Monday, Aug. 24, 2009

On Monday, Aug. 24 I had the pleasure to see one of my all-time favorite artists, songwriters and bands at San Francisco's best live music venue.

(Bottom of the Hill - 17th Street, San Francisco)

I discovered Ted Leo & The Pharmacists mostly by word of mouth. I've heard his name a bit and finally saw the "Me & Mia" video on HavocTV.

Naturally, that x-mas, I had to have "Shake the Sheets".

Fast-forward to last summer. I see TL is playing with Against Me! at the Warfield in San Francisco. I ordered a pair of tickets at $30+ each from Ticketscammer. The day of the bleeding show, Ted announces his show is cancelled due to a personal emergency. My appeals to Ticketscammer were nil, since he wasn't the headliner.

So, round June, I discover he's coming to SF for two shows at the BOTH and I immediately buy a pair of tickets for the show.

I'd not be disappointed. It was easily the best show I've ever seen. Even my friend - a Ted Leo neophyte - agreed that the energy was unmatched. From the moment he hit the stage playing "Little Dawn" to the 90 minutes later when he played "CIA" he was still playing at the same intensity.

Ted, I should mention, will be 39 next month.

From Bullying the Jukebox

(bass player... no idea of his name, maybe Marty Key? "Jason?")

Ted played most of his best-known, best-written songs along with a slate of new ones, which all were really, really good.

I was disappointed that there was no performance of "Sons of Cain," "High Party," or "Ballad of the Sin-Eater." However, the surprise of songs like "The One Who Got Us Out," "Heart Problems," "Under The Hedge" and "CIA" totally worked.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention how the place exploded when he played "Counting Down the Hours" and "Biomusicology." "Me & Mia" brought a wave of "hey, I know this song" from the crowd.

He played until about midnight and that included THREE encores. For the first one, he didn't even leave the stage. He set his guitar down, then turned around and said "you guys aren't going anywhere, huh?"

The band took a break so drummer, Chris Wilson could get a bandage and Ted played a cover of a recently passed "punk pioneer" (sorry, can't remember the name!) song.

He kicked into "Timorous Me" and the rest of the band joined him for a couple more songs before they closed with new song "Last Days."

Right around the time when I thought it was time to leave, the band jumped back onto the stage to play one more song which was a request. Suitably - since there's all kinds of news regarding the CIA's torture program - he played "CIA:"

And when we were late in getting in,

We couldn't say where we'd been.

But maybe you knew,

Like you sometimes do -I've got no need to pretend.

But C.I.A.,Only you
know what you've done.

(the only photo I got of Ted himself, that looks like a person.)

Farm Fest 2009 Featuring Madrid.

It's rare that I get the opportunity to review my very own show. But here I go! August 15th was a very sticky and warm day. My band members and I met out in Franklin, WI around 11:30 to set up the drum kit, mics, amps and monitors. We also did a quick sound check too to get the correct levels on everything. Our bass player's kit came with his piccolo snare which is fine for our practice sessions, but it wasn't near loud enough for this outdoor venue. So my new Mapex 14 x4 snare was the perfect solution.
After running through a few songs, I was already pretty sweaty. How am I going to blast through 30 songs in this 92 degree heat!? Luckily, when it started to get slightly darker, the heat died down a little and a light breeze swept Farm Fest.

The opening band was Mohr. Ave. They started later then they were supposed to, but it wasn't too big of a deal. A good buddy of mine arrived for our set just before we were starting so he would have missed just about everything. Mohr. Ave played a few covers along with their originals. We played second. The mosquitos were horrendous and feasted on all of us throughout the night. It was extremely difficult to keep time on a drum set while the bugs were draining whatever blood they could find in the back of my ear! During our first song "Everyone Again", the hi-hats started acting fishy and I couldn't open them towards the end of the song. Luckily, I fixed it in time for our ska number "Modern World". This song started well, but on the outro, I accidental counted incorrectly and slowed it down, but luckily, I kept the time and the song ended decently. "So Real" was the next one I believe. No problems there. Everything sounded good. "When The Glitter Fades" followed that. That's our song resembling "Why Did We Ever Meet?" by The Promise Ring. Thankfully, it worked out quite well. It's also one of my wife's favourite songs. Along with our originals, we also tackled Elvis Costello's "Oliver's Army". Unfortunately, Pat, our second guitar player's mic wasn't turned up very much so the crowd had a rough time hearing him. Of ALL songs!! I haven't seen the video tape my sister made of the night yet, but I imagine he's hard to hear. The last few songs went alright. The Lobster Boys followed us. They played jam-style songs, Phish covers etc. etc.

So overall, our first show went alright. I think if the bugs were out of the picture, the night would have been a little better. I look forward to the next show we play, and working on adjusting the ska song.

Les Paul

I was going to blog about how important Les Paul is to modern music.

But it's so easy to just post photos of some of the most well-known guitarists with LPs.

And it's even easier for me to look at this from a punk-rock angle and post photos of some of the most influential punk guitarists - from top-4o pop punk, to hardcore - with Les Pauls.

These are in random order:

Kris Roe from the Ataris is left-handed, so he plays an upside-down Les Paul.

Steve Jones - Sex Pistols
Mick Jones - The Clash
Nate Albert while with the Mighty Mighty Bosstones

Bille Joe Armstrong - Green Day

Brett Gurewitz - Bad Religion

Lyle Preslar - Minor Threat