Horses are terrible people

Last night I had the pleasure of going to the Tool concert at Staples Center here in Los Angeles.  The show was amazing and the sound was much better than I expected.  They started off with Lost Keys and Rosetta Stoned. I was impressed and happy that they didn't try and play a recording of the talking track from Lost Keys.  I think it would have distracted and been too obvious as a recording.  

As expected a majority of the set list was comprised of songs off of 10,000 Days which was fine by me.  Other songs on the set included Stinkfist, Fourty-Six & 2, AEnima, Schism, and they closed with Lateralus.  While I was hoping for a track off of Opiate or Undertow, it wasn't to be.  The highlight of the show for me was AEnima which was incredible live.  

The way they handled the lights and visuals was great; they slowly progressed with visual complexity through out the set, starting with none and ending with everything going full bore.  The all white stage and low backing (6, 7 feet tops?) progressed from light show to video display and at one point the display that runs around the entire staples center was flashing the Tool logo.

Maynard was humorous with his referring to the VIP's in Los Angeles repeatedly.  After they finished Rosetta Stoned he said something along the lines of "Oh good the VIP's are here now, we can start the show" and when they took a five to ten minute break before going into the last quarter of the show he explained that they had to stop because the VIP's had to go out and buy more beer.

Overall I don't know how to place the concert against David Gilmour earlier this year, but I have to say it was one of the best concerts I've been to.

That's right, Michelle and I went to see the White Stripes last night at the Greek in Los Angeles. Our friends Jan and Mike joined us for the concert which I've been looking forward to since Michelle bought the tickets. We had decent seats in the middle about half way back, except for the wonderful couple behind us who wanted to make sure that I was able to participate in their conversation during every song they didn't know. Unfortunately, they weren't too well versed in White Stripes songs, well other than those they heard on KROQ. But if you were to hear the way the mr wonderful whistled as loud as he could after each song he didn't pay attention to, you'd be fooled. Annoying couple aside, they played a great set with a diverse mix of songs off all their albums, and even played Black Jack Davey. Jack wasn't much of a performer, but he did play very well. Excellent musician but he didn't engage the audience much. The music was great (what I was able to hear of it over the couple behind me).

Michelle and I were concerned about leaving in time to get home by 11pm for our baby sitter. Of course murphey's law was such that we got stuck parking at the very back of the lot. We left right at the end of the last encore song, only to find a tree had fallen across 6 cars blocking the exit from the parking lot. Michelle ended up getting a ride home from Mike and Jan and I waited for the parking lot to clear.

I was invited to be the featured poety at "Poets at the Hill," a monthly poetry reading at the Hill Ave Library in Pasadena. I had a good time meeting members from pathetic.org and listening to the various readings. We went for some pie and socializing at Coco's afterward. Thank you to Michelle A for inviting me and for all those that went out of their way to come out for it.

I confess... I'm a music junkie. That is I love music. I also collect albums and such. So much that between my CD collection and my now growing purchase list from ITMS, I've filled my 40 gig ipod and have had to delete some albums off iTunes that I have sitting in my cd collection and I don't find the time to listen to. Out of curiosity today I went to the ITMS purchase history page to see exactly how much I've bought off of there. As it turns out I've spent more money there than I did on my 3rd gen iPod. :x

Speaking of music, I'm going to see the White Stripes on Thursday :-) Oh and have you checked out Kings of Leon yet? No? Go check out their first album. It's good stuff! Also worth checking out is the now integrated Last.fm and Audioscrobbler. I really like the new design theme and progress they have made.

Work as been busy but good. I've been working on a project writing the SOAP based backend for a handheld application that will integrate into one of our customers existing web based applications. It's been pretty cool implementing them and I have all sorts of good ideas (I think) for upcoming Framewerk technologies using Soap.

sIFRFonts.com isn't doing too well. I've not had time to really spend a lot of time populating the font database. Maybe I'll take a day or two once Framewerk goes beta to add a couple hundred fonts to it.

I've been looking forward to this album far too much. I had high expectations after the reviews and Blue Orchid.

Don't get me wrong, it's not a "bad" album. Heck, I probably would like it better if I wasnt looking forward to it as much as I have been. But it's ok. There I said it... It's ok. I was hoping for, expecting, wanting... an incredible album. But it's just ok.

In contrast on Friday I went to see the Pixies with Mike. It was a great show, with the Bell Rays as the open act. Let me just say the energy the Bell Rays had was amazing, and I have to say it was probably the best opening act I've seen. The Pixies were amazing. Definately worth the ticket price and 11pm show. Kim Deal was looking a bit masculine, but her voice was just as sweet as it's always been, between her cigerette and beer brakes while Frank was doing his thing.

Michelle and I went to see Morrissey last night at the Wiltern. The set list was fairly short, but included one song from almost every Smiths album, and most of his solo albums. It wasn't the best concert I've been to. It wasn't the worst concert either. I'm not disappointed with the experience, but I'm not overjoyed with it either. Can you tell?