Month: May 2003

I drove past the Living Room today and it looks like they’re changing the name to the Tree House Coffee Shop. I have no idea whether someone bought it or the owner just changed the name, and still no word on whether they’ll ever bring back their open mic. They still have Christian open mics on Thursday and Sunday. You can check out their new website here.

I saw the Matrix: Reloaded on Saturday and it rocked. Still no real explanation on why the machines need humans (the energy storage theory in the first movie has to be wrong), but I came out of the movie very satisfied with how its going. Don’t believe the reviews saying it’s all action without any plot. It’s no more action than the first movie and it hasn’t been dumbed down at all.

Philadelphia Anti-folker Adam Brodsky has a master plan to get listed in the Guiness Book of World Records or at least get interviewed on NPR’s All Things Considered. After giving up on past record attempts of pogo-ing and eating strange objects, he’s decided to be the first solo performer to play 50 shows in 50 states in 50 days.

if you’re really and truly an american, you and i share the same lingering childhood desire.

To be listed in the Guinness book of world records. is there anything more american than that exalted dog-eared little paperback? Yes i know its actually created, compiled and published in the UK, but when it comes to the records concerning the human body and dumb stuff done with said body, quite frankly we colonists own that part of the book.

anyway beginning on august 3 and ending 50 days later, i will do something no other solo performer has ever lacked the good sense to do.
i will play 50 folk music shows, in 50 states, in 50 days.
i will limit myself to one show per day, cause playing 4 shows in maine, New hampshire, vermont and massachusetts and then taking the weekend off would be a puss move.

anyway i wanna invite you onboard. whether you are a fan of mine or folk music or a corporation desperately in need of writing something off before the end of the fiscal year, or a venue or just somebody who cant help but stare at a train wreck. there is something here for you in these 50 days. i assure you.

Now would be the perfect time for Puerto Rico to vote for statehood. Read more about the tour. I could have sworn some singer-songwriter chick did this already last year, but I’m sure Adam would have researched that ahead of time.

I’ve always kind of liked Pavement, but I never got any of their albums until a few months ago. So far I’m really impressed and feel dumb for not getting into them sooner. My friend Kevin is a big fan, so I went with him, Adam, and Melissa to see Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks last night at the Troc and they were awesome. Adam asked me what my last concert was and I couldn’t remember. If you don’t count local shows the last one I went to was the fairly bad y-100 feastival. The acoustics are terrible at the First Union center and they should cancel everything but Hockey and Basketball. Before that I saw Vanilla Ice at Brownies 23 East. hah. What’s wrong with me?

Last night I ran into a few cool people like Gwen Hesser and a guy who used to come into the Living Room every once and a while, whose name I forget but I remember he’s a web designer and a Pixies fan.

If you can catch the Jicks on this tour, do it!

Attention musicians: Give up. That’s how I feel every time I listen to Jeremy Hollis at the Grape Street Pub open mic. There are two types of good musicians: those that inspire you and those that make you want to throw your guitar in a dumpster.

I ran into a lot of people at the Grape Street open mic last night. Roz King, Maria, Jeremy Hollis, and Do it for Danny all came out, although Do it for Danny just came to drink, despite Grape Street disposing their weekly drink specials I reported on a while back. The Dannys are free from their indentured servitude at the Wednesday night Carribean Crab open mic which is now hosted by some guy named Paul.

I really liked the alt.country trio “Skilly” and hopefully they’ll get their website back up after they pay the bill. I had an interesting conversation with their guitar player about choosing their band name. The drummer was afraid that having the word “skill” in their name would imply they were musically skilled. It should be noted the word “kill” is also in their name, but no one should assume they are killers either.

One act that stood out for me was the two guys from Delaware who called themselves, “Life in Stereo.” They had a laptop on stage providing drums, bass, and backing vocals, turning the open mic into Karaoke night. I guess these guys expected us to shower them with roses for their performance, because at the end the lead guitarist said, “I know you guys aren’t into the Techno shit, oh well fuck it.” In emoese that roughly translates to, “I know you guys aren’t into the Techno shit, so fuck you.” The crowd didn’t seem hostile at all, but I guess “Life in Stereo” is used to playing for the people on their dorm floor. I had no problem with the arrangement, but I didn’t care for the guitarist’s backing vocals in the 2nd song.

Upstairs, Anime night turned into a screening of the Matrix in honor of the Matrix Reloaded coming out this week. I’m really looking forward to it, especially if it explains some of the glaring plot holes in the first movie. Keeping humans around for energy storage and needing them to stay concious just doesn’t make sense and wouldn’t work. I hope that gets explained somewhere.

This is a bizarre story.

Local artist John Shaughnessy put up some random thoughts he thinks would make great fortune cookies. Here are some of my favorites.

FORTUNE COOKIES by JS
You will soon visit a zoo and find a sad monkey.
When in doubt, shave it.
You are already infected.
See that guy over there? He wants you.
If someone gives you lemonade, just drink it.
You will be the poster-child for something.
There is money under your roommate?s mattress.
Only you and your uncle can make a sad orphan smile.
Thursdays are always full of mystery.

These are just asking to be strung together as song lyrics. How about these:

You don?t know how lucky you are.
Many could live on the pizza crusts you discard.
Seek out the ones with webbed toes.
The answer is boiled potatoes.

Read the rest of them and come up with your own songs.

I finally got a new phone so I’ll have to start returning a few messages people left for me when my old phone died. This time maybe I won’t drop it down into the mechanic’s hole at Jiffy Lube.

The phone is very similar to my old one, but the blue lighting looks a lot cooler. It’s still a plain two color model, but I’ll wait until I get something more expensive.

Roz mentioned to me today that there is an open mic at Slate’s on Route 38 in Maple Shade (yeah, that place connected to Hooters). The open mic goes on every Wednesday at 10:30PM.

Also, if you’ve been waiting for Salam Pax to come back, he has.

The Grape Street Pub’s sound guy and host of the Monday night Anime screenings, Mike, criticized the Y-100 Feztival selections last year as being out of sync with the expected crowds.

the only local bands that got any attention whatsoever on any stage were the Red King and Pilot ’round the Sun? The problem was that the station mostly booked the wrong styles of acts that the typical Fez-goer had no interest in. While good, bands like Town Hall and Stargazer are generally loathed or at the very least, ignored by the skatey-punkish, rough, edgy music devotee that usually attends the concert.. Why doesn’t the station want more compatable acts on the side or main stages? I think it’s more of a record company-weasel thing if you ask me. What do you think the vps’ of Sony, Universal or whoever would have done to y100 execs’ had bands like Isle of Q or Poppycock Babble or Planetary had gone on ahead of lackluster sets by Incubus or any of those cookie-cutter ‘anger-boy’ bands of the week?

Personally, I have a hard time believing big time record executives are afraid of their premier acts getting upstaged by local talent, but booking bands that compliment the headliners should be a top priority.

Former Living Room open mic host, Roz King, wrote a chaotic indictment of MTV’s Total Request Live.

TRL a good sign that are children are sexually frustrated as they should be or a sign of absolute social failure to it’s main biologicial objective (to teach it’s children and evolve the mind of man)?

I call pop culture/Industry “The Church of Cool”

Roz’s opinion is pretty similar to most musicians, but the article is worth reading just for the interesting use of grammar.

I took down the link to the Super News Feed because it was broken as much as it was working. It could have something to do with the ever growing headline database taking longer and longer to return the latest 100 links. Everything would be fine if my host allowed me to cron the update script every hour, but they don’t. The first lucky sap who checks the feed at the start of the hour is actually running the update script for everyone. Sadly this began taking more than 30 seconds, which is too long to use in a meaningful way. Hopefully the news feed will come back later in a new form since RSS is the next big thing to hit the net.

I think its time for a new poll. This one was incredibly popular compared to my previous polls.

Chelsea in Orbit won a few local awards last year for their self-titled CD. In an interview with the Philadelphia Musician Resource Kitchen, Greg from Chelsea in Orbit has the following to say about his home town and its music scene:

“The scene lacks enough quality musicians. Parts of South Jersey may as well be Kentucky. They don’t want to hear anything new. I’m not trashing Philly just for the sake of it. I love Philly, grew up in the area and have played often here and will continue to do so.”

He also compares New York to Philadelphia, which isn’t really fair. As of the 1990 census New York has about 4.5 times the population of Philadelphia (7.3 million vs 1.6 million). Obviously there are a lot more good bands in NY trying to get something going. If you’re a good band in Philadelphia you have the advantage of less competition.