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

Saturday, June 26, 2004

"when can the pizza happen?"

Ok, so why is 11 am and Charise and I are craving pizza? Why isn't Grottos and Peace A Pizza open!? They need to fulfill our needs. Now.

We have someone here doing a meet and greet and we are going to ask him out. We're nuts.

Thursday, June 24, 2004

Luna Lounge in the words of Matt

I am way too sleepy and I won't have any time to post in the next few days, so I will cut and paste what Mr. Matt posted on the Omnisoul message board about our jaunt in the city on Tuesday night...

Luna Lounge Show
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I’m going to take a shot at a review of last night’s festivities. First off, Miranda and I left Newark early and because she drives like a champ, we got to the city with plenty of time to look for fun things to do (green light, green light, green light! Yessss!!). This was in spite of mapquest creating imaginary street names which do not correspond in any way to NYC.
Josh and I learned how one parallel parks in 28 steps or less as Miranda gave us ten minutes worth of meter-side entertainment.
Although we could have eaten at the shop which serves grilled-cheese ONLY, we went to a cool pizza place, outside of which there was a man sitting…. Forever! It seemed like he was staking claim to his own chunk of sidewalk for hours. I guess you had to be there.
Anyway, there wasn’t much to do in the proximal area to the Luna Lounge. There was of course the popular orange-shirted guy who was caught by the fuzz for selling drugs and pinned to the ground to the delight of hordes of onlookers. There was also a charming young man talking to his girlfriend on the phone next to us: “Hon, we should go out dancing or something tonight, it’ll be nice. And then afterwards we can come back to my place and have some awesome sex. Yeah babe, it’ll be sweet.” One tends to worry about the gene pool.
After hours of chilling around town, finally, the show! There were three bands in total. Omnisoul was sandwiched between “Money Money” and “Spank.” Don’t worry, mothers, despite what you may be thinking, this was NOT an adult-themed evening.
M.M. came all the way from Canada along with an admirable fan base. I met two girls who made the ten-hour bus trip from Toronto. Said one of them, “In Canada, we have beer, we have hockey, and we have sex.” (My bags are packed). The sound was earth-shatteringly loud, which left some of us somewhat incapacitated the rest of the evening.
Omnisoul went on the stage around 9 and proceeded to rock our kneecaps off. The set went as follows:

All or None
Twinkle of a Life
Waiting
Scare the Night
Home to Home
Another Day Gone
Feel What You Want
The Greater You

I think that the strongest song was STN. Derek put the most amount of energy into the really intense parts of the songs and it really impressed us. Furthermore, Josh’s bass solo was tight as ever and unlike at some venues, we got to hear it loud and clear. We all have to thank the friendly house sound man with the entertaining accent. Mike Tate on the lighting added some extra spirit to the performance, especially Home to Home and Another Day Gone. A real spectacle (which was a perfect photo-op) was Shawn’s guitar solo in Twinkle. Derek came over and stood looking over his shoulder as if to say “Yeah, play that reeeeeal niiiiiice!!!” the intra-band interaction was strong. This has been noticeably improving lately and it adds some more energy to the shows.

Even the ride home was fun. Miranda caught several traffickers off-guard with her cat-like maneuvers around the city and outside of the tunnel, which landed us at dunkin donuts (where else do all good road trips pass through?). We passed through my home turf in NJ to get some gas and the station attendant said, “Oh, they all give me 2, 3, 4, 5 dollars. You give me 10 dollars! I am so lucky!!” clearly happy that Miranda was gracing him with her presence and cash.

We hope that more familiar faces came make it out to the shows in July! For everybody who came to the Luna Lounge last night, I want to hear what you think of the show and the trip!
-Matt

Tuesday, June 22, 2004

...thinking that they own the world - but i believe it's mine...

Blurry pictures of The Downtown

Saturday morning was brutal, though highly entertaining compliments of Jen. She had lost her contact in my bathroom and after a bout of frustration she found it suctioned to the side of my sink. Funny shit. Jen and I went out to breakfast at Newark Bagel place and it was greasily fantastic.

I spent Saturday afternoon at the store with the girls, which is always trouble. I escaped the store around 5 pm and hit the road with Aurora and Tanya for a 170 mile destination. Of course no trip is complete without our customary stop at Wawa for caffeine to fuel us. Our goal? Farmingdale, NY to see Akiva and Ron Sexsmith. But mostly Akiva because his music is super saucy.

In the player: The Clarks "Fast Moving Cars", Akiva "Bueno y Sano" (our rule is that we can listen to the artist that we are seeing if we are beyond the 100 mile mark), Jonasay "Live at the 9:30 Club", Lloyd Dobler Effect advance music, Omnisoul "Live at the Scrounge", and Jamie Cullum "Twentysomething".

On the way to the rest stop we told our stories from the previous evening as well as other misadventures such as bracelet heads and bladder crushed uteruses. Uteri. Uteri or uteruses? Burger King is becoming my favorite road stop because they have veggie burgers. Has anyone else noticed how immaculately clean the Jersey rest stop bathrooms are? Jersey rest stops kinda bother me a little because they all look the same, and while its predictable, its not always fun. Half the adventure is not knowing what to expect, and you expect the Jersey rest stop.

Traffic was moving fine until we hit New York. Uggghhh - I don't think I hit fifth gear until we were almost in Farmingdale. Kinda odd, along the highway there was a park. I would call out to people as we rolled along, but the girls reminded me that this wasn't a good idea while we were cruising at 10 mph.

We find The Downtown, not quite using our directions, but we found it nonetheless. Cute town. We grab our stuff, lock the doors, and head to the club. Wait - I forget my wallet. Turn around. The venue was pretty neato, the way I would decorate a venue. When Aurora, Marissa, and I have our venue, it will look like this. The stage was large and not very high. Cymbols covered the lights and guitars adorned the walls. Shit, I forgot my camera. Back to the car.

It was kind of laid out like The Point but more spacious. Everyone was sitting down, and there was no way I was going to sit down after I was sitting for three hours, so we stood. Hopefully we didn't block too many peoples' views.

Akiva took the stage with Simon and began the rock. Simon had this box he sits on and beats with his hands. See above pictures for a blurry view. It was awesome. Aurora saw a sticker on his instrument that said "Simon Rocks My Box". That's the greatest sticker ever (and now we possess one). I'm totally honest when I say this guy is super good and up there in my top ten artists right now. Well, probably my top five on my one list. I have to have two lists - one of the artists that I support, will see whenever they are close by and I have all their albums and stuff like that, and the other list is just artists that are just out there. Such as um, Radiohead. I love them, and well, I have all of their CDs too, but I have only seen them once and don't even have a shirt. And there is Pat McGee Band. Totally different band, also my favorite band ever, I have all their albums, I think I have every shirt made because the band gave them to me or I bought them back in the day, and whenever they are within a few states radius, I will usually be at those shows. Two different schemas. But yeah, Akiva would be in the PMB category of my rock list. This could be a totally different post. It will be.

Whew, that was a tangent and a half. This new paragraph makes me feel all clean and new. So yeah, the show was good, half funky rock, half singer songwriter crooning. Akiva even covered Sarah McLachlan even though he didn't say her name write and I probably didn't write her name right. Akiva wore the shirt of the place his CD was named after, which prompted Aurora and I to contemplate checking that place out next time we are in Boston.

After the show we moved the the back so that the others could actually see. We chatted for a bit with Akiva until Ron Sexsmith came on. They were a really colorful band, with Ron leading the pack with a purple shirt. My initial reaction was old school Wilco but that could be because Ron reminded me a bit of Jeff Tweedy.

A little after 11 we decided to head back home. Were we seriously only there for less than two hours?! Talked to Akiva some more and we may head down to Atlanta. Hmmm. Its been a few years since I have been to Atlanta... But due to money and time, it will either have to be Atlanta or Cleveland. Time will tell, but I am sure we will have our answer by Thursday since then Aurora and I can actually figure things out.

Aurora said the funniest thing ever. To be followed by Tanya. "I need someone with a tongue ring." I look back at her. We pause. "NOT YOU!". Haha. i think Aurora missed this because she was in the back of my car switching CDs. Starsailor replacing the Clarks and the new Akiva sampler replacing the Jonasay. And we were on our way to the 7-11 we previously passed. Not as good as Wawa, but the Slurpees will do.

The NY roads were still trafficky even after midnight. Do people ever sleep?!! I can't imagine what it would be like at 5 pm during the week! While gong over the bridge this carfull of guys stared at us and one got in the back seat to, what we assume, plaster his phone number on the back windshield. Unfortunately we did not catch up to them, haha.

We stopped for gas and coffee and Jersey rest stop coffee has got to be the worst ever. We only had two choises, 12 ounces and 24 ounces. That is a huge difference and a major beverage choice!! Aurora and I opted for the larger since we are addicted. Big mistake. The warm flavorless coffee barely took us home at 3 am.

Sunday, June 20, 2004

the logan house never ceases to amaze me

I swear I have no dignity. I would post pictures, but damn yahoo has been screwing up and I can't upload anything. Soon enough, check back.

I started the day with an awesome radio show with plenty of callers, and ended it at the Logan House. I drove up with Matt and Dave early so we could catch Omnisoul before IKE came on. Ran into John Faye while going upstairs and he had the same outfit on as me again. Except I had a bright blue scarf and my black shirt was a tank top, not a t-shirt.

Omnisoul rocked the house as usual. Took some decent pictures, too bad you can't see them. Their new album drops in August, you should stop by their site and preorder it. Its gonna be hot. But yeah, the show sounded good except the vocals sometimes, a little too hot.

Before arriving to the Logan House I warned my friends that I couldn't get drunk because I was afraid of what I may do. Such as make an ass out of myself. And I said that I couldn't get drunk because i would end up dancing with Glenn. Yup.

Miss Jen came up from DC just in time to get her rock on with IKE. So we sang and danced as usual. IKE performed a Prince cover and Glenn went nuts and drug me out to dance with him, so we did. Dave said he wished he had a camera. It was a crazy good time. When IKE played Deathbed, Glenn grabbed me and we celebrated as John mentioned the music video. Woohoo!! And of course Jen and I did our "na na na na na naaa's".

John had handed me the mailing list and some blue cards to distribute during and after the show. I wasn't drunk, I was just in a giddy mood because of the interesting turn of the evening. So while John was tuning, he mentioned to the crowd that I had the blue cards. So I said....
"They're blue! Like Viagra!" What possessed me to say this in the presence of the crowd, I have no idea. Again, maybe it was because of the interesting turn of the evening.
"What was that Miranda, can you repeat that?!" - John
"They're blue! Like Viagra!" - me
"There you go guys, go see Miranda for your penile dysfunction" - John

Why why why why why do I do these things?! Oh but it was interesting, throughout the night I met and talked to some nice people.

We said our goodbyes and headed home to Newark. Jen and I had a sleepover and spent the evening catching up and talking about our scandals and misadventures. I can't wait to see her in DC next week! :-)

And that was Friday.

stupid website

I know I know I know, my website is WAY out of date, but I can't ammend it. Argh. I have it all set up on my end, but the files won't transfer. Apparently it doesn't recognize my site. I am working on this - sit tight.