Music

I have been listening to BBC’s Radio One today, like I do every other day when I’m at work now, and god damn the new Coldplay album sounds good. It’s so good that I when I preordered the album on Amazon I got the fastest delivery method I could (in hindsight, I probably could have just gone to a CD store. It seems I’m so addicted to Amazon it’s not funny). Tickets go on sale here this Friday and there is a growing group of people I’m going with. Hopefully we’ll all be able to get tickets to the concert. That’d be just friggin’ awesome, know what I mean? ...

Just heard it on Annie Mac’s Radio 1 session - Liquid V club sessions, for all good things DnB. Dang, I gotta go. Got Santos Renuentes to see *yet again* tonight at Tobacco Road. I wish they’d play in like, New York or something like that. I need an excuse to fly up there*. Plus, tomoz I have to go to… New Orleans! Oh I’m bored already. hehe. * WTF am I talking about, like I need an excuse???

I especially went to Tobacco Road on Thursday night to get some pictures of Santos Renuentes playing an acoustic set, something that I hadn’t heard them do before. There was going to be a delay with starting their set so my friend and I decided to get some food downstairs. I had just about finished my meal when I thought “hold on… they should have started by now”. I raced upstairs and they were nearly finished. Sophia gave me a greeting saying something like “I’m glad you finally came to watch our show, Kristian.” I found out later that while I was downstairs stuffing my face she did a shout out for me two songs prior because I always went to their gigs…. and I was nowhere to be seen at that time. Bloody hell. ...

I think my flight back to the US was the worst ever for jet-lag and annoyance factor. American Airlines has yet to prove to me they can get me somewhere without being over an hour late. Well, here’s hoping for the future! I knew things were going to be bad when I arrived in the US because I had a connecting flight through Dallas, TX to Fort Lauderdale. Of course the flight from LA to Dallas was an hour late, so as I touched down in Dallas I was supposed to be boarding my next plane. I ran out of the arrival gate (A24 for future reference) and across the travelators to the adjacent terminal to get to gate C4. Just as I arrived I heard an announcement that the gate had changed to C11. After moving to that gate and waiting for about 15 minutes (yes, not surprisingly the outgoing flight was going to be late departing) we had another gate change to C2. On the way over to that gate there was a guy strumming a guitar with a girl tagging along with him. I said to him “you should sing us a song about all these gate changes!” So he did! It was pretty funny. His name was Ryan and when I asked him what he did he said “Dude! I surf, dude!” (I kid you not). I think he was actually a construction worker by day but lived right on the beachfront in California and surfed at night mostly. The girl he had with him, Krista, was also from California. He was your typical cliche surfer. Blonde hair, even a beard and the most surfie sounding voice I’ve ever heard. If you’ve watched Finding Nemo just think about all those turtles Nemo meets. Exactly the same sort of voice. It was freaking hilarious! ...

I’m pretty stoked at the moment. I just received my ticket for Ultra Music Festival 2005. This is supposed to be America’s biggest electronic music event, which is saying something in terms of size. Although I’m expecting it to be multiple times as large as Enchanted (approx. 50,000 people are expected to attend) I doubt it’ll have the same charm as Enchanted as none of my Aussie Enchanted friends will be there! Ah well. ...

It was a bit weird to hear that Traffic, the premier place for Drum and Bass in Adelaide, had closed its doors recently. The big memory I have from there is when I saw DJ Marky and Stamina MC play and that was simply *awesome*. However, that and maybe a couple of other performances aside, one thing I had against the place was that there was way, way too much cigarette smoke inside. I was constantly in search of some nice clean air or some decent ventilation. It sort of sucked like that. ...

Heh, this is pretty funny. My friend Omar from work informed me that one (or some) of his other band members had found a site that gave excellent reviews for all the Santos Renuentes gigs that the person had been too. They told him “see, you never know who comes to see our shows”. Well, yes that’s true… but if it weren’t for Omar I doubt that I’d ever had heard of Tobacco Road or Santos Renuentes or whatever. Maybe I would have gone along to see some live music one time and seen their band. If I did take that path, I’d probably have given them a good review anyway ;-) ...

Don’t ask me how the hell I found this site… today hasn’t been the most productive work day. Anyway, here is the link to the site: http://www.convictcreations.com/culture/music.htm. It only really gets interesting about half way down, but this is the part that really made me laugh: “Australian men are renowned for having the dancing rhythm of Frankenstein…their lack of rhythm and stiff knees has many of them resembling a chicken or jack in the box bouncing from side to side.” ...

and none of my music, and no computer, and 1/2 of my clothes. It was actually a blind, dumb-arse mistake of mine to put my music CDs in the wrong suitcase, but oh well. Originally though my air shipment was supposed to arrive a few days after I did (it is an air shipment after all) so I wasn’t really that worried. However, that isn’t the case as I’ve been here for nearly 2 1/2 weeks and I ain’t seen anything yet. Yeah, whinge whinge whinge, I know :-) Supposedly it’s in customs at Miami airport still… those buggers are playing my guitar (good luck it’s left-handed), wearing my clothes (good luck that’s mostly my winter stuff) and listening to my CDs (yeah, um, good luck). ...

I am absolutely blown away by this place (and I ain’t only talking about Tobacco Road). It’s true when they say that everything is bigger in America. I was driving to Miami last night with a pretty good set of directions, thank God, and I was amazed by the sheer amount of concrete used in the construction of the highways. As an engineer (or just a generally inquisitive person), I am in awe at how all of this stuff is designed and built. I start thinking about it and then give up because it hurts my head. ...