The opening band were called Fuck Buttons. Two guys who use rewired old school electronics to make some pretty astounding noise. I would probably not listen to it at home but I had to appreciate them of course. Especially when asian dude busted out the original game boy and got pretty fucking into whatever he was doing with it. For a bunch of button pressers they were pretty freaking animated. Also I am reverse racist and the fact that they had a cute asian gave them some extra legitimacy to me.

I love pictures like this unapologetically. I do not care if it's bad photography, I like the weird light effects and whatnot.

They were amazingly beautiful. I hate reviewing music or giving my thoughts because I feel so uneducated, and like you can get a better idea of what they are like by looking up one of the millions of other accounts of them on the internet. It is definitely epic. It penetrates your soul. If your soul is not interested in being penetrated do not attend one of their shows. I am so glad I got a chance to see them while they were in Victoria, even if I still do not quite appreciate how legendary they are. Anyway, so, it was a good show okay? Even though I only had two drinks!

And now, I think it may be almost Warcraft time. Yes, that is correct, after all these years of resistance Amber was finally sucked into WoW.

So we hit a few shows last night and took a bunch of pictures. We hit the Cindy Woolf CD Release show with Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin at The Outland Ballroom, the BluesFest Afterparty Jam at Nathan P. Murphy's and even caught some dudes jammin' some jazz on the street.

On the other side of the link is a brief taste (plus video), but to see all the goodness, hit up our Flickr!

Cindy Woolf (myspace)

Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin (myspace)

BluesFest Afterparty Jam with Tommy Castro and locals, City Streets.

Dudes jammin' Jazz on the street

Oh and a strong supporter of all things local music, Blondie, took some video (which is much much better than anything we can do with our hi-tech cell phone video thing). So here's a little bit of Eric Weiler Band and Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin. Thanks Blondie!

Eric Weiler Band (myspace)

Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin (myspace)

I hate portapotties. Hate them. My most recent experiences with portapotties have been ab frightening -- at the Gorge Amphitheater -- shared by 10,000+ campers, cleaned once a day. The worst experience was at the Pearl Jam show in 2006 -- I had to pee sooooo bad one morning that I finally worked up the nerve to go in. Upon opening this door to body function hell, I discovered someone's morning dook, coiled up, all brown and wet, staring directly into my eyes. I immediately lost all desire to pee and burst through the door so fast that Hubby, who was waiting for me, thought I was being chased by something. No, Hubby, just a giant pile o'poo.

So, you can imagine my sheer horror last night when "crampy, bad things" started happening in my bowel-area. The feeling started creeping up on me while we were waiting for the show to start. I tried to fight it, but when I started sweating and feeling like I might soil my panties, I knew that this bout of "issues" was stronger than me and immediately sought a bathroom, only to find that my only choice was a huge circle of HoneyBuckets (Oregon's portapotty company).

Wanting to scream, cry, plead with god for this not to be happening, I quickly assessed my options:

1. Continue to try to hold it, knowing that I would never make it

2. Go for it

Out of necessity and necessity only, I chose #2. Very carefully, I entered a green HoneyBucket, chosen because it was in the very back of the HoneyBucket loop and also out of the sun. I cautiously entered. Quickly scanning, I discovered that it was actually clean. There were no man stains in the urinal and it didn't reek of anything except HoneyBucket air freshener. Again employing much caution, I delicately opened the lid. GLORIOUS! NOTHING inside yet. This was a virgin bucket. I was the first and only person to use it this evening.

So, I proceeded to exorcise the demons. Quickly, carefully, never really making contact with the seat. I'm going to be honest, friends, I got splashed. Yes. Let me repeat, I got splashed by shit water. Splashed. As in, "shit water made contact with my bare, exposed skin." Soon enough, the debacle ended and I anxiously removed myself from my throne, wiping down all possible inches of my body with that hand sanitizer stuff.

Then we went to the concert. Then we came home and I promptly took the hottest bath of my life to rid myself of any PPTD (portapotty transmitted diseases) I might have picked up in The Splash.

Luckily, Hubby, who is the most understanding person on earth, reminded me that I actually made gargantuan progress in facing one of my worse fears -- having to do "that" in a PP.

Moral of the Story: When shit hits the proverbial fan, it's good to have a Hubby to bring out the good in you.

There was a very short-lived time, roughly from 1940-1963, when jazz came from the streets to play for the streets.  A series of barriers, racism firstly, greedy managers and club owners at a close second, led to jazz clubs closing and the music disappearing from the popular scene.  Somehow, it survived the 70s and the 80s (I'm really not sure how) and today, it survives as a museum piece on display, drawing roughly the same demographic as classical music.

Better than nothing, I guess.

When I do have a salary, and I pay off my student loans, and all the other loans life accrues along the way, I hope I can support the festival, and I hope my life allows me to make the Labor Day trip to Chicago every year or so to soak it all in.  It's tough to beat, really.  Even at its worst, we're looking at a free music in a park with a bottle of wine.  (Oh, apparently that's legal?  Gotta love consentual crimes.)

This year wasn't as much of a tour de force as last year was.  Sonny Rollins and Ornette Coleman don't do much for me musically anymore.  I'm very concerned about what happens to these sorts of events when all the figureheads have passed on.  With Joshua Redman or Kenny Garrett be willing to headline free festivals?  I'd hope so, if they care to see their music continue.

The best surprise I found at the festival was Dave Douglas' brass ecstasy.  He hasn't recorded that group yet, but he said he intends to.  Keep an eye on that.  I didn't know a tuba could be so funky.

And while no one is interested in jazz anymore, go get Jackie McLean's Demon Dance, one of the great last hurrahs towards the end of Blue Note's bluest years.

So this damn hurricane from the freakin' Gulf of DAMN Mexico has been sucking this week up (except for the marvelous day yesterday, but I wouldn't know b/c I was inside at work all day–i know some of you feel me).

Crappy weather aside, yes there is amazing football on all day today. But what are you doing to do when your ass gets sore from sitting on the couch too long? We've got you covered. There is a metric crap-ton of great live music going on tonight to cover just about any genre. We've got 80's heavy metal, jam happy feel good, funky delicious, jazz, blues, rock, covers and even some backwoods country to check out! So get out and hit the town with a group of friends and enjoy!

JUST LOOK AT ALL THOSE TAGS! YOU KNOW THERE'S A TON GOIN' DOWN TONIGHT!

(oh, and click the links to visit the bands on Myspace to give them a listen)
 

Remmington's Downtown

Machine Gun Symphony brings all the 80's hair metal awesomeness to melt your face. Get a group of friends together and party like you're in one of those cheesy fun 80's movies! But more face melting. 
 
 

The Outland Ballroom

Lance Sitton & The Seed, Bring Your Green Hat, and Jam Room
This will be a great show for fans of Jack Johnson, Reggae, Jam, and just damn good feel good music. Great with a group of friends and a bucket of beer.
 
 

The Outland

The Sociables!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! With Let It Rain.
You don't need to know anything else…get your ass there!

DOWNTOWN SPRINGFIELD ON PARK CENTRAL EAST

GO Magazine's HOT LIST Party. We're honorary guests (woot woot!). If you didn't know we were named Hot Blog for the area (thank you thank you). Well you can read the whole article here and see all the other awesome people that will be out and about and find out all about the party here and all the awesome stuff going on. We'll be there for quite a bit tonight so if you can, come out and say hey! Thank GO Magazine!

The High Life
DJ Platinum spinnin all your faves. Always a damn good time at the High Life.

Patton Alley Pub
East Ash Street

The Daily Pub
Hot Box

Harlow's
Steve Smith & the Sneakers playing rock, blues, and covers.

Mixology
Truet​t & The Trait​ors - no cover​ (21+). Oh…3165 S Campb​ell Ave. 

Galloway Station
The Diversity Band brings rock, country, rockabilly, and blues. 

Cartoon's
The Dropouts play just about everything. 

The New Key Largo
The Revenge serve up blues, rock, and great variety. (1281-B E. Republic Road)

W.F. Cody's South 
Thryllbilly bring great blues. (next to Harter House on Republic)

Restaurant's serving live music with that food…
(during dinner hours) (…kinda) 

Gem of India
Moon Honey performs acoustic at Gem of India from 6:30-8:30.

Nonna's
Jason Strickler performs live jazz from 7-9. Nice way to enjoy and fancy dinner with the lady! ;)

Haruno's
Jazz with Randy Hamm with John Raczka and Christin Bohrisch from 8-11pm (nice!).

Springfield Brewing Company
Ryan Talbot Experience. A jazz staple in Springfield. From 6-9pm. 

Off the beaten' path…way off!

Luttrell's Auction Barn
Country and bluegrass with Judy Domeny Brown and Southwynns. Oh…2939 W. Kearney Street.

Kanye West is slated to be the closing act at this years (the 25th annual) MTV Video Music Awards. This is of course after his vow to never perform on the show after recieving no awards last year and being treated "poorly" by having his performance in Las Vegas restricted to a smaller stage. Hes a bit of a character eh? And for the longest time I had a habit of refering to him as Cayan West. Honest mistake but funny none the less.
The Performance (Im hoping) is a showcase of his latest world Glow-In-The-Dark tour. We wanted to go because it was bound to be the best looking concert of the year, but there was just something about wearing earplugs to a show I didnt find too appealing. 
So look out for the ego-crazed star on the main stage im sure at this years Video awards

Strafford Route 66 Days in Strafford, MO is a two day event. Tons of bands and stuff going on. Check out their website at strafford66days.com. You can catch acts such as McGill, S-Foil, Nocturnal Nation and more! We've got the rundown and the flyers on the flip side.

Sorry this is late, but you can still catch a number of the acts if you chose to brave the rain.

Schiller also had guests: Jette von Roth, Jael (singer from the Band Lunik and from the project Mina) and my personal favourite, Kim Sanders - her performance of the song Forever was amazing and tugged at my heartstrings.

All in all, it was an amazing show, very good lights and I truly adore the sound engineer as I never ever have heard a concert that well mixed!

NYC Fashion Week is HERE. Solange did her thing at the Conde Nast Media Group’s 5th Aniversary of Fashion Rocks! here in NYC Yesterday.Other performances included her big sis Beyonce, Rihana, Chris Brown and Mary J to name a few.

Beyonce and Justin Timberlake performed. Bey held down a few performances. She's back Snitches!

She did a tribute to Etta James. She looks beautiful. Wow! The similarities are a bit striking. She's always on One Hundred. Gotta luv it.

Bey then joined Keyshia Cole, Ciara, Mimi, Ashanti and others for  “Just Stand Up”, the worldwide charity single benefiting Stand Up To Cancer.  The song was created and produced by LA Reid and Kenny "BabyFace" Edmonds. Peep the SHOE SWAG ON THAT STAGE! WOW!

Breezy hit the stage. GET INTO IT!

Rhi Rhi did her thing as well. Can't wait to see.

Sing Mimi. You know where gonna do some FLY lights in a minute....Stay Tuned.

-Stay FLY!

Spoon bootleggers might just be the laziest group of people I've ever seen in my life. Either that, or they have to "work" a lot, but regardless, there's no excuse for this track taking over a month to get to the internet. Jamming out to this in a moment of pure ecstacy during my unplanned stop at this year's Pitchfork Festival, all I could think about was how excellent this new song "Writing You In Reverse" was and how I was going to throw it right on to my iPod once I found it on the internet later that week. Wrong!

We had to wait over a month to get this incredible new track from Spoon, but I'm going to lay off the negativity and just say the wait was well worth it. This new track exhibits the best of Spoon, both old and new. It's got the upbeat catchiness of newer Spoon material like "Don't Make Me A Target," while still maintaining that quirky sense of rhythm and blues we heard on their earlier tracks like "Lines In The Suit," one of my favorite Spoon tracks from their second and arguably their best album Girls Can Tell.

Stereogum already made the stupid joke that if all of Spoon's new songs are as good as "Writing You In Reverse," then Spoon fans should go Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga for their new album (very corny, I know). But just hearing this song live and after listening to the recording at least two dozen times, I've got a feeling this new album will be better than Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, if that's even possible. Spoon has grown quite a bit since that last album in 2007, in regards to songwriting and stage performance, so as a longtime Spoon fan and even after seeing them three times in the past year alone, I just can't wait to see these guys again out at Street Scene in two weeks.

I'll be patiently waiting out the winter for that new album too guys. Take your time though. As a band with one of the most impressive and thorough discographies in indie rock, us fans are lucky to have so much great material to hold us over.

MP3: Spoon - Writing To You In Reverse

via YANP

Trans Siberian Orchestra Tickets are on sale now for the Giant Center in Hershey, PA Shows Sunday, November 2, 2008.  Tickets are available for the Trans Siberian Orchestra 3:00 PM show and 7:30 PM show.
Your Trans Siberian Orchestra tickets to Giant Center in Hershey are covered under Tickets Now 100% Guarantee.

Giant Center
950 Hershey Park Dr
Hershey, PA 17033

LOL, gomen, I'm still in a euphoric state after winning a contest yesterdayXDD I wasn't really expecting that my section's gonna win. I was totally in tears before the contest because I was the director of the play and my classmates' acting were kinda crappy. But in the end we pulled it all off and was declared champion *dances on top of a table* Thank kami-sama! Then I remembered and totally stared blabbing "Hey, today's Arashi's concert!" to anyone who would listen. My classmates were like "What the hell is she blabbering about?!" XDD *waves Arashi flag* Maybe Arashi's acting and Jun's DoS, freakishly perfecting something attitude possessed usXDD

Well anyway, enough of my boring school rants. Speaking of concert, I've read some con reports of Arashi's Kokuritsu ConXD and OMFG it sounds like its the most sugoii concert evaaa! They sang some of their old songs tooxD The vast amount of audience who went there was so overwhelming, and it was only pictures I saw, what more if I was there myself??! I wonder what they'll do on their tenth year anniversary?

You can read con reports HERE, HERE and HERE

There's this exchange program thing at school and Korea is the destination. I so wanna go badly coz it'll be around late October up to the early days of November and that means its somewhere sometime around Arashi's AAA Con. BUT the fee's so effinn' expensive, 75 000 pesos. Where will I get that sum of money??? Oh kami-sama, why's my life so miserable?

I didn’t know that the concert finally had a venue and a date. After the first concert promoter backed out and a new one signed in, I still didn’t know when it will be. Until, I saw a friend’s Yahoo status saying “Eraserheads reunion will be tomorrow, and I got ticket already”… damn! Where was I?

So, it was Friday and the last day of work week. I read the some forum on the net and it’s confirmed that the reunion will be held in The Fort, Saturday of August 30 at 8PM. Bingo! After my shift, I went to National Bookstore and bought my ticket. I’m pretty sure everyone was excited, sure they are! I heard a couple of guys singing “Minsan” while standing in a very long line of hungry fans. That time, I haven’t eaten my breakfast yet. I’m so particular with my diet and making sure I got the food I need in the right time but, that time was different. Exempted!

Patience and more patience and the prize is the official Eraserheads: The Reunion Ticket! I was eating my breakfast but my mind drifts and looked back how good their songs are and how genius Ely is. I went home, took few hours nap, woke up, called some friends, groomed and rushed to The Fort and I was there! The Fort –wow! Surely it was big but not enough for Ehead fans. When the screen shows 30 seconds countdown, you can hear all the noise and I was, at that time, Hahaha! Overwhelmed!

They first played “Alapaap” followed by “Ligaya” which literally turned me upside down! You know, I had this attitude of letting myself loose during concerts and that was no exemption. It was followed by hit songs and most of them are my favorite – “Wag Kang Matakot, With a Smile, Huwag Mo nang Itanong, Fruitcake, Kaliwete, Kamasupra, Toyang” and then a short break. It was then the band showed up with Ely’s sister reading a note of apologies and informed the crowd that Ely was rushed to the hospital due to stress, emotional, and poor health……………………………………………………………………….………and we all prayed. Amazing, really! To think that the band has been gone for many years and the response of the crowd is no less than a believer.

The band cannot continue without him, and it wouldn’t be the same Eraserheads without Ely. So, that concluded the night. I was fused with different feelings, thoughts, and emotions. It was a happy and sad experience but nevertheless, it was really a Night and a huge reunion of Eraserheads and the fans. I hope that Ely will be able to recover soon and though it’s obscure, I want them to be together again and bring back the OPM spirit. The new OPM bands have a lot to learn from them.

Must start feeling better for Mogwai tonight. I can't pretend to know this band well but I definitely like what I have heard. We ran out of pot; what kind of poetic justice is that? Hopefully impending falafels will perk me up... but wtf is a falafel?

Yes, the ocean is beautiful, it also smells like sea-stink.

Pre-coned Roxy. So full of life.

Desk forest. Yes I am pretty mature for my age.

WURK.

When I was a part of those audiences I had no kids, hadn't started uni, no idea what I wanted to do with my life. It would be almost a year before I hitched up with my man. Good grief, I hadn't even begun to be a librarian!

And it could have been last week. I still feel like that person. Strangely, given all the life that's come in between, it makes me feel empty, just like I always felt after each concert ended in 1986. 

Only a few weeks now until I'm 40, and in that same week I'm off to Queen and Paul Rodgers.  Some things never change. I wonder if my 17 year old self would recognise me.

I recently saw Bob Weir and Rat Dog open for the Allman Brothers show at Red Rocks. First off, let me submit that Bob Weir Might actually be the Gorton's Fisherman. Exhibit A:

Second, he rocked the stage in the shortest shorts this side of the Village People. Exhibit B:

Sorry, I know that was unnecessary, but so where Bobby's shorts.

But most importantly, Bob Weir's performance was like being behind the senior citizen at the grocery store who stubbornly refuses to give up the outdated practice of writing checks. Bob Weir played every slow Grateful Dead song that he ever wrote, except that he played it twice as slow as it was originally intended. I swear to God, he played Lost Sailor and Looks like Rain so slow that it literally took 40 minutes just to get through them. I was this close to chopping my nuts off and throwing them at the stage just to add a little excitement to the show.

He also employed that bullshit crutch that all "beyond their prime" rockers employ when they can't sing the notes they used to. He would kind of speak/rap the lyrics so that all emotion the song once had was flushed down the shitter (along with Bobby's self-respect).

And to round it all out he did this for TWO FUCKING HOURS!!!!!!!!!! Two hours for an opening act which sucked monkey balls.

When we finally got through the snooze fest and started rocking to the Allman Brothers, HE COMES OUT ONE MORE TIME TO CONTINUE HIS TORTURE UPON US!!!! It would be funny if it weren't so sad to see Weir attempt to play a solo on the same stage with Derek Trucks and Warren Haynes. Derek jams a face melting solo into Bobby plinking through what sounds like a drunk invalid trying to play a ukulele.

Retire Bobby. You suck!

1. Tom Petty (2 nights) The Gorge Amphitheater -- George, WA

2. Wilco (Jennie & Kadar) Les Schawb Amphitheater-- Bend, OR

3. Black Crowes McMenamin's Edgefield -- Troutdale, OR

4. Racounteurs (2 nights) -- Well, technically Hubby can't go to either of these shows because he's being shipped to Korea for work for two weeks -- what kind of crap is that?? Raconteurs rule!!

Roseland -- Portland, OR

5. The Kooks

6. Kings of Leon

7. My Morning jacket

Holy crap batman, we're  concert crazy! See you there!

http://picasaweb.google.es/marcpp/ADCReguers150808#

I'm having trouble embedding so peep the Link: Janelle Monae LIVE from Highline Ballroom NYC