So we went out tonight to one of our favorite Greek restaurants, Taki's Mad Greek, and stuffed ourselves with a variety of yummy food! Chris Harris accompanied us, as we were all going to see Busdriver at Neumos afterwards. We walked, since the venue is less than 10 minutes from our apartment. The doors opened at 8 pm, but we didn't get there until 8:45, and we were worried we'd have to wait, as every other Busdriver show I've been to has been packed.

The place was empty. There were literally less than 10 people milling about. We met our friends, Jennifer, Jason, Geoff and Lisa, and stood around and talked. Then Busdriver came out and started futzing around with stuff. We all kind of moved up to the stage, unsure of whether he was doing soundcheck or starting. There were only about 20-30 people there, but he started the show, thanking us all for coming out early. He played his set for around 30 of us, the dedicated few, joking and making the best of things. I've seen this dude five times, and it's always been packed. His show kicked ass as usual, although it was a bit short, and he went completely crazy on stage. That's why nearly ALL the pics we got were blurry. We bought a rare collection of his songs at the merch table afterwards and waited for the next band, The Gray Boy All Stars.

We waited an HOUR for them to saunter up to the stage. By this time, Neumos was filled to the brim with drunk frat boys and their girlfriends. The band sounded like every 5 piece funk/jazz combo from the 1970s. The drummer looked like a Reservoir Dog. The bassist looked like an out-of-place Texan. The guitarist looked like every hipster in Seattle, the organist like an out-of-work music teacher, and the sax/percussionist looked like... you know what? It doesn't matter, they were boring. Talented, energetic, and boring as hell. I wanted crazy turntablist-jazz-hiphop and I got The Cosby Show. Not a good follow-up to Busdriver. I think I nailed it when I described the genre as "Sportscoat and Bluejeans Jazz". Also, it was 21 and up, and it just sounded too... grown-up to me. We left about four songs in. 'Evs, Busdriver kicked ass, as you can clearly see.

Labels: Busdriver, food, music, Neumos

posted by tangentbot @ 11:41 PM 


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Gogol Bordello @The Showbox - Monday - 03.10.08 - 7pm

Ministry/Meshuggah/Hemlock @The Showbox - Saturday - 03.29.08 - 7pm

Grey Boy All Stars/Busdriver @Neumos - Thursday - 03.27.08 - 7pm

Gypsy Punk one night, Jazz/Funk and BUSDRIVER another night, and Industrial and Math Metal another night; March is looking okay so far. I don't know if I'll actually be able to make it to *all* of these shows, what with the exorbitant ticket prices and all, but we'll see.

I finally got my RAM upgrade for what is to be my audio computer. Upon installing it, I discovered that one of my memory ports is totally shot, so I've got a 512 Mb stick of RAM that I can't do anything with, and my machine has only 1.5 GB, instead of 2. Whatever - it'll be more then enough for my needs. I have been kicking around the idea of purchasing a balls-out, dedicated audio laptop, which would be an expensive buy, and I instead decided on resurrecting an old desktop I had at home. It has an M-Audio Delta Pro-audio card in it (6ms latency!), 1.5 GB RAM, and it's a 2 GB P4. I'm tweaking it right now, installing all the necessary crap and trimming out all the garbage. The upside is that I'll have a robust audio workstation, and I only paid 70 bucks to upgrade the RAM.

Labels: Busdriver, computer, Gogol Bordello, local music, Ministry

posted by tangentbot @ 5:42 PM 


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