getting lost in jersey and omnisoul at the HOB

I woke up early on Saturday and punched out a lot of things before the noon hour…all compliments of Samatra Starbucks coffee. Have you ever seen “First Daughter” with Kaite Holmes? Neither have I until Saturday, where it played back to back in English and Spanish. I still haven’t seen the beginning nor the end, but it was decent background noise.

My mom met me in the ‘boken and we lunched. Then we thought that taking 130 all the way to Morita;s would be swift. No. But it was ok, I rocked the iPod and informed her of all the new stuff I am spinning.

Morita and I headed off to Matt’s to carpool over to the Omnisoul show at the House of Blues. We totally got the directions messed up and we ended up going in the exit and hanging a left at lube zone. I talked to Phil and met Lisa via cell phone, so that was entertaining, but didn’t help our lost cause any.

We made good time to AC and swiftly made it to the House of Blues. I was on the Omnisoul guestlist…who keeps the lists not at the door?!!?? Back downstairs. We missed the first Omnisoul song, which is the one I wanted to hear the most: “Live Like Your Last Day”. Well, fuck.

We made it up near Jamie and totally rocked out. I was in fucking bliss and my smile must have taken my whole face. I am so extremely proud of these guys. They sounded huge and the audience was loving it. Kinda funny though, they rearranged some of theis older tunes…so here I am singing along, and totally not singing along to the right parts anymore. Jamie didn’t have his awesome horn solo part in “Home to Home”, but Derek still delivered the shaker love during “Scare the Night”. Ha, remember when I was shaker tech, for like, a night?! Nothing but love. I think “Not Giving Up” is fantastic and totally haunts Derek and my quest for the rock star dream.

Naturally they shouted out a song to the U of DE posse, then the whole crowd exploded for “Waiting (save your life)”. This song still sends shivers up my spine. Wow, and having the room jump up and down, arms pumping in air, cell phones up, singing along to every word will always remind me of the Stone Balloon in December where both Omnisoul and my fates were signed, sealed, delivered, welcome to the industry,

Lifehouse played after and were not as fantastic. Of course I am biased, and Lifehouse reminded me of every other band I like, but they lacked the passion and stage presence. They weren’t awful, but they weren’t great.

Chatted with Jim for a bit as well as Josh and Derek. So beamy faced.

After the show, we filtered out and decided to try our luck on the slots. Both Morita and I won a few quarters, but gambled them back. We drove over to Tropicana and met up with Cindy and her posse. Morita had his first buttery nipple, which reminded me of many a college night, especially Slut Fest 24K.

Around 1 am we called it a night and headed back to Pennsauken. We were both pretty quiet, then he says, as he is driving on the Atlantic City Expressway, “I need to pull over so I can get sick”. So he does. We went drink for drink and I was fine, just tired, so I won’t blame it on his lack of drinking skills, although whenever he does hang with me, he ends up puking.

This prompted a conversation this weekend about my drinking. See, back in Newark, was pretty much getting shit faced every other night. Mostly because of the company I was with – Aurora, the Rainbow crew, and the Marlon Spike crowd. And honestly, I really had no reason not to – I was at an extremely low point in my life and there was no reason for me to be responsible. Now I actually have a reason to wake up and be quick-witted, which saves my fiascos to the weekend.