Phish at the Gorge

Yes, I've been a Phish fan since...  well, let's just say I have fond memories of putting Maxell XL-II cassette tapes into padded envelopes to mail off to strangers with a promise of some new phish show coming back on the magnetic reel in a few weeks.  My fandom went on hiatus overlapping the band's actual hiatus, but a mix of nostalgia, renewed interest in a rejuvenated and once again productively creative band, and a desire to finally visit one of the more renowned outdoor concert venues around got me interested in making the trek to central Washington to see the phab four again for a two-show stop at the Gorge Amphitheater.  Kate and I chose to camp off-site (at Vantage, right on the Columbia river) which seemed to be a popular spot among fans seeking a little more quiet, sane camping area with close proximity to the river for swimming.

We caught two shows - one each on Friday and Saturday nights - and in between did some exploring of the high desert of central WA, the nearby troves of petrified wood at the Gingko Petrified Forest State Park, and went swimming in the chilly but refreshing Columbia river.  Here are some photos from trip.

Night 1 on the lawn at the Gorge, taking in the amazing vistas. 

Fandom in the form of a boy scout uniform.

The Gorge is one of the few venues where the further you are from the stage, the better the view is.  Amazing rich palates of color on the Gorge changing as the sun set and the stars took over.

Here's Kate at the overlook just to the side of the stage area.

Donut cape and vest fandom.

I caught part of night 2 down on the floor around the FOH area.

View from the side.  As always, the light show is one of the aspects of a Phish show that makes being there much different from simply listening to a recording after the fact.

Focused.

A great couple of shows.  It was fun to see them again with Kate for a more enjoyable performance than the last time we saw them, inside in Boston in the winter in 2003.  Even Mr. Miner ranked the Gorge (night 2) as the best show of the tour!  Glad we were able to make the trip this summer.

Aside from the concerts, we went to the Gingko Petrified Forest State Park.  Here is one of the installations on the hiking trail.  All of the main petrified wood pieces were protected in these gated enclosures to prevent theft, I guess.  Kind of odd, but still impressive samples.

At the visitor center there were some remarkably intact log pieces.

 

As well as some very cool native wall art inscriptions from nearby areas, moved to the visitor center due to some construction somewhere.  Pretty neat! 

Tucked out of the way, this was an enjoyable state park.  Lots of petrified wood around - even the stone used to make the entrance sign was constructed out of blocks of petrified wood! 

Avett Bros. at the Mountain Winery

Ever since our 2006 wedding at the Mountain Winery in Saratoga, CA, we had been wanting to go back for concert at the beautiful outdoor venue.  Last month we finally made it happen!



Right after our wedding, the Mountain Winery underwent a significant renovation to the whole concert bowl and grounds in general.  While it's turned what was a cute but a little outdated venue into a beautiful and very classy concert venue complete with several upscale (read: overpriced) dining options and luxury boxes (to cater to the wealthy silicon valley types), I was a little nostalgic for the simpler, less "shiny" Mountain Winery that I remembered from our wedding.  For example, the nice stone courtyard, benches, and little fountain beneath the giant redwoods where we had our ceremony has been completely redone and I think not all the trees survived the construction.  Still, much of the appeal of the place is the wonderfully sweeping valley views it provides, and those were still there in abundance.  Also, they got rid of that ridiculous swimming pool that used to be there, and the concert bowl (even if it dominates the property now) is really nice.  Not a bad seat in the house.



So on to the show - I got lucky with Craigslist again and snagged some great seats for a cheap price that included some pre-show hors d'oeuvres.  The Avett Brothers are an energetic folk/rock group from North Carolina that somehow Kate had managed to see once before already (Merlefest)!  They put on a good show and as the sun went down we put on all our layers and huddled for warmth (and reminded ourselves of how we were glad we decided to have our reception indoors!) and enjoyed the light show on the historic facade of the Paul Masson winery building.  A nice summer evening - we were happy to get back there finally!

YTVotD, musical edition

Have you ever wondered why so many pop songs sound familiar? Or feel like you subconsciously recognize that song on the radio but don't know how?  Australian comedy band "Axis of Awesome" has this pretty, well, awesome skit to demonstrate to their audience that pretty much every pop song ever is really just based on the same four chords, played over and over in order.  The songs are labeled on-screen, but it helps a lot if you have a reasonable knowledge of bad pop songs going into it to better enjoy the mockery. Well done guys, despite the fact that it kind of makes me want to vomit. (Warning, one curse word at 4:58, so NSFW or sensitive ears)

HSB9, continued

As promised, I have some additional videos and pictures from this year's Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in SF. Enjoy! Who wants to come out for it next year?

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 2009

I'll have some more photos and a recap up soon, but here's two videos I took of Natalie MacMaster and husband Donnell Leahy fiddling up a storm on the Porch Stage Saturday. Her performance was my highlight of the weekend, although there were lots of other great acts too.

This was their opening number:


And this was their closer, a rousing fiddle and dance extravaganza.


This song really captured the relaxed and fun-filled atmosphere of their performance. You could really tell that they were genuinely having a grand old time up there on stage. The crowd really enjoyed the girl (just an anonymous concert-goer) that was invited to dance a bit on stage (2:10) after doing her thing in front of the stage. Neat moment among many at HSB 9. Can't wait for next year!

More to come when I have a little more time...

Phish at Shoreline, 8-5-09

The highlight of the week for me was not only getting to go to my first Phish show in 6 years, but that I could even ride my bike to and from the show! A band that I have invested a lot of brain cells and hours between headphones in over the years since middle school, it was thoroughly enjoyable from both a nostalgic and forward-looking perspective; the band is back and playing their old classics (almost) as well as ever before, and they also have some real inspiring new material as well to keep things interesting. While it's definitely not just a "reunion tour" or novelty act, they are seemingly paying appropriate attention to the old stuff that the fans like.

The venue was about 5 miles away from our place and accessible via a scenic biking/walking trail that heads out to the Bay. Getting to bypass the throngs of people in cars both getting in and out was especially fun. If anyone's curious, here's a video clip from their performance Wednesday, it cuts off, sorry. (not filmed by me despite the same last name, my seats weren't quite that good!)



Two of my cousins will be in Washington state catching a pair of shows today and tomorrow, lucky ducks! Hope you guys have fun at the Gorge.

YTVotD

Not that anyone watches music videos anymore (or that MTV even shows them), but have you ever wished that the words to the song would describe what's going on in the video? This series of "Literal Videos" does just that, with pretty humorous results. They kind of even remind me of that Yatta video parody.

There are three song videos done in this "literal" style: Tears for Fears' "Head Over Heels," A-ha's "Take On Me," and my favorite, Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Under the Bridge."

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 2008

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 2008 - Golden Gate Park, San Francisco - Oct 3,4,5

Our 3rd year of going to this amazing, free, three-day festival in SF (we missed 2006 while on our honeymoon). Derek even came out this year to join in the fun, it was great to have him around for the weekend of music.


Oakland's own MC Hammer started the festival off on Friday afternoon (apparently he now lives in Tracy). Yes, the same MC Hammer in your dusty cassette tape collection from 1991. I thought he'd be doing his gospel act, but nope - he was vintage MC Hammer. If you don't believe me, check here, here, or here. Hardly Strictly Bluegrass indeed. But fun for us in the 20s-30s crowd.


The main act on Friday was Alison Krauss and Robert Plant. They put on a really nice set to a huge crowd at the Banjo stage. Some good old Zep covers along with some of their new ones, and the "Down to the River" song from O Brother too, which was sung beautifully by Krauss. Plenty of videos online of them, too.


Gary Louris and Marc Olson from the Jayhawks


Del McCoury Band - a festival regular and one of my favorites. Here's Ronnie McCoury with some fiesty licks:





Closing the night on Saturday was Mickey Hart's Global Drum Project. Pretty cool, highly rhythmic, and featuring 3 other world-renowned percussionists, Derek and I enjoyed this a bunch. Could have done without Mickey's spacey ramblings about how rhythm is the lifeforce of the spirits, yadda yadda, however. Zakir Hussain is amazing on tabla, though.


Here's HSB benefactor Warren Hellman (banjo) with his band the Wronglers.


Red Wine came back this year from Genoa again! One of my favorites from 2007. Love their sound. Here's a bit of a New Orleans-Italian swing tune they played:



Alison Brown Quartet on Sunday. A bit of video here, if you want.


The Infamous Stringdusters, featuring our fellow Dartmouth alum Chris Pandolfi on Banjo.


A big crowd for the Waybacks at the Arrow Stage. Pretty different from when we saw them earlier this summer!


Gogol Bordello was pretty outrageous. They are described as Eastern European Gypsy Punk, and I guess that's pretty accurate.


Kate and Banjo had a good spot for hanging out and enjoying the day on Sunday.


Derek and I even played some ourselves at night! Apparently we were very focused right here. Derek is quite the guitar player nowadays.

Good times, can't wait for HSB 9!

They're Back

Exciting news from Phish today. Back to the Mothership for 3 nights in March.

Let's just hope they've got it together this time around, and it's not just a fundraiser tour. I'm optimistic.

Anyone on the East coast want me to try to get you tickets?

Also: Apparently news travels fast on the internets, and a lot of people out there still like Phish 4 years later.

3rd Annual Commentate Pesto-fest

Usually it is Kate who blogs about food-related topics, but since this activity (and the subsequent results) is one of my favorites I'll take the reins for this post about our 3rd year of temporarily transforming our kitchen into a pesto factory. The idea is we both really like homemade pesto - it's way better than the stuff you can get in a jar, but is expensive to get such a large quantity of basil and time consuming to make it fresh when you want it. So, during the summer when basil is in season we go down to the farmers market and stock up on super-cheap basil - $1 per large bunch (we got 5 total). The rest of the directions are as follows:

• pick and wash recently purchased huge piles of basil (Thai or regular works, having the Olympics to watch helps this activity, as does a salad spinner)
• peel a few heads of garlic
• grate a big ol' block of Parmesan
  
• toast a bag of walnuts (or pine nuts) in a dry pan
• throw everything in a food processor with oil and salt

So after it's all made, we pack it into ice cube trays, muffin tins, anything else you have that will make nice portion-sized hunks that can be kept frozen. It helps to cover them with saran so the basil doesn't oxidize and turn dark green, but that doesn't matter a whole lot. Below are the results! Yummmm... It also makes for some interesting reactions from your friends when they are over and go to get a couple ice cubes from the freezer.


Naturally you should save some of the fresh stuff to eat soon, which we did with a nice picnic at an outdoor free concert we went to last weekend - the Waybacks at Los Altos' Hidden Villa.

Here's Kate enjoying some of our delicious masterpiece on the lawn,

Here's our view of the band playing a tune from our seats on the lawn (they will be at HSB 8 too!),

and the overall gorgeous setting of the Hidden Villa as the sun set over the Santa Cruz mountains.


Summer living is good here in California, hope the same is true for wherever you are!

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass

Since this post is already outdated, I'll be brief. the 7th annual Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival (which you can read about here) was a great weekend of fantastic weather, great (mostly) bluegrass music, lots of people, and amazingly enough it is all free. Saturday we met up with lots of friends over the course of the day and Sunday I went up by myself. Can't wait for next year! Below are some pictures from some of the acts that we saw. If you're curious to see the whole weekend's impressive schedule, there is a pdf here.

Bela Fleck and Keller Williams

The Mother Hips

Red Wine, a string group from Genoa (yes, Italy) who was my surprise favorite act. There are two videos of them performing at the bottom of the post. Really good and excited to be at HSB.

The Red Wine banjo player overwhelmed by demand for their CD after their performance

Hot Buttered Rum, a San Francisco original

As close as I bothered to get for David Grisman/Curly Seckler

Railroad Earth

Del McCoury Band, putting on a fantastic request-filled set to close the weekend

Kate with friends Bailey and Cara

Red Wine playing an acoustic number

And so you will believe me that they are from Italy, Red Wine singing an Italian bluegrass song. Bravo!