Category: tunes

Music. Bands. Songs. Concerts.

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all seasonally-displaced


Funny weather today in Northern California – all cold and cloudy and breezy, made me feel all seasonally-displaced. The ashen sky and blustery gusts made me think of Halloween, and that made me think about how I think, for the first time since being here, I’m considering not dolling up the house for the holidays. Not the end of an era, I think, more just a respite. Maybe I’ll change my mind come August, who knows. Right now, though, I’m not too hot on the idea this year.

I actually left work around noon to come “work from home” (the quotes owed to the fact that, at my sawmill, “working from home” is common parlance, so much so that it’s often acronym’d as “WFH”). I did, however, work – despite the reputation that WFH may have. I will admit though, that it was nice… sitting on my couch typing instead of in my dreary grey cubicle at work – for that, the office-disconnect is worth it.

Anyway… tonight I had some champagne, shared a couple glasses in celebration of “the hell of it.” So, champagne-buzzed and carried by the chorus-driven pop melodies of my most recent one-man-show musical discovery, BC Camplight, I’m gonna write. (But, for real, check out BC Camplight. With the excepted couple of oddball tracks, that album is goood).

Oh, and, if you’re reading this – whomever your pipe to the internet is has updated their DNS records, and you’re now viewing sounds familiar on it’s brand new shiny host. I don’t know where the new server lives, but it sure seems peppier than the old one to me. I’m surprised how quickly and efficiently I was able to migrate my content – and glad it’s up and running. With any luck, you’re now zipping around the blog viewing pages and leaving comments with ease. Let’s now move on from the timeout Hell of the past few weeks, OK? Good then.

Y’all been watching the presidential debates on CNN? Hope so. Even though it still seems early to me, there’s some good discussion happening. Nobody, on either side of the fence, looked standout-amazing to me, but I suppose the machine is still lurching into motion and there’s a lot of spit and rag left to be applied before the top few contenders shine like political polished chrome. For what it’s worth though, I am getting excited at the prospect of change – as I think lots of Americans are.

I suppose I don’t have much more to write… I’m still celebrating a working blog. Goodnight.

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sea of white


The Arcade Fire show Saturday night in Berkeley was just awesome. The bad was on-point, the sound was crisp and the mix was perfect. It was a sea of elated white people bouncing around and clapping and singing along to the Fire’s hooky hooks. I was entirely surprised that the band was able to maintain the energy levels they had when we saw them the 1st time in that little 200-person club. Sure, it’s harder to communicate that kind of energy to an audience of ~8,000 – but they had everyone on their feet by the end. Check out some video of them doing an oldie-but-goodie over here at YouTube.

I didn’t post Sunday night because I spent most of the evening working to backup all the files and databases on my server. That’s right folks, I did it: I signed up for a new hosting provider in an attempt to escape the sinking ship that is my current host. I made the call around 11pm Sunday night, mostly out of frustration, but also after sitting down and writing the following in a text file because I couldn’t access my blog. The background:

Over the past week my uptime has simply disintegrated to abysmal levels. Now, the downtime which used to be a fairly rare exception has unfortunately become the norm, and, more often than not, I can’t even get onto my own pages. Sunday night I spent a good chunk of time trying to gauge what effort would be involved in actually pulling up stakes and moving all my pages to a new host. The outlook was grim: moving all my database-reliant pages (the blog, the galleries, my personal server-stored bookmarking app) is going to be a bear, and there’s a real risk things won’t come over perfectly and will have to be rebuilt from the ground up. The whole migration process is iffy, and the prospect was almost enough to make me keep trying to get StartLogic to help me out – but I’ve just had such poor luck.

But, in the end, I the effort seemed worth it – and I bit the bullet. The switch will hopefully be transparent to you, dear reader. The only noticeable change should be the site speeding up and not crapping out all the time. I hope for things to be up and running and swapped to the new host by the end of the week. We’ll see. Just bear with us here at sounds familiar for a week or so, OK? Thanks.

Hey, wanna see some pictures of my garden? OK. From top to bottom: 1) I put up a mini-scarecrow to keep the dang birds from my strawberries, 2) It seems to be working, but one of the berry plants has aphids, 3) Flush with ripening tomatoes.

And finally, a web roundup of other pictures from our Memorial Day weekend spent camping (welcome to the digital age, folks, where everyone who you go camping with has digital cameras and websites): Bill & Susie post some pictures, and so does Megan. I particularly enjoyed the series near the bottom of of Keaton in the dog-cage while Jake pokes her with a stick.

Other than that, I don’t have much to write.

Hopefully my stupid webpage was up long enough to let me post this, and likewise let you read it. Stupid webpage.

Goodnight.

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the jostling thousands


Good Wednesday evening to you folks – had a good, but slow, day (work-wise, at least). I think people must still be on vacation or something, as the flow of e-mail was low-low-low (cue car salesman voice). It’s OK though, because the work part of my day is over and Keaton was looking cuuuuute when I got home. And now, I’m reclined on the couch typing. Spent some time putting up some new pictures from our Memorial Day weekend camping trip, mostly of Keaton. You can check them out by visiting her gallery here. Hope you enjoy ’em.

This weekend is the Arcade Fire show in Berkeley. We’ve got a huge entourage of ten peoples going, from the music-nuts to the casual fans to the relatively uninitiated. We had considered renting a minibus/van thing to all caravan down together, but several calls to every rental agency in the area turned up nothing. No worries though… we’ll figure it out. I’m excited, if a little worried about trying to get a decent spot among the jostling thousands (a capacity sellout, around eight-thousand) packed into the 100% general-admission venue. Recent setlists look extremely promising, and the band have been planning some super-cool afterparties at local venues. Not that I think us almost-adults would entertain the idea of heading out to a club after the show (we’re old as balls these days)… but a guy can pretend.

I just don’t have anything more to write… Goodnight.

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it’s not good, but there’s new pictures


Tuesday night, fresh from a post-work trip to the bar for some beer-fueled conversation. It’s essential, you know, to “hang out” with your workplace compatriots… I’m convinced that it’s one of the single most effective things you can do to increase your stock at the old sawmill. A beer and candid conversation go miles and miles when it comes to relationship-building – the Japanese have it down.

Well, changed the blog’s layout – reduced the page area to 900px wide. I know this matters not to most folks, but, to me, it means some folks with more wimpy screen resolutions might be able to see some more green framing the center white text area – which was my intent when choosing this new layout. So, hopefully your user experience is a little greener now – just as it should be. In other blog news, I’ve been sporadically working on my upcoming half-2007 “best of” list, as has become tradition here at sounds familiar. I know you’re simply wet with anticipation, but it’s not right to publish it before sometime around mid-June… so sit tight.

Found out today that I missed out on tickets for the Smashing Pumpkins’ reunion run at the Fillmore in San Francisco. I wasn’t paying attention, honestly, and wasn’t really sure I wanted to go. Having heard the new song, however, as well as watched the internet buzz build (even PF is saying the new single is “not that bad”) – I’m now kicking myself. What’s worse, they sold out and eleven night run (well, not really a run, but close), and the Fillmore shows are on of only two “engagements” (one on the west coast, one on the east) they’re doing. That’s eleven times over the Fillmore’s capacity – and we missed out. For me, it would’ve been a pretty important concert – marking the tenth time I’d have seen the Pumpkins live (if you count the various band configs). Ten times is a lot for one band. I’m still cautiously optimistic about the album, and I don’t like that new song all that much – but it is fun to listen to. I think this comment on stereogum pretty much sums it up for me:

I must admit, the chubby, depressed high schooler still somewhere in my subconscious is pretty stoked from reading that setlist. And I really don’t hate that first single like…even a little bit. It’s not spectacular, but it’s certainly not terrible either. Maybe this comeback could actually be more than Billy Corgan in need of some fast cash and an ego stroke?

Yeah… dang… guess I’ll have to put Sharaun on Craigslist watch for tickets.

Been getting a lot of requests for new Keaton pictures lately, soooo… I uploaded some tonight. Hope you enjoy them!

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gold for the weekend


Sunday. Worked outside in the sun all day, building that barbecue over at Anthony’s. Today we took it from about halfway done to around two-thirds done. It looks good, you can even spot it for a barbecue now – before I could’ve seen mistaking it for some sort of shelving or rack or something. We have the grill and the raise/lower system left to build, and then make a rack to burn the wood on, a tray to catch ashes, and perhaps add some ventilation to the “pit” area. It’s maybe another two work-days of work and then we’ll slap on the high-temp paint and start slow-cooking tri-tip over oak. I’m really impressed with how it’s coming together, even if it will weigh 400lbs.

Anyway, sorry the blog’s been so slow lately… my host has really been sucking it up. In fact, I swear if this thing goes down again or continues to be this dang slow – I’m gonna look into moving. And, similarly, we’ll be camping next weekend. Finally, our first real trip of the summer. Right now, I’m planning on taking Friday off to head up there early and stake out enough campsites for the huge group we’re going with (need to claim the prime sites early for the busy weekend). In fact, today, I toyed with the idea of taking Thursday off too – just for the crap of it – to have a nice long five-day weekend. I can’t wait to get out in the boonies. I plan to sit in the sun and drink beer and throw frisbees and go in the river and take naps. Yeah, hurry up weekend, hurry up.

Has anyone else noticed the humongous web-presence explosion of 2008 presidential candidate Ron Paul? I mean, the frontpages of Digg and Reddit have been absolutely blowing up with stories on this guy. First, it was MSNBC’s “cheating” of Mr. Paul via it’s unofficial online “who won the debate” poll; then, it was Guliania’s chastising of him at the GOP debates – a move I bet ol’ Rudy now really regrets. Now, it seems, news pages and blog are just looking for a reason to write about him. I’d say, right now, it’s clear that Rep. Paul has has the internets “en fuego.” It’ll be interesting to see how the GOP machine ultimately responds to Paul if his popularity continues to rise, I’m betting more than a few card-carrying Reds would do a lot to keep him a long way from Pennsylvania Ave. Guess we’ll have to just stay tuned.

OK, I’m gonna be honest – I actually like the new Smashing Pumpkins single that leaked last week. Sure, it’s not exactly classic Pumpkins (the guitar is a little GnR/Prince-ish and loopy at times, but in a surprisingly good way). The more I listen to it, the more I like it – and it’s really raising my hopes for the album. Maybe it’s nostalgia, because I’m pretty sure I’d never pick up a song that sounded like this “off the shelf” and just like it… it’s carried in a big way by the name for me… but still, it’s not bad…

Goodnight.

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let me out


Back when Sharaun and I were last in Oregon, we had been scheduled to participate in our greater neighborhood’s annual garage sale. We had both had been looking forward to it, not only because garage sales have some sort of kitschy fun associated with them, but because it would’ve been an opportunity to offload some of the old, yet still useful, junk we’ve been hoarding over the years. Well, as you likely guess from all the past-tense verbiage, we didn’t get to participate. We instead flew to Oregon and left our unused mathoms to collect more dust. This coming weekend, however, our friends neighborhood is doing the same thing – and we’ve signed up with them for a joint ticket. Meaning, this week we’ll pull down all that old stuff, put a nice spitshine on it, and move it for insane! Insane! Insane! low prices.

I’m excited, not at the prospect of turning a buck, but rather at the chance to get rid of so many cubic feet of material we’ve been housing. We’ve got stereo equipment, office furniture, CD shelves, vases, computer stuff, books, and all sorts of useful things which are simply rotting at our place – I’m hoping we can find good home for them. Otherwise, anything left unsold at the end of the day goes to Goodwill (the well-off person’s tax-deductible trip to the dump). Anyway, how much for an old office chair with boogers smeared on the bottom of the seat?

Every day before I go to work I check the garden. The little cages I erected over the strawberries are working, I’ve got plump red berries that haven’t been completely eaten away by birds. I look over each plant and try to judge if it’s grown noticeably from the last time I did so. The corn seems to the be changing the fastest, and I swear it puts on inches over a matter of days. I love being out there in the morning, with the cold air still clinging to the ground and dew covering everything. Sometimes I stay out there for up to five minutes, and wish I could just call in sick and climb into the hammock instead. You think everyone who’s only been at their career for seven years gets this itch? I mean, I’ve got like a hundred more years of work ahead of me and I’m already antsy for the next phase. Where are my millions? Where is my early retirement? Let me out.

I know it shouldn’t be, but I’ve been letting my anticipation build for the new Smashing Pumpkins album. Even though it’s not the original lineup, I’m excited by the increasing level of hype floating around the internet. I’ve gotta admit that I’m already quite prepared for a letdown, and in fact expect one given the steady decline of the Pumpkins work post Mellon Collie. But, I’ve always been a fan, and, against all my better judgments, am looking forward to the leak.

Goodnight.

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i crush your heart


Hey, long-dark-hair girl, I know you were here. I found some of you on my carpet today, while I was down there playing with my daughter. I don’t know what you’re trying to do, leaving pieces of you around like that. Maybe you think you can tempt me away from my idyllic family-man lifestyle, perhaps into some fiery tryst with you. You may have visions of my face, framed in your lilting dark tresses, lips locked to yours. Yes, long-dark-hair girl, you may think that your devious body-part scavenger hunt has tantalized me, aroused my curiosity. But, I’m sorry to say, I’m pretty firmly rooted here where I am. I already have a girl, she has blonde hair (at least, to the eyes). So, let me be clear when I say: Your siren song may lead weaker men to dash themselves against your supple shoals, but not I. While I must admit, the brute in me wondered of you – what used to be hooked to the end of your hair: the shape of it, the feel, the smell. A well-placed gambit, I’ll allow, but I’m immovable. I crush your heart. Live with it.

Hey peoples, it’s the blog intro, one paragraph into the blog (because I can do that). It’s Thursday night, coming up on a Friday that happened faaast. The week, feeling somewhat abbreviated by the trip to Oregon, seems to be ending so soon. Today was warm, and I swear I’m not kidding when I say that all those piping hot gamma rays and that UV whatsitcalled made my fledgling garden double in size. Every night when I get home from work I go out there, Keaton on my shoulders, to inspect the day’s progress. I slowly show her each plant, naming it and pointing to it, then tell her what food we’ll eventually get from it. “This is a tomato plant,” I say, “it gives us ketchup and spaghetti sauce.” Sometimes we touch the tomato leaves and smell our fingers, the pungent smell seems to interest her.

Yeah, Keaton and I, we love that garden. It’s too bad though, that so do the ants. That’s right, I knew when I cleared the space for my planter that I had hit “ant city.” I didn’t really think much of it at the time, although it was easily the biggest congregation of the critters I’ve seen since moving out of fireant-infested Florida. I did my best to wash them away as I was installing the box, but it seems they’ve rebuilt and are now located somewhere in the depths of the earth directly below my garden. This is bad, for numerous reasons. Number one, they are already damaging plants. They’ve chewed up the fresh bean leaves. Number two, the internet says the tunnels and catacombs that are the ants’ houses below my plants can damage roots and whatnot. I gotta kill some ants, y’all! The internet says some pure clove oil mixed into a sprayer will get ’em for good without having to resort to harsh pesticides. So, to the local apothecary I’ll go. These ants must not jeopardize our harvest!

For about two days now, I’ve been listening to nothing but Yes’s Close to the Edge. An album which, until two weeks ago, I’d never heard in my life. I love it when I find albums like this; those which escaped my original rampage of discovery back in the day. Sometimes I get a little shocked, actually. How could such an incredibly radical album have flown under my radar for so long? I mean, I didn’t even really know the story of the album’s role as the cornerstone of the prog-rock movement – I was completely in the dark. It hurts a music snob’s pride, you know, to come upon albums like this. But, it also makes me glad to have found it. I tell you what, this album is amazing… even if you’re no fan of “prog,” you gotta give it up.

Anybody listening?

Goodnight.