"I'm spinning round the room in awe" ryan adams

Saturday, September 13, 2003

Tasty

Since someone likes to talk in their sleep....what little sleep was to be had (4 hours) wasn't really had until about 8 am where I got an hours worth of sleep after Mark and Justin left for B'more. Aurora called my ass and woke me up at 9:30 so we could hit the road by 10. Picked up Jen and Marissa and we were on our way down 95 South. But not without a stop to Dunkin Donuts and Wawa first. We were cursing the rain before we even left DE.
So we dodged the raindrops on 95 and made it to Baltimore incident free. Except for parking. Ok, I go to Philly a lot and know that city like the back of my hand, and though I go to b'more for the inner harbor and fells point, I am not too familiar with that city, though it is almost equally as close. Yeah and the parking sucks. So we found this lot, that you just fold your money up and put it in the slot, its not computerized so ther eis no time count or anything. And the slot to put the dollars in is the size of the width of a dime, so you literally have to roll the dollar to slide it through. After 5 minutes of trying to figure the damn thing out and shove money in it to no avail, we found another lot, a block closer, and the same price, but easier.
So we park and head to Camden Yards to start our morning off with Jonasay at the Taste of Baltimore. We weren't going to go to this event until John Faye (of IKE) mentioned it to us at my concert on Labor Day. Ike is great and we don't get to see them enough, so they were the deciding factor.
So as soon as we find Jonasay, the rain starts and we get slightly soaked. Jen had the revelation that this is a rare occasion that we see a band perform twice in less than 12 hours in two different states. We missed some of their set, but it was enough to satisfy.
After they played we decided to stroll around Camden Yards and check out this event they call Taste of Baltimore. Oh yeah so awesome. Every where you went you got free food and free stuff. Our favorite were the balloons that said "Silver Spring, MD" on them. The essence of SS, MD will be mentioned in an upcoming blog. So we walk around and enjoy the festival, then its time for Ike.
Ike is fantastic and definitely one of my favorite bands. It started raining again and a nice guy let me use his umbrella. Then it started to downpour so we all went under a ledge until Jen and I said screw it and we played in the rain and danced to Ike. We made the band laughed when we shouted out Beautiful. Cliff played the Christina cover at my show and it freaking rocked. But yeah, played a long set full of musical goodness.
After Ike, we walked around some more and said goodbye to Aurora since she had to go to work. Time to see Fountains of Wayne. We were all really excited to see FOW perform since we really dig their studio albums. What a disappointment. Their live show blew. Granted I love the music and think they're really talented, but there was a real lack of stage presence and desire. They played about 7 songs and left with minimal crowd interaction.
That was made up for with Hootie and the Blowfish, who headlined. Prior to the show we all admitted how great of an album Cracked Rear View was. We were about 5 rows back and marissa got some awesome pictures. The whole show was great. They played a lot of the new album as well as some older classics. Played for an hour and a half including two encores. Their guitarist, Mark Bryan, was amazing. Their whole stage presence was incredible and they were all so charismatic. So good.
The ride home was filled with conversation about bands and artists who love what they do and the loss of true heart in some commercialization of artists. Its always good to have intellectual musical conversation.

So today was full of good friends, soaking wet dancing, and great music and heart. Thank you.