Wednesday, May 16, 2007

keane, amoeba & denver

so the keane show was moved over to the gibson amphitheatre in choloville, er universal citywalk, since the greek is firefighter's headquarters while they battle the blazes in griffith park and environs. a pretty poor substitute but i wouldn't have wanted to be in their shoes scrambling to find a suitable replacement to the greek at the last minute. can you imagine the poor suckers who didn't get the memo and showed up to a smoke filled greek? "that keane was a little hard to hear but has one helluva pyrotechnics show, larry!"

anyways, the concert was good but not great. fresh outta rehab, the lead singer (tom chapin) sounds great. he's got some serious pipes and sounds equally good live as he does recorded, which is pretty impressive. the visuals around the show were cool, nothing remarkable but a combination of military themes and sorta groovy pac northwest native art-toons. the biggest downside was that they program their electric guitar rather than play it live. why? it's not like electric guitar players are hard to find or that they're crowded on the stage (it's just 3 dudes). hrm. the best songs were "a bad dream" and "atlantic". i was left with the impression that they were a good band, but need to show a little more range and get a little braver with their performance. how about something as simple as a cover song guys?

moving on, i dropped a little coin at amoeba last weekend and picked up some good deals. their used music selection can't be beat, i found most of the stuff i wanted for under 10 bucks. big win. early faves are bassnectar's new release "undrground communications", the latest feist "the reminder" and mark ronson's first artist album "version" (really nothing more than collected production work but good nonetheless). miguel mig's newest is solid houseparty fare, but adding vocalists beyond lisa shaw doesn't make you eclectic or varied if everything as a decidedly similar 4x4 beat behind it. overall, a good haul and i'm still making my way thru it all.

this week started out in LA on monday but i flew off to denver in the evening for a speaking gig at a golf course. yes, some people speak at fancy halls, some at hotel auditoriums, and others in front of press corps scrambling to get their question answered by the speaker of obvious prestige. i speak at golf courses where i'm basically the toll they need to pay before they can get to tee time. nice. what was cool about this one was after i fought my way out to the location past cows and horses, i was rewarded with some simply amazing views of the area. my Q can't do 'em justice, but here's some of the pics from the trip.

this is a shot from the "minitorium" where i sang, danced, and otherwise spewed forth infosec nonsense for 60 minutes. freakin' beautiful rocks! when i first saw them i immediately thought "how did they make those?" man have i been living in LA too long... :-)

following my speech, we made time for a mad dash around the course in golf carts. woohoo!! below are my partners in golf cart cruisin' christine and hope.

the course was stunning. damn shame they wasted a perfectly good hiking trail on golf! ;-)

among the geese and other wildlife around, you should be able to make out the 4 deer that passed right in front of us. pretty cool!

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