I've Got My Hands Up So Take Your Aim

Work is back to being overwhelming and crazy, but I'll save you those details. Yesterday my brother asked me - ASKED ME - to join him in using tickets he won to see Robert Randolph and the Family Band. I honestly only know a few of their songs (though I LOVE those songs) and it was FREE and he ASKED ME, so I said yes! Unfortunately we did not think it all through very well and wound up busing it up north then walking around and busing it back to the Loop-proper and walking a mile or so to the train so we could grab the last train of the night ... meaning I didn't get home until 1:30pm and him even later.

He fell asleep on the train; I did not. I dutifully let my big brother sleep while I stared out the window, got off six stops before he would, and told him to not sleep through his stop. He didn't get home until nearly 2am and somehow still got up earlier than me and was on the train, passing my apartment, before I could bother getting out of bed.

It was at Park West, which is a pretty interesting venue I'd never been to before. There's seating on the main floor and a bunch of little booths, then there is an open floor right in front of the stage. We stood off to the side for a while during the opening act, then got down to the floor for the main event and were pretty close to the stage.



He was insanely attractive and built more than I thought he really was ... especially with the dark button-up and tight vest. Niiiiiiice. :D

What wasn't so nice is realizing/remembering about 15 minutes into the show that they're a total jam band ... and I actually do not like jam bands. Like, just play the freaking songs! I don't want to hear you go instrumental for 15 minutes, playing the same melody over and over and over and over again, which they did. A lot. Especially as a teaser to the opening to the one song I really love of theirs - and that I figure people actually DO know of them - but never played the actual song. Just jammed parts of the opening for 15 minutes then went into the encore, which were other jam songs. *eyeroll*

They also didn't play Travelling Shoes, which I also really, really love.

But hey! If you're really into soul jam bands, go check them out! LOL They did cover Jimi Hendrix's "Foxy Lady", do an instrumental of Michael Jackson's "The Way You Make Me Feel", and play the first half of The Impressions' "People Get Ready."

To round out the worry on the hard drive last week ... IT can't recover ANYTHING from it. Good news: No porn will be found. Bad news: I've lost three years of work emails that I had archived because I was an idiot and forgot to copy over the .pst file. Yup!

LOL I also somehow lost my music ... which I swore was copied to the server, but when I copied it back, it just magically disappeared and won't show up in any folders. Hrmph. To combat this, a work friend showed me this great site for free DLs (you're actually supposed to 'tip' and/or 'spread the word' on the albums to get more exposure, but whatever you wanna do about it, I won't ask.)

Noise Trade

More specifically, The Civil Wars Live at Eddie's Attic with the melodramatic Poison & Wine that's begging for fic. SIIIIGH.

Speaking of, between work and family and impending doom and gloom about my birthday (O_O) I haven't written ANYTHING. I need to finish the threesome HS charity fic for tebtosca, finish my BB, and write another charity fic, but words are just failing me.

Work is also about to blow up with crazy hours and I'm rounding out my May travels by driving to Lansing tomorrow evening for a Wednesday meeting (more appropriately, a coworker is driving and I'm riding shotgun the whole way). Oy vey.

Oh hey, I woke up to an email about Supernatural: The Anime Series being Best Buy's deal of the day, at $8.99. I know a lot of you would love knowing that!

So last night was Coldplay and I was anticipating pretty bad seats, but it was actually really awesome to be back behind the stage (no, seriously) because they didn't have a big backdrop behind the stage, the entire United Center was wide open and Chris Martin and Co. were running around and playing and singing while walking the catwalk that went behind the stage.

Now, I like Coldplay, especially their early stuff. Parachutes was, like, in me, or something. I would listen to it daily, on repeat, and I thought it was the most incredible thing ever. A Rush of Blood to the Head was good for me; I ADORED the singles, though everything else was okay to me. X&Y didn't really do anything for me, and I haven't really paid attention since then. I knew they had a CD out, I kinda liked the song but didn't hear it enough to weigh in ... but Jesus Chris. Last night was probably the best concert experience of my life. I can't even ... Foo Fighters are my favorite band, have been for at least a decade, Dave Grohl SHREDS his vocal chords every time they perform and they rock like there's no tomorrow. But. I don't know. Last night's concert was a whole 'nother thing.

( More deets on the concert )

In other news, I looked up at the rafters and saw this and thought, hey! I remember that time we won 72 games! It was a really, really, really good year :D

I am a HUGE fan of songs that build. Songs that start small and melancholy, then begin to drive forward until they just open right up and give you more emotion than you had expected from the get-go. So, here are a few good ones I love ... rec me some of your faves!





( A few more songs )

1. This song has been the inspiration for much of copfic. Just the sound of it, the mood, the tone of the instruments. Before I wrote a word on it, I would walk across the Adams Street bridge with it in my ear and I'd imagine a trailer or opening credits if it was gonna be a TV show. LOL I know, it sounds ridiculous, but it's how my brain worked at the time. And now any Black Keys songs work, I love that album so hard.

2. There's this awesome S5 moodtheme over here. I've downloaded but forgot I can't upload major stuff to photobucket while connected to the work server. They're smarter than me and block major uploads or downloads to unapproved sites.

3. I got my assignment for spnthreesome and LOL ... yet AGAIN I got someone on my flist :-D Which, is partly like, whew! easy to please! I know what they like! But then it's also like, 'shit, something else I have to figure out and write!' because ...

4. I already have intentions to finally finish barfic (original BB idea) and cranky!engineer!Jensen, and then I saw The Crazies a few weeks back and got this ridiculous story idea and wrote parts of a prologue on the train that next morning. Not to mention a crazy, filthy, porny J2 I also wrote 2K for but will likely turn into a real story.

5. For those who have seen Inception, take a look at this. Ignore the typo, I didn't do it. But I keep LOLing at that last frame. Also? Quickly, because I know through random scanning of the flist over the last month I saw a lot of people super-duper excited over this movie and that there's already a fandom building at it, I'll have you all know that as I watched, I couldn't stop thinking of how everyone was already slashing everyone, haha. But that Tom Hardy, JFC. I want him all over me.

6. In general, I enjoyed Inception, but didn't love it. However, two days later, got into a fight with a coworker over the merits of Christopher Nolan's work. The Prestige is my favorite movie EVER and Dark Knight is INGENIOUSLY played (up until the last 20 mins or so because then it FEELS too long though I know we needed those bits). So now I'm planning a Nolan marathon with the parents. Mmmmmm Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale.

So, years ago (okay, like five), I lived with my cousin. He and all his friends were OBSESSED with the movie Old School. Mike (cousin) discovered The Dan Band, the wedding band during Will Ferrell's wedding, where they sing Total Eclipse of the Heart and drop f-bombs throughout the whole thing. They also appeared in Starsky and Hutch and The Hangover (OMG Bradley Cooper you handsome bastard).

SO. Back then, in my little friends group (that soon morphed and then singled out to be just me, my BFF, BFF's hubby, and cuz, anyway ...) we all developed this ridiculous love for The Dan Band. We saw them three years in a row, when they came to Chicago, House of Blues. We would get shit faced, push ourselves to the very front, up against the stage, and interact with the band, laughing hysterically and being ridiculous. I fucking love this band.

SO they haven't been here in two years, finally came back with a local radio station's Christmas show, brother and I both won tickets, we went. The Dan Band was hysterical, almost more so because they performed for a crowd likely in the near-10,000, but it seemed like only a few hundred got it, or knew what was going on. I love these guys. Brother started talking about their CD, I remembered I had it on the home computer, promised to upload it for him, and now I've decided to share with you.

It's basically just medleys of girl songs, sung on high speed with swear words dropped here and there. Trust me, it's lots of fun and addicting. Among the songs included ... Free Your Mind, Gloria, Genie in a Bottle, Milkshake, Flashdance, Fame, You Oughta Know, Shoop-Whatta Man medley (which proved that a decade later, I still know alllll the words to Shoop), Total Eclipse of the Heart, Lady, Abba Medley (Fernando and Waterloo, I forget the third song). So yeah. It's free, it's fun, it's silly.

Dan Band