Tag Archives: music

Personal Blog

Singing in the Car

Tonight I drove out near LAX to meet up with Jesse while he was in town and catch-up on life and the universe. On the drive back there was some accident on the 405, so I took the non-interstate route, which was no faster but at least I was moving. It made me realize that I miss singing in the car very much. These days I live 5 minutes from work (and am FINALLY getting my bike repaired this weekend, so will be in the car even less!), so I don’t get too much car-music time. I rather miss times when I drove to Louisville from Pittsburgh, and had 6 full hours of car singing.

Anyway, the hour I spent weaving my way through LA to get home was actually quite pleasant, from the singing but also because I was in no hurry to get anywhere, so I could take my time.

For your listening pleasure, I’ve made a playlist of some of the songs I sang on my evening drive home (predictably, there’s a lot of Bryan Scary in there). Enjoy!

http://grooveshark.com/playlist/What+I+Listened+To+On+My+Drive+Tonight/62485448

Personal Blog

Last minute adventures

Last minute plans always have a fun sort of edge to them, and last night was no exception. Graham had only just remembered that I was in LA for the summer yesterday and dropped an email inviting me to a show they were playing last night in Hollywood.

You all must by now know my adoration for Bryan Scary and the Shredding Tears, so of course I planned to go, and attempted to wrangle any other last-minute adventurers I could. Happily, Josh agreed to go with enthusiasm (he did a small bit of modeling on the music video, and claims to have had Imitation of the Sky stuck in his head ever since).

So we ventured down to Hollywood and managed in to see the Tears. They were fantastic, as always, and the sound system was great! (By that I mean you could actually hear Scary above the instruments)

Afterwards I got to chat with Graham for a good while, which was nice. Graham is one of those people who I’d love to be better friends with, but I only get to see and talk with him every now and again. He and Scary are going to be in town recording for a bit, so we resolved to get together for some quality hang-out time.

Hooray for being social on a Wednesday night!

Personal Blog

Man it’s so loud in here

TMBG ROCKED HARD CORE! At first, we were worried. Centre, while starting to drag in cool bands for Carnival, still does an absolutely craptacular job of advertising them. So the crowd was rather small. We seated in the orchestra were worried, we did not want the Giants to be sad that there was a small group. So, we all vowed to be the most energetic, enthusiastic crowd possible, sending lots of love and energy.

When the band came on, they invited us to come right up to the small area of the pit which was right against the stage and did not have seats, so of course we all rushed up. I was lucky enough to be right against the stage. John looked at mee!! *swoon* (both of them! *double swoon*).

Anyway, we rocked hard core. Like HARD core. And then, something happened, something that my Centre friends who were absent from the concert will enjoy…

We rocked so hard that…

(wait for it)

We rocked SO HARD..

(waaait…)

We rocked out so hard that we BROKE THE PIT. That’s right! All our bouncing and dancing and pogo-ing was just too much for it, and it split RIGHT DOWN THE MIDDLE. The right half of the pit sunk three inches lower than the left half, and the bouncing continued, and it got REALLY wobbly.

Having worked road shows at Centre before, I knew how far of a drop that would be if the pit suddenly gave way, so I took to desperately clutching the edge of the stage. Fortunately, the bracing held, and we continued to rock.

And it was awesome. Gabbard should have pictures of the damage up soon.

Personal Blog

NYC

I could talk about Singing Forest right now, but I don’t think I’m ready to talk about that yet, so instead I’ll give a simple weekend review.

I went with Carleton to New York to visit his friend, Mike. I hadn’t been to the city since the 6th grade, and that trip mostly involved me scurrying to keep up with my dad and uncle, occasionally gazing at the tall buildings because that’s what I figured tourists were supposed to do.

It was a nice train ride from Milford (which is just near where I work, and has free parking on the weekends for their station, woo!). Mike’s apartment is in the Upper West side of Manhattan and is quite nice. Friday night we went to the planetarium for some music-and-show-off-computer-rendering deal. ‘Twas nice.

The next day we went to get bagels, at some place that Carleton spouts is the best bagel place in the WORLD!!! (Just tasted like normal bagels to me, perhaps my palette for bagels is just not sophisticated). The main mission of the day was to help Mike buy a betta. I wish I’d brought my camera so I can add Rocky’s picture to the growing list of “Friend’s Bettas”.

That night we went and saw Carleton’s Cousin play a set at some club/bar place. His music is very good, and we’d seen him play at a coffee shop in CT last weekend. This time he was with a band, and it was a very lively set.

We then retired to Mike’s apartment and watched City of God, a very powerful and awesome movie. Mike’s mom is from Brazil, and used to teach in the City of God, and apparently said that the movie is quite accurate as far as how things are there. The individual story is very uplifting, but the truthfulness of the situation is rather depressing.

Overall, a very nice visit. It’s much more pleasant to visit the city when you are with people who know how to get around.

Personal Blog

Ben Folds

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I’m not ready for crunch time yet!

Saw Ben Folds last night, and I am happy to add yet another cool person to the Order of People who Constantly Have to Push their Glasses Up on their Nose. *pushes her glasses up on her nose*

The show was fricken awesome, and it was a nice break. Plus, I got the lightboxes in for my show yesterday. Technically, I could dawdle about and work on my pieces here and there, because the show doesn’t go up until Tuesday, but my goal is to get everything completed today.

Plus, I still have to think of titles for my pieces! I’m a horrible title-thinker-upper. I had to force myself to come up with 2, because I talked about them in my artist’s statement which was due on Thursday. Someone think of titles for these two, maybe they will inspire me to think of titles for the other 11 pieces:

https://www.wertle.com/glass/pic1.jpg

https://www.wertle.com/glass/pic3.jpg