Rough Draft

The Young and the Hopeless

Dana and I went to see Mest, Something Corporate and Good Charlotte at the Tower City Amphitheater. I've been listening to Mest for a while, but this was the first time I saw them in concert. I was hoping they would play "What's the Dillio?", but they didn't. They played a bunch of songs from their new self-titled album, and Joel or Benji came out on stage when they played Jaded. They also played Fuct Up Kid, Drawing Board, Hotel Room and ended with Cadillac.

Something Corporate played next, and put on a spectacular show as always. They played 3 songs (Only Ashes, Me and the Moon, and Space) from their upcoming album, North. They also played their standard set of songs including Punk Rock Princess, Hurricane, Fall, and If U C Jordan. The best part of their set was about halfway through when Andrew said, "Ok this next song is kind of long." This was the second time I've heard Konstantine live, and it sounded even better this time. Halfway through the song, Andrew climbed up on the piano and sat and sang. Konstantine is definitely one of the best relationship songs ever written.

The headliners of the show were Good Charlotte. They played a good mix of songs from their self titled album and their newer album, The Young and the Hopeless. You could tell most of the crowd had only heard The Young and the Hopeless, because when they played older songs, the amount of people singing along dropped noticeably. Before playing their last song, Benji said "Ok, this is the part of the show known as an encore, where the band usually acts like they are leaving. So pretend we just played our last song." What followed was a very odd mixture of boos and cheers. Benji stood there for a minute and then said, "No, you're supposed to chant something like 'We want more!'". It was pretty amusing.

One other interesting thing that happened towards the end of Good Charlotte's set is they had some random guy from the crowd come up on stage and play drums with them. Benji said it worked a lot better when Green Day did it, but the guy that got up on stage actually seemed to do pretty well.

Eagles vs Bills

The Eagles returned from their bye week, apparently found their offense, and got their first win of the season by beating the Bills 23-13. This was the first Eagles game that wasn't televised here in Cleveland. So I had to use the NFL score ticker while watching the Browns game and then checking ESPN.com after the Browns game was over. From the sounds of it, the Eagles almost blew a 16-0 lead, but a 60+ yard touchdown by Brian Westbrook towards the end of the game sealed the win. It looks like the Eagles defense did a good job of stopping Buffalo, especially given that Pro Bowlers Brian Dawkins and Bobby Taylor did not play, and Troy Vincent got injured early in the game, and did not return. Next week the Eagles play the Redskins (this will be the Eagles first game of the season against a divisional opponent) and hopefully their offense will continue to improve and they'll get some starters back on defense.

Take Me Out To The Ballgame

Jeff's parents took Jeff, Phil, and I to an Indians game at Jacob's Field on Sunday. It was the first MLB game I've been to in about 5 years. The Indians lost to the Red Sox 2-0. Pedro Martinez pitched for the Red Sox, and a rookie, Cliff Lee, pitched for the Indians. It wasn't a very offensive game, as the score indicates. The Indians couldn't seem to get a man on base with less than 2 outs all game. They did manage to get the bases loaded in the bottom of the 7th, but it was with 2 outs, and they didn't end up scoring. After the game, we ate at Fuddrucker's in Tower City and got 10% off by showing our tickets to the game.

Eagles vs Patriots

I'm a little late in posting this, but the Eagles suffered a 31-10 loss to the Patriots. With Safety Brian Dawkins and Cornerback Bobby Taylor (each arguably one of the best players at their respective positions in the NFL) it's no surprise that Tom Brady and the Patriots had a good day passing the ball. Once again though, it was the Eagles offense which disappointed. The entire Eagles offense just seemed completely out of sync. This is the Eagles first 0-2 start since Andy Reid started coaching them 4 seasons ago. The Eagles have a bye week this week, so hopefully they can get things turned around.

Signals Over ITMS

It's Tuesday and that means Apple has provided me with fresh music just waiting to be purchased. I was quite happy to see that the new MxPx album, Before Everything and After, as well as the new Thursday album, War All The Time, were added to the ITMS as both were albums I was thinking of purchasing after hearing a couple mp3s from each album. After listening to the 30 second previews, I ended up purchasing both. The MxPx album is nice and upbeat while the Thursday album is much darker. I've listened to both of them once today and enjoy them. I'm sure they'll be finding their way into my regular rotation of albums very quickly.

Sing Like You Think No One's Listening

A few friends and I went to see Straylight Run and Jamison Parker at the Grog Shop last Saturday. This was about the 5th show for both bands and there were only about 50 people there. Jamison Parker played first and played all the songs off their EP Notes and Photographs as well as the song Paper, Rock, Scissors. There was a really cute girl standing next to me during their set (more on her later). After their set, I went over to buy their EP and a T-shirt. They're doing this really cool thing with the EP. They have 2000 copies to sell on the tour and each is individually numbered and each has a different Polaroid attached to it. When the EP hits stores in October, the cover (or possibly a fold out poster type of thing) will be a collage of those 2000 images. Very cool idea. I also got a chance to talk with Parker a little bit. He had a 15" Titanium Powerbook with a scanner connected to it at the show.

Straylight Run played the 6 songs they have made available for download as well as several new ones. A lot of people sang along with Mistakes We Knew We Were Making, It's For The Best, and Existentialism on Prom Night. One of the new songs they sang was sung by Michelle, and I'd just like to say she has a very nice voice. She sang backup vocals on most of the other songs, but it was hard to hear her. Overall, Straylight had a much more raw sound live than their mp3s, but it still sounded good, just a little different.

And now back to the attractive girl standing next to me during JamisonParker. When she was standing next to me, I thought she looked like Michelle and it turns out, she was Michelle! Then after the show, as we were leaving, she was walking over to the bar by herself. This is the time when I should have gone over and bought her a drink (especially since it was her birthday). But no, I was stupid and wimpy and didn't. Bah. I'm still kicking myself for not doing it. I mean how cool would it have been to say I sat down and had a drink with Michelle on her birthday. Oh well, I just have to make sure not to pass up such opportunities in the future, assuming I'm lucky enough to have more opportunities like that.

Best Live Performance....Ever

Dana and I went to see Yellowcard at the Agora last Thursday and they were simply put: amazing. We were right up front and just inches away from the band the whole night. They had so much energy and you could tell they were having a great time playing. The crowd was jumping and singing along with every song. Ryan crowdsurfed a couple times, Sean did a backflip off one of the speakers during Way Away and again at the end of the show, and Ben held his guitar out into the crowd so everyone nearby (including me :-) ) could strum it.

They had a very good mix of old and new songs in their set. They started off with a couple old ones: For Pete's Sake and Finish Line. After those Ryan said, "Ok, we're going to play a few songs off Ocean Avenue and we want to just rip right though them, so let's rock out nonstop for the next 10-12 minutes." And with that they played Way Away, Breathing, and Ocean Avenue. Then came the best part of the show. A couple people in their crew came on stage with chairs, Ryan grabbed an acoustic guitar and played Empty Apartment and followed that with Rough Draft (one of the most amazing songs ever) which they have never played live until this tour. After that they mixed some more old and new songs together including Sureshot, Star Struck, Only One, Life of a Salesman, and Avondale. After that was the serious part of the show because they played Believe which they wrote about September 11. They left the stage after that, then Ryan came back to play Cigarette and the rest of the band came back throughout the rest of the song. They finished up with October Nights.

At the end of the show Dana got a guitar pick, which she gave to me, and I bought a Yellowcard Ocean Avenue shirt and got Sean to sign my Ocean Avenue CD booklet. Quite a fun night.

I'd just like to say I'm really glad to see these guys being successful. They're a great group of people and they've worked really hard to get where they are today. They started in Florida and then left everything thing behind and moved to California to make their dream of becoming a successful band come true and that's something I can really relate to at this point in my life.

AMV

My friend Mike and his girlfriend Meri has been making anime music videos for 3 or so years now. I'm hosting a few of their newest videos for them, so I thought I'd mention them here. I was going to provide links here, but Mike already set up a spiffy page with screen shots and descriptions, so I'll just direct you there.

Cute Without the 'e' Cut From The Team

Taking Back Sunday was on Jimmy Kimmel last night and they performed Cute Without the 'e'. Mike recorded and encoded it, so here's an mpg of their performance . The new members of the band fit in really well and the crowd really got into it.

Monday Night Football - Eagles vs Bucs

Last night's game wasn't a pretty one for the Eagles, they lost to the Bucs 17-0 in their first game of the season and the first game at the new Lincoln Financial Field. The Eagles offenese looked particulary sluggish and out of sync. I was pretty happy with what I saw from their defense though. I was worried about it after they lost Hugh Douglas and Blaine Bishop in the offseason. The Eagles play New England next week and then have their bye week. I wasn't happy to see they had their bye week so early, but it looks like they might need it to get the offense back together.

The Best of Me and You're So Last Summer

The Starting Line were on Jimmy Kimmel last night and performed The Best of Me. Their performance was excellent, though I was hoping they'd get to play 2 songs. I'm looking forward to seeing them October 4th at the Drive Thru Invasion Tour and their acoustic EP/DVD entitled Make Yourself at Home is due out around the end of November.

Taking Back Sunday will be on Kimmel tonight, and my guess is they'll be performing You're So Last Summer which they just shot a video for with Flava Flav. That song has one of my favorite lyrics in it: "The truth is you could slit my throat and with my one last gasphing breath I'd apologize for bleeding on your shirt." This will be their first TV appearance with the 2 new members of the band. If they play 2 songs, I would have to guess it would be Cute Without the 'e', Cut From the Team, which is a great song and the music video, which is based on Fight Club, is even cooler.

Update: The Starting Line's performance on Kimmel can be downloaded at Punk Rock Vids. Damn, that was fast.

Space

Being Tuesday, Apple added new songs to the iTunes Music Store. So it was about 9:50 and I had Distributed Systems at 10, but I thought I'd see what new songs were added this week. The single Space from Something Corporate's album North (due out Oct 21) was added to the store. A couple clicks and less than 1 minute later and I was on my way to class, listening to the song on my iPod. How cool is that?

The Soul Still Burns

Matt got the Gamecube version of Soul Calibur II over the weekend. We've played it a bit on the last couple days and I have to say it's one of the most fun fighters I've played in a while. I've always been a fan of weapons based fighters, I mean come on, swords are just cool. The controls are simple enough that we had good fights going on even with people who don't play video games that much. I haven't played too much yet, but I'd like play enough that I can get past the button mashing style of play. My character of choice right now is Xianghua, because she's fast and seems to have a good variety of sword moves. I also found a character last night that uses nunchucks, and he seems like he could also be a very good character to learn.