Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers

Last week, Feller and I went down to Santa Cruz for a Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers concert. I’ve written a bit before about how much I love seeing my favorites in concert, and this was no exception. RCPM is up there in my top three favorite bands, and I haven’t had a chance to see them perform in years. Roger Clyne consistently gives great, energetic performances, and I always leave the show feeling revved up and revitalized. Feller has started coming with me when there are shows I want to see, and it’s fun to share the music I love with him.

I haven’t listened to RCPM on a regular basis for a few years; I didn’t love two of their recent albums and haven’t even listened to their newest, but this concert took me right back to being 22 on a beach in Mexico hearing them live for the first time. My buddy and I drove down to Rocky Point on a whim, after seeing Cross Canadian Ragweed in Tucson, who announced they were playing in Mexico the following week. We didn’t have a hotel or plan, and we discovered that this concert was a huge fucking event. We found the one room still available around the corner from the concert venue and got down to partying.

CCR was great; they always, always were, which is why I was so heartbroken when they broke up. But RCPM? Oh, god, they were MAGICAL. I knew some of their music because I worked in a sports bar that had The Refreshments on the jukebox, but even the stuff I didn’t know felt familiar and wonderful. I am pretty sure there weren’t any fireworks that night, but that feeling you get when you see fireworks is so strong in my memories that I have to remind myself he was only singing, “The kids are lighting firecrackers/Boom, boom, boom” and that it wasn’t actually happening.

After that night, I was hooked. I saw RCPM anytime they played in Tucson and as many times in Phoenix as I could. I saw them in Rocky Point another three times, always as part of a fun road trip with the same buddy. They were the soundtrack to my life in the first few years after I graduated college; when I didn’t know what was going on or where my life was headed, I turned to Roger who just seemed to GET ME. And the concert last week just took me right back there, reminding me of all the fun I had while listening to this band.

Linkspammy

It seems that every time I post a linkspam, I IMMEDIATELY start finding MORE COOL STUFF OMG. I love the internet sometimes.

Speaking of Christina Hendricks, here’s an oped piece about how awesome her character on Mad Men is and why I (or people in general, I suppose) want to do her. (This is totally an old post, but I only recently saw it) Sidenote: Toy With Me is a great site that has fun and interesting articles written by smart, witty women about sex.

You know, I’ve never had any great desire to live in a big city, and certainly not New York, but I suppose, if you twisted my arm enough, I could SOMEHOW find the will to live in this Townhouse in the Sky. (LOOK AT THE LIBRARY. SO MANY BOOKS.)

Dear Tim Gunn, thank you for being so awesome. Tim Gunn critiques superhero costumes.

I <3 RDJ Robert Downey Jr on Leno (the Letterman clip right after RDJ is HILARIOUS too)

NO EFFING WAY. Cross Canadian Ragweed in SF August 5 with Micky & the Motorcars!! This is awesome. I get CCR twice in one year PLUS Micky and the Motorcars. Someday, I’ll tell you about the time I almost slept with the lead guitarist.

Most importantly, my bestest best friend ever got married this past weekend, and lo it was awesome. We had so much fun, and everyone liked the feller. He’s was confident and social and talked to everyone there and could not have been sexier if he tried. As one of my friends put it, he wasn’t clingy and didn’t need me to “hold his hand” and that’s hot. There were a couple of VERY minor bumps, but overall? The weekend COULD NOT have gone better.

The Boys from Oklahoma

Last night was … amazing. Awesome. So great. I had SUCH a good time at the concert, and the music was AMAZING. I tweeted (ugh, that word) quite a bit before/during/after the show, partly so I could remember all the awesome stuff that happened.

I really wanted to take the BART into the city for the concert, but I didn’t want to risk not having a way to get back home afterward, since the last BART would have left around midnight. So I drove. I HATE driving here. The freeways SUCK, the drivers suck and you know those hilly road San Francisco is known for? They TERRIFY me. I had nightmares about them before I moved out here, so I pretty much avoid driving in the city as much as possible. Unfortunately, getting to the bar for the show led me down one of those hilly streets. It was the street Mariam and I drove on to get to the Golden Gate Park when we were here in October, and when I realized that that was where I was headed, I started praying like crazy that I wouldn’t have to stop at the top of an incline. This is how I know God loves me: I hit the first red light where the street was still pretty level, and it was greens the rest of the way. No stopping on the incline. I even was able to find a parking spot about three blocks away! It was awesome!

I made it to the bar about 5-10 minutes before Randy Rogers Band came on. The Independent is a small, dark venue, and it wasn’t super crowded. Apparently, it has a coat check! I kind of didn’t realize those things actually existed in the real world. They didn’t have the beer I wanted, so I went with cheap:

@AmysJoy I forgot how bad Coors light is
@AmysJoy I miss being where XX is readily available

Randy Rogers Band was GREAT. They opened with one of my favorite songs, “Somebody Take Me Home”. The set was short, about an hour long. Randy Rogers has the flu, and he sounded a little off, but not bad. Before they started “Kiss Me in the Dark”, Randy “hope[d we’d] find someone to make out with who didn’t have the flu”.

@AmysJoy Randy Rogers wants me to find someone to make out with! Yes please!

Aaaaand then some drunk bitch climbed up on stage. She got right up on the guitarist before she was escorted off the stage, but not out of the club, which surprised me. And then her friend told me that she’s known Cross Canadian Ragweed since “long before” they were CCR, but this was the first time she’d ever gotten to see them. Except…they’ve been doing this 15 years, so that would have put her at 10 AT THE OLDEST for her to know them before. I totally believed her. I have noticed there’s always that one person who KNOWS the band at shows like this, which isn’t to say that they’re not telling the truth, but it is annoying and kind of just makes them sound like a tool. Don’t be that guy. Also, don’t be the guy who orders a pink drink from the bar. I TOTALLY judge dudes who order girly drinks (unless they’re gay, in which case, it’s okay). Be a man for God’s sakes!

Anyway, Cross Canadian Ragweed. Awesome. This is the fourth time I’ve seen them, and it was the best show. It was VERY high energy, almost no slow songs (no “Sick and Tired”, no “17”, no “Fighting For”, no “Flowers”, no “Run to Me”, no “Cry Lonely”). I was gonna say they didn’t really play a whole lot off their new album, but looking at it now, they played over half of it. You know, you get used to hearing songs in a particular order on the CD, you don’t expect to hear that order during a live show. My favorite part of the album is the way three songs flow into each other. They mesh really well, and CCR played those three songs in the CD order. It was awesome. Their show was only (“only”) 2 – 2.5 hours, but it felt like so much longer. In a good way, not in a Public Enemies way. Cody was quite chatty last night. He’s not usually a big talker, so it was kind of a nice change. People were shouting out requests, and he assured us we’d hear “Alabama”. He also assured us that we would NOT hear “Carney Man”, which is on their first album and kind of a dorky song. Every show I’ve been to, he’s made a point of saying that they’re not playing it. Then he told a cute story about his kid getting to sing with B Dylan (Bee Dillon? I don’t know. Half the time I can’t understand what he says because he’s got an accent and talks really fast). DEAN DILLON!

@AmysJoy Cody Canada: “thanks for the tequila; it makes me talk a lot.”

And then he forgot the words to “Boys From Oklahoma”. He tried to recover, but he “already forgot again. Fuck it.” And he just went back into the chorus. It was kind of awesome. And also hilarious.

This show was just … guh. Amazing. I came out of it feeling great. Riding really high on a wave of AWESOME. I love these guys, and they DID NOT disappoint. My only complaint, which is the one I always have about their shows, is that the instruments are turned up so loud, it gets a little hard to hear the lyrics. I took a ton of pictures (this one’s my favorite) and a few videos. The sounds pretty shitty on most of the videos, but the picture quality is pretty great. This one and this one have the best sound, but the worst picture. Oh well.

I’m so glad I went, and I’m really hoping Reckless Kelly gets out here soon.

Hot Tonight

First, I want to make a note regarding my best books of 2009. These five books were my ABSOLUTE favorite books that I read last year, but it was very difficult to narrow the list down to just five. I read so many great books last year, and I would pretty happily recommend any of the books on my 2009 list. I also really liked A Northern Light, The Lovely Bones, The Demon’s Lexicon, Rampant, Graceling, etc etc. I think the only books I really DID NOT like where Jodi Picoult’s Nineteen Minutes and Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime.

Second, I splurged some and bought myself a fancy new phone. It’s LOVELY. It’s the Verizon Droid, and it syncs with my Gmail and Google calendar, so I can set alerts on my phone to remind me of assignments and stuff, which I think will be helpful for school this semester. I’ve also got my school email set up on my phone, so I really won’t be able to “forget” about school this semester. Plus I’ll be able to upload pictures to Flickr and even update my blog from my phone. I’m pretty stoke about all the possibilities this phone has. Now, I’ve just got to get my bluetooth synced.

Tonight, tonight I have big plans. Cross Canadian Ragweed and Randy Rogers Band are playing in San Francisco. I am so excited for this show. It’s been about a year since the last time I saw CCR, and I’ve never seen Randy Rogers. It’s a great pairing, and I’m sure it’ll be a great show. I cannot wait.