Rough Draft

Interview with The Wolf

There's a really good interview with Johnathan "The Wolf" Rentzsch over on Drunken Blog. It's rather long, but I highly recommend taking the time to read it. Lots of good geeky stuff including talk about mach_inject and mach_override, Web Objects, Cocoa, garbage collection, and threading. I also enjoyed this line regarding what aspects of OS X programming are overrated: "Overrated is the chick-appeal. "Hey baby, I write Mac OS X software" isn't the slam-dunk one would expect. Doesn't stop me from trying, though. I hear the iPod engineers have better luck". I was also excited to see 1985 by Bowling for Soup in his iTunes playlist.

Concert Backlog

While I'm writing about concerts, I figured I'd mention a few I went to Jan. and Feb. but never got around to writing about.

Back in January, Nick, Eric, and I went to see Ben Gibbard, Mark Kozelek, and Eric Bachmann (oh and one other person whose name I forget) for a Tsunami Relief Show. Ben was excellent as always. He played a mix of Death Cab, Postal Service, and some covers. From a list I made after the show:

Photobooth
Title and Registration
Brand New Colony
Such Great Heights
Recycled Air
Movie Script Ending
I Was a Kaleidoscope
A Lack of Color
405

3 covers

Nick and I bought posters, and after the show Nick got them signed by Ben, Mark, and Eric. I had taken BART, and the show didn't end 1:00, so unfortunately I couldn't hang around after the show.

In mid February, the three of us went to see Interpol at The Warfield. The opening band was ok. Their music was darker sounding and they fit well as an opener for Interpol. The music itself was good and they had both a male and female vocalist, but the female was painful to listen to and unfortunately she did most of the singing. Interpol's set was quite good. This was actually the second time I'd seen them live as they played at the BFD show I went to the summer I interned at Apple. However, I hadn't heard any of their music before the first time I saw them, so this second show was much more enjoyable. Also, their bassist is super cool. He looked completely bad ass wearing a white shirt, black pants, suspenders, boots, and a gun holster.

Also in February, Eric and I went to see Something Corporate and Straylight Run at The Fillmore. The Academy Is and Armor For Sleep opened. I knew a couple of Armor For Sleep's songs, but still haven't really gotten into their new album.

Straylight played a fairly short set:

The Tension and the Terror
Dignity and Money
Tool Sheds and Hot Tubs
Existentialism on Prom Night
Mistakes We Knew We Were Making
Another Word For Desperate
For the Best

Their set was pretty good, but I wish they could have played longer.

Finally, Something Corporate came out and pretty well rocked the house as usual. They are definitely one of my favorite bands to see live. They played a pretty long set, and as best as I can remember the songs included:

Cavanaugh Park
I Woke Up in a Car
Straw Dog ("old favorite" as Andrew said before playing it)
Space
As You Sleep
Down
Only Ashes
Me and the Moon
21 and Invincible
Watch the Sky
Punk Rock Princess
If You See Jordan
I Want to Save You (Piano only)
Konstantine
Hurricane

I was really glad they didn't end with If You See Jordan and enjoyed hearing Watch the Sky live. The piano only version of I Want to Save You was really beautiful and Konstantine (which seems to have a new verse or two every time they play it live) was excellent as well.

That's a quick recap (though admittedly not very in depth) of attended concerts. Upcoming shows include New Found Glory/Reggie and the Full Effect, Snow Patrol, The Get Up Kids, and possibly Jimmy Eat World/Taking Back Sunday. And I'm anxiously awaiting a tour by Brand New.

I'm a Rocker, I Rock Out

Eric and I went to see Fall Out Boy and Midtown at The Grand in San Francisco last night. The venue was a little bit further from the BART station than I thought, so by the time we grabbed some food, we got to the show about 20 minutes late and missed Gym Class Heroes. I had listened to the songs on their PureVolume page, and discovered they're actually a rap group. I wasn't incredibly excited about seeing them anyway, though it would have been cool to hear the song Taxi Driver the lyrics of which are for the most part composed of band names. The second opening band was The Academy Is. We saw them about a month ago when they opened for Something Corporate. They weren't too bad.

Finally Midtown took the stage. Mike introduced me to Midtown (they're from Rutgers, where Mike went to school) our freshman year of college, and I've been wanting to see them live ever since. They certainly didn't disappoint. They were actually introduced by their guitar tech who pretended to be Napoleon Dynamite. He surprisingly looked and sounded quite a bit like Napoleon, except he had his red hair slicked back. It was pretty entertaining. Then the band came out and Gabe had "EMO SUCKS" written in tape on his sweatshirt. He proceeded to declare emo a fad, but that rock was forever. Then they jumped straight into their set with Give it Up. The rest of their set included:

• To Our Saviors
• A Faulty Foundation
• Is it Me? Is it True?
• Empty Like the Ocean
• Just Rock and Roll
• Hey Baby Don't You Know That We're All Whores
• Waiting for the News
• Nothing is Ever What it Seems

It was good to seem them play a couple older songs in there. They were going to end their set with So Long as We Keep Our Bodies Numb We're Safe, but someone from the venue came out and said something to Gabe and they said, "Oh, I guess we already played our last song". I'm not sure if perhaps things were just running late, or if someone got pissed that one of Midtown's members lit a cigarette on stage (there's no smoking in most California clubs). It was disappointing not to hear one more song, but nonetheless Midtown played an awesome set.

The first song played on the venues speakers while they were getting set up for FOB was the Empty Like an Ocean Mash Up (a mix of Midtown's song and some rap song). I had just recently downloaded the song from here, but it was amusing to actually hear them playing it at a Midtown show. Unfortunately then the rest of the inordinately long time between Midtown's and Fall Out Boy's set was filled with standard rap. Ugh. They could have at least played some MC Lars.

Finally, the lights went out and Baby Got Back was played over the speakers as Fall Out Boy took the stage and opened with Dead On Arrival. Eric and I had been in the back-middle of the pit, but as soon as FOB started playing a whole bunch of people rushed from the back of the crowd. After just a few seconds I ended up 5 or so people from the front of the stage. It had been a long time since I'd been in the pit for a show so I decided I'd stay there for at least a while, and ended up staying the entire set. It was just too much fun rocking out. Though not expecting to be in the pit, I hadn't carefully tied my shoes before the show, so by the end of the first song, My left shoe was completely untied. Fortunately I managed to duck down and get it loosely tied and shove the laces inside my shoe before the second song started. Fall Out Boy shows are always incredibly energetic and this one was no exception. The pit was crazy the entire set, but it was a good time.

As far as I can remember, they played all the songs from Take This to Your Grave as well as 3 songs from their album that comes out in May, and one really old song that I don't remember the name of. The new songs were really good. The electric version of Nobody Puts Baby in the Corner (the song was originally only on their acoustic EP) kicked ass, as did Sugar We're Going Down which I had just heard a couple days before the show. This was my 5th time seeing Fall Out Boy, but the first time they were the headliners. Their shows are always a lot of fun and I had a great time at this one and I can't wait for their album to come out in May.

Update: I forgot this amusing story. After one of The Academy Is's songs, their lead singer told everyone to say hi to one of their stage hands. Then he says "He's single...and straight, so sorry San Francisco".

(Not a) Red Letter Day

The Get Up Kids are releasing a final live CD and then moving on. Saw this coming for a while what with Matt's second band The New Amsterdams, and James fronting Reggie and the Full Effect and playing keyboard with New Found Glory, but nonetheless it's pretty sad. Their album Something to Write Home About was what got me into punk/emo music back in high school when Mike first sent me some of their mp3s, and it remains one of my favorite all time albums. And so I say, so long to TGUK and good luck.