Goodbye hot weather.

You’re like that kid who visits with a group of people and leaves with everyone else. Then comes back because he “forgot something” and stays around another week. Well hot weather, I’m officially kicking you out. And in doing so, I am taking out my window air conditioner.

Goodbye window air conditioner.

You were my first ever and we never really got along. I hated how you were supposedly “energy efficient”, yet substantially increased my electricity bill. And I hated the way you created heat on the other side of my window, so that if I wanted to turn you off and switch to a fan oodles of hot air would be instantly sucked right back into my room. Maybe we’ll get back together in a year or so.

Goodbye you two, I won’t miss either of you one stinking bit!

After reading glowing reviews from various attendees of the Matthew Good concert at The Centre in Vancouver, I reflected for a moment and made the decision to write my own. After all, “it’s the internet”. My content here doesn’t have to be… what’s the word… good.

One very surprising remark was “that was the best show I have ever seen” or something to that effect. I have seen two Matthew Good concerts total. The one before was the private Las Vegas event which, in my opinion, was significantly better. Even despite the much shorter set, the performance was much more solid and the sound quality was terrific. Granted, we were sitting 8 feet away and were in a living room. I haven’t seen an excessive number of concerts, but I’ve seen quite a few. And for all of them I am usually very critical.

So now to get a little more specific. *Thinking of the best way to approach this*

“Odette” is a great song. In fact, I really like most if not all of Matthew Good’s songs. Matt’s overused vibrato on “Odette” on Hospital Music makes him sound like a goat. Normally his vibrato is used sparingly and sounds really good, so hearing it used even more when performed live wasn’t enjoyable to me. And to the person sitting next to me who thought I was crying, I wasn’t. I was doing my best to hold in my laughter. I turned to Keith midway through and whispered “He sounds like a goat”. We were laughing to the point of tears.

I check Matt’s blog frequently and had read this before the show:

Things are coming along though. I actually completely reworked ‘Pledge Of Allegiance’ for the acoustic yesterday and am quite fond of it, so that’s a plus.

Sounded really cool, especially since I loved how “Suburbia” turned out. Hearing “Pledge of Allegiance” was an eye opener. I got this feeling that made me think “oh, so that’s how he does it”. The best word I can think of to describe this new acoustic version would be formulaic. I am going to end with that since I have no grounds for saying what is good or bad in that regard. What works, works. “Pledge of Allegiance” worked. It just struck me as taken the same re-worked method that “Suburbia” and all the other songs took.

It seems that Keith, Alex and I were the only ones to cringe during “Apparitions”. The ending chorus was sung without the accompanying guitar. Everything was great and sounded amazing till the guitar came back in and the dissonance was clearly audible. But if nobody else heard it except 3 guys in the back mezzanine, sweet! Since this paragraph is about vocals, I will add that they sounded great from an audio mixing standpoint. However, the guitar was much too quiet and was overpowered by Matt’s voice.

Photo Credit: Jennie Roth

The last negative thing I will write is with “I’m a Window”. I will limit it to just that I felt the impov guitar solo was very sloppy. It was cool that Rod came out to play lead, which he did on the album. Though, I am curious if that will be a recurring thing for the tour. I’m not sure how the song would stand with just hard-strumming chords.

In all, given what I’ve written, I’d reflect and say that the show was a disappointment. Yet, Matt did a fantastic job everywhere else. The set list was jam packed with an assortment of songs spanning his career. His performance was terrific and banter was humorous. Maybe, deep down, I was really hoping for a full band show.

I would consider myself a Matthew Good fan and it is unfortunate to only have two shows under my belt. Yet I’m now debating 7 hour drive up for the Buffalo show. After the huge expenses of the weekend in Las Vegas and Vancouver with the respective concerts being such a small portion of the trip, I don’t think it will be worth the time and effort. We will see.

Home again!

Just returned from another trip out west, this time to Vancouver, British Columbia (Canada, of course) to go see another Matthew Good show. And, once again, the concert was such a small fraction of the vacation. Below is a jotted list (with hyperlinks!) of my time “abroad”:

Flight into Vancouver, Arriving at 2:00 am (Vegas Time)
Much Needed Sleep
Cafe Crepe for Breakfast/Lunch (aka Brunch)
Irish Coffees and Cat in Heat
Subeez Cafe for the Pre-Show Get-Together
Matthew Good at The Centre
The Atlantic Trap and Gill for Alexander Keith’s IPA and Celtic Music
Aaron with Luggage on Waiting at Doorstep
Holiday Inn, Iced Tea, Kisses, National Anthems, Kicked Out
Sleep for a Few Hours
Up Very Early to Visit The Warehouse Studio (Adam Keener Noel)
Walk Around Gastown
Caffe Barney for Breakfast
Adult’s Only Night with Wine/Beer at Science World
Yuk Yuk’s
Ankles Giving Up
Fritz European Fry House for “ONE MEDIUM POUTINE”
Sleep
Homemade Breakfast with More Irish Coffees
Smoke Alarm = Fire Truck
Armoury Studio
Robson Street for Chapters, HMV, and Bang On shopping
Street Meat, Amazing Hot Dogs
Cypress Mountain Lookout over Downtown Vancouver
Stepho’s Greek Taverna for Dinner
Invented Game of Avocado
Game of Kings
PSR #’s 87, 12, 41, and 64
Sleep
Cathay Pacific Flight Home with Free Alcohol (lots) and a French Guy

Sitting in my living room is an entirely new experience now. Quite a large step up from a bulky futon and a picnic table, we now have a nice TV and a nice couch. I can’t really describe it that well at the moment, so I’ll just post a link to my Flickr page where I’ve uploaded two pictures (click the image for the Flickr page and more sizes):

Soon to come are bookshelves, artwork, and a nice 3-4 seating “dining” table.

What does one do when they have 1 disc (Disc 4) of Heroes with the next not arriving till most likely Monday, a bottle of Sho Chiku Bai Nigori Unfiltered Sake (”Silky Mild”), and a weekend to watch the three remaining episodes on said disc? Well, assuming they also have a blog, they write stupid shit into a text box and click “Publish”.

Since my previous post in which, among other things, I described how great the TV show Heroes is was deleted (aka “censored”), I will elaborate for a brief moment. Heroes is great. I believe I had mentioned in the we’ll-stick-with-”deleted” post, that the only other TV show I regularly watch is Lost. Both are fantastic. Though, while watching, and allocating enough time for only one episode, you tend to have hatred for their perfectly set up cliffhangers at every ending. Having heard great reviews of the first season from various friends/family, I anxiously wait to finish the season (stupid, slow Netflix). And sucks for Iiann (aka “Ian”) who started watching the season with me but ended up making a weekend trip to L.A. Oh well.

So what would the point of this post be, you might ask yourself. Well, I’ll make a point right here. If you look back a few posts to September 9th’s Post I had compared the original “Man of Our Times” to the remastered version visually. Well, below you can listen to the clips shown in the Flickr image. Mind you, they are short clips. Its quite impressive what they did:

“Man of Our Times” - Genesis
Original .aiff | Remastered .aiff

After listening to both, I highly recommend ordering the Genesis Box Set or at least Duke, the album this track was taken from.

This game at Gimme5Games is very addicting, and fun. I made the highscore table! See:

Go play for yourself! Its really fun, I swear.

This crudely drawn sketch of a chart explains the work-day phenomenon for 9:00 am arrival and 10:00 am arrivals. The 9am individuals have locked themselves into working a full day, whereas the 10am people have utilized the “Nyquist Departure Time”. Normally requiring to leave at 6:30 for a full day of work, the time folds over the NDT to conform to the Full-Day Sample Period (9 - 5:30).

In other news, BOTH the couch and the television are due to arrive tomorrow!

Ok, Matthew Good, I’ll play your game. This program isn’t good. I’d enjoy it much more if I had control over where these “props” go. I feel as though I could do a much better job than whatever face detection algorithm they have going in here. This is FunBooth by the way.

Anyway…

I think the really bad lighting has something to do with the algorithms performance. I’ll try again tomorrow, maybe. Oh crap, that reminds me I have to go to work tomorrow. Blech!

By October 14th, the living room will be amazing. And by “October 14th”, I really mean “Next Sunday”. Allow me to explain.

Today, after a trip to New Jersey (which, by the way, actually does smell like rotten eggs. I was quite surprised to learn that nobody in the car had farted) and back home making a pit stop in Staten Island, I wound up spending, um, lots of money. Our living room, which was in dire need of a new couch setup and a new TV, is going to be amazing. I bought a couch and love seat combo thing (for much cheaper than I was planning), as well as ordered a 50″ TV. Both are great, and I’m really looking forward to their arrival. The couch will be here Wednesday, the love seat was currently “out of stock” and won’t arrive till October 14th. The TV will be here Sunday (1 week!). Ian and Pete are now in charge of the rest of the room (aka area rug, entertainment center, table — no picnic tables allowed). Anyway, of course pictures will follow.

What’s great is, now I own (yes own) my own huge TV and my own couch set. I’m happy, but broke for the time being. The only downside is, the TV arrives the Sunday before I leave for Vancouver (Wednesday, 19th). So I won’t get a chance to play with it that much.

I need to go do a shot of something, I spent too much money. Ahh!

Original and remastered versions of “Man of Our Times” by Genesis. Original - 1980, Remastered - 2007. (and, for the record, “Remastered” really means “Remixed and Remastered”).

This fully amazes me. Both are exactly the same waveforms. I’ll try and post short (so as not to offend the RIAA) clips of each soon. So, bookmark this link.