A little late posting this but most of it is still fresh in my mind. On Wednesday February 10th the family, some friends and I packed into the Jeep Cherokee and headed out on a 3 hour drive to Knoxville. We ignored the snow warnings and were pleasantly surprised with the weather during the trip up. We missed a turn that cost us about 15 minutes but we made it just in time to meet Brandi and the band at the Disc Exchange in Knoxville at 6:30pm.
If you live in Knoxville or pass through stop in because the people at the Disc Exchange are extremely friendly and they have VINYL! It is a throw-back to the old days. It reminded me of the seventies when my dad, mom and sister would head down to the record store on a Saturday and browse the latest releases for an hour or so. Funny thing, Brandi loves Elton John and I would have been looking through the Elton albums back in the seventies. I was a big fan but I do give a portion of the credit to Bernie Taupin, I love great lyrics. Where was I? OK, so Brandi plays 3 or 4 songs for the crowd of 100 or so all crammed in the corner of the record store for this up-close and personal mini performance. Just about the time everyone started realizing it wasn’t a dream she was whisked away, after all, she had a concert to do at 8pm. I’m not sure how we got lucky enough to attend this special performance but I thank the Disc Exchange and anyone else who was responsible, thank you Brandi Carlile, it was a treat. After she left, we browsed the Vinyl and a few of us purchased some CDs. I already had Give Up The Ghost on Vinyl so I bought the CD. The store had some autographed lithographs they gave away with the purchase so that was a bonus.
At this point we just barely had an hour to eat so we drove toward the Bijou Theatre where the concert was being held. A couple of laps around the city and we decided to park by the theater and eat across the street at Dazzo’s Italian Castle Pizzeria. We were really pushing it for time so we ordered meatball subs and a pizza. As 8pm approached we knew we weren’t going to make it. Both the waitress and the Chef apologized because they knew we were going to the Bijou for the concert but it was our fault for cutting it so close, not theirs. The food was great, I had not had NY style Italian food for some time, since 1993. (Maybe some day I will tell the story about moving from Miami to the back-woods of North Georgia)
So we missed quite a bit of the opening act, Amy Ray (1/2 of the Indigo Girls). The tickets didn’t say anything about an opening band and let me tell you, for those that know Amy from the Indigo Girls, forget-about-it. I think she was doing “Bus Bus” when we walked in and hearing it live makes the recorded version sound bad (it’s not). It was wall-to-wall rock-n-roll from the heart. I didn’t know much about Amy because I was not a fan of the Indigo Girls. The little I had heard from the Girls back in the day made me think of Joan Jett meets James Taylor and that’s not an Ice Cream flavor I prefer. I can tell you I have ordered Amy Ray’s latest from Amazon and I will review it soon because she was smokin’ at the Brandi Carlile gig. It might be hard to be objective though because I just read that she used to cover Dire Straits in the early years of her career so she already gets a big thumbs up. My hats off to the kid on the drums too because he was beating the hell out of them. Visit the Amy Ray website.
So now to the main event, Brandi Carlile. She has so much to give and she does. The twins, Tim and Phil are a great complement to her unique voice and gift for words and music, the songs. I have always been drawn to artists who write their own songs and have very unique voices, a voice that makes them try harder, from the heart. Great voices that require effort always felt better to me than the ones that flow naturally. I love to hear Janice Joplin, Mark Knopfler, Ricki Lee Jones, Tom Petty, Deana Carter, Will Hoge, to name a few. Back to Brandi, the first time I heard Brandi was on the Pat Monahan (Train) album “Last of Seven”. She sings on “Pirate on the Run” and steals the show (sorry Pat). I admit I was late to the Brandi party but I’m catching up.
Back to the concert, Brandi proved to be quite the entertainer, some humor, some “angry” Dylan, talk about mom and niece, she let us all in and she stole our hearts by giving her own, it was a fair swap. The theater is so intimate that we got to hear her unplugged, completely, I mean she did a song without a mic and it resonated all the way to the back of the theater. I kept thinking selfishly “don’t strain those vocal cords this early in” but she pulled it off and it was an experience you can’t get from a recording. As they played song after song time went faster and faster, to the point where you are thinking, man this is almost over, but it kept going and then we get some more personal time. Brandi does some Tammy Wynette and Loretta Lynn. Joking about bad country in a good way and making the whole experience even more personal, it was great. If you haven’t seen Brandi Carlile live then I encourage you to find out when she is touring near you and get your tickets because this is one performance you don’t want to miss. Visit the Brandi Carlile website.
…and then we drove home in the snow.
I like guns by Steve Lee, this video just made my day. “…I ain’t gonna shoot any-one, and no one shoots at me because I got a gun!”
Watch until the end if you like blowing stuff up.
I read some great reviews about this BluRay player and I really wanted something that had a fast startup time and BD Live 2.0 so I put the JVC XV-BP1 on my Christmas list. My wife was feeling like Santa this year so she got it for me and I was like a kid in a candy store, or maybe a kid on Christmas day would be more appropriate. The first Blu-Ray movie I tried was The Mask with Jim Carrey and Cameron Diaz. It played great and the load times were as advertised, I was excited. Then I played another movie and the audio didn’t work on pass-through. It only worked if I set it to PCM-Multi. So now I’m nervous, I did my homework, my Magnavox Blu-Ray was junk so I justified the JVC. Let me try something else, so I pop in John Mayer’s Where The Light Is – Live In Las Vegas… Still no audio on passthrough it only works on PCM setting.
So I start looking on the Internet for others having this problem and it comes up blank, no hits. This can’t be true, am I really the only one? Next I jump over to the JVC site and search for firmware and I see that my firmware is 6 months old. Apparently this thing has been in the warehouse for awhile. I download the newest firmware, put it on my flash drive, boot the player, it installs and BAM! it works. Man am I happy. If you have this same issue be sure your flash drive is formatted FAT not NTFS or it won’t work.
You can get the firmware update for the XV-BP1 Blue-Ray Player at JVC Firmware Update.
I got my tickets to the Brandi Carlile “Give Up The Ghost Traveling Show” tour date in Knoxville. It’s at the Bijou Theater on Wednesday February 10th. Can’t wait!
If you haven’t heard the new album you need to get it now. One of my sons gave it to me for Christmas, on Vinyl! I was already a big fan and this album doesn’t let you down. Brandi just keeps on giving and keeps my hopes alive that the music industry will turn around and start rewarding talent rather than hairdos, cowboy hats, and cleavage.
For you Elton John fans he gives an appearance on this album, he rips the piano and even adds a few vocals.
The video feed of some U.S. Predator drones in Iraq have been hacked by locals using software that cost about $26. The tabloid headlines offer little hope for humanity but when I see something like this or that commercial space flight challenge back in 2004 I am reminded how remarkable the human race is. People still show signs of determination, ingenuity, and resourcefulness. It also points out how the Government overpays for everything. Basically they could have paid a couple of tech savvy kids a few thousand (rather than 12 million) to strap a camera phone on a gas powered model plane and security might have been better. Oh well, read the article at the Wall Street Journal.
In similar fashion I saw where an Air Force forensics worker was able to recover the data from a 5.25 inch floppy disk after it had been cut up with pinking sheers. After the NSA and CIA either failed or estimated the data recovery cost over 1 million the “little guy” went to work with some scotch tape, a couple of floppy drives and SUCCESS! A murderer confessed. All for less than $150. Jim Christy is pretty famous now after that.
This was very cool, on Thanksgiving day seven turkeys showed up in my front yard. It’s not the first time but they don’t come by every day and it’s usually only 4 or 5. I guess they smelled the turkey cooking so they knew they were safe until next year. They stopped by in the morning and the afternoon.
On the menu: Turkey, Green Bean Caserole, Squash Caserole, Mashed Potatoes, Gravy, Dressing, Corn Souffle, Sweet Potato Souffle, Pumpkin Bread, Pumpkin Pie, Chocolate Pie and plenty of Reddi Whip Cream.
I just watched this movie for the first time since it came out. I didn’t remember it being that funny, maybe because I’m older I saw it different but it was entertaining the second time around. Billy Bob Thornton, Bruce Willis, and Cate Blanchett made a great team. Thornton as a hypochondriac made the movie. The story came from the rights to the true life story of some 1970s bank robbers but it was painted with a wide brush and turned into a moderate action, comedy, romance movie. If you have Netflix and your queue is low I would add it, if you see it in the $5 bin at WalMart grab it. If you can’t wait:
The Wreckage Review – So I bought the latest from Will Hoge and I like it. I was drawn to it because I noticed he was playing in Chattanooga recently. A quick look on Amazon and I see he has a new album out and it’s on Vinyl. That got my interest so I sampled some songs and then I bought the album. I’m very pleased. I can’t quite put my finger on it but something tells me if you like Tom Petty and you like John Mellencamp then you will give this album 4 stars. Make no mistake the music is neither Tom Petty nor Mellencamp but if you like both of those artists then there is a cross point in The Wreckage. You can really hear it on 2 tracks “Long Gone” and “Favorite Waste of Time” but it comes through on other songs too. This is the album that Keith Urban should have done. I always felt Urban’s music was too manufactured and the lyrics and deliverance fall short of his natural talent. This is the album and performance you Keith Urban fans have been waiting for but the radio is hiding it from you. The Wreckage has just enough raw edge to sound real and not manufactured but has enough polish that it keeps its luster from track 1 to the end. I am always excited when I find new music and this has been a pleasant surprise but I got 2 for one here because on Goodnight/Goodbye I hear a voice I want to hear more of. I’m off to find some music by Ashley Monroe, thank you Mr. Hoge.
Visit the Will Hoge Website
Buy The Wreckage on vinyl at Amazon
Buy the Wreckage on CD at Amazon
-
How sweet it is, vinyl is making a comeback. It’s music to my ears, literally. I just bought Will Hoge’s latest album “The Wreckage” on vinyl and it included a free MP3 download of the entire album. The best part is that it’s available a month before the CD. I can start building my vinyl collection again and get the digital album. Best of both worlds, with the free download I don’t need to “rip” vinyl which takes too long compared to ripping a CD. Good times, I guess I need to find a new stylus for my Beogram turntable.
You can’t buy a guitar lesson from John Mayer, it’s free.