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Happy Monday to all reading this. Hey y’all!
Last night was Part Deux of the (official) World Beer Fest At My Home, 2006. I still say it’s crappy business for that “other” World Beer Fest to have only a limited amount of tickets which means many deserving beer lovers get shafted. But then, if I *had* gone, MY Beer Fest wouldn’t have happened. And I liked mine. Just like last week, Jenn and Eric came over and we finished off the remaining beer (7 flavors) while eating the Chinese food and chocolate cake they brought over. Yumminess all around. I think of the whole lot the ones I enjoyed most were the Dogfishhead Indian Brown, the Yeti Stout, the Fuller’s Bitter (the other one, not the ESB, which I also love), and some others that I can’t recall now. We took notes on all of the beers and that was fun. One of my favorite comments was from Eric on one of them: “Chewy”.
After the food/drink we hit the living room to watch Jenn’s performance with Shades of Winter from Friday night. We did go to their gig, but Julie was feeling really horrible and there wasn’t a choice of what to do. I took my little Peep home to take care of her. So, I missed their show, big deal. While watching the video of the show (I’m so glad Eric tapes all of Jenn’s shows!) I noticed a few things: first, the people in that coffee shop were talking WAY too much and much too often. There was more audience conversation than music. And you know, I really hate that crap. 90% of the audience were there specifically for the band, and were friends of theirs…and yet they talked ALL THE WAY THROUGH. Dammit, come on! You guys are there to listen to music, not talk about whatever unimportant crap is going on. Show some respect.
The other thing I noticed by watching the video is that they need to balance things better. I still say the guitars were too loud AND Jenn’s vocals too quiet.
Other than that, nice gig. Their version of Sting’s Fragile is freakin’ great. New band member and fiddle player Susie is really good and adds a nice dimension to the music. Besides the annoying talking, the other bad part about the watching “party” was that ET’s battery ran out and we didn’t get to watch the end of Harbinger. Another time, then.
Since that ended a few minutes early, I requested that I be VJ for the rest of the night. They obliged, but unsure of what I was about to unleash. If you’re keeping score at home and know what the subject of this diary means, you’ll know what I played for them.
The BIG HIT VIDEO. I’m sure I’ve shown it to Julie sometime in the past 10 years, but I know Jenn and Eric had never seen the Earth to Earth video in all its high school-created glory. My mistake in putting that video in, is that I forgot all of the totally embarassing stuff on the tape before we got to the E2E vid. Damn, I should’ve thought that through. It was James in high school, with ultra-bad hair and being very sullen and moody. In addition to being made fun of for all that, evidently I had a huge Texan accent while in high school. It was awful, they wouldn’t let me ffwd through my misery.
Well, finally we came to the E2E video. I think it confused them, esp. what Jason (the star of the video) was doing. They said, “who’s that guy, what’s he doing?, did you guys use fake blood?” No, there wasn’t any blood. I think I never came close to getting the concept right on that video. It’s supposed to look like either the guy kills himself or falls asleep - it’s supposed to be an unknown. Unfortunately the “asleep” part never came through so it just looks like he offs himself, but there isn’t any blood. Ah well.
I remarked, “I still like that song.” (even if the video is crappy) Jenn said, “it’s good…for a high school band”. I’ll accept that. Even if I think it’s better than that.
After the amazing Earth to Earth vid, I moved up a few years and played the not-as-bad-but-still-pretty-craptacular video for 3 Penny Opera’s Mr. Raleigh’s Dilemma. Well, before that we saw a good portion of 3PO’s 2nd Capzeyez show (and my last one) since it was on the tape before the vid. I’ll have to get their thoughts on it, but I always enjoy watching it, however bittersweet it is. Then came a couple of tracks from a Steamboat show (”It was a major experience to play on that stage, even though I played there a lot, because of all the great musicians who played on that stage…I mean, Stevie Ray Vaughan played on THAT VERY STAGE”) and then The Masterpiece. The consensus was that it was better than E2E, but I think my “concept” once again confused everyone. Which is fine, since it makes no sense to me either. I’m still happy that Bryan at least tried to go along with my concept and dressed up in a costume.
Neither Eric, nor Jenn (my current bandmate) have ever seen me on stage so I’m sure that was a little bit of a different thing to see me up there rocking out. Even if it was kinda fake rocking out because being in front of TV cameras make me nervous as hell. Always has.
After they left for the night Julie said she wanted to watch more 3PO videos since both of us were having a great time reliving that part of our lives. Me because I was in a great band playing great songs, and Julie because she loves seeing me on stage in my “proper environment” (my words). And she really loves that band too. We nostalgically watched the first Capzeyez show from 11/1/97 and she nearly started crying since that was 9 years ago. Holy crap, really? Yep.
LONG TIME.
Seeing myself on stage (even if in a TV studio) and remembering that moment in time just further solidified what I’m supposed to be doing. Dammit, I miss that! More than anyone can probably know. It sucks that I’ve just had bad luck in picking bands since Amy & Christina. Mastermonk played 2 gigs and Flat Foot did 1, but that’s been it since A&C and 3PO before that. It’s more of a ‘determined’ thing for me. I *have* to get back to that place. And I know that typing about it doesn’t do anything to fix that, but as I am here at work, I don’t have a choice for the next hour. When I get home, I’m picking up that wonderful guitar that Bryan bought for me as a graduation present (again, THANK YOU for that) and getting to work.
3PO damn sure isn’t going to be the highlight of my musical career.
I’ve got to over, I’ve got to over, I’ve got to overcome….
Current Mood: determined
Current Music: More Beats by David Garza + a lot more from my Top 1000
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