LA Day 1

We got into LA yesterday around 10am. We thought it would be a nice relaxed day. A little lunch, go by the new place, and maybe start working on preparing on life in California.

The beginning part of the day went as planned. Made it to our house in Santa Monica. Our landlord, Michel, was there fixing up the last remaining items and then we were off to lunch. After lunch we went by Darian's new high school to start the enrollment process. That is when the stress started.

First we were off to the clinic to get Darian's shots updated, they were closed by the time we got there. Then off to the gas company to get a utility bill. I had forgetten about getting gas service turned on so we had to call a number. Set up the gas service. Then pay a nominal amount so we could have a reciept to prove our residency in Santa Monica.

Then off to the DMV. We forgot our birth certificates so back to the house then back to the DMV. Then the shocker. California has a written test. Unnecessary stress the first day in the city, but we had to have it prior to completing Darian's registration. Fortuntaely both Jacki and I passed and now have California drivers licenses.

The rest of the day was spent booking a hotel, grocery shopping and at the end of the night Darian and I went the Cheesecake Factory while Jacki remained at the hotel to get some rest.

Darian geeked out when we were waiting to get seated for dinner because she saw the drummer of AFI walking down the street.

Hopefully today will be less chaotic.

Kings Of Leon

Just got back Kings Of Leon. They played a fantastic show.

Opening band 1: The Helio Sequence. Two guys, drums and guitar/harmonica playing to backing tracks. Not bad but not something I'd see myself listening to.

Opening band 2: Secret Machines. These guys played too long. Some of the songs had their moments and then they'd go into these almost dirge like slow spacy music. Not good. And they played well over an hour longer than they needed to. Their set must have been 2 hours and was much longer than KOL.

KOL: They rocked. Last time I saw them, and heard them for the first time, was at Bonnaroo 2004. On the way to the show Darian said she wanted to hear Molly's Chambers. She got it as the opening song in their set. They played a strong 75 minute set.

It was Jacki's birthday so I was glad she enjoyed their set.

Darian scored a setlist after the show.

Under Contract

Our house is under contract. It turns out the second offer we received was better both financially and the buyer looked stronger with his loan approval status and downpayment.

On the market for 5 days and under contract. And they want to close August 31st so no more house payments!!!

House Offers

We just received news that we've already received one offer on the house and that another realtor has said we will have another offer in by Thursday morning. Less than a week and two offers. Sure beats the 6 months it took us to sell in Austin.

Real Estate Caravan

Today the real estate caravan, where realtors come to check out our house, is under way. I've had Darian with me at work all day since the caravan occured midday.

I'm assuming it went well because we've already received two calls that realtors are showing their clients our house this afternoon. So hopefully after one day of showings we will receive an offer. I can always hope!

We also received a proof of our flyer, it looks great. Click to download the flyer.

Santa Monica

We are moving to Santa Monica. On Friday Jacki and Darian flew out, saw 6 places and decided the little house in Santa Monica would work. We now have an address and in approximately one week we will have a California address.

This will be a lifestyle adjustment, going from a 2800 sf house w/ basement to a 1300 sf house with a small garage. The weather is great, the landlord is nice, and I think this will be a good move for us.

Considering how some of the schools are doing in a our current area I'm excited that Darian will be on track at a good high school.

Our house is now on the market for $364,900 in Smyrna. The realtor caravan starts tomorrow.

Current plan is for movers to pack us on Friday, ship out on Monday and we fly out Monday night or Tuesday morning to Los Angeles.

House For Sale

It looks like our house will be for sale this week in Smyrna. Jacki has done an incredible job getting things in order and interviewing the various realtors. She chose a realtor on Friday and we are hopeful it will be on the market early this week.

Tomorrow we begin the immense amount of paperwork with the relocation company. So far the inspections have been completed and after meeting with our friend Troy we found out all things required for repairs by the relocation company is extremely minor. All the fixes should be in place by Thursday.

This upcoming week our mission is to find a place to live. I'll be looking at some places Monday when I get back to LA but after talked with Jacki and Darian I think they are pretty set on living in Santa Monica. My goal will be to find several places in Santa Monica that could work so we can begin the plan for our final move.

Its hard to believe in less than a month we will be living in LA but we have no idea where.

4 weeks to go

Its a done deal. We are moving to Los Angeles in 4 weeks. Still not sure where we will live so I'm flying Jacki and Darian out in a couple of weeks so we can find a place to live.

Overrall I'm pretty excited. The life getting interrupted part isn't any fun, but I think the move to LA will be good for us. Another new place, and we are already getting back in touch with old friends and making new ones.

This weekend we are going through the closets trying to decide what gets trashed and what will go with us on the move. Something that will be very different in comparison from our previous move is that we will be downsizing instead if upsizing like we did coming to Atlanta. From Austin we went from a 3 bedroom 2.5 bath house to a 4 bedroom 3.5 bath house with a full basement. Now we are looking at going from a 4/3.5 to a 2/2 if we're lucky, and of course nearly zero storage.

This will defintely be a life change.

The Who - Indecency Scandal

The Live 8 broadcast of The Who's "Who Are You " is the impetus for the Parents Television Council asking the FCC to levy a fine to the ABC stations that broadcast the performance during the Live 8 highlight show.

Once again this seems extreme, and doesn't better society in any way. The song is 25+ years old and has been played uncensored on the radio since its original debut. Also the reference is so subtle that on first listen you likely wouldn't catch it, meaning the parents group was familiar with the song prior to the airing.

I did notice when watching the ABC broadcast that they didn't censor The Who's performance, although they did censor Pink Floyd's "Money". And interestingly enough MTV and VH1 did censor The Who on first airing.

I really hate seeing this type of stuff.

Dave Matthews Band

Jacki and I saw Dave Matthews Band last night in Atlanta. Not the best set list I've seen from them but they did play Say Goodbye which is right up there with one of my all time favorite DMB tunes. I got trapped trying get drinks so I missed Stolen... through ... Smooth Rider.

I hadn't seen DMB since 2002 so it was a nice treat to see Carter on drums again. He played this amazing psuedo-solo at the end of You Might Die Trying. It wasn't perfect and he even got Stefan off beat at one point, but it looked like they were having a ton of fun.

Much to Jacki's disliking Trey from Phish came out and played on a couple of tunes. His solo on Jimi Thing was amazing. Great guitar tone and a very tasteful solo. However Lousiana Bayou was too drawn out and was very strange to finish the main set with.

And then the world's longest encore break. It had to have been at least 10 minutes.

All in all a good night.

One Sweet World
Dream Girl
Don’t Drink the Water
Hunger For The Great Light
Dancing Nancies
Say Goodbye
#34
Time Of The Season
Granny
Stolen Away On 55th & 3rd
American Baby
Smooth Rider
Stand Up
Jimi Thing *
Louisiana Bayou *

__________________

You Might Die Trying
What You Are

Show Notes:
* Trey Anastasio

LA

I spent the last couple of weeks in Los Angeles for work and will be headed back out for a few days again tomorrow. On the trip out I saw Morgan Rose the drummer of Sevendust on my plane. I'm pretty sure it was him, it looked like he had freshly dyed black hair. Didn't get to talk to him, so I'll have to catch him on the next flight out :-)

I flew Jacki out for the first weekend I was in LA. This was her first time out so she was pretty excited. Minutes of being in town we checked into the hotel The Orlando. Then it was off to see our good friend Dean Truitt play at the world famous Viper Room on Sunset Strip. He was playing with Jason Falkner, and this was the new band's debut performance with Jason. Jason long ago played lead guitar for Jellyfish. It was a great show. Before the show Jacki and I went to the Rainbow with Dean and I had my second close encounter with David Spade. Turns out he was at the table we were seated at just before we got there.

Friday we went and found the Duran Duran and KISS stars on Hollywood Blvd. Saturday and Sunday we spent checking out different areas, Pacific Palisades, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, W. Hollywood, Bel-Air, and Culver City. There is an extremely good chance we will be relocated out to the Los Angeles in a few months so we wanted to get an idea of how far or should I say how little our money will go out there. We've pretty much determined it will be very hard to buy in these areas but renting is probably a good option. We just have to make sure we get Darian into a good school. We saw Dean a couple of times over the weekend and had a nice dinner with him Sunday night.

LA was a comfortable 68 degrees most of the weekend. The ongoing joke was when it was 67 it was cold and when it reached 69 it was hot. Ironically Jacki's fair skin got a little burnt when we ate some Mexican food on the patio of a restaurant in Santa Monica.

Jacki flew out Monday, and it turned out I had meetings in Kansas City Tuesday so we ended up flying out about the same time. Back to LA Tuesday night and work work work.

I saw Dean again Thursday night and flew back home on Friday.

Studio Day 34/35/36/37

Yes, I haven't been great at keeping the days in the studio up to date. Over the past 6 weeks the band hasn't spent much time together as an entire unit. We also haven't progressed much since mid April. Some of the recent happenings include Mike V working on guitar parts for all of the tracks. This past Tuesday I spent some time working with him on guitars for Lonely One.

Last night was the first night in probably 4 weeks or more where the entire band was in the studio to work on recording. Katie worked on vocals for All About You. It took the better part of 3 hours, but Mike V had some great feedback and we are hopeful that on listen back we have a vocal track the entire band is pleased with.

We continue to progress, albeit slowly.

Vocals and guitars are primarly what is left. We will need to touch up a few other things including bass on one track, and maybe some drums and percussive effects.

A little drum upgrade

The time has come to do a little repair and upgrading on my drum kit. About 2 months ago I noticed my Tama Iron Cobra double pedal had been starting to slip a little. The left foot pedal, the extended pedal, connecting piece had actually wore down to a rounded shaft. Originally it was square and you screwed it in to hold the fitting, but now since it was round the screws wouldn't hold.

I took it into Guitar Center and quickly found out that not only was this a farily common problem with the Iron Cobra but the demo units in the store actually showed the same signs of wear. One of the sales guys of course recommeded that I upgrade to the latest and greatest DW 9000 series double pedals. I found out the price he thought he could give me and told him I needed to think about it.

I went back today and decided to go ahead and make the purchase as well as get some new drum heads. I decided to go with the Evans G2 coated for the toms and the sales guy recommended an Evans Double Ply Dry Coated Dry Head for the snare so I thought I'd try that out as well. They were out of the 14" G2 so I'll have to go back and get it later in the week. My $500 purchase gave me the DW 9002 pedals, 14" snare head, and 16", 12", and 10" tom heads.

I went to the studio tonight to try out the pedals. A huge difference over the Iron Cobras. Much smoother, better balance, and easier to play faster, which is always fun. I also put on the 10" and 12" heads. My drums sound brand new again and truly show off the DW sound. I'll probably pick up the 14" head from the other Guitar Center this week.

Practice this week should be fun with the band.

Drums

My band has our first gig in nearly 6 months tomorrow. Over the past couple of weeks we've had a handful of rehearsals and it has been nice to get back into the groove of playing.

Mike V made a comment when I was talking about my playing that made a lot sense. I commented that I was playing better than I thought and I almost had the ability to play whatever I could think of playing.

He made the comment that kind of suggested I was floating or flying over the instrument. It was a pretty cool concept and one I hadn't tried to verbalize before. As you improve your playing and mastery of the instrument you'll begin to float on top of the instrument and that kind of frees you up to play some extremely creative and interesting things. I've only had this feeling a few times but now have a feeling I can assoicate and strive toward again as a play.

crowes vid and pics

Here are some rough shots from the two crowes taken through a treo 650
using binoculars as a zoom lens. No joke.

The first is a video of Chris on stage the first night in Atlanta. Turn the sound down!
chrisvid.3g2

Jealous Again

We made it to the Black Crowes one more time on their four night stand in Atlanta. This time it was a family affair with Darian, Jacki and myself. We got to the venue early so we wouldn't be in the nose bleed seats. Once the doors opened Darian darted for the front of the stage and Jacki and I went to the second level. We settled in about 4 rows up from the front of the balcony close to the middle but off to the right side. The only downfall from our position is we couldn't see Ed at all, and viewing in between shoulders and over heads got tiresome.

The show had a very different vibe than the Thursday show. The show at times felt a little mellower although the set wasn't mellow by any means. A few more obscure tunes were played and the jams lasted a little longer. Highlights for me once again were No Speak, No Slave and My Morning Song. Jacki wanted to hear She Talks To Angels and I noticed they hadn't played the song in about a week so she had her hopes up. Sure enough she got her wish during the encore.

Chris was as animated as he was on Thursday and it seemed Rich was having more fun, grinning more than Thursday and jamming a little bit more with the rest of the band. During Jealous Again, Rich takes vocals on a couple lines in the song but actually nodded over to Sven to take the vocal on the second line. They also got in a few songs from the 3 Snakes album.

Here is Sunday's setlist.

Don't Do It
Stare It Cold
Go Tell The Congregation
Jealous Again
Seeing Things
My Morning Song
Girl From A Pawnshop
Space Captain
High Head Blues
Wiser Time
How Much For Your Wings?
Young Man, Old Man
Twice As Hard
No Speak No Slave
-encore-
She Talks To Angels
Shake Your Moneymaker

Darian got herself a Rich Robinson guitar pick and had a good time at the show. On our way home we asked if we had made her a Black Crowes fan and she said yes. Mission accomplished.

We picked up the Instant Live Recording and got home right around midnight.

Welcome back Steve

Steve Gorman is back with the Black Crowes and Jacki and I witnessed it first hand. I got home and went to the Black Crowes website and saw they issued a press release announcing the return of Steve. I had told Jacki before the show they had a different drummer and then I was confused when I saw Steve on the drums. I had gotten a couple of bootlegs from early on the tour and found the shows difficult to listen to becaure the drum parts and the grooves weren't quite the same.

Probably as a result of Steve's return and first show back with the band this ended up being the best Crowes show I've ever seen. Chris was so animated, dancing and having fun the entire night. Jacki and I were talking about how different a show was compared to Chris' set we saw at Bonnaroo last year. The was the first time I'd ever seen the Crowes perform and actually look happy. It was a great night.

Virtue And Vice
Sting Me
Jam -> Black Moon Creeping
Cosmic Friend
Ballad In Urgency -> Wiser Time
Jam -> Thorn In My Pride
Sometimes Salvation
Peace Anyway
Soul Singing -> Jam
Jealous Again
Remedy
No Speak No Slave
-encore-
Willin'
Hard To Handle -> Jam

Chris' shirt said
"Don't buy weed from speeddealers"
Marc's shirt said
"Genuine Mustache Rides 5 cents"
and Ed was sporting a great FZ shirt.

I'll post some pictures I took with my Treo tomorrow. I even got a quick dancing video of Chris. We picked up a shirt for Jacki and a poster for me and now I'm going to listen to my instant live cds of the show!

at the black crowes

Here is the opening band, Rose Hill Drive.

Mudvayne

Last night Darian and I went ot Mudvayne at EarthLink Live. The show was sold out, but one of the benefits of working at EarthLink paid off. EarthLink corporate gets a handful of free tickets to every show at EarthLive so I did a little research and was able to get a couple of complimentary tickets for the show.

Darian and I got to the show about 7:00pm. Pretty much the scheduled start time. One of the bands, American Head Charge, had their bus break down so the show started a little later to accomodate the missing set.

We got inside and got a nice seat about 5 rows off of the floor. Darian wanted to live the concert so she went down to the floor, and I was quite content sitting back in my chair and watching and listening to the show.

Before the first band went on I checked out the merch booth and found out Mudvayne was doing an aftershow autograph of their new disc if you bought it. Since Darian is no longer a kid I ended up buying to copies, not to mention I already owned it so now we've got three copies of the disc.

First band was Bloodsimple. Out of New York and along the lines of the new metal scene. More hard core than progressive, more power than dynamics. Singer's voice was a little too cookie monster for me, but the music was good and the band was tight.

Second band was Life Of Agony. Also out of New York, and a band with some history. Vocalist Whitfield Crane from Ugly Kid Joe joined them briefly in the late 90s'. This was a reunited lineup from the early 90s and the music went over well. Darian commented that they were a little more commercial sounding than the first band.

Mudvayne came out and played a great set. I saw them previously on September 10,2001 the day before the dreaded 9-11. Ironically the night I saw them, absolute esacpe-ism. The band were decked out in full makeup, actually with bullet holes to their head just like they were to the MTV VMAs that year, actually just a few days prior. They played an outdoor venue which is always odd to me for this type of metal show. It happened to be at the end of the first tour so Chad's (at that time Kud's) vocals were pretty shot, and the band didn't really have as strong a catalog to pull from. Putting together an hour plus show for an album that was only 50 minutes without the interludes between songs prooved tough. I really enjoyed that show but was pleased to see how far they've come since. Ironically 9-11 was about the time they took off the makeup for good. I don't know if it was simply coincidence or not but the escapism is now less about the theatrics and more about the music.

Now back to the show in Atlanta. Fantastic set. Unlike the Austin show in 2001 they now have 3 great albums and for me their debut LD 50 is the weakest of the three. They opened the set with Determined and proceeded to run through a farily even set incorporating songs off the three major label releases.

In no particular order here is the set list I was able to cobble together.
Determined
Silenced
Internal Primates Forever
Happy?
Death Blooms
IMN
-1
Nothing To Gein
Mercy, Severity
World So Cold
Not Falling
Dig

Highlights for me were Determined, Happy?, and World So Cold. Chad's voice sounded fantastic on the melodic parts and the screaming never disappointed. I remember when World So Cold came out as a single about 18 months back, they were promoting it on tv and also released a live bootleg. I was disappointed with the performances, the band looked exhausted, and the music and vocals weren't up to the standard I was hoping. Last night World So Cold blew away any previous disappointments. Chad did a little let's hear it for our troops speech right before the song, with the main message being just because stuff isn't in your backyard doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

Dig closed the night and although that was the song that gave 90% of the crowd their first exposure to Mudvayne it almost seems like it doesn't stand up to the newer material. I'm hoping Happy? takes this band from bringing in gold records to finally crossing into the platinum.

The aftershow was non-eventful. No pictures and you could only get one item signed. I asked Matt what drum pedals he uses and he said Pearl. No longer the Tama iron cobras, that I still play to this day. Ryan was extremely nice to Darian. As Darian had her cd signed she said "Thank you so very much" to which his reply was "You're welcome so very much". She defintely got a kick out of this. Gregg signed looked at me I said thanks and he didn't really say anything. And then Chad at the end actually reached out and waited for me to shake his hand. He was a true class act.

I'll post some pics from the show, and scans of the autographs and aftershow pass shortly.

It had been too long since I had been to a great metal show. Different than the 80s and 90s but a great experience nonetheless.

Direct from Portland Mr. Brown

The family got to hang with long time friend I originally met in Austin at pcOrder. Corregan has been on a heavy consulting gig living everywhere but home for the last 9 months. We joked about getting the original "Band" back together from Austin, renting a studio in some far-off land and spend a week recording an album.

Could be fun. And my chops aren't too far from being ready for a project like that. Just don't know if any of the other guys still play. Maybe I'll trickle out the emails in the next week and see if anyone is interested.