Category Archives: music

What to Do?

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So I can’t help but wonder…when you’re picking up two recording artists, each with their own albums, one with some AAA radio play, both of whom have been (and currently are) touring with a jazz great and shuttling them across town for a live, acoustic session and interview (as a favor to the hubs who will be recording said sessions), what kind of music do you have playing in the car during the ride to and from?

Her album? I can sing along to it since I actually like it (though I wouldn’t be stupid enough to do that).  His album, though it’s all jazz & African guitar instrumental?  One of Herbie’s albums?  Though truth be told, I personally only own Possibilities (though the hubs I believe has a copy of everything).  The Sex & the City album since that’s what I’ve been grooving to lately or maybe some country?  Or how about my mixed Road Trippin’ disks which are mostly filled with 80’s music – I have 12 disks worth (hey, LA to Vegas and back is one long ride, don’t judge).  Or maybe some talk radio or NPR?

What’s a gal to do?  Well, I guess for starters I should go wash the car.  It’s so bad the hubs even made sure to remind me as he was leaving this morning (while I was on a work call – so it’s important).  I’m certainly open to suggestions though, so feel free to share your thoughts.

I’m So Over Poo

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I have spent a good part of this week cleaning up doggie diarrhea each morning.  Off the carpet.  Not counting the times we came home at night and I had to clean up poo yet again.  Off the carpet.  I’m so over it.  My Folex is doing a shitty job (pardon the expression) of getting it all up.  So now lucky us, our living room smells like crap…seriously.  Needless to say, I do believe I’ll be renting a steam cleaner this week (watch it get in the 100’s).

Last night was the first night we came home (from the last minute decision to attend a kick ass Brad Paisley show with filled to the brim with hottie little, OC drunks all around) that was poop free.  This morning was the first morning that I woke up to no poo!  Rejoice!  Mind you, the cat must’ve felt badly that I didn’t have anything to clean up and kindly left me a big ‘ol, messy hairball to clean up after.  At least the Folex worked on that.

Tonight, we’re off to the Playboy Jazz Festival at the Bowl.  Herbie’s performing and we have box seats.  It should be a fun night.  He’s got some great musical guests lined up.  Luckily he’s the second to last act to perform so it won’t be crazy hot when we get there.  Of course that also means we’ll be around more, all day long, well seasoned and sunned drunks *sigh*

Two straight nights of drunks and I just might be swearing off alcohol.  At least they shouldn’t be falling down and rolling down the grassy knoll known as “lawn seats” tonight (seriously, we moved as far away from the dancing drunks as we could last night or I’d probably be typing this up from the hospital after getting my toes surgically re-attached).

Hope all you dads have a great Father’s Day today!

Well, Hell! I Guess I Saw it Coming

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Well, it seems it’s official. I did indeed (seem to) get myself yet another damn sinus infection. I’m just going to have to suffer through it though since I have to fly again next Thursday. I figure I’ll wait to see the doctor (my wonderful doctor) next week so I’ll be ON the meds when I fly again. Hopefully this will mean I will keep things manageable instead of making things worse. And yes, I will be asking my doc for a recommendation to an ENT since this just seems to be getting out of control.

I guess I’ll try to take a short (super short) nap before heading out to the Kenny Chesney show tonight. I’m not a big KC fan, but Leann Rimes is opening and I kind of like her. Plus, the tix were free! And how am I to turn down a free concert. Even with crappy, nosebleed seats 😉

So I wonder how much Sudafed is too much Sudafed?

Not Quite Wordless Wednesday: Sonoma Edition

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Consider yourself warned…this is a long post, with photos.

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Sonoma was fun. Sonoma was cold. Sonoma was rainy. Herbie was awesome! Really, that’s the trip right there. Fun, but cold and rainy with a great show. We didn’t get to do pretty much anything on our brief list of things to do – no cave tour, no fancy, delicious dinner since we ran out of time on Friday and they only do dinner on the weekends and we were flying out Saturday night. And the camera barely came out of my purse since it was so crappy out. Oh well.

Instead we hung out on the square for the first time. We tasted some chocolate at Wine Country Chocolates – and of course bought some champagne and zinfandel truffles (yum!). We enjoyed some wine with some cheese over at the Sonoma Wine Shop (OMG YUM!). We bought two bottles of wine (an unoaked ’07 Chard from Valley of the Moon and an awesome ’06 Miner Viognier from Simpson Vineyard) and took a ’04 Merlot from Millerick Road from backstage. We also bought some cheese from the cheese tasting – a Humbolt Fog from Cypress Grove Chevre and a killer dry Monterery Jack from Vella Cheese Company – both are absolutely delicious. And I did a little shopping at the outlet center before we left (hello new purse!). So not in the plan, but that rain, well, it messed us up a bit.

If you’re heading out to Sonoma, be sure to stop at the Sonoma Wine Shop – $5 tastings (good pours too and they really take the time to ask what you like) and $5 cheese tastings to go with your wine (and again, they really take the time to ask what you like and pair things up). Best $15 we spent – two wine tastings and some cheese. And again, it shares the courtyard with Wine Country Chocolates. What more could you ask for?!?

As for Herbie’s performance, it was awesome. Probably my favorite so far (and while I’m most definitely not a fan of jazz, I do see quite a few Herbie shows). I chose to sit in the audience instead of hanging backstage. Forty-five minutes or so and he was still only on the second song! It was great though to be in the middle of the audience when he played Rockit. He hasn’t played that song life in years (he said nearly 20, but I believe he’s played it somewhere else – non-US show – a few years back). We’re talking about the crowd just freaking out, jumping up out of their seats, dancing everywhere you looked. It was so cool. For a more musical review (by someone that likes and knows jazz), here you go.

And now for the photographic part of this Wednesday post. Too bad half the photos didn’t upload and dingdong me deleted them from the card already. Oh well, it’s not like I took many pictures to begin with (and it’s not like I won’t be seeing Herbie again…soon).

Writing up the setlist…

Jess Writing Up the Set List

During sound check…

Backstage @ Sonoma Jazz Rehearsal

During Rockit…

Herbie Hancock & Vinnie Colaiuta

Must be Quick

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I’m heading out the door in a few minutes. Yes, you’re eyes are NOT deceiving you, it is indeed merely 8:00Am here in the hot San Fernando Valley.  My widget tells me to expect 102 today. Yikes!

Well lucky for me, I’ll be out wine tasting in Temecula.  Mmmmm….wine.  It’s a shuttled trip with a friend from LWL.  So basically, we can drink more than we might otherwise and know that we have at least a two hour commute (no traffic) until we get back in front of our cars.  Should be fun.

I’m bringing my camera, so hopefully I can get some fun shots. Funny thing, I’ll be up in Sonoma in a few days for still more wine.  Yum!  You better believe that NO bottles of wine will be coming home with me (today).

And speaking of cameras…I went to the Crowded House show last night at the Orpheum.  The Orpheum is one of LA’s art deco style theaters.   Absolutely gorgeous.  We actually hung out afterwards looking around and taking pictures.  So woohoo, looks like I’ll have some fresh Wordless Wednesday material…finally.

The show was quite good as well.  The guys were in great form playing off of each other and the audience.  I did realize though, Crowded House is much like Toad the Wet Sprocket for me.  I love them, and will always recognize their songs, but…I can rarely sing along since I like to listen to them while doing other things.  They have great background noise and perfect for driving (not necessarily singing).

Okay, time to head out.  Hope you guys have a great Saturday and those of you here in SoCal, stay cool!

Sometimes Music Videos are Still Good

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Even on a slow day, I can have a three-way. I’m so much cooler online…

I’ll listen to pretty much any kind of music. I’m not a fan of hardcore rap or of funkadelic jazz (no matter how many times I see Herbie Hancock live), but otherwise, I’m not too picky. I love 80’s new wave – what can I say, music was fun back then. Day to day (well, first and foremost, LA radio sucks worse than any market I’ve lived in before) I listen to mellow, singer songwriter stuff or country. Considering we don’t have an AAA station out here, that pretty much rules out listening to the singer songwriter, cafe kind of stuff. So country it is.

The other fun thing about country, they still do real videos and actually have channels that play them! Which of course means that those guys now how to have fun with videos like back in the day (man, sometimes I sound old). The latest video that’s cracking me up is Brad Paisley’s Online. It’s got a great all star cast and completely matches the humor in the lyrics. William Shatner cracks me up – is that blond Marcia Brady??

Check it out (sorry it can’t be embeded, it’s put up directly by BP’s people).

What Do You Wear to Concerts?

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I’m sitting here putting the finishing touches on my concert-going outfit before I head out to pick up the hubster at work.  By the way, it turns out there is such a thing as too much Child perfume *yikes*  So as I’m sitting her in my too big jeans,  cuteish black tee and old sneakers, I got to wondering what other people wear.  And I rarely bring a purse, just my ID in case I want a drink, and some cash.  Oh and my glasses and ear plugs (man, getting old sucks!)

I’ve learned the hard way to shoot for comfort.  Too many times I’ve worn the wrong shoes and have paid the price.  Hell, half the time it’s about a mile or so hike just from the parking lot – hence the sneaks.  I also typically wear something that I won’t care about if someone spills beer on – hence the old (too big) jeans and the simple tee.

But have you ever noticed that sometimes folks seem to go all out for concerts?  They’ve got on the perfect jeans with their teeter-tottering heels, that adorable, yet pricey top and that jumbo, monster-sized, uber-trendy purse..  Or maybe that’s just the SoCal market – LA and Orange County are like two totally different places on the fashion scale.

So before I head out the door to grab the hubs, I’m curious, what do you where to concerts?

I Think Today is the Day…

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The day where I have nothing worth blogging about. My head is all congested and foggy and well, I really don’t have all too much going on or all too much to say. I can’t even really get motivated to decorate for Christmas this year. Though I did pick up a couple of Christmas (and Kat) presents over at Sephora, but really, that’s it.

To help get me in the mood…Christmas is All Around from Love Actually (which I will repurchase shortly dammit!)

Never mind, it kept fucking up my formating on the entire rest of the page. Oh well.

Consider Me Appalled

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We were just now driving back from dinner with a friend (Don Cuco’s in Tolouca Lake – yum!) and you’ll never guess what I heard on the radio. No, not Christmas music – though I am looking forward to that. No, it was Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant! I couldn’t believe my ears.

Why was I appalled you ask? Well, you see, it’s not yet Thanksgiving. It was a mere 11:00pm. Huh, you say. Well, Alice’s Restaurant is said to be based on a true story that occurred on Thanksgiving Day in 1965. It was basically your typical (if 18 minutes would ever be considered “typical”) anti-Vietnam war type of song complete with sing-a-long – the song’s storyline can be found here at Wikipedia. Traditionally, the song is only played (and annually played) at some point on Thanksgiving Day.

Seems the uber* annoying pot-head, Jim Ladd over at KLOS (with the annoying flash website) has his own version of the tradition. He seems to feel that since he doesn’t work on Thanksgiving, that the eve of Thanksgiving is well, good enough and therefore playing by the rules. I’m sorry, but you don’t fuck with tradition like that.

Hell, lay off the pot and at least wait another hour play it at midnight stoner-boy, the show’s on until fucking 2:00AM!!!! So yeah, this might seem silly, but some traditions just don’t need to be fucked with and I’m just a bit both bothered and yeah, appalled by this.

*Hey wordpress folks, where are those damn language symbols in spell check?