Well, I hit the 10,000 mile mark on my car on my ride home on Monday (or maybe it was Tuesday). Weeee :)
September 2002 Archives
I went to see John Butler Trio with Don this past week. He won tickets on Jam Base, so he invited me to go. Neither of us had seen him before and really hadn't heard any of his music either. So, we were basically going in blind. Don said he had heard some good things on some of the jam band mailing lists, so there was at least some potential.
Psychedelic Breakfast were the openers. I know we missed some of their set, but I'm not sure of how much. These guys were pretty good. They seemed a little more straight ahead rock with some jam elements rather than an all out jam band. My biggest issue with this band was that the guitar player overplayed A LOT. He played like he was in an old school heavy metal band while soloing instead of just grooving to the music. Other than that, they were pretty good.
John Butler Trio came out with some stand-up bass, slide guitar, and drums to start the set off. Seemed a little slow and mellow, so I got a little worried. I was definitely not going to stay for two hours if it was going to stay at this level. Luckily, it did not. They picked up real quick. Some nice songs, excellent singing, and some good jamming (though after hearing the CD, some of it seems a bit rehearsed). John is rather political, so he had some banter between sets about some of the meanings of his songs, and who/what they pointed at. I definitely enjoyed the show and ended up grabbing Three, the first full length disc from this trio. This disc delivers. It was definitely as good as the show was.
I think John may be on his way to joining an elite group which includes people like Dave Matthews and Bob Dylan. The group is called Noone Can Understand What I Say Between Songs. He isn't there yet, but at a couple of points, I had to really listen to him.
I went and saw a few of my favorite bands a couple of weeks back (09/12) at the Fleet Boston Pavilion. First off, I have to say that I love this venue. This is the second show I saw there this summer and probably my 6th or 7th overall. This place is located right on the water. The seats are all pretty good. The other nice thing is that they have a set of tables at the back of the seats where you can sit and hang out, but still hear and see the show perfectly. Very cool.
We got to the show good and early assuming that King's X were actually going to go on early if both DT and Satch were going to get their supposed hour and a half sets in. I ended up waiting outside until 7:30 (when King's X went on, which was actually on time) trying to meet up with a friend. I didn't meet up with him, but luckily he got in anyways. I ended up watching KX from the back with Carl. They sounded good, but I didn't like that they only played like 6 songs. I REALLY like these guys and would much rather have seen them put on an hour set.
During the break, we went up to the seats. We had third row dead center. They were excellent, you could almost reach out and grab the bands. Joe Satriani came on next. I stayed up at the seats for about 3/4 of Satch's show and caught the rest from the back. Satch's sound was excellent. He played a variety of stuff, but mostly it was a greatest hits show. He played for about an hour, if that.
Next up was Dream Theater. As many people know, these guys are probably my favorite band. I've seen them a ton of times (probably around 30, I need to figure that out at some point). Their sound was sorta muddy throughout most of the set, but they came off pretty good. WAY too short a set for my tastes. I would rather have seen them play a 3 hour show. I think in the end they played about an hour as well.
After the show, I had aftershow passes from Mike. Bogie and I headed to the meet and greet area. We met up with Matt from Event and his girlfriend there. Matt gave me a 3 song sampler of their new CD. Very good stuff. I think these guys have finally gotten their own sound down and I really like it. We got to meet the band. I chatted with most of them for a minute or two. The guards were really trying to push us out (even while I was chatting with James and Bogie was chatting with Mike).
After the show, Nick and I headed over to the Bell in Hand to check out the end of Central Basement's set. They were in a wacky mood, which was funny. This, of course, was not a good idea as I was exhausted the next day, but it was a fun night.
I've watched a bunch of movies as of late.
Blade 2
I am a huge fan of Blade, own it on DVD, watch it from time to time, etc. When I heard the second movie was coming out, I was psyched. I wanted to see it in theaters, but didn't get a chance to. When the DVD release date was announced, I made sure to put it right on the top of my Netflix list.
I watched this hoping for the best. It was ok, nowhere near as good as I had hoped. Some of the action sequences were awesome, but at points too fake. It seemed like they put some computer animation in the middle of some of the action sequences. I didn't like that. The storyline was pretty good. The minor part of the love story was kind of weak. In the end, ok, but nowhere near as good as the original.
The New Guy
I really like all the teen movies. I've seen most of them a few times, so I assumed that this was gonna be another one I would enjoy. I was dead wrong. This movie was horrible. The only redeeming part of this movie is the 5 minutes of Eliza Dushku trying on bathing suits. And that's not even all that great.
Dead Again
I got this movie because Scenes from a Memory by Dream Theater is loosely based on it. Because of this, I knew a decent part of what the story was going to be about. In the end, it was an excellent movie. I really enjoyed it. It had some good plot twists and the acting was rather good.
Mulholland Drive
I got this because I heard it was somewhat like Memento in that it was somewhat of a mindfuck. It definitely was. Very strange things happening throughout and very confusing. But in the end, a very cool movie. This may be one for the buy list.
Ocean's Eleven
I got this from Columbia House a while back because I forgot to send the card in, so I decided to finally watch it. It was pretty good. Nothing over the top, but in the end a very interesting movie. I think I need to go out and rent the original to see how it compares.
John Q
This movie was rather good. I am still iffy on the whole political statement it made, but I thought told a decent story. I think some of the suspense came out of it having some good thoughts that things would probably work out in th end. And Heather Wahlquist is damn hot.
Yes, I know this was last week, but I am a bit behind.
Birthday weekend was fun and rough. Wednesday night, I headed to Sissys for some food and a couple of early drinks. We then headed over to The Rack to check out some of Michigan Black Snake's show. After that, we headed over to the Bell to see Stu, Keith and Milo play. It got ugly at the Bell as friends were buying me drink after drink and shot after shot. Late night we ended up back at Sissys for a few and then I headed home.
Thursday, my actual birthday, I spent much of the day being lazy. I actually did some work to deal with some of my boredom. I headed down to Sissys eventually to have some dinner and met a few people there. After that, we headed over to the Bell in Hand to see Central Basement. A ton of my friends showed up and some of the more evil ones bought me shot after shot after shot, etc. The night ended sorta early for me as I could hardly stand. Bad friends :)
Friday night, Becky, Vinnie and Emily rented a private room at Boston Billiards and a bunch of us met there. I was still hurting from the night before, so I kept it slow on Friday. It was a nice time, good and relaxing, which is just what I needed.
The rest of the weekend, I pretty much laid low to save some money and get some relaxing in.
All in all, it was a fun weekend which involved just a bit too much alcohol.
I'm going to try and catch up the last few weeks today :) Things like birthday weekend, a bunch of movies, Dream Theater show, etc.
It's funny, I can still remember the whole beginning of my day a year ago today. I planned to head to New York to move back there. I had already finished moving all of my stuff out of my apartment in to storage and was living with Don for a few days to enjoy my birthday with a lot of my friends. I also wanted to stay to celebrate Don's birthday, so I decided to stay until the 11th.
Monday night we had gone out for Don's birthday, so I shut my phone off when I headed to bed to make sure no one bothered me early in the morning. I woke up just before 10 and started finishing up my packing. My phone rang a few minutes later and I saw that it was a Long Island number. I was annoyed because I figured someone was not going to be able to pick me up or something. I answered to my sister in a frenzy. She was checking to make sure I was ok and was going on and on and I was very confused. I was sure she had tuned in to War of the Worlds and had not realized it. I ventured in to the living room at Don's and turned on the TV. I didn't leave until almost 2AM or later. The rest of the day is basically a blur, but I just remember sitting on the couch all day watching everything unfold.
This year, the day was in mind, but not to a terrible extent. The first thing I did was turn on the TV when I woke up to make sure all was well. It was, so I went about my normal routine. I got in to the car and people were talking about last year on WAAF. I flipped around during commercials and heard something interesting on BCN. Howard Stern was talking about planes hitting the WTC. I listened for a bit and realized they were rebroadcasting last year's day. It was very interesting to hear. The strangest thing was hearing all the rumors which ended up not being true. I was listening when the first tower collapsed, which was just frightening to listen to again. A very interesting tribute.
Over the course of the day, there were signs on the Net. Things like Yahoo going gray, Slashdot's banner ad just saying 09/11/2001, CNN and ESPN headlines, etc. Today was a busy day at work, so spending too much time thinking about it was difficult.
This evening I planned on avoiding the TV shows about 9/11. I didn't want to end up getting all upset all over again. I was flipping around after the President's speech and came upon something interesting on CBS. They were showing a documentary. It was not supposed to be a documentary about 9/11, but ended up being. It was a documentary about a new fireman's first nine months as a probationary fireman. His time started in June down the block from the WTC. Eventually they came to 9/11. Some of the sights and sounds of this were amazing. Things I had not seen before, but definitely something new to think about. It gave you a real sense of what was really happening inside. My favorite part about this was that it had a "happy" ending. I say it was happy because every one of the firefighters from this house made it back in one piece. It was nice for it not to be another way to make you feel bad.
Another nice thing I happened to catch this evening. At 9:11PM tonight, baseball stopped. They paused for a minute and then showed a nice tribute to America and baseball.
In the end, a sad day that I don't think anyone will every forget.
It's my birthday today. Yay me! I'm already hungover, thanks to the crew at the Bell last night. Oops. More punishment tonight, ack!
Also, happy birthday to Vaughn and Lynn!
So, I have been a slacker here lately. Just haven't felt all that inspired to write and haven't really had much to write about. Hopefully I'll get a little better this week. I got a couple of movies in this weekend, so I will write them up at some point. Hopefully I'll try and keep up with the news and going ons on the Net this week as well.
My birthday is this Thursday. Should be a good time. I'm trying to get all my friends to go out on Thursday to go see the guys in Central Basement. My liver is already trembling. I have way too many hard core drinkers as friends :) Friday night a small group of us are going out to play some pool over at Boston Billiards to celebrate Tim and my birthdays. Becky and Vinnie are supposedly doing all the organizing, so thanks to them. And then I think there will be some pre-partying on Wednesday as well. It's going to be a scary week.
Hopefully all this stuff (and the short work week) will help inspire me a bit. I definitely feel like I have been in a rut as of late. Basically doing the same old stuff all the time. I really would like to continue playing guitar. I was good for a few weeks, but have fallen off some since.I went out to California. I also really would like to be doing some more reading. Keeping up on the web sites (this one and my dream theater sites) would also be a nice thing.
