Beginning of a Problem
Originally uploaded by Corvar152

My current collection of whiskey.

I have been a fan of Tracy since the late 80's. I am not sure if I heard Fast Car or Talkin' 'bout Revolution first, but they are both incredible songs which I have listened to innumerable times.

When we arrived at the Pabst, we weren't positive if there was an opener. Once we got there, we found out that Gabby Moreno was playing. Neither of us had heard of her before, and were delighted with her performance.

First, I must say that Tracy Chapman still looks great, and sounds even better. Her set really spanned her entire career, from her early hits to last years album, and even covers. Tracy played a variety of guitars, an electric banjo, and even a box, mixing things up after pretty much every song. It was really a fantastic set.

My one negative comment about the night was that the crowd was weirdly rowdy. It was an older crowd (in fact older than I thought it would be). But there was a lot of weird yelling at the stage and cat calling.

I am terribly tardy in writing this, so it will be woefully incomplete as a review. I am still awed by how great of a performance space the Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park is. This is the second concert I have seen there, and it sounds absolutely fantastic. I would love to move into the city just so I could go there more often.

This show was part of Chicago's New Music Monday's series. It was originally slated to be headlined by Rokia Traore, who I know next to nothing about. Not sure if she had visa problems, or what the deal was, but it looks like all of her US dates were cancelled. So Chicago locals Shellac were announced as filling in about a month before the show. It seems that word got out, because there was quite a crowd of Shellac fans in attendance.

Shearwater was a bit mismatched with Shellac, but I don't know if the New Music Monday shows really match opener to headliner, even without a last minute lineup change. Shearwater didn't really fit the mood I was in, and nothing particularly leaped out about them.

Shellac really presents an interesting visual to me. Steve and Bob are so unassuming and so do not look the rockstars, while Todd exudes rockstar. All are fantastic musicians, and add their own personality to Shellac. They put on both a long and energetic set, possibly being the first ones to express such sentiment as, "Fucking kill him. Kill him already, kill him." over the pristine Pritzker sound system.

Shellac has never failed to overwhelm me and leave me a little limp and disoriented. Seeing them back in the day at the Congress for the Lounge Ax, Fireside Bowl, Rainbow Rollerrink, etc. to seeing them last year at the Hideout, they have always put on a great show.

Some pictures from the show can be seen on Flickr.

Who's on the scene
Originally uploaded by Corvar152

--
William R. Thomas aka Corvar
corvar@gmail.com corvar@theonering.net
Sine coffea nihil sum.

Good Humor
Originally uploaded by Corvar152

It's building tenant appreciation day, so we get icecream for free.
Unfortunately, I am being good, so I just got a Chocotaco for a
coworker.

I have had many great times going to see the Reverend, and I am sure I will continue seeing him for as long as he still tours. There is a whole group of my friends who cycle in and out for the various shows, and I would be really surprised if I didn't know a small handful of people who see him whenever he is in the area. Thankfully, not only is the Reverend a legendary entertainer, he is also a workhorse tourer, so we never have to wait terribly long before he is in the area.

The Nekromantix were the openers, and I have never had the privilege of seeing them before, though I have seen Kim Nekroman perform in his guise as the guitarist for the HorrorPops a couple of times. With the death of Andy DeMize in January, I really wasn't sure if the Nekromantix were going to follow through with this tour, thankfully they did. Andy was replaced by Lux, who did a solid job and definitely made the band a lot cuter. They put on a solid performance, and I will keep an eye out for them in the future.

I didn't realize that Reverend Horton Heat had a new album out, until the Reverend mentioned it on stage. The set was primarily old classics, with a smattering of the new songs tossed in. A special treat was Hoss (the light engineer) taking the microphone for a cover of Motorhead's Ace of Spades (in honor of the impending tour with Motorhead this fall).

It was another wonderful hot smelly evening, courtesy of Elektrotrash. My only negative comment is the annoying paypal receipt tickets, requiring the entire group to be present to get in. Of course, that is just sour grapes because I got stuck with tickets. One of the bonuses, is that cameras were allowed, so I have posted a handful of pictures from the evening here.

I haven't really written much here of late outside of my concert goings. Things have been very good, and when that happens this often dries up. But I am going to make a valiant effort to catch up everyone to some degree.

I have been seeing someone since February and it is going fantastically well. Michelle and I really clicked right away and moved to getting serious pretty quickly. So I have been spending as much time as I can with her, getting to know her and her kids better. And it has been pretty great.

More recently, Lisa (maegwen) took off on her cross-country spirit quest and one of her first stops was to visit me. She came in on a Friday night and headed west with the sun on Sunday. While she was here, I showed her around Kenosha a bit more and took her up to Milwaukee. Lisa, Anne (Entmaiden), and I went up for dinner, a bit of aimless wandering, and to see Flight of the Conchords. I think both of them enjoyed this glimpse of what Milwaukee has to offer.

Last Thursday, I flew out to Tucson to visit Nancy (a friend from college). I knew she had been out there a long time, but I didn't realize it had been since 1994. I have long promised to come visit, and finally I lived up to my obligations. It was hot, but wonderful. The big bummer was that Two Feathers was out of town, I would have liked to get to know him when he didn't feel like the odd man out. We didn't have any big plans, and much of the weekend was filled with the activities that 4 kids force on anyone, so we had multiple soccer games, trips to and from school, coaxing/prodding/cajoling/threatening kids through homework, etc. They did go out of their way to show me about town and the desert a bit. We went to Tohono Chul and Agua Caliente. I also got to visit Two Feather's cafe a couple of times Epic Cafe (which has fantastic food and drinks and I would strongly recommend it even if it wasn't owned by a friend). Before I got out there, I was a bit concerned about sleeping on a futon in the family room, but the futon didn't break my back and the kids let me sleep until I naturally woke up and take naps without disturbing me. On Saturday evening, I even got to meet up with Jon (Tookish) for drinks. Overall a very good trip, and I want to go back and visit some other time (probably during the cooler part of the year because I don't know if I could hack warmer ;).

Hmmm, what else is up. I am going up north for my annual planting expedition next week.

Work has been busy, but I have been getting stuff done which is nice. I guess that's about it.

It is really silly to write a review of Flight of the Conchords as a concert review, but here I am. I guess Flight of the Conchords are sort of a dual surprise attack, are they comedy? are they music? They are both, and kick your butt, or something like that.

The act requested that all of the best seats be held for will call only, buyer must be present and you must immediately enter the venue. This cut down on scalper problems, but meant the people who cared enough to jump on presales right away to get good tickets had to stand around like cattle to get in. I am really torn about this, and think there has to be a technical fix to scalper programs, but what do I know.

The warm up act, opener, whatever you want to call him was Eugene Merman. He plays the landlord in the series, but his act had nothing to do with that (which is no surprise). He had a number of good bits, especially the Delta airlines one.

Bret and Jermaine put on a solid show, alternate comedic banter with songs that were featured on the show. They were joined by Nigel Collins on cello, bongos, backing vocals, etc. Nothing specifically stands out in my mind about the performance, but it has been an action packed week since I saw them. Definitely a couple of funny chaps.

This was one of the most highly anticipated shows for my group of friends and I in a long time. I jumped on the pre-sale the day it started, and got tickets near the front of the balcony. Unfortunately, Neko sold out the Pabst incredibly fast and they moved the show to the Riverside. That was the beginning of my ticket frustrations. I received the email that the venue was being changed before I received my tickets for the first venue. The email said they would be re-issuing seats and you should get comparable seats to your original, I got the exact same seats, and the Riverside's balcony is closer to the stage so I won't complain about that. I will complain that I didn't hear anything more about my tickets until 2 weeks before the show, when I got another email saying that my seats would be the same and that tickets were printed and should arrive in the mail. It also had a caveat that if the tickets didn't make it I could go to the boxoffice the day of the show and get new copies printed. Now a smart and cynical person would read that to mean, we didn't actually mail your tickets, they will be at will call and we are just fucking with you, but I actually eagerly checked my mail daily and on a daily basis swore at them. When I got to the boxoffice, my tickets were already printed and waiting with what seemed like a whole theater of other peoples, so I call Pabst/Riverside/Turner/TicketWeb a bunch of lieing asses.

Once I got the tickets in my hot little hands, and my ticket anxieties vanished, my experience picked up. Riverside of a beautiful venue that sounds great. We had good seats (though I am a big boy and old theater seats are not spacious). After picking up the tickets, we met the rest of the group across the street and Mo's and had a drink. I was sort of prodding people to get them moving so we could see the opener, and we still ended up missing a song or so of them.

I didn't know much of anything about Crooked Fingers, but they definitely landed in the category of an opener that knocked my socks off and won me over as a fan. Before I left, I picked up a couple of their CDs and am listening to their newest album as I type this. I think everyone in my group ended up liking Crooked Fingers quite a bit. They played a really tight set, sounded great, and had a wonderful chemistry. From looking up their bio, Eric Bachmann is the constant in the band, but I really hope he keeps his two partners (Miranda Brown is one of them, not sure about the crazy percussion/keyboardist who rocked out) around going forward.

When the lights went down signaling that Neko and company were coming on stage, you could almost feel the anticipation. I don't know the whole band, and couldn't say if some of the members changed, but Kelly Hogan and Jon Rauhouse were definitely there. Kelly was looking and sounding lovely as always, and Jon played some crazy licks on 12 string, banjo, peddle steel, etc. I could blather on and on about Neko, how great she sounded, the witty banter between songs, etc. but really it won't tell anybody how great the show was, but instead just how big of a crush I have on her. I will say, the video that they had playing on the screen behind them was very cool, they did People Got A Lotta Nerve to the music video (which I hadn't seen before) which was great. The mix was quite well done, so if you like Neko's studio work, live would blow your socks off. They played a nice mix of old and new stuff, but I would love to near some of the stuff that reaches back to Neko Case and her Boyfriends (like South Tacoma Way or Thrice All American).

Neko mentioned that they will be touring again in the fall, and I definitely plan to catch them on that tour as well.

We couldn't have missed more than a song of Jennifer O'Connor when we showed up. But unless she started off real strong and faded quick, we didn't miss too much. Jennifer played well, but she just didn't grab the audience, possibly because the audience wanted nothing short of the Indigo Girls.

An act like the Indigo Girls could possibly learn something from Flogging Molly in choosing an opener. Specifically, Flogging Molly picks a quality opener that really doesn't match their style too closely, which really allows the opener to shine. I guess many acts could learn from that lesson.

I was first introduced to the Indigo Girls in the late 80's, or maybe early 90's. I don't know where my mom got it, but she had a cassette of their self-titled release. Despite being very into loud, angry, angsty boy music (industrial and punk), I liked them enough to copy that cassette and I listened to it for many years. I have intended to see them play live for a number of years now, and I am glad it finally worked.

The Indigo Girls really put on a great performance on many different levels. They sounded simply fantastic. They did a great job of mixing in old stuff with new, hits with the slightly more obscure, etc. They also did the best job I have ever seen of audience participation. During a number of songs, they stopped singing so that everyone could hear the crowd singing. And I must say, their audience could sing (I just mouth the words, because my voice would bring down the entire thing). As a sort of interlude, they brought Connie Grauer of Mrs. Fun on stage to play something on piano called Picaso's Shoes which was a fantastic aside. I wouldn't mind checking out Mrs. Fun sometime down the road. For the encore, both halves of Mrs Fun joined the Indigo Girls on stage along with Jennifer O'Connor to sing Closer to Fine.

It had been well over a decade since I was on the Carroll campus, and I had never previously been in their fieldhouse, so I had no idea what to expect. I guess if you would have asked me, I would have thought something closer to my university's fieldhouse than my high schools. But the later was the case, if I am off, my high schools fieldhouse was bigger. I was double pleased to find out the only thing to drink was warm bottled water with no cap. And triply thrilled that the accommodations were port-o-lets outside of the building. The only plus was that because the bathrooms were outside they opened a garage door which lowered the temperature from 1,000,000 DegF to a mere 999,998 DegF. Oh also, if you collect your ticket stubs, you were S.O.L. because they took the whole ticket at the door.

While I am making fun of the venue, I will say that it sounded AWESOME for a gym. Hell it sounded about 80 times better than the Eagles Club has sounded in the past decade, and even better than a number of venues whose sound engineer aren't a deaf mute (I think a lot of the Eagles Club/Raves sound system if you couldn't guess). They also had a crazy number of staff running around, not sure what they were doing, but there were definitely a whole bunch of them. So if you needed venue staff, you could probably touch at least 1 at any particular time it seemed.

There was a pretty darn big crowd. The show was sold out, and it definitely seemed like everyone showed up. If the crowd was a little older (or less wee) the place would have been a whole lot more crowded. I think the average age was probably 20 and the average height was 5'2". Even with the stature of the crowd, I do think a fire marshal would have had issues with the crowd. Not sure if the number of tickets sold was based off a capacity without 400 staffers, or if they didn't take into account the room used by the stage, or what, but it seemed fuller than permissible.

On to the music at last. The first band up was Ra Ra Riot, one of the people I went with was a big fan of theirs and I could see why. They sounded really good, though Alexandra's vocals were no where to be heard in the mix. Their set was a bit short, but they were the first opener so I guess I can understand. I will be watching for them in the future, I got their CD and already have listened to it through.

Next up were the Cold War Kids. They fall into the, not bad but didn't grab me category.

Death Cab for Cutie put on a really great set. They sounded great, they hit the songs I really wanted to hear, and they played a decently long set. The first song of the encore was Ben doing I Will Follow You Into the Dark which was awesome. I was torn between wanting them to play longer, and wanting them to finish knowing how wrecked I would be at work today. But they put on a great show.

As an aside, there was a roadie (not sure if he was with the school or the tour) who looked like Hagrid and wore a suit while tearing apart/setting up everything. I also saw someone wearing a hot dog suit (like what you would wear to advertise a hotdog stand), or maybe someone slipped some acid into my open water bottle.

It had been over a decade since the last time I saw Morrissey live, and back then he was playing arena type venues so I was no where near close to him. I was sort of sad that there were no gladioli being waved and tossed about, of course I am not sure how the Rave's bouncers would have dealt with flowers. I guess the lack of flowers could have been the season, but come on, it's Morrissey get him tulips or something ;)

Mitchell was chronically late for dinner, so we pretty much completely missed the opening act. I think we heard their last two songs. They sounded pretty good, but I didn't hear enough to really form an opinion. They were The Courteeners and I do think I will check them out based on the smidge I did hear.

Morrissey started his set with authority, opening with This Charming Man. It was possibly the best song of the night. I was also pretty stoked by Black Cloud and Irish Blood, English Heart. There are a slew of songs I would have loved to hear, but there is no way to make everyone happy. The backing band did a damn fine job supporting Moz, though Johnny Mar would have been a great addition.

At this point, there are well over a handful of bands that I have seen more often than Morrissey, but there is no one else in the running for the time between the first and most recent times I have seen them perform live. He is timeless, and Years of Refusal really proves it. Seriously it is his best album in quite a while, and I will continue listening to it, while some of the other interim releases don't get much play. I don't know how soon I will go back and see Morrissey live though. Possibly if he did a best of tour would draw me out, and definitely a Smiths reunion would.

On Sunday, I went to see Monsters Vs. Aliens and I happened to go to the iPic theater up in Glendale. I didn't know anything about the theater, but I have to say I am a bit sold on them.

I am guessing none of my friends have actually been to one, so I will start at the beginning. The first thing you notice when you try to buy tickets, is that most of the seats are reserved, and there really aren't that many of them. Tickets are a smidge more expensive for the reserved seats ($14 at night) but they include popcorn. Another thing is no kids are allowed after 7pm.

Once you get past ticketing, you come upon a bar. A pretty good selection of alcohol, I didn't look to see what they had for beer, but the prices didn't seem too bad for the 32oz beer option. They also had popcorn, nachos, pretzels, etc. to take into the theater.

Further in, they had a small bowling alley, a bigger bar, and a full restaurant.

In the theater, all of the chairs were big, like real big, and not with another seat right next to it. We were in general admission (the first two rows closest to the screen) and the seats all had room for a small table between them and every other space actually had a table. In the assigned area, the chairs were even more comfortable looking, with individual tables attached to the arms. The furthest back row was a series of love seats.

All in all, a pretty swank way of seeing movies, and I definitely plan on going back. Of course, I will never take the risk I did and not have tickets before showing up. We got tremendously lucky.

It looks from their website, like iPiq is expanding and hopefully they will be widely available soon.

I switched which computer my iTunes is on, and screwed it up on the old computer, so I lost all of my apps.

So what are your favorite iPhone apps right now? The last time I really talked to people about apps in general, the app store was relatively new.

So wow me with your app knowledge.

I guess I should preface this with, I don't really care what consenting adults get up to in their bedrooms, dungeons, or heck, the backyard. If no one is getting hurt (more than they want to be), rock out with your... So with that said, on with the story.

I have seen a Scion xB tooling around town a couple of times, always from behind. On the back, it has the little family stick figure stickers for a number of kids and some pets. There is also something else that seemed very family oriented, not sure if it was the Jesus fish or what. But the last thing was just a URL along the top of the back window, PawStar.com.

In the past, I had wondered what the heck PawStar was, but by the time I got to a computer I always forgot the URL. Today, I was pulling into the grocery store parking lot while the xB was coming out. So for the first time, I got to see the side of the little box. On the side, along with the URL, it had a number of words, Gothic - Cosplay - Furries... Beyond those words, I could swear I saw a little kid in a child seat. I didn't make out the last of the words, because I started giggling.

There has always been something that has made me giggle about furries. Maybe it is my fear of being typecast as a bear instead of my inner fuzzy bunny. But mainly the people just look friggin silly (my apologies to any furry/anthro fans who may read this). But what simply pushed me over the edge was the mix of the family stuff with the furry stuff.

It's not every year that you get an opportunity to see an act like Flogging Molly on St Patrick's Day, so I leaped on the pre-sale immediately, not knowing how many friends would want to come. So I bought 6 tickets right away, and ended up selling one of them on Craigslist. I much prefer selling tickets on craigslist to someone who will actually be going to the show and enjoy it versus selling it someone who will turn around and scalp it for a profit.

My gang of people drove down to a CTA park and ride and took the El into the city. While getting our transit passes, a CTA worker came up and asked us, "How many Irish Popes have there been?" we responded, "None." He then asked us, "How many Polish Popes have there been?" and we responded, "Quite a few." He then cracked, "Yeah we are going for a shut out."

Our plan was to find someplace to eat and have a few pints in Wicker Park, while waiting for the last of our group to meet us. We happened into the Wicker Park Tavern. Their food comes from Cafe Absinthe and was pretty good, the pints were relatively cheap, they played Irish music, and had soccer/rugby on the TVs. We were pretty happy with things, and then the Chicago Fire Department Pipe and Drum corp showed up to play a set. Tom bought them a round of shots, which hopefully didn't cause them problems later in the evening when they played at the United Center. We chatted with the members for a while, and one of them is in a band which plays traditional Irish songs, and covers of bands like Flogging Molly and Dropkick Murphys. They are called Red Rebel County, and I will have to check them out when I get a chance.

Eventually, the last of our group met up with us, and we wandered/staggered down the road to the Congress. We had pretty well missed the Dub Trio by the time we got there, but that meant there wasn't a lot of waiting around. The Aggrolites took the stage, and while I had been looking forward to them and they did sound good, their vibe just didn't match the St Pats energy. I am usually very happy that Flogging Molly chooses diverse other bands who sound different to open for them, but on St Pats, everyone is Irish, and the opening acts should have been.

I really don't have too much to say about Flogging Molly, they put on a fantastic show. I have seen them a bunch of times already, and they always do a great job. Ending their current tour on St Pats in Chicago, was certainly the way to do it. I don't know that I have seen the Congress quite as full as it was last night, and definitely the crowd was into things.

I am not sure what would possess me to start the week off with a show that is going to run this late, but there I was at Planet on a Sunday night seeing 4 bands. Now don't get me wrong, I do enjoy it, but I am getting too old for this shit when I have to work the next morning (and drive 2 hours in the middle somewhere).

The first band up was the Jetty Boys. I guess they are semi local, from Sheboygan or some such. There were some problems during their first couple of songs (no lead vocals), but after the sound guy got that fixed they sounded good. I would label them sort of a power pop punk mix. They were definitely the pleasant surprise of the evening, and I will hopefully get to catch these guys again.

The Jetty Boys were followed up by The Daniel James Gang and Poison Arrows. The Daniel James Gang is another local act, I didn't get into them as much as Jetty Boys. Poison Arrows seemed to bring a heaping dose of pretension with them from where ever they came from.

The Queers put on a solid set, as they always do. The original singer, Wimpy, was in attendance and took the stage toward the end of the night. I prefer Joe King's vocals and more laid back style, but it was interesting getting to see Wimpy's broody aggressiveness. I ended up bugging out not long after Wimpy took the stage, so I am not sure how long the set was.

St Pats
Originally uploaded by Corvar152

I called in advance, and the box office said that no cameras were allowed at the show, so I didn't bring mine with.

I had thought the show was going to be down in the Rave, but it was upstairs in the Eagles Ballroom. I just didn't think that the Murphys had that type of draw, but they definitely packed the upstairs. The other times I have seen them, they didn't play nearly as large of a venue, so it seemed like a big step up. They even splurged on some lights and such.

First up was an act called Civet. They had a number of elements I am fond of, so I should have loved them, but they were just to hardcore for me. They were a smoking hot girl band, their tags on Last.fm included such favs as psychobilly, punk, riot grrrl, etc. I should have just loved them, but I never could get that into hardcore. I wanted to like them enough that I listened to some studio stuff this morning, still no love from me though.

I could say similar things about H2O, well except for the whole smoking hot girl band thing, but it comes down to my disdain for hardcore. Though I guess there is a bit of a comparison, because they definitely seemed to be the pretty boy side of hardcore, hell I think if it came to a pit or fistacuffs Civet would have kicked H2O's ass (judging by the badassness of looks). Tom kept making Good Charlotte comparisons, I don't know, I will just leave it at not my thing again. Though, I will give them props on doing a bit of a Fugazi cover (which inspired me to say, "Ian McKaye would die just to be able to roll over in his grave over this"). It would have gone over better if I hadn't seen Fugazi do Waiting Room from almost the exact same vantage point.

Dropkick Murphys put on their typically excellent show. I would love to eventually see them do Green Fields of France live, but I realize that is probably never going to happen. Outside of that, there was no particular song I really wanted to hear that they skipped. It was neat being up in the balcony and being able to watch the crowd down on the floor writhe with the band. I have seen DKM enough times at this point, that I just don't have much more to say.

Aww how cute is that?
Originally uploaded by Corvar152