ShellE Productions

After tossing out TEDxBoulder this list seems awfully short. What are we forgetting?

8/14 Noe Venable
8/17 Billy Idol
8/20 Drifting Sand
8/21 MC HAMMER!
8/21 TSR!
8/22 Rock The Bells?
8/29 Slash

Today started out with me watching a cool YouTube copy of an Adidas commercial that ran during the World Cup. It starred Daft Punk, Noel Gallagher, Snoop Dogg and some other people that I didn’t recognize in the Mos Eisley Cantina. Pretty cool stuff.

This afternoon, we went to San Carlos and saw The Sweet Revenge play acoustic at Clooney’s Pub. We got there and there were zero band members there. Eventually James showed up. We tried to coax him into a solo gig but decided to go get food across the street instead. We got some mango chicken, some pork dumplings, some fried bananas and some steamed rice from New Canton Restaurant. While we waited for our food to cook, the rest of the band showed up. We got our food and headed back to Clooney’s but discovered that they gave us no utensils to eat with. My wife went back and got some chopsticks for us and got us a couple of cokes at the bar.

The Sweet Revenge played after a DJ who spun R&B and Reggae all afternoon and pretty much took up all of the space that they should have had to set up. Instead, they set up in front of him with four stools. Gabe sat next to Clint next to Chris next to James with Erick playing a drum and a cowbell behind them. It was the first time we had ever seen them play acoustic before. They said that they had rehearsed and run through all of the songs before and had promptly forgotten the arrangements.

No matter, they still put on a really fun show. The venue was a boisterous bar with a barbecue going on out on the patio. They asked the band to mention the tri tip and the band did. Clint got distracted by some MMA vs NFL show that was playing on the television and Erick went a bit crazy with the cowbell at one point. After finishing up their regular set, Gabe mentioned to Clint that they should play Every Rose Has It’s Thorn, the Poison song. Clint looked up the lyrics and Chris and James walked away. They played a pretty competent cover for no rehearsal and the first time playing it ever. Chris even came back and did some cowbell accompaniment near the midpoint of the song.

It was an intimate show, that felt like a house concert in someone’s living room, but was a pub concert instead.

We came home for a brief intermission. Then we headed back out and saw The Famous, Dead Country and The Toadies at Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco.

The Famous are a Hank Williams III inspired local band, whose set didn’t really interest me. They played a very strange cover of Purple Rain near the end of their set which was unique to say the least.

Dead Country are a band from Los Angeles who play very radio friendly rock songs with a bit of pop sensibility and a lot of repetition. If I were to describe another band that they resemble, I would say early Everclear. Their set was a bit better than The Famous and they at least held my interest throughout their hour on stage.

The Toadies were the band we paid to see. I had really only heard one of their songs over and over on the radio. The band was a lot more grunge than I expected, reminding me at points of Nirvana, Bad Religion, The Pixies, AC/DC and The Beatles. Oddly enough, in their encore they covered The Beatles and apparently a bit of Bell Biv Devoe.

The Toadies put on a pretty great rock show, on par with Local H, another loud and somewhat angry band. The fans were rowdy and one mosher fell at one point and got up with a bloodied face. I’m not big on that kind of roughness, but we got out unscathed and had a pretty good time.

Overall, the show of the weekend for me was The Sweet Revenge at Clooney’s. A small gig with a really cool band playing slightly different takes of their songs and not afraid to make a mess of some of them.

It was a fun weekend, but now it is time to put it to rest and head back to work for the week.

Back on August 21, 1997, I visited Star Lake Ampitheatre in Burgettstown, PA and saw several really good bands put on a show. I had purchased extremely cheap tickets to the show, which featured Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Soul Coughing, Toad the Wet Sprocket and Neil Young with Crazy Horse.

I hadn’t seen Toad the Wet Sprocket since then, but they’ve broken up and gotten back together several times. We saw Glen Phillips solo in Portland and Seattle a few years back when Vienna Teng opened for him and my wife had never seen Toad before.

So we took the opportunity to visit a “newly remodeled” venue in downtown Napa called the Uptown, which is a theater comparable to the Aladdin in Portland and much better than the Mystic in Petaluma.

We also got to spend some time with a friend who shares the lead singer’s name.
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Today was our eighth wedding anniversary. To celebrate, we spent the morning being lazy, the afternoon having a nice lunch at Panera Bread in Millbrae (I had the chicken tortilla soup and salad. My wife had chicken with wild rice soup. We split an Asiago cheese bagel with sun-dried tomato cream cheese. I had an iced tea. She had a hot chocolate).

After lunch we did some electronics shopping at Fry’s in San Jose, where we bought a 32GB SDHC card, a 1.5TB hard drive and I got a charger for my iPod that I can leave at work. We also picked up a 4GB MicroSD for a friend and debated for the second week in a row buying a Panasonic camcorder. We passed again on that.

Our next stop was Micro Center. We browsed a lot and bought a Micro SD USB adaptor for our friend.

Next was Best Buy in San Carlos where we bought nothing but celebrated The Rescues being featured at a $7.99 price point for the week. I also looked at all of the Windows video editing software and discovered that the cheapest one, Corel Video Studio, was the only one thst supports the HDV .m2ts files our current camcorder spits out. We acquired that later in the day.

We got gas and a snack at Costco and headed home to get ready for this evening’s Charming Hostess show.

Even though it was my fourth time seeing Charming Hostess this week, I really enjoyed their performance in the Yerba Buena Center Forum. Pre-show, the cd music they played was Borrowed Arms by Two Foot Yard, a band which features three sometimes Charming Hostess members. The band added three members from Real Vocal String Quartet, Dina Maccabee, Jessica Ivry and Irene Sazar to a few songs. Marika, Cynthia and Jewlia did a couple of songs from Sarajevo Blues, which I was happy to hear as we never got to see Marika with then during that era.

It was a sad realization that this performance was the last time we will see Marika for a while. She plays in New York later in the week and who knows when we will see her again.

I took a few pictures and recorded what I imagine will be bad video during the show. It was nice to be there and share in a concert experience with my wife as I have done countless times over the years.

After the show we waited to see if Marika would come out. She didn’t so we didn’t get to say goodbye. But we will see her in the future I am sure.

We took a few pictures of The Bowls at night and had a late dinner at 4th Street Bar and Deli. (I had fish and chips. My wife had chicken tenders.)

While we could have had an extravagant celebration, I felt like today was not really different than any other day, and that felt just fine because every day I get to spend with my wife makes me happy. I feel lucky to be spending my life with her and sharing in adventures big and small.

This afternoon, we went to High Tide Cafe in Pacifica for lunch.  We went there last Saturday for brunch.  It is a great restaurant.

After lunch, we stopped by a local Lutheran Church’s “yard sale” where they were selling whatever you can fit into a pink shopping bag for $1.  We bought a bag full of books, music and doodads.  One of those doodads was an iRock mp3 player.  We also bought a really cool piece of luggage for $5 that looks like it may have just sat in someone’s garage for a long time and was very lightly used.  Oh and some fudge for $1.

We saw a pretty smashed up Saturn that was involved in an accident shortly before we got there.  I felt bad for the owner.

After we got home, I finally caught the Eclipse Mouse on Mousehunt.  It is the mouse that sits atop the King’s Gauntlet and by making the catch I’ve completed that area of the game.  It took quite some time but it was worth it and kept me busy while the developers build the two new areas that are coming next.

In the late afternoon, we hopped on BART and headed into the city to visit The Bowls Project.  For me, it was my third day in a row visiting the sculpture garden in Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.  For my wife, it was her first visit altogether.  I showed her around and Jason from Charming Hostess told us a bit more about the project.  I demonstrated some of the unique acoustics and we spent some time just relaxing like it was a friend’s living room.  That’s what The Bowls has become for me actually, a really cool venue that feels like a good friend’s living room.

Tonight we saw a four piece incarnation of Charming Hostess open for a solo set by Marika Hughes.  The crowd for the Marika portion of the show consisted of many of her friends and even several who also play cello.  It was like a San Francisco cellist convention for the most part.  Both the Charming Hostess and the Marika Hughes sets were around 30 minutes each.  Marika had only prepared to play solo cello instrumental pieces from her Picasso Commissions project, which features only songs written by her friends and collegues.  She played a song written by Dina Maccabee, one by Carla Kihlstedt, one by Charlie Burnham and two others.  The crowd demanded an encore and she eventually was coaxed into two other songs with vocals.  They are from her other current project, Building Buildings.  The last song she played made reference to Lemonade and made me think of the Ramon and Jessica song, Fucker, which also makes reference to Lemonade.

After the Marika set, we went to the bathroom at The Metreon and then headed to The Red Poppy Art House, where we saw Ramon and Jessica, who closed their main set with Fucker.  Dina’s mom and brother were in the crowd and Jesse’s mom was there too.  It was a pretty big turnout and felt like a special occasion more than just a standard show.  They pulled out some rarely played tracks and put on a great show, as usual.  Dina even subtly plugged my YouTube video for Driving is Fun during their set.

We were pretty hungry after three concerts.  We headed to El Farolito and shared a plate of chicken super nachos and a strawberry aquas fresca.

It was a busy day but very enjoyable.

We were invited by Dina a few months back to attend a Ramon and Jessica performance to be filmed for a podcast. It took place at Hyde Street Studio C, where bands like Green Day and Digital Underground have recorded albums. We were quite honored and terrified to be there, as we figured we’d destroy some equipment or make loud obnoxious noise that would ruin takes. Or that we’d be on camera. Fortunately, the former two didn’t happen. We got through recording the room levels (“silence” that would be EQed out) without giggling, and got to watch performances of four songs that will go on the next album.

The Chasing The Moon podcast is recorded on the night of a full moon, and a new episode is screened also on the night of a full moon. We returned to the former site of 12 Galaxies, now The Blue Macaw, to watch the premiere of Ramon and Jessica’s ep, as well as watch both Ramon and Jessica play their own material. The room wasn’t all that different, but the undertone of the weirdness that is Frank Chu was missing.

The night opened with Hélène Renaut, a singer/songwriter on guitar and uh…some other stringed instrument which she played on her lap. I don’t usually dig singer/songwriters on guitar and unfortunately, this gal wasn’t an exception. Eh well. Strangely though she didn’t put me to sleep.

Next up was Jesse, who handed out percussive noisemakers in a Hershey’s tin. I got a mini maraca, Dina got a rainmaker, and I think Marië and some other people got bells. Jesse had probably about 13 or so instruments/pieces of equipment total in order to make his music from his album recorded in New Mexico, Ojito, including a looper, a tape player and a tuba. As I told him after the show, “I wasn’t sure how you were going to pull this off…and I still don’t know how you pulled it off!” There was a pretty decent crowd in the venue for his set, and he said he had envisioned silence between the songs and to take that as they wanted, but thanked them for the applause. He deserved it because he was working hard up there (and quite sweaty afterward). The centerpiece of the album, “Creature” was equally brain-melting performed live as it is layered on the album.

Next up was Dina, who is usually backed by a trio of Erics, but that night only had her guitarist. She started out with a Beck cover a cappella and off mic in the front attachment of the stage, with the audience backing her up. After that, her songs seemed to be more moody and present with her vocal being a lot more bare and exposed than it is when drums and bass are present. “In Your Galaxy” made me sad that the place wasn’t called 12 Galaxies. Jesse played glock on it. It would have been an awesome night for “Driving Is Fun,” but “The Appointment” won out as the final song because the person it was about was in the audience.

An encircled countdown started soon on the screen above the stage after Dina’s set. We saw a rather dark version of the podcast which is available to view online; in the video file you can see Erik and other people in the audience, but at the show we could only see the performers. Also the online version includes an interview at the end. I didn’t care much for the editing of the first song, as there was a bit too much not-showing-faces, but the editing of the second song very much captures the whimsy of the band, which I hadn’t expected at all to see. The third song shows off the skilled fingerplay of the musicians. The fourth song is only partially heard in the credits. They sounded really good loud.

When it was over, Dina, Jesse, and Marië all got together on the center floor and hugged. We hastily bid them goodbye, missing the last band, Indianna Hale, because Erik had flown to in LA and back that same day for work, and was loopy. We’ll have to see them some other time. They made a really nice peacock flyer for the show. To go along with the bird theme, Jesse had put the R&J bird in a space suit for his flyer. And so ended our first time at The Blue Macaw.

Here’s what I have so far. What am I forgetting?

6/01 The Sweet Revenge
6/05 Math The Band, MC Lars, MC Chris
6/06 BFD
6/17 The Sweet Revenge
6/18 Dina Maccabee, Jesse Olsen
6/19 En Vogue
6/20 Heather Combs, Garrison Starr, The Rescues
6/22 Kate Miller-Heidke
6/25 Brandi Carlile

7/05 Lilith Fair
7/08 Dina Maccabee Band
7/11 MZD [reading, not concert]
7/17 Katie Herzig Marika Hughes, Charming Hostess
7/17 Ramon and Jessica (not 19th, can bounce after ChoHo)
7/18 Charming Hostess
7/24 Toad The Wet Sprocket
7/25 Toadies

Using only song names from ONE ARTIST, answer these questions. Pass it on to 20 people including me. Try not to repeat a song title. It’s a lot harder than you think! Repost as “My Life According to (BAND NAME)”

Pick Your Artist: Garbage

Are you a male or female? Supervixen

Describe yourself: Dumb

How do you feel: Only Happy When It Rains

Describe where you currently live: Space Can Come Through Anyone

If you could go anywhere, where would you go: Parade

Your favourite form of transportation: Tornado

Your best friends are: Special

Your favourite colour is: Silence Is Golden

What’s the weather like: Afterglow

Favourite time of day: Drive You Home

If your life was a TV show, what would it be called: The Trick Is To Keep Breathing

What is life to you: Fix Me Now

Your current relationship: #1 Crush

Looking for: The World Is Not Enough

Wouldn’t mind: Sleep

Your fear: Wicked Ways

What is the best advice you have to give: Soldier Through This

If you could change your name, you would change it to: Candy Says

Thought for the Day: Shut Your Mouth

How I would like to die: It’s All Over But The Crying

My motto: Run Baby Run

A year ago, Erik and I were at SFO, eating pizza for Pi Day and getting on a plane to New York for a wonderful excursion of sights, sounds, and of course food.

This year, I’m so very excited to say that we’re going on tour…on the weekends. And we want to see you. So if I’ve tagged you, either we want to meet up, or I need suggestions on places to go/things to eat in the places we’ll be in.

If I’m not visiting your town this time around, I really hope you’ll look up the tour schedule and see a show. I’m really proud of what Vienna and Alex have accomplished on this album, and the shows will be equally awesome, promise.

On with it:

April 17 – Schuba’s – Chicago, IL
April 18 – Orlando FL, stopping over to see friends on the way to
April 19 – Miami, FL to see my sister, her husband’s family, and shower my niece with zillions of toys!

April 24 – Yoshi’s – Oakland, CA
April 25 – Rio Theatre – Santa Cruz, CA

May 2 – Club Congress – Tucson, AZ

May 9 – Variety Playhouse – Atlanta, GA
May 10 – The Evening Muse – Charlotte, NC

May 15 – Akrona Galleries – Akron, OH – visiting Erik’s family, and seeing the lovely cat Ebony
May 16 – Cleveland, OH to check out the Rock n Roll Hall Of Fame