Here I am, as promised, ready to do some serious bloggin’. Due to my ardent stance on alliteration usage (pro!), I’ve decided that Mondays should be for “Music” and Fridays should be for “Photographs”. This pairs poor, alliterationless “Books” with Wednesdays.
Here we go!
Music.
I enjoy music. Quite a lot. I’ve got lots o’ gigabytes of it and a serviceable iPod touch enabling me to carry on my love affair with tunes wherever I go. However, I understand that an mp3 player paired with musical appreciation in no way makes me unique or special or fancy. It neither qualifies me as a musical expert with impeccable taste, nor does it imply that I’m an uber-with it hipster, who likes bands before you’ve ever heard of them. The point of these “Music” bits is to simply share a song/artist/album that I think is really super-awesome and that I think you will hopefully enjoy. No one likes a music snob. Blech! They’re the worst. I will attempt to avoid any and all forms of snobbery in my blog posts. Promise.
Anyway.
Music!
This week, I will talk about a band. That band is Dawes. If you’re lucky, clicking this link will result in vast amounts of good feelings and maybe even a modicum of absolute giddiness – I experienced both! Dawes has put out one studio album to date: North Hills. As of right now, its Amazon.com Sales Rank is #51,473 for MP3 Albums, so you know it has to be good. All of the songs on the album rate at least “Pretty gosh darn good!”, but my favorites are When My Time Comes, Give Me Time, and Love is All I Am. Give ‘er a listen if you’re up for it.
While North Hills is quite good, this band is orders (at least three!) of magnitude better live. I have been fortunate enough to see them perform twice. The first time, back in May, they opened for Low vs Diamond and Ben Lee at Nectar in Fremont. I’d definitely never heard of them before (they weren’t listed on the tickets or Nectar’s website beforehand) but they were ridiculous. Hearing really good music with no prior recommendations/expectations is a real treat. They were so good that most of the obnoxious, “I’m going to insist on talking during the opening act” folks actually shut up and listened. The lead singer/guitarist was quite the showman, animatedly dancing and hopping around on stage (in a good way) and the entire band’s performance was 100% entertaining and full of energy. They played for about 45 minutes and I ran up and bought a copy of their CD as soon as they were finished. <3
They came back to Seattle again in July, touring with Deer Tick, so OBVIOUSLY I went and saw them again. Having listened to their album a bunch, they were even better the second time. Very satisfying. In the future, I plan on attending their shows whenever they’re in the Seattle area. Anyway, they’re my favorite new band that I’ve given a listen to so far this year, so I figured it’d be prudent to give ‘em the old shout out and share them with whomever might stumble across this entry. Hopefully you don’t think they suck!
In other news, today (assuming I publish this when it’s still August 10th) is my birthday! Hooray! 23! Woooooo! I celebrated mostly yesterday because I had to work today, thereby doubling the time over which birthday festivities occured. It was great fun. The highlights were eating at Ixtapa, my favorite restaurant ever (sorry Feve, you’re a very close second), and opening up one of my presents, only to discover that the red panda decorated wrapping paper was concealing a Canon Rebel XS 10.1MP Digital SLR Camera. Win! And it was totally a surprise, which made it that much better. Now when I take and post photos, the only thing to blame their mediocrity on are my underwhelming photography “skills”. So that’s fun. My parents/family also sent me lots of nice presents and my housemates whipped up a delicious cake. So, yes. A good birthday.
See y’all soon.
Concerts attended in 2009: 9
Most recent: Throw Me the Statue & Blitzen Trapper @ the Mural Amphitheatre, 7/31/09
Next up: The Avett Brothers @ the Paramount Theatre, 8/28/2009
