Panic On The Rocks
I hit up my second Red Rocks show of the summer this last weekend. Widespread Panic did three full days there, I caught the Friday show. It was magical. The moon was out and mercury was shining brightly. Panic rocked everybody and their new guitarist, Jimmy Herring, was really really good. Though, I thought he actually soloed a little bit too much. I’m sure most would disagree with me. I don’t really feel like blathering on about the show so I’ll just go ahead and link you to a bunch of other peoples reviews.
Brownie Yer Doin’ A Heck Of A Job!
Family Style!
Cold Leftovers
Tsunami Publicity Office Diary
Mothwing Dust
Barefoot Adventures
Bathtub Gin
Stillisstillmoving.com
And if that is not enough for you, you can stream the entire show off your computer.
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I just got that excited/bummed out feeling you get when you see one of your bands on a major corporate TV commercial. I just saw an AT&T ad featuring Mates Of State. The ad features the beautiful song For The Actor. When my emotions boil down, I really am happy for their exposure though. Now Mates Of State have done ads before, but it didn’t faze me the same way because it seemed like it was for a good cause and because Jason and Kori were naked (sfw) in it. Anyway, listen to and download Mates Of State’s wonderful cover of Phantom Planet’s California while your here.
Update: Youtube has the commercial up at this link
#The Tetris effect is the ability of any activity to which people devote sufficient time and attention to begin to dominate their thoughts, mental images, and dreams.
#There was a time when they dotted the landscape in five and dime stores, bus stations, roller rinks, and amusement parks from coast to coast. In todays world of digital photography, finding an oldstyle photobooth (original chemical chemical dip & dunk botths, not the digital ones) is like finding a soda fountain shop - I can hardly avoid partaking in it’s nostalgic appeal and usually end up spending a few bucks. Photobooths in Colorado can be located at The Collective in Boulder and at Sputnik in Denver. While you’re at it, go check out the Photobooth Blog.
#As an anecdote (haha) to last weeks WWWoW, here is a list of fictional medicines and drugs. It should be noted that some of the items listed may be used as both medicine and drug, or in other capacities, but fictional works are often vague on such distinctions. Grouping is done by what seems most likely. My favorite on this list is probably Dylar, from the novel White Noise, a psychoactive drug that is supposed to remove the fear of death.
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I recently added Mark Wheeler’s wonderful 1 Bit Audio Player to this here website. So now anytime you see this symbol just click on it and it’ll play the associated file (this time it is Thom Yorke’s “Black Swan”). I really like this plugin because it’s simple and lightweight. Thanks Mark! If you’d like to explore more mp3’s and stuff, check out the mp3 tag.
#And right about now it’s time to have some fun.
I have my Beastie Boys tickets. Do you? If not, buy them a day early using the pre-sale code MIXUP at ticketmaster. Don’t say I never did anything for you.
#The website wis.dm is really pretty stupid but it is getting a ton of activity. This is how it works: you post a yes or no question, other people answer it. This was my question. I remember having posted to a website with a very similar idea in the past, does anybody remember what it was?
#This is an exhaustive list of nonexistent, named medical conditions which appear in fiction which includes diseases that have evolved naturally, artificially engineered biological weapons, hereditary diseases, magical diseases, and technology-based diseases. I think my favorite is Primary Vocabularyitis, from a episode of Bewitched titled “Samantha the Bard”, that causes Samantha Stephens to speak in rhyme.
As a bonus, here is a list of fictional toxins.
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Manu Chao At Red Rocks
About a month ago I was giving my girlfriend a hard time about never taking me out on a date. Well it turns out that she actually took my pestering to heart. I’m surprised she bit, I was really just needling her, trying to get a rise out of her. (Wow there was a lot of slang in that last sentence) Because of my prodding, she surprised me by taking me to my first Red Rocks show of the summer.
Gogol Bordello opened up for Manu Chao (I love his crazy website). Both shows were really good. I really want to see Gogol Bordello at a smaller venue but I couldn’t imagine Manu Chao in a small setting, he feeds off the audience and the crowd feeds off of him in return. It just wouldn’t have been the same in an “intimate setting”. I hadn’t heard of Manu Chao until a couple of weeks before the show, so his whole thing was totally new to me. I was even more shocked to learn he is one of the worlds best selling artists.
Man, what energy! Him and his band ended up doing something like four encores, and the stage nearly got rushed during one of them. Manu sings in French, Spanish, Arabic, Galician, Portuguese, English, and Wolof, and he’s often mixing them in the same song. His sound is a strange crossbreed of reggae infused with UK punk (The Clash) with hints of salsa, raï, ska and good old rock and roll sprinkled throughout.
Unfortunately I missed a half of Gogol Bordello’s set while helping my brother finish a flask of Southern Discomfort in the parking lot before the show. Oh well. Next time.
If you’re interested in more cause=time has a great review of the show in addition to some bootleg mp3s. There is another (Romanian) review of the Red Rocks show on this blog. There are some great photos of the show to be found on Flickr too. Below you’ll find a couple Manu Chao songs to listen to (and download) if I have piqued your interest.
Manu Chao - Me Gustas Tu
Manu Chao - Welcome To Tijuana
