29th
observations
been on a live music kick; went to the san jose jazz festival (courtesy of my generous employer*), then a free they might be giants concert in the park, and last night saw dave matthews band free (*comge).
the jazz festival was awesome; i was expecting much less. the quality of jazz played is definitely worth a detour from your life path. i really liked the yoshiaki miyanoue tokyo quartet; the guitarist and the pianist were awesome. extra credit: the pianist reminded me of my friend kegs.
they might be giants was also great, although i didn’t care much for the venue. the park was way too small and i ended up about 200 yards up and out on the hillside from the stage. by the encore however, the bottom had cleared out and i was able to see john and john in closer adulation. they played ana ng, which still remains one of my favorite songs of all time. it’s one of those songs that poses many interesting questions without answers, captures a thought everybody has had at one time, but nobody bothered to ever write down. well, they wrote it down and sang it.
dave matthews band was meh. i’ve never been a huge fan, but heard they were good in concert. the violinist is overrated; i understand there aren’t too many spastic black violin players in the world, but playing the same blues scale over and over again in every song is just not even trying. the drummer was awesome, and fat to boot. how many fat drummers are there in the world? i smelled a lot of pot at the concert. what was surprising to me was that i was surprised to smell it. i guess that’s showing my age.
regarding encores; how stupid and insincere is that? stop your concert, pretend like it’s over, and then come back on stage after unnecessarily boring your audience and forcing them to clap continuously like monkeys for 10 minutes. if i were ruler of the world, my first order of business would be to outlaw encores.
one of the lead singers from tony! toni! toné! was the opener. the jury is still out on which ton* it was. what was sad is that i suspect 4 people in that entire audience of a thousand strong new that james saadiq was a member of tony! toni! toné!. one of those 4 was me, and the other 3 being people i told that i went with. what was also sad was that out of those 4 people, only 2 of them had ever heard of tony! toni! toné!. i wonder what it’s like to go from 1 hit wonder fame to opening act obscurity. also, one of the best songs dmb played was when they asked the members of james saadiq’s band to jam with them. i’m not sure if there is some deeper meaning on the interrelationship of the previous 2 sentences about talent and fame, but i needed to say both and they are both there now for the audience to figure out.
