Anyhow, the first story was on NPR Morning Edition on September 5, 2008 about Robert Morrow, the country coroner, dentist, and volunteer fireman.

The second story which was on the NPR Morning Edition on November 3, 2008 were various viewpoints about how people there were voting, and included interviews of a couple of friends of mine. Cool stuff!

Be sure to check out the photo galleries in both stories– great photos!

I don’t regularly post about when I go out, but I think the following experience warrants a post. After the concert we grabbed a few drinks in Uptown, then did a classic post-drinking breakfast at Pete’s Kitchen. Pete’s was busy as usual and we ended-up taking seats at the counter. Shortly after we got there a guy in his mid 60’s sat down by us and proceeded to give the conversation of a lifetime. Essentially he was a single wealthy guy who grew-up in that area, and hadn’t had to work in twenty years because of financial windfall. Some of the quotes include:

“I wish I had a time machine so I could go back to the late 60’s with my money, some extacsy, and some viagra!”
“It was great back then, anything you could catch from a girl could be cleared up by a shot.”
“I used to have a Jaguar back then that only cost $5000…. girls would always ask to go for a ride in it. Eventually my first question was ‘do you give head?’”
“… I once got 4 blow jobs in one day in that car”
“My son only needs an Audi to get laid”
“My son set me up with a computer, and I don’t do much with it other than surf the internet for porn”
“I’m going to vote for gay marriage to piss people off. I think they have it good right now because they don’t actually have to get married because of what all of us straight people have done to fuck-up marriage”
“I went to Rocky Horror Picture Show once just to be entertained by all of the people there. I was way too old to be there, but I just took some Scotch and took two shots each time everyone else smoked a joint”

He had us rolling. He was obviously a bit off of his rocker, but you could tell he’s lived an awesome life and spoke fairly eloquently yet vulgulary funny. Especially to be his age and out eating breakfast at 1 in the morning. I hope I have a life half as fun as his. It was definately a good way to close a great night.

Good times.

I got home at about 1 and was totally exhausted.. I just might be getting too old for this shit. :O

Seems like I’ve been on a bit of a streak for seeing live shows, though I’ve been so busy that I haven’t had a chance to post about them. In early March I saw the live version of Dave Chappelle’s Block Party which was as good as expected. It was very laid-back, Dave had plenty of new stuff to talk about (this was the second time I’ve seen him live), and Erykah Badu was /amazing/. I think she needs to have my babies– what a beautiful, soulful woman. I’d love to see her do a full concert and plan on trying to catch her the next time she’s in town.

In mid-March I went to see P.O.S. at the Larimer Lounge. I originally saw P.O.S. perform as one of the openers for Atmosphere and was /very/ impressed… in fact I think it’s the first time I’ve ever bought a CD at a concert, and I’ve seen quite a lot of shows over the years. P.O.S. is basically a punk artist turned indie hip-hop, and both his production and lyrics are pretty amazing. I’m sure if he got much mainstream exposure his material would be quite a bit more popular.

It was my first time at the Larimer Lounge (I was supposed to see Wesley Willis there, but unfortunately he passed away before that concert happened) which was kind of interesting. Basically the front area is a small bar where you can drink, and a very small and short area where the stage is at. You can’t take drinks out of the bar, and I think the place holds around 335 people. Kind of interesting, and I’m sure I’ll end-up going back (Murs was there recently, but I was sick that day).

On St. Patricks Day I saw Dave Attell at Comedy Works. We ended-up with seats maybe 3-4 rows back and had a blast. Dave was on fire and brought-out a lot of material which even seemed risque for him. I’m paraphrasing here, but one of my favorite lines from the evening was something along the lines of:

Oh yeah, I love children, I message them on the internet all the time. “Hey Sarah, do you have a webcam?”

April didn’t really present itself with many concerts, though I did go see The Second City: Red Scare and a Rockies game as well. Red Scare was great– admittedly I’m not necessarily someone who frequents the theatre, but this production was right-up my alley. According to my friend Molly who hooked me up with free tickets (thanks!), I was within the target demographic for the show; young, politically aware, and someone who normally doesn’t go to the theatre. Basically it’s a biting improv performance which covers many current political and social issues such as race, politics, Dubya, the environment, sex, etc, all without holding any punches. I was pretty floored that they actually cursed quite a bit (who doesn’t enjoy a f-bomb?), and I had a great time. It’s only running through the 21st of this month, and I highly recommend checking it out if you’re not easily offended and have an active interest in what’s going on in the world.

The only other show on the horizon that I have tickets for is The Roots at the Fox Theater. Should be a good time. Oh, I guess I did also check-out Body Worlds 2 a couple of weeks back.

My Operating Systems Theory class also started picking-up in April, and I had a great time learning about the initmate internal details about FreeBSD, threading, locking, paging, process scheduling, pooling, and all of the other fun geeky stuff that goes with the intimate details of an Operating System. Unfortunately in the middle of my research paper about FreeBSD I got pretty sick for a couple of weeks and am just now starting to tread water again. My last couple of classes have been soul killers, so I decided to take the next 8 weeks off from school to recharge and take care of some things which have slipped during me being busy with school.

On a related note, I officially scheduled my Summer vacation today for the first week of August. I’ll be heading to the Pacific Northwest with Lindsey to visit Seattle, Portland, and perhaps Vancouver. So far the agenda is to catch a Portland Beavers game (an AAA affiliate of the San Diego Padres), where my High School friend and former neighbor Mike Thompson from High School is a starting pitcher, visiting Archie McPhee, and enjoying the awesome hotel we’re staying at in Seattle (thanks to Lindsey’s work discounts), but I’m sure more will be on the plate before we leave.

I’ll also be heading to Kansas City in a few weeks for a wedding which should be a blast. I’ll be doing a road trip there with my best friend from High School for another good friend’s wedding. I need to remember to find at least one or two BBQ places to try and eat at while I’m there…

Whew, this ended-up being a much longer post than I anticipated.

Lately I think the best example of this is Death Cab For Cutie. A friend recommended it to me when Transatlanticism came-out, so I’ve had their stuff for a couple of years at this point, but only recently have been getting into it. Remembering how much I liked Ben Gibbard’s side project, The Postal Service, I decided to give it a spin again recently and was pleasantly surprised. I’m really not sure why I didn’t get into it, considering I was also listening to Martin Grech at the time. Oh well, at least I now understand what the buzz has been about.

I went to see Atmosphere, Blueprint, and P.O.S. last Thursday (Nov 10th) at The Fillmore. Despite it’s usual lackluster sound, it ranks very high on the list of concerts I’ve seen; honestly it’s a toss-up between this show and seeing the Smashing Pumpkins in a very small and intimate venue on their farewall tour as my favorite concert at this point.

We didn’t make it in time to see all of P.O.S’ opening, but I hadn’t listened to him before and was impressed enough with him to buy his CD at the show. He’s basically a punk artist who decided to go hip-hop, and both his lyrics and production are very unique but good. I’m still jamming to this album…. it will be among my favorites for the year I’m sure. Even better he has a new album coming out in a couple of months. If you’re into the indie hip-hop, it’s a “must have” album… I really dig it, and so do a lot of others apparently.

Blueprint, one half of the group Soul Position (RJD2 does the production) followed P.O.S. and put on a pretty good show. He did some of his stuff off of his solo album, 1988, as well as a few Soul Position songs. I think I was so floored with P.O.S. and looking forward to Atmosphere that I kind of glossed over this performance honestly. The audience didn’t seem to be much into his performance until he started doing some of the Soul Position material. His album 1988 is pretty decent really, but overall just a good indie release IMHO.

And finally Atmosphere came on. Atmosphere opened up with a live band which was AWESOME… there is just something about hip-hop that makes it so much better when it’s live even if it doesn’t sound like it does on the album. Slug put on a good show as always, and eventually Ant came out (this is the first time he’s toured) to do the production while the band took a break.

It was cool to finally see Ant in person seemingly enjoying himself. For those not famillar with him (probably anyone reading this), he’s the basement dweller behind the production of many Rhymesayers artists, and other non-Rhymesayers artists such as Sage Francis. Here’s hoping he makes enough money on this tour to buy some more gear and more vinyl to sample from. It’s fun listening to his stuff over the years as you can tell how much better he’s gotten, that he’s upgraded his equipment, etc.

But damn Atmosphere put on an amazing show, and that wasn’t just the beer talking! I would of eagerly went to see them perform again the next evening had there been another show (they sold-out 2 shows at the Fillmore in SF, and three shows in native Minneapolis).

Thanks,

- Brandon

PS– Blackalicious, you’re bordering on this territory too. Luckily you have at least a couple of decent songs on the last two albums, but you’re still on notice.

The concept of Face Candy is really great– Eyedea (of Eyedea and Abilities), with a bass guitarist and a jazz drummer. It’s really hard to describe, but something to the effect of Eyedea going freestyle with a flow similar to Doseone, with minimalst folk/jazz music to accompany him. JT Bates was an AMAZING drummer.. I have never seen someone rock a small set like that (it was just a snare, bass, 3 cymbals, and a hi-hat) and get so much sound out of a simple set. I really love any sort of hip-hop combined with live instruments, and honestly they were the unexpected highlight of the night for me.

I think since it’s a side project for Eyedea as they don’t have any material out at all, but here’s hoping they’ll put something out (a live album would be especially great). The crowd which came to the show was really sort of bizarre to me, but then again I’m sure most of them were there to see Ill Bill. At first they reacted fairly pooly to Face Candy, but as they played on you could kind of see the crowd getting into it (you have to understand they had a vastly different sound than anything else that night), but by the end of their set they recieved a lot of applause and respect.

Cage followed them and put on a pretty decent show. I’m just barely familliar with his material and it’s honestly not my style, but it was pretty good.

Brother Ali came on next who puts on a great show– I was very impressed with him when I saw him precede Atmosphere a couple of years back. He’s currently working on a new album with Ant, and he had to of been playing some of that material which all seemed very promising. I liked his performance better the first time I saw him, but he still did a great job.

Ill Bill came on to close up the show, and it was fine I suppose. I just think there are many other artists which I’d rather see live as neither Ill Bill or Cage are really the type of stuff I’m into (which probably explains all of the sideways hat wearing thugs at the show). I liked their production, but generally speaking I don’t think their rhymes were anything to get excited about both in ingenuity and content.

Next on deck for me is a two day concert blow-out; Atmosphere, Blueprint, and POS on November 10th, and Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Jean Grae, and Pharaoh Monch on November 11th. I’m really excited about both of these shows, especially if Mos and Talib perform any of their groundbreaking Black Star material together!