eski-moe's

Had dinner at Tokyo Joe's friday with stephanie. Never eaten there before, it's kind of like Noodles, but with rice bowls. It was also conveniently located next to the theatre where we saw the Simpsons movie. Funny stuff, it was basically like watching 3 episodes of simpsons in a row, but there were a couple of killer jokes/site gags that took advantage of the PG-13 rating. Cleaned up my back porch and planted a bunch of flowers during the day saturday then we all met up at jacq's. Made mojitos with fresh mint from the back yard, then picked up joaquin and headed to the rockies game. Another win (6-2) over the first place Dodgers. Had a couple of post game beers and some slices nearby then headed back to boulder. Spent sunday helping steph with some household projects and chilling out.

r.i.p. tom snyder

Here's a classic interview with Public Image Ltd:

green reservoir camping

Saturday morning we headed up to the Green Reservoir just outside of Silverthorne for some camping. It seemed as if the rest of colorado had the same idea because every campsite along the reservoir was packed out, and we spent a good while driving around just to be sure until we settled on an off the beaten path random spot right by one of the feeder rivers. It turned out to be perfect, only a couple of other people were even nearby. Dylan brought all his fishing gear and randomly enough I found a perfectly working fishing rod in the middle of a field, which steph used to catch her first fish ever. We also played some boule and brought up tons of great food - brats, snacks, fajitas, smores, eggs/bacon, etc. The weather cooperated as well, just a little bit overcast with only a brief bit of rain which kept the heat at bay.

built spill tough

Friday night steph & I met up with robert & angie in denver to go see Built to Spill perform at the Ogden. This was my 10th time seeing them, and once again it was a stellar show. Got to hear a couple of tunes I hadn't heard in ages, a brian eno cover, and an epic 'randy' encore. Stephanie was kind enough to get me their new reggae infused 12" (They Got Away b/w Rearrange), and even got it signed by humble ol' Dug after the show. I made a FOB recording but haven't posted it yet. If you're impatient you can grab a copy from the other guy who was there taping or you can wait for mine which should be up by week's end.







Liar
In the Morning
Velvet Waltz
The Source
Time Trap
Car (drumless)
Wherever You Go
Third Uncle (brian eno)
Nowhere Nothin' Fuckup
You Were Right
Strange
Mess With Time
Stab
Carry the Zero
E:
Randy Described Eternity

life imitotes art

Get one before it starts raining more than ever!

trains, planes, cars

We had a noon flight out of o'hare on monday, so it gave us plenty of time to take the train to the airport and get some brunch once we were there. Once we were back in town, we headed over to jacq and dylan's place for some drinks prior to hitting up the Fox for the Page McConnell show. Touring with a full band, including a guitarist, the material was more akin to phish than his previous outings with Vida Blue. Great show, played lots of his new stuff, mixed in with a vida tune, a phish tune, and classics by talking heads, rolling stones, elvis costello, bunny wailer, and the commodores. It should also be noted they were filming the show professionally, and although I did not tape, you can grab a copy from etree if you're so inclined.








Set:
Heavy Rotation
Close to Home
Memories Can't Wait
Back in the Basement
Complex Wind
Runaway Bride
Final Flight
Everyone But Me
Maid Marian
Walk the Proud Land
Machine Gun
Pump it Up
Beauty of a Broken Heart

Encore:
Strange Design
Rules I Don't Know
Monkey Man

chicago sunday

Sunday morning we took the bus over to navy pier and rode the ferris wheel which provides a nice view of the city.



The weather had been great all weekend even though it was starting to get hotter today. We grabbed some lunch as soon as we arrived then headed over to check out the first band of the day was Deerhunter, which were introduced as Deerhoof, which prompted a slew of cougarhoof jokes. The pitchfork folks rave about these guys, but they need some more time to develop their sound, and the toothpick lead singer could use the time to fatten up a bit. Seriously, he was grossly skinny.



Menomena was up next and they set the bar high for the rest of the day. I didn't love their latest album, but their performance inclined me to take another look. They all shared vocal duties and played multiple instruments.



Junior Boys came next on the other stage, but we camped out near the stage we were just at so we could have some prime real estate for the Sea & Cake. Made some small talk with our neighbors and even scored a brew for keeping my eye on some one's gear. As I mentioned earlier though, you could still hear everything quite well and the Junior Boys had it cranked up. Adding a drummer to the fold, their material translated very well in a live festival setting.

Chicago locals, the Sea & Cake, were up next and I was stoked. They cranked out their mellow brand of cool breeze mathy jazz rock quite splendidly.





We walked around a bit, got some more refreshments then headed back to the area in between the 2 stages for Jamie Lidell. He played a bunch of new material until settling into the 'hits'. I always forget that he's a goofy white european guy and not a long lost relative of otis redding.



Next up the man of the hour, Stephen Malkmus, former Pavement kingpin. Usually he has his backing band the Jicks in tow, but today was a solo outing, and a great one at that. Pulling out a large number a pavement classics and even joined by former pavement 2nd drummer, Bob Nastanovich on 'trigger cut' and 'in the mouth a desert'. Set: Heaven Is A Truck / Blue Arrangements / new song / Us / Extradition / Loud Cloud Crowd / Spit On A Stranger / Walk Into A Mirror / Trigger Cut / In The Mouth A Desert / new song / We Dance.



Sunday's line-up didn't afford much time to breath. Right after good ol' stevey, we had Of Montreal. Their current album is a delight, and much of the set indeed came from that disc so I was pretty happy, and come to think of it pretty tipsy. Never known for being dull, Of Montreal wore all kinds of crazy costumes (wings, football shoulder pads, etc.) and had zany costumed creatures join them on stage, such as a five headed funny lip thing, darth vader, and a crab arm. Set: Suffer For Fashion / Bunny Ain't No Kind Of Rider / Softcore / She's A Rejecter / October Is Eternal / The Past Is A Grotesque Animal / Heimdalsgate Like A Promethean Curse / Chrissie Kiss The Corpse / Faberge Falls For Shuggie / The Party's Crashing Us / All Day and All of the Night.







OK, time to eat! We were starving and I needed to sober up a bit. So we found some tasty meat kabob things and chowed down.



The sun had gone down, and we had some time to kill before wandering over to the ill-conceived 3rd stage to check out the Klaxons. My camera ran out of juice, and looking to avoid the crowded mess we experienced during dan deacon's set, we positioned ourselves on the other side of a chain-link fence on one side of the stage. It was right by the fuze tent where they had been giving away samples all day so there were all these little plastic cups that people had stuck in all of the openings in the fence. I joked that it was a wailing wall, and then some girl bumped into it, knocking a bunch of the cups on the ground, then stepping on them. They made a loud crunching sound, and I blurted out that she was "crushing peoples dreams," which was absolutely the funniest thing ever. The Klaxons were pretty cool playing true to the album. I've grown to like them more after my initial backlash due large in part to the silly 'new rave' monicker the british press had slapped on them. No one joined me in my "klax-on, klax-off" chant but it drew some laughs. After their rousing rendition of Grace's, 'it's not over yet', we decided it was, skipping out on de la soul in order to beat any subway congestion.

chicago saturday

I woke up pretty early saturday and picked us up some breakfast at the dunkin on the corner. Unfortunately the milk I got for stephanie was rancid even though the date was well in the future. Oh well, the munchkins were tasty. Got some more lousy directions from our concierge and headed to get a deep dish pizza before the fest. We got there before the resty was open so we just hung out right across the street from the sears tower for a while. Had a great sausage/pepper/mushroom pie, and then picked up the train to the park. Our hotel was on Harrison just outside one side of the loop, and the park was at Ashland, just outside another side of the loop so everything was pretty close.





The festival gates were delayed in opening for a bit, but security was lax, affording us the luxury of smuggling in some vodka to break up the monotony of drinking beer all day. The festival was very well organized - plenty of port-o-lets, lots of food vendors, 3 beer tents, and $1 waters & fuze fruity drinks (which mixed swimmingly with the vodka). The acts were staggered between 2 main stages situated to the left and right, so that they could break down/set up while another band was playing. And if you were camped out near one stage waiting for the next band, you could still hear the band on the other stage, so you didn't miss much. Hard to say what the crowd size was, perhaps around 10-12k, it was sold out all 3 days, but the amount of people watching any given band at any given time fluctuated, as there was also a third smaller stage off to the side.

First up, Califone. I was really excited to see these guys. After a somewhat prolonged bingo soundcheck, they came correct and thoroughly impressed playing mostly newer material majestically. I goose bumps during 'orchids'. In the pics you can see fan Sam from Iron & Wine watching from backstage. We had some time to kill before the next band we wanted to see, so we headed over to check out the arts & crafts village and the Flatstock poster exhibition.





Next up, Battles. My curiosity was peaked because the drummer has played previously with helmet & tomahawk. This was different than those two bands with a heavier emphasis towards electronics. Absolutely sick. The intensity never let up as they worked through album cuts as well as some brand new material. Definitely a highlight.





Iron & Wine was up next, but it was too crowded up close, and I think there were some sound issues because we couldn't really hear it that well from the back. What we heard was good, however. He had a full band and it seemed a bit more upbeat than material I'm familiar with. Much of the set was likely new material from his forthcoming album.





Towards the end of his set we headed over to find the third stage tucked away in the corner of the park to see Dan Deacon. It was packed over there, and to make matters crazier, he was set up on the ground in front of the stage. People were going nuts, and I think I saw him briefly when he jumped up one time. I heard he eventually had to stop playing because they feared people may get crushed, but we had left his set a bit early anyway and taken this opportunity to get some dinner.



The headliner tonight was Yoko Ono, which was kind of random. Of the people that stuck around, I think many were just curious to see she was going to do/perform, including ourselves. Randomly I bumped into a girl in the crowd who had seen the same Cibo Mato show with Sean Lennon, some 10 odd years ago at the Echo Lounge. Prior to her set they gave out all these little pen lights, and showed a video explaining some silly morse code thing she wanted everyone to do to which meant, 'I love you'. I don't think the crowd really cared much. She was quite energetic and she gets mad props for being 74 and rocking out, but the music was strange at best, many of her songs veered away from actual words, and drifted into 'e...e...e..AH..Ah..ah' territory. The highlight was a visit from Thurston Moore on her last couple of songs including, 'mind train' and 'don't worry koko'.





The subway was much less crowded tonight, largely due to a staggered exit before and during the yoko set. Our transfer station was right at State by the Chicago Theatre where widespread panic was hunkered down all weekend. We were in the station for a while and were forced to listen to some street performer play the same 3 oldies from Animal House over and over, but luckily we beat the wook fest coming from the theatre.

chicago friday

Miscalculated the whole 'security' checkpoint time frame at the airport and was a bit rushed getting on board our flight, but steph & I made it to chicago. We took the train to our downtown hotey right by grant park. We had some lunch at a diner type place next to the hotel before walking to the art museum. Our concierge was hard to understand so we kind of headed off in the wrong direction. On our wrong way journey we bumped into kim gordon, lee renaldo, and mark ibold outside of the hilton, which was pretty neat. I told them I enjoyed their music and was looking forward to their set tonight. Made it to the museum and covered pretty much the whole thing making sure to check out la grande jatte by Seurat (as featured in ferris bueller, and recently parodied in family guy). Outside the museum, mike picked us up and we headed to his place in ukranian village for some burgs & brews. Wink joined us, and had us in stitches with his off the cuff remark about a GILF. After dinner, they dropped us off at Union Park on their way to play cards. Day 1 of the Pitchfork Music Festival was underway. We showed up in time for tonight's headliner, the previously bumped into Sonic Youth, who performed Daydream Nation in its entirety, followed by a 3 song encore of tunes from Rather Ripped. Spot on performance. The subway was mobbed after the show, and we wound up walking around the loop a bit trying to avoid the crowd.

view from our room

random statue

sonic youth

potter apathy

Voldemort kills Hermione, and Hagrid is killed by Snape in the attempted ambush of Hermione and Ron. Ron and Hermione flee, but Voldermort surprises them and engages in a magical duel with Ron and Hermione, blah, blah, blah, etc, etc. I could care less. The end, hopefully.

nooOOoo nooOooo noo

I almost forgot a couple of weeks ago that we bumped into amy winehouse on the street. She was even nice enough to let jacquie pose with her for this picture:

iBlend

Take your new iPhone and blend it.



The current bid on the iDust over at ebay is $570.

greenskeeper

tuesday tunes

the orb - Orbsessions Vol. 2: Second installation of previously unreleased material spanning their history. Much more cohesively orby than the first edition. Many tracks echo the overwhelming enchantment afforded to the listener during their prime, and rightly so since many of these cutting room floor scraps were conceived during that period from which the orb could do no wrong.



interpol - Our Love to Admire: Instant gratification. Not much of a departure from previous efforts which is fine because this is what they do well. Gloomy yet strangely upbeat, echoing r.e.m. during the 80's. Just some rage and three kinds of yes.



thurston moore - Trees Outside the Academy: Essentially a series of skeletal sonic youth tunes performed largely acoustically by thurston and some friends, notably J masicis (who's studio it was recorded in), samara lubelski (who provides violin accompaniment and bass), and good ol' steve shelley (best known as the sonic youth drummer). A good piece to tide you over to the next sonic youth album proper while the band tours around this summer in celebration of daydream nation's cemented iconic status (scroll down to #50).



airiel - The Battle of Sealand: Latent shoegaze is always suspect, since it really had a time from which it came. Many claim the Silversun Pickups as the next coming of shoegaze, but their thin veil of poseury is just as easily seen through as like-minded shoegaze revivalists, The Startford 4 on their embarisingly bad 2nd album. This is Airiel's first full length and it holds up fairly well to the promise evident on their slew of EPs released over the past couple of years. Even though they hail from chicago, these guys could be mistaken for a british band from the early 90's. Think of it like this - Airiel is to shoegaze as Kasabian is to the madchester scene, not in the same class but decent enough successors.



datarock - Datarock:Could just as easily have been called Nerdrock, taking cues from the Talking Heads. You can't take it too seriously, but it's good fun when you're in the mood for some good fun.

rain delay

Jacq & dylan returned from italy so we welcomed them home with a bbq over at their place tuesday night. We had a great spread, including a swillin' watermellon and a lemoncello nightcap. On the 4th, stephanie & I rode the coal creek trail then headed back to j&d's for another bbq, this time with the fam. Before it got dark we walked over to folsom field for the fireworks display which did not disappoint, as usual. The funniest was when some guy was trying to read the declaration of independence on stage but was drowned out by the crowd doing the wave the entire time.

Saturday morning I ran some errands with paul - picked up lauren's b-day gift (ipod nano) and a new celly for myself (samsung u540 steel blue) me steph & jacq went to the rockies game, which was delayed an hour and 20 minutes in the first due to rain & lightning. When the game finally resumed we took our seats back in the front row of the rockpile right above the fountains where joaquin met up with us. The rox went on to win the game 6-3 over the phillies. When the grounds crew was folding/rolling up the tarp after the delay the winds picked up and it took a while for them to get it under control, people where getting carried off and blown around. A similar event occurred during the game sunday when they were trying to put the tarp on the field, but this time the phillies dugout was trying to get it under control as well.





Sunday steph and I rode coal creek trail again jazzed up from watching the tour de france and robbie mckewen's triumphant come from behind stage victory. Then we headed to hillside for a belated father's day / lauren's birthday bbq complete with badminton & croquet.

muzzy wuzzy wuz a cozy

Had a pretty relaxing weekend. Took care of some errands saturday, then checked out the pool in my neighborhood with stephanie. It's pretty nice, not too crowded, but a little. Afterwards we watched some dvtrons and made carnitas. My parent's fridge had flipped the breaker earlier in the day, so they were getting rid of all of the frozen meats since they had now thawed. I was the prowd recipient of several pounds of carnitas. I will be eating it for at least a week. I wonder if they will taste good on the grill?

Sunday, we met up with devin, kim & maddox on pearl street for some lunch at the mountain sun. Maddox is a handsome devil - very enthusiastic. It was a pleasure to finally meet him. Afterwards steph & I headed over to the Aspen Groves for some more poolside action. Pools were the place to be this weekend with temperatures in the high 90's. The Groveside pool was quite large, and people were out to party. We were severly underprepared, so we made a quick stop to the grocery and picked up some sunday 3.2, and some lemonade for the handle of Jack someone had brought along. The highlight of the day was hands down, the Muzzy beer cozy that jeff had discovered in his RV. It is quite possibly the greatest red neck beer cozy of all time.