty of energy out. Bella continued to amaze us once again, as she's somehow becoming an expert at climbing at only age 2. She kept up with her cousins as best she could, and she even was brave enough to go across one of those bouncy bridges, which normally scare her away.

We headed out to Red Lobster for my my mom's dinner after that, and Bella once again managed to eat her weight in mac and cheese. We had a thrilling ride home, since we ran out of diapers after Bella pooped there, so luckily that was at the end of dinner, so we got her in the car with no diaper on and sped over to Grandma's house, probably breaking the record for the time for that drive.

We hung out at Grandma' s for a little bit longer, and then took a quick pit stop to my favorite music store, Rolling Stone, before heading home. Bella had been in RS once about a year ago, but we haven't had a chance to take her back since then. To give you a quick explanation, it's pretty much all cd's in the store, and the ceiling has cd's and artwork and stuff hanging all over the place. So Bella walked in with us and LOVED it, she ran around looking at everything and being the loudest person in the store (even though it was almost 9:00).

While I was picking out cd's Michele walked with Bella to the back row of the store. Now keep in mind, when we talk to Bella about music, we talk about loads of bands (Terrible Twos, Death Cab for Cutie, Radiohead, Feist, Butch Walker, Weezer, etc.) . You may remember that Bella requested the Weezer song on the Rock Band game the last time we played it, so I guess she's becoming a fan. Michele picked up the new Weezer cd, which neither of us have shown her, and asked her if Bella knew who that was. On her first guess, Bella said "Weezer!" We have no idea how she did that, I don't know if she's already reading words or something, but we are just scared.

So it was a fun day all and all, and Bella mercifully slept like a rock that night. We'll be finishing the Grandma birthday celebration this Saturday on her actual birthday. Bella is ready to sing "Happy Birthday" another 4 or 5 times, along with 10 or 12 rounds of "Take Me Out To the Ball Game" as well.

Dan In Real Life

2008-08-25T12:03:00.000-07:00

So I'm trying to catch up on movies I've missed in the past year (hey, you try raising a two year old, going to school, having an active concert life, holding down a job, oh yeah and having a wife and all that too!), and I just watched Dan In Real Life last night, starring Steve Carell from The Office.

I was giving this movie a chance, since I'm a big fan of Carell going back to his days on the Daily Show. He of course was great in the 40 Year Old Virgin, so this was his first foray into the more "romantic" side of the "romantic comedy" genre.

Unfortunately, I was not a big fan of this movie. I'm not sure what I disliked more, the god awful dance-workout scene, the cliche-ridden family football game, the prediction of what my life will be like in 13 years with one daughter begging to drive and the other starting to date boys... No, it was none of these things, not even the fact that the writers, directors and producers expected us to suspend our disbelief enough to make us believe that a woman like Juliette Binoche might actually date a giant douchebag like Dane Cook.

No, it was none of these things, I came to realize. It was actually the fact that I sat through 98 minutes of this movie, and not one single character in the movie threw a punch at Dane Cook. It's my belief that if you're going to put Dane Cook on a screen for more than, oh, 2 minutes, someone had better throw a punch at his face. Just on sheer principle. I don't care if he's playing the same scuzzbag character he always plays, or if he's playing the Dalai freaking Lama, someone had better throw a punch at his face.

Hollywood: Please take note of this, and please plan accordingly in all future productions. Thank you.

Vacation Week Pt 4

2008-08-19T19:42:00.000-07:00

For our last day of relaxing on our trip, we headed to the Jersey shore to Michele's Aunt Joanie's house, for Bella to spend some quality time with the Cooney relatives, and more time with Carolina and Augie.

Bella again missed her nap that day, so she was a bit of a crank at some points, but overall she had a lot of fun, and got to introduce the family to her favorite movie in the world, Ratatouille. Good times all around.

After spending the night at Joanie's, we packed everything up and headed towards home. We made a long long drive from New Jersey to Cleveland the first day, then headed straight home the day after that. Loads and loads of driving, but lots of fun overall.

And of course, I thought I'd end things off with another photo of the infamous Jersey Shore Crab.