so its been a nuts week around here. slowly but surely the populace of south east texas moved into a subdued mass panic mode as the path of hurricane rita moved towards galveston, and in turn houston.

it really was a unique experience, i dont think i've ever lived through anything like it. just the fact that a couple of million people tried to (quickly) evacuate, and failed utterly proved to me once and for all that the residents of any major city in the US would be absolutely screwed if any sudden calamity occured. the bottom line is that no city today is designed to allow a massive percentage of its population to quickly leave. Houston has 3 major highways ending "inland" and countless back roads and rural highways, and when i tried to leave on Thursday morning (09/22/05), 2 days before the storm was projected to hit, it was an absolute cluster.

whats more amazing (to me) about this whole scenario is that everyone recognizes that, with our current technology base, we're totally powerless to do anything about it. the most amusing media moment for me was seeing a spokesperson for the city on the news stating - is it reasonable to build 20 lane highways for once in 20 year events? well, no, its not! hearing this, my thought was - yep, pretty much wed all be screwed if there was a major terrorist (lets say chemical) attack tomorrow.

and of course all of this happens on the one weekend that i'd planned a vacation around for austin city limits. As mentioned I ended up trying to bug out of town on Thursday. I planned a "rural route" to avoid the major highways. after a couple of hours - and the recognition that it was absolutely pointless to sit in traffic that was moving at less then 1mph - i turned around and came home.

not to be deterred I called up Southwest and got the last available ticket to Dallas, scheduled to depart the next morning, with a connecting flight onto to Austin. come what may, i was going to get myself to Austin for this show.

Arriving at the airport the next morning at 5am, several hours before my flight, I saw a full, bustling airport of people ready to get the hell out of dodge.



come to find out, Southwest had ended up zeroing out all of their flights. in other words, every flight that morning had availability. good news for me as it allowed me to cancel my flight to dallas, and get directly on one to Austin. I was now going to arrive well ahead of schedule, and maybe even be able to get a few hours of sleep!!!



the first day in Austin ended up being good times with a serious dash of misadventure. i ended up being awake for over 22hours and the whole thing ended up feeling like a day out of sitcom with a dozen locations -

home
the deserted highway to the airport, like something out of a horror movie
houston airport
airplane and flight over texas
austin airport
hotel bedroom
lunch in south austin
driving to acl,
hiking through some backwoods trail to get to the park,
the SHOW!
Mates of State
Thievery Corporation
Keane
hiking back through the woods (in the pitch black) trying to get back to the car.
getting lost in the woods with a bordering-on-hysterical girl
the moment we found the car!
my friends parents (mansion) in the Austin hills were we stayed
downtown austin drinking at bar after bar
late night pizza at same street restaurant where they blast death metal while serving you
passed our in the car on the drive back to the house
BED

yea it was a fairly eventful day, and the next two were even better!


okay this the guy on the left is an Austin regular. Pink panties are his thing.

the chick on the right was some really really drunk girl at the Aquarium. See the lovely looking guava looking drink in front of her? thats her puke - keep drinking kids!

between 1999 and 2003 Adam Duritz and other members of Counting Crows played a secret show at the Shim Sham Club in New Orleans each May - corresponding with one of the Jazz Fest weekends. Always amazing shows Adam and Co would slowly but surely get very, very drunk over the course of the shows, playing covers, each one with different friends contributing in some way.

well the Shim Sham shut down and 2003 was the last year that New Orleans got a Jazz Fest Counting Crows secret show. with the recent sadness in New Orleans, I started thinking about all the amazing times I had there and pulled out this show.

theres a whole mad story on how i got permission to tape the show and plugged into the board. i posted it on one of the crows boards a few years back - but just know, i couldnt even walk for a few days after this show as I ran a mile in dress shoes to get my equipment when i found out i would be able to tape a few minutes before the show was scheduled to begin. thank god, i made it to the car and back before the show and caught all of it.

heres some tracks of the boys doing some Madonna covers - it just seemed like the most random cover, so you get to hear it.

Counting Crows covering Madonna's Borderline
Counting Crows covering Madonna's Crazy For You
Counting Crows covering Stephen Foster's Oh Susanna

i went out on Wednesday to check out the Octopus Project. If you've never heard of this band and are into unique instrumental music you should check them out. After hearing several mp3s I decided they had some definite potential.

unfortunately the live experience in no way lived up to the perfectly constructed songs on their records.

the good news is that the opening band, Go Spread Your Wings, a 2 member breakbeat ambient noise band were really good. ive never been into ambient noise before - but GSYW were just really melodic, and i found myself singing my own songs over there breakneck speed beats.

ive posted their whole show, taped from the board, for your listening pleasure.

01 Intro
02 Spoon (Dear Blink)
03 Segue #1
04 Untitled #2
05 Segue #2
06 1477 Tone A
07 Great Sound
08 All I Ever Wanted Was A Friend
09 Long Time

Ben Lee. You just have to be a little bit jealous of a man who's dated Claire Danes.

Juliet, A So Called Life. Yum.

Anyway - this was a great show. I have no idea why, but I ended up being late to the show. I walked in on the 3rd song, freaked out and ran to the soundboard to get a feed. I think I ended up missing one of the my favorite songs - Cigarettes Will Kill You from the Breathing Toronados record.. which is actually my favorite Ben Lee album.. Listening to his records chronologically, you get a sense that this is where he started moving away from a singer-songwriter mentality (or maybe it was just youth) to more production heavy record. Cigarettes... is an especially killer example of his focus on production - with slews of background harmonies that build up over the course of the song.

I managed to get over being late - and really enjoyed the show. Ben played a variety of songs - old ones, new songs from his then unreleased record (Awake is the New Sleep), covers and even a song from his collaborative album "the Bens" with Ben Folds and Ben Kweller. Here are a couple of tracks from the show for your listening pleasure.

Float On Okay (Modest Mouse Cover)
Catch My Disease

But the best bit of the show came after he played Catch My Disease. The venue where Ben was playing (Fat Cats) actually has a fenced off "back yard" - people wander back there between sets and smoke cigarettes. So Ben grabs an acoustic and tells everyone to come out back with him, he wants to play outside! You can actually hear this go down in the Catch My Disease MP3 above.

So we all wander outside and sit down on the ground. Ben jumps up on a picnic table and plays a few songs for the crowd. I was actually video taping the whole thing, and at one point Ben hops off the table, keeps playing his song while he walks through the crowd and plays directly for the camera for about 30 seconds. Great stuff. I've actually been planning on dumping that song to avi format for a while. When I get my laptop back into commision ill post that clip.

I saw Tori on Saturday night - the setlist was okay, but as always Tori was mesmerizing..

So Tori's been doing these little interludes at every show (the Piano Bar section) where she plays covers of other artists songs. Usually different tracks at every show - theres been some amazing ones so far - heres her doing Karma Police a couple of days ago.

Well in Houston she did House of the Rising Sun - an Animals cover, and then she attempted to play Winding Road, a Bonnie Sommerfield cover (which is also on the Garden State soundtrack). So shes trying to figure out this track while shes on stage, because shes never actually played it, only heard it (!). So after a minute she gives up and launches into a little improv song which leads into Daniel by Elton John..

Check out Tori Traders for bittorrents of Tori shows

check out the improve and here are the lyrics
maybe next time
maybe at the encore
maybe ill be trying this again
when i say to the girl, to the make up girl
will you sing me just a little bit of the melody
to the make up girl
and i love her very much but
shes tone deaf and thats a bitch but
i know ill find it out
please give the ipod
on the stage of stage
and i will learn it very fast
before the encore, ya know
ill try it before this nights out
cause i dont want to leave you hanging, leave you hanging
but i know i just might so
oh thank you very much for staying
ive got to come up with another one
cause i cant remember what i was going to do
and now here it goes
so here i go.

So it was a few weeks ago on a Saturday morning - I was cruising Space City Rock looking for something decent to do that night. Ana was going out for an anti-Bachelor party (this isnt a Bachelorette party, rather, its the outing that occurs on the same night as the Bachelor party. Its when all the girls get together to rally around the fiancee - whos stressed that her man's probably got a strippers naked self in his face.)

Well - well I dont see anything I want to do, so I started googling the names of artists playing at the various venues in town that night.

Amazingly enough I hadnt automatically recognized Maria's name. Here's what Saddle Creek has to say about her.

Though often referred to as half of the duo Azure Ray and 1/4 of Saddle Creek’s Now It’s Overhead, Maria Taylor’s talents have seen her name attached to an impressive roster of musicians. She’s popped up on Crooked Fingers’ Bring on the Snakes, Bright Eyes’ Lifted or the Story is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground, and Moby’s 18 (yes, that Moby). Her distinctive, luminous vocals provide a unifying thread through such unlikely releases as The Bruces’ Shining Path (2004), The Faint’s Wet From Birth (2004), and Bright Eyes’ I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning (2005).

Well I love Azure Ray, and suddenly I had something to do. Yes! Go Super Unison for putting on kick ass shows in Houston.

Here's a couple of tracks from her show -

edit - by request, ive added the whole show. enjoy ;)
for lyrics check out always on the run

01 Soundcheck
02 Xanax
03 Birmingham 1982
04 Tell It Like It Is (Aaron Neville Cover)
05 Speak Easy
06 Light House
07 Leap Year
08 One for the Shareholder
09 Song Beneath the Song

Also - check out the studio version of Speak Easy at her Saddle Creek site (linked to above.)

Everyone should check out her record 11:11 - its all over the place, yet not so far from Azure that you're suprised by the directions she taken. The music for One for the Shareholder was completly written by Mike Mogis - uberproducer at Saddle Creek. The production on this track is really amazing, and makes me hope Mogis puts out a solo record with various indie singers performing vocal duties a la Dntel.

I also taped Statistics, but im not really a fan. If anyone wants to hear some of these tracks let me know and ill put them up.

I taped this show last year - it was a pretty amazing experience, about half way through the show the sky opened up and it just poured down rain.. People were slow dancing in it while Jenny played I Never.

This is the video in DIVX (AVI) format. (It will only be up a few weeks)

Check out the RiloKiley.net forum discussion on this video.

I also have Soundboard audio of the Tilly and the Wall set from this show - they played inside the venue on a smaller stage. Ill post a couple of mp3s from it in the future.

So after a thousand posts across various music forums over the last few years, Ive decided to set up shop in my own little corner of the universe.

Over time, I plan to publish my thoughts, mp3s and videos from live shows I’ve taped, as well as the occasional original song…

Thanks for visiting, I hope you come back – I’m betting you’ll like something every now and then.

peace