Jonobie and I went to a bluegrass festival in Tacoma called Wintergrass.  I was really impressed, so much so that it was almost worth the exhorbitant $65 price of admission.

We're not certain if there was a cheaper way to get in.  For example, we didn't do any workshops, so we're not sure if there was a cheaper non-workshop admittance.  But they ( Read more... )

Pinback played at the Showbox last week. Not being able to find anyone who'd heard of them, I went by myself ( Read more... )

We saw this excellent show in Las Vegas after the Fast Pairs.  Bill Gates and Warren Buffett has apparently also chosen to do early bridge events because they were sitting three rows in front of us.

This is a circus set entirely to Beatles music.  The music had apparently been remixed and re-mashed-up from the master recordings by George Martin and ( Read more... )

Since many people aren't familiar with his name, I'll start by saying that Mark Knopfler is the former frontman of Dire Straits.
Last night was a beautiful evening at the winery, marred only by a little rain and the occasional presence of those older guys you can tell just by their skin tone have been heavy drinkers for many years.

Mark Knopfler is a ( Read more... )

buoren opened up for the blue man group at the Key Arena last week.  Ok, so it wasn't really Kevin, but he looked like him, acted similarly, and was from San Francisco. Tell me if I lie. Basically, he sat there at a table in the middle of stage and sampled a bunch of rock songs played DJ, scratching, stopping, backing up, etc. It was a lot of fun, ( Read more... )

Another Showbox outing, this time with another ex-coworker, Matt Mitchell.  A lot of good conversation over dinner was followed by one of the best concerts in recent memory, in no small part due to the opening act.

Tally Hall
I had never heard of these 5 collar-and-tie performers from Michigan.  Think of a cross between Weezer, a barbershop quartet, ( Read more... )

I saw them again at the Showbox, one of my favorite venues, now that it (like everywhere else) is non-smoking.  Everyone was there - Carl Newman, Neko Case, Danny Behar, and all five-ish others that make up this indie-rock supergroup.

Once again, they blistered through a set of catchy, high-energy rock, the kind where it's mandatory to stand up and ( Read more... )

We went to see Michael Bublé concert last night.  The man can perform; he sounds as good or better live than he does on disk, and he had a pretty good band.  The band was arranged in this sweet modern-looking setpiece of a big, paneled, sloped surface with three flat platforms cut out of it.  Those areas housed, from right to left, the "Big Band", ( Read more... )