Saturday, January 2nd
The Strange Lights and Satellite Voices at Turf Club
Saturday, January 2nd
Red Pens at Kitty Cat Klub
Thursday, January 7th
The Farewell Circuit and Jake Dilley and The Color Pharmacy at Triple Rock Social Club
Friday, January 8th
The Alarmists at 7th Street Entry
With: The Arms Akimbo, The Evening Rig
Saturday, January 9th
Revolver & The Secret Agents at Tryg's
Thursday, January 14th
ReadyGoes at The Red Carpet in St. Cloud
With: Mortal Kombat
Friday, January 15th
Best New Bands of 2009 Showcase at First Avenue
With: Slapping Purses, The Twilight Hours, The Afternoon DLight, Red Pens, Peter Wolf Crier
Saturday, January 16th
The Goondas at Big V's
Thursday, January 21st
History Books at 7th Street Entry [CD Release Show]
With: Red Fox Grey Fox
Friday, January 22nd
Motion City Soundtrack at Mall of America Best Buy In-Store Performance
Saturday, January 23rd
Red Pens at 501 Club
With: Zombie Season
Tuesday, January 26th
ReadyGoes at Station 4
With: Anchorage
Friday, January 29th
Rock The Cause Presents: Glitter Ball 3 at The Music Box Theatre
With: Stellar Vector, The Melismatics, White Light Riot, Alison Scott, The Notties, The Bloodsugars
Saturday, January 30th
The Bloodsugars, Joey Ryan & The Inks, The Arms Akimbo, and The Debut at Sauce Spirits & Soundbar
---14 JAN---
Saturday, February 6th
The Melismatics at The Varsity
Saturday, February 6th
Phil Solem, Mars to Mercury, and The Notties at Sauce Spirits & Soundbar
Sunday, February 7th
The Melismatics at 501 Club
With: First Communion Afterparty
Friday, February 12th
The 4onthefloor, Hotel San Sebastian, and The Fattenin' Frogs at Terminal Bar
Saturday, February 13th
White Light Riot, ReadyGoes, and The Arms Akimbo at 7th Street Entry
Tuesday, February 16th
Dan Rodriguez, Nicole Serrano, Jack Selmer, and Katie Skare at Joyce United Methodist Church in Uptown
Friday, February 19th
The Notties at Scott Herold's
Saturday, February 20th
Young Lust at North Star Bar in Rochester
Friday, February 26th
Ari Herstand at The Fineline [DVD Release Show]
With: Casey Carlson, Ben Kyle (of Romantica), Skyler Stonestreet
Saturday, February 27th
Rock The Cause Presents After School Special at The Pause at St. Olaf
With: 32 Below, White Light Riot, Dropping Trou
---10 FEB---
Monday, March 1st
MC/VL at Memory Lanes
With: Kitten Forever
Thursday, March 4th
The Fattenin' Frogs, Northeast & The Beat, and The Fontanelles [Acoustic] at Acadia Cafe
Friday, March 5th
Sick of Sarah at Maplewood Mall Hot Topic In-Store Performance
Friday, March 5th
The Alarmists at The Varsity
With: The Farewell Circuit, Greycoats, Mercer
Saturday, March 6th
The Invincible Kids and The Blend [CD Release] at The Cabooze
Friday, March 12th
The Midnight Mo Experience and Some Other Guys at Scott Weber's
Sunday, March 14th
Farewell Continental at The Beat Coffeehouse
With: The Chord and The Fawn
Tuesday, March 16th
The Alarmists at Dubliner St. Patrick's Day Bash
Wednesday, March 17th
The JunkDrawers at The Ugly Mug
Thursday, March 18th
The Goondas at Kitty Cat Klub
Friday, March 19th
Revolver & The Secret Agents and Rubber Soul at Scott Weber's
Saturday, March 20th
Joey Ryan & The Inks at Turf Club
Saturday, March 20th
The Alarmists at Triple Rock Social Club
Wednesday, March 24th
Mike Droho at 7th Street Entry
Wednesday, March 24th
Junk FM at The Ugly Mug
Thursday, March 25th
The Notties at Sauce Spirits & Soundbar
With: Mayda
Friday, March 26th
ReadyGoes and White Light Riot at The Fineline
Saturday, March 27th
Zoo Animal and Maudlin at Sauce Spirits & Soundbar
Saturday, March 27th
Pictures of Then at 331 Club
---19 MAR---
Thursday, April 1st
The Fontanelles and Cedar Avenue at The Fineline
Friday, April 2nd
The Idle Hands, Communist Daughter [CD Release], and The Arms Akimbo at The Fineline
Saturday, April 3rd
Red Pens at Hexagon Bar
With: Total Babe
Sunday, April 4th
The 4onthefloor at Kitty Cat Klub [CD Release Show]
With: The Alarmists, The Evening Rig, Koo Koo Kanga Roo
Tuesday, April 6th
The Fattenin' Frogs at Lee's Liquor Lounge
Wednesday, April 7th
Killola and Sick of Sarah at 7th Street Entry
Thursday, April 8th
Julian Casablancas at First Avenue
With: Funeral Party
Friday, April 9th
The Goondas at 1094 11th Ave SE
Saturday, April 10th
ReadyGoes at The Red Carpet in St. Cloud
With: Standard Thompson
Wednesday, April 14th
Junk FM at The Ugly Mug
Thursday, April 15th
Mark Mallman at Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Saturday, April 17th
The Melismatics, Far From Falling, and Attention at First Avenue
Saturday, April 17th
The 4onthefloor at 501 Club
With: Dan Tedesco and The Long Haul, The Goondas
Wednesday, April 21st
Maudlin at Sauce Spirits & Soundbar
Thursday, April 22nd
Roster McCabe at The Cabooze
Friday, April 23rd
White Light Riot at The Fineline
With: Future Antiques [CD Release], The Farewell Circuit [EP Release]
Saturday, April 24th
Rock The Cause Presents: Through The Looking Glass at Scott Weber's
With: Cadillac vs. Cornbread, Maudlin
Thursday, April 29th
The Bangles at The Fineline
With: Sick of Sarah
Friday, April 30th
Ari Herstand at Springtime Shebang at University of Minnesota St. Paul Campus Mall
Friday, April 30th
Dan Rodriguez and Cedar Avenue at The Fineline
---20 APR---
Saturday, May 1st
Owl City at The State Theater
With: Lights, Lynhurst
Saturday, May 1st
Punk Rock Prom V at Nomad World Pub
With: Reckless Ones, Teenage Moods, The Debut (as Lance Hazard and The Fortune 500), Kitten Forever, The Fillmores
Tuesday, May 4th
Fauna at Sauce Spirits & Soundbar
Wednesday, May 5th
Junk FM at The Ugly Mug
Thursday, May 6th
Phil Solem at 7th Street Entry
Friday, May 7th
Revolver & The Secret Agents at Scott Weber's
Friday, May 7th
The Arms Akimbo and The Alarmists at 7th Street Entry
With: The Championship
Friday, May 7th
The Midnight Mo Experience at Scott Weber's
Saturday, May 8th
Paul Green School of Rock at The Rock Nightclub in Maplewood
Performing: Aerosmith, Pink Floyd
Wednesday, May 12th
The 4onthefloor at Famous Dave's at Calhoun Square in Uptown
Thursday, May 13th
The Alarmists at The Varsity
Friday, May 14th
The Goondas at Hoolie Fest at Shuga Records
Friday, May 14th
ReadyGoes at The Fineline
With: Standard Thompson [CD Release], Not Like This [CD Release]
Saturday, May 15th
Paul Green School of Rock at Primetime Sports Bar & Grill in Burnsville
Performing: The Who, Guns N' Roses vs. Motley Crue, Glam Rock
Sunday, May 16th
Har Mar Superstar and Mark Mallman at Lyn-Lake Street Festival
Wednesday, May 19th
The Melismatics and The Alarmists at The Fineline
Wednesday, May 19th
Junk FM at The Ugly Mug
Friday, May 21st
Joey Ryan & The Inks and We Are The Willows at The Varsity
Friday, May 21st
ReadyGoes at The Red Carpet in St. Cloud
Saturday, May 22nd
The Arms Akimbo and Usonia at Sauce Spirits & Soundbar
Sunday, May 23rd
The Spill Canvas at Triple Rock Social Club
With: Tyler Hilton
Monday, May 24th
The Buzzcocks at The Fineline
Wednesday, May 26th
Junk FM at The Ugly Mug
Saturday, May 29th
Joey Ryan & The Inks and New Century Masters at Memory Lanes Block Party
Saturday, May 29th
Charlz Newman at Mayslack's Bar
---25 MAY---
Friday, June 4th
The 4onthefloor and Cadillac Kolstad at Scott Herold's
Saturday, June 5th
The Goondas at 331 Club [CD Release Show]
With: Red Daughters
Sunday, June 6th
Roster McCabe, Catchpenny, and Ari Herstand at Grand Old Day in St. Paul
Thursday, June 10th
B.C. Squints and The Poor Boys, Hud, and The Fattenin' Frogs at Lee's Liquor Lounge
Friday, June 11th
The Alarmists at Northrop Plaza
Friday, June 11th
Machine 22 at 7th Street Entry [CD Release Show]
With: Green Sweater Society
Saturday, June 12th
Roster McCabe at The Cabooze
Wednesday, June 16th
Lynhurst at Peavey Plaza
Wednesday, June 16th
Junk FM at The Ugly Mug
Thursday, June 17th
The Melismatics at Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Friday, June 18th
The Hopefuls at Peavey Plaza
Friday, June 18th
Matt Dodge & The Lobsters and The Farewell Circuit at Sauce Spirits & Soundbar
Saturday, June 19th
The Twilight Hours, Lynhurst, and Joey Ryan & The Inks at Stone Arch Festival at St. Anthony Main
Saturday, June 19th
ReadyGoes at The Red Carpet in St. Cloud
Friday, June 25th
Sick of Sarah at 2205 Grand Ave in Uptown
Friday, June 25th
Red Pens at Walker Art Center
Friday, June 25th
The Debut at Hexagon Bar
Saturday, June 26th
Mark Mallman at Turf Club
With: Pink Mink
Wednesday, June 30th
The 4onthefloor at Famous Dave's at Calhoun Square in Uptown
---19 JUNE---
Thursday, July 1st
Joan Jett and The Blackhearts, The Melismatics, and Sick of Sarah at Summerfest in Milwaukee
Friday, July 2nd
Vanity Theft at The Back Bar in Janesville, WI
Saturday, July 3rd
The 4onthefloor and The Debut at Nomad World Pub
Monday, July 5th
311, The Offspring, Pepper, Heiruspecs, Mark Mallman, Attention, and Lynhurst at Taste of Minnesota
Wednesday, July 7th
Junk FM at The Ugly Mug
Friday, July 9th
Weezer at Basilica Block Party
With: Eric Hutchinson, Rogue Valley
Friday, July 9th
The 4onthefloor at 501 Club
Saturday, July 10th
The Farewell Circuit at The Beat Coffeehouse
Sunday, July 11th
White Light Riot at Nomad World Pub
Friday, July 16th
The Farewell Circuit at The Varsity
Friday, July 16th
Joey Ryan & The Inks at Nomad World Pub
Saturday, July 17th
Rock The Cause Presents: "Rock The Vine" A Celebration of Blues and Soul at St. Croix Vineyards
With: Alison Scott, Cadillac vs. Cornbread, The 4onthefloor, The Midnight Mo Experience
Saturday, July 17th
White Light Riot at Sauce Spirits & Soundbar
With: Mercurial Rage
Tuesday, July 20th
The Fattenin' Frogs at Lee's Liquor Lounge
Wednesday, July 21st
Dan Rodriguez at The Ugly Mug
Thursday, July 22nd
Joey Ryan & The Inks at Mill City Museum Concert Series
Friday, July 23rd
Shiny Toy Guns at The Cabooze
With: Hey Champ
Friday, July 23rd
The Goondas at Kitty Cat Klub
Saturday, July 24th
Koo Koo Kanga Roo, Farewell Continental, and Wide Eyed Kid at 7th Street Entry
Saturday, July 24th
Pink Mink, Silverghost, Screamin' Cyn Cyn and The Pons, and Marco Polio & The New Vaccines at Minne-Motor Festival at Hexagon Bar
Monday, July 26th
The Melismatics at Kitty Cat Klub [Single & Video Release Show]
With: The Hounds Below, The Strange Lights, Hastings 3000
Wednesday, July 28th
Junk FM at The Ugly Mug
Saturday, July 31st
Charlz Newman at Bunkers
With: Cedar Avenue
---23 JULY---
Sunday, August 1st
Vans Warped Tour at Canterbury Park
With: Fake Problems, The Early Strike, You Me At Six, Ice Nine Kills, Hey Monday, AM Taxi, Reel Big Fish, Cold 43, The Exposed, Andrew W.K., Set Your Goals, Every Time I Die, Mayday Parade, Dillinger Escape Plan, Pennywise, The Rocket Summer
Monday, August 2nd
The Alarmists [acoustic] at Kitty Cat Klub
Thursday, August 5th
BNLX and Waxx Maxx at 501 Club
Thursday, August 5th
The Goondas at Cause Spirits & Soundbar
Friday, August 6th
BNLX at Turf Club
Saturday, August 7th
Junk FM at The Ugly Mug
Thursday, August 12th
Ari Herstand at The Varsity
With: ReadyGoes, Dan Rodriguez, Roster McCabe, Joey Ryan [CA] & Kenneth Pattengale, White Light Riot, Gabriel Douglas, The Alarmists, Sarah Winters
Friday, August 13th
BNLX and Red Pens at Hexagon Bar
Saturday, August 14th
Red Pens and Pink Mink at Pizza Lucé Block Party in Uptown
Saturday, August 14th
The Melismatics at Triple Rock Social Club
With: 500 Miles to Memphis
Thursday, August 19th
The Alarmists at Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Friday, August 20th
Vanity Theft and Grey Matador at The Red Sea Bar
Friday, August 20th
The Rockford Mules and The 4onthefloor at Hexagon Bar
Saturday, August 21st
Rock The Cause 3rd Anniversary Party at Scott Herold's
With: Not Like This [Acoustic], Sebastian Love, John Snell
Tuesday, August 24th
Red Pens at Music & Movies in Loring Park
Tuesday, August 24th
The Goondas at Nick & Eddie Restaurant
Wednesday, August 25th
MACCA: A Tribute to Paul McCartney
With: White Light Riot, The Melismatics, Blue Sky Blackout, Raven, Guppy (Adam Levy & Ashleigh Still), David Ronald Beckey, Alicia Wiley, Kelly Jo Mitchell, The Lanes, and more
Thursday, August 26th
Matt Dodge & The Lobsters and Raven at 7th Street Entry
Friday, August 27th
Pink Mink, Fuck Knights, and BNLX at Kitty Cat Klub
Saturday, August 28th
Green Room Music Source Showcase at Club Jäger
With: Ruby Isle, Story of the Sea, Communist Daughter [acoustic], Maudlin
Saturday, August 28th
The Idle Hands, The Debut [EP Release], White Light Riot, and The 4onthefloor at Turf Club
Tuesday, August 31st
The Fattenin' Frogs at Lee's Liquor Lounge
---22 AUG---
Wednesday, September 1st
Weird Al Yankovic at Minnesota State Fair Grandstand
Saturday, September 4th
Uh Huh Her and Sick of Sarah at Duluth/Superior Pride Festival
Monday, September 6th
The Dukes of September Rhythm Revue (Donald Fagen, Michael McDonald, and Boz Scaggs) at Minnesota State Fair Grandstand
Friday, September 10th
The 4onthefloor at Red Stag Supper Club
Saturday, September 11th
The Goondas at Nomad World Pub
Tuesday, September 14th
Girl in a Coma, Sick of Sarah, and Hacienda at Triple Rock Social Club
Thursday, September 16th
The Fattenin' Frogs and Taj Raj at Acadia Cafe
Friday, September 17th
Pink Mink, Red Pens, and The Hounds Below at Hexagon Bar
Saturday, September 18th
Jeremy Messersmith at First Avenue
With: Total Babe
Friday, September 24th
Mark Mallman at Lake Harriet Bandshell
Friday, September 24th
The 4onthefloor at Lee's Liquor Lounge
Saturday, September 25th
Rock The Cause Presents: Cirque Du Serve at UW-River Falls
With: Solid Gold, Roster McCabe, Not Like This
Saturday, September 25th
Usonia, The Farewell Circuit, and Cedar Avenue at Turf Club
Wednesday, September 29th
Junk FM at The Ugly Mug
Thursday, September 30th
Twin Cities Film Fest at The Fineline
With: ReadyGoes, Communist Daughter, Hastings 3000
---15 SEP---
Saturday, October 2nd
The Debut at Cause Spirits & Soundbar
Saturday, October 2nd
Waxx Maxx at Kitty Cat Klub
Tuesday, October 5th
Muse at Target Center
With: Passion Pit
Tuesday, October 5th
The Fattenin' Frogs at Lee's Liquor Lounge
Wednesday, October 6th
Lynhurst at 7th Street Entry
Thursday, October 7th to Sunday, October 10th
Mark Mallman's Marathon 3 at Turf Club
Friday, October 8th
Roster McCabe at The Cabooze
With: Kinetix
Thursday, October 14th
Maudlin at Cause Spirits & Soundbar
Friday, October 15th
The Fattenin' Frogs at Memory Lanes
Saturday, October 16th
The Arms Akimbo, White Light Riot, Usonia, and The Farewell Circuit at The Fineline
Saturday, October 16th
The Melismatics at Cause Spirits & Soundbar
Sunday, October 17th
Gorillaz at Target Center
With: N.E.R.D.
Thursday, October 21st
Pink Mink at Hexagon Bar
Friday, October 22nd
BNLX and Satellite Voices at Stanley's Bar Room
Saturday, October 23rd
Ari Herstand at 708 University Ave SE
Saturday, October 23rd
Joey Ryan & The Inks and The Western Ridge [CD Release] at Kitty Cat Klub
Tuesday, October 26th
The Goondas at Honey
Thursday, October 28th
Catchpenny at Apple Store In-Store Performance in Uptown
Friday, October 29th
Fuzzy Machete and Vanity Theft at Big V's
Saturday, October 30th
Rock The Cause Presents: Phantasmagoria Monster Mash at Scott Weber's
With: ReadyGoes, Cadillac Kolstad
Sunday, October 31st
The Fattenin' Frogs at Triple Rock Social Club
Sunday, October 31st
Junk FM at The Ugly Mug
---22 OCT---
Tuesday, November 2nd
Red Pens at Electric Fetus In-Store Performance
Friday, November 5th
Phil Solem, 500 Miles to Memphis, Courtney Yasmineh, and Grey Matador at 501 Club
Saturday, November 6th
Kicks & Spurs and The Fattenin' Frogs at Terminal Bar
Saturday, November 6th
Red Pens at 7th Street Entry [EP Release Show]
Monday, November 8th
The Fattenin' Frogs at The Fineline
Friday, November 12th
Hotdish at The Ugly Mug
Friday, November 12th
Maudlin at Hexagon Bar
Saturday, November 13th
Savanna D'Amico and Not Like This at The Loft at Barfly
Friday, November 19th
Sick of Sarah at Mall of America Maurice's In-Store Acoustic Performance
Saturday, November 20th
MC/VL and G-Biz at Nick & Eddie Restaurant
Sunday, November 21st
Brandon Flowers at First Avenue
With: Fran Healy
Wednesday, November 24th
Ike Reilly Assassination at First Avenue
With: White Light Riot, John Swardson & Get Gone
Wednesday, November 24th
Junk FM at The Ugly Mug
Friday, November 26th
The Arms Akimbo at Cause Spirits & Soundbar [CD Release Show]
With: Joey Ryan & The Inks
Saturday, November 27th
BNLX at Cause Spirits & Soundbar
---15 NOV---
Thursday, December 2nd
Alicia Wiley at 7th Street Entry [CD Release Show]
With: Greycoats
Friday, December 3rd
Roster McCabe at The Cabooze [CD Release Show]
With: More Than Lights, Mark Joseph Project
Saturday, December 4th
Cedar Avenue at The Varsity
With: Dustin Hatzenbuhler
Saturday, December 4th
Junk FM at The Ugly Mug
Tuesday, December 7th
Sick of Sarah at Honey [CD Release Show]
Thursday, December 9th
Ari Herstand at U of M Hillel
Friday, December 10th
BNLX at 7th Street Entry [EP Release Show]
With: Farewell Continental, Red Pens
Tuesday, December 14th
The Fattenin' Frogs at Lee's Liquor Lounge
Thursday, December 16th
The Goondas and Kicks & Spurs at 7th Street Entry
Friday, December 17th
Maudlin's "The Worst Christmas Pageant Ever!" at Hexagon Bar
With: Pat O'Brien, Speshul K, Jon Ehresmann, Santa and The Ho Ho Hoes, Scritchy The Cat, Hennepin County High, Savanna D'Amico, Maudlin, The Icy Shores, Dave Mehling
Thursday, December 23rd
Joey Ryan & The Inks and Consolation Champ at The Fineline
Thursday, December 23rd
The Melismatics, Thrush, and Mayda at Cause Spirits & Soundbar
Sunday, December 26th
The Farewell Circuit at 501 Club
Wednesday, December 29th
Junk FM at The Ugly Mug
Friday, December 31st
Mark Mallman at The Varsity
With: Caroline Smith & The Good Night Sleeps, Red Pens, Koo Koo Kanga Roo
---15 DEC---
219 total
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Saturday, April 3, 2010
The funniest and strangest overreaction I've ever encountered
Let me tell you the bizarre and hilarious story about someone who literally blocked me on Facebook over simply sharing a normal, non-offending photo of her and her friends that she herself had posted on Facebook.
Earlier in the day, I was sitting online and checking my Facebook periodically as I usually do. A photo popped up in my news feed of a friend who was standing outside the new Minnesota Twins stadium with some of her friends at the first-ever exhibition game there. Being a Twins fan and someone who hasn't been to the new stadium yet myself, I was naturally inclined to click on the image to see it full-size and check out the view. Here is the image for reference, which I pulled out of my browser's cache:
Notice the random guy in the background on the left side? That's pretty funny! I have a buddy who has a collection of Facebook albums with what he calls "Guy in the Background" photos (some people also refer to it as photo-bombing but my buddy has been doing it for years beforehand) and naturally thought that he would enjoy seeing this humorous photo too. So I re-posted it on his Facebook wall, plain and simple.
Later that night while at a show, I checked my Facebook on my iPod Touch and discovered a wall post notification from the woman who posted that photo. I then jumped over to my Facebook wall only to discover this:
WTF? Well, she's right about me being a stand-up photographer, but what in the world would prompt someone to have such a bizarre response over me doing something that is completely normal for anyone on Facebook? I then jumped over to my inbox to discover this:
Kinda hard for me to respond to you if you've blocked me, haha. I then responded to her post on my Facebook wall with the following, which she can't see if she's blocked me but obviously this whole bizarre situation needed to be clarified for my friends.
I have never had any known problems or issues with the woman in question whatsoever and hadn't even knowingly crossed paths with her in nearly a year anyway, so really all I can do is laugh about this because it literally does not make sense. I think I'm going to share this with Fail Blog or another similar website too because they'd probably find this all amusing as well.
Earlier in the day, I was sitting online and checking my Facebook periodically as I usually do. A photo popped up in my news feed of a friend who was standing outside the new Minnesota Twins stadium with some of her friends at the first-ever exhibition game there. Being a Twins fan and someone who hasn't been to the new stadium yet myself, I was naturally inclined to click on the image to see it full-size and check out the view. Here is the image for reference, which I pulled out of my browser's cache:
Notice the random guy in the background on the left side? That's pretty funny! I have a buddy who has a collection of Facebook albums with what he calls "Guy in the Background" photos (some people also refer to it as photo-bombing but my buddy has been doing it for years beforehand) and naturally thought that he would enjoy seeing this humorous photo too. So I re-posted it on his Facebook wall, plain and simple.
Later that night while at a show, I checked my Facebook on my iPod Touch and discovered a wall post notification from the woman who posted that photo. I then jumped over to my Facebook wall only to discover this:
WTF? Well, she's right about me being a stand-up photographer, but what in the world would prompt someone to have such a bizarre response over me doing something that is completely normal for anyone on Facebook? I then jumped over to my inbox to discover this:
Kinda hard for me to respond to you if you've blocked me, haha. I then responded to her post on my Facebook wall with the following, which she can't see if she's blocked me but obviously this whole bizarre situation needed to be clarified for my friends.
I have never had any known problems or issues with the woman in question whatsoever and hadn't even knowingly crossed paths with her in nearly a year anyway, so really all I can do is laugh about this because it literally does not make sense. I think I'm going to share this with Fail Blog or another similar website too because they'd probably find this all amusing as well.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
March: 31 days, 32 new-to-me albums
I've made it a goal of mine to listen to an album a day in 2010. I typically listen to at least an hour (if not 12+) of music every day and love the album as a creative format. So hearing 365 over the course of a year seems like it should be a snap, assuming I can accumulate enough additional albums worthy of my time and ears of course.
We're now 1/4 of the way through the year and I've accomplished my goal thus far, but I was randomly inspired to make March an entirely "new-to-me" music month. Between digging through a massive pile of albums from my roommates' stash downstairs, having albums given to me by a few especially loyal and supportive friends, and buying a few albums I really wanted (or even just on a whim), new music March was a success.
Go to my website and punch in the Konami Code (Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A) on your keyboard to access the "secret" section, then go to March under "Album of the Day". Notice how EVERY date that month has a red box around it? Any "red" tags are albums I hadn't previously owned or heard before, so you can easily figure out what I've been adding and what I already had. Plus each album links to a Twitter post where I say something random associated with it too.
Here's a breakdown of what March was for me, musically speaking of course. (You do NOT want to hear how my March went otherwise.) Want to know what albums & artists I'm actually referring to though? Go to my website!
1: Dug this out of the stash downstairs, and since it includes some of their biggest hits I thought it worthy of my attention.
2: This quirky but cool rock band has always sort of resided on the outer edge of my consciousness, so it only made sense to give this album a shot. Didn't have any real expectations but now I think they definitely rock.
3: This band was TORTURING me for months with their singles from this Grammy-nominated album. Every time I'd hear one I'd love the music/hooks/melodies but would be instantly turned off by the annoying vocals, which is what I refer to as "Oasis Syndrome". (Sorry Oasis fans, I love it when someone covers "Wonderwall" but can't stand the original.) But after hearing one song covered enough by some friends of mine and the two other big singles elsewhere, I decided to give the full album a shot. And it rocked. Not the whole way through, but I definitely don't dislike this band anymore.
4: Another quirky but cool band I've really wanted to see more often (they're local) but haven't really had much opportunity to do so. Though their lead singer refers to this album as "a relic" (it's from 1999), I dug it. Most bands can't even make a 12-minute song, but they can make it and have it be cool even.
5: I love rock supergroups (especially this one), though I didn't actually know who all was in this band until I borrowed this album from a friend.
6: This local band largely flew under my radar until this year. I wish the album would've been recorded a little bit better (the mix seems iffy at times) but it's still totally awesome.
7: Remember the Bee Gees? They aren't all dead yet but they were already reincarnated as this band.
8: The solo debut by the frontman of one of my favorite bands. Imagine that band with longer songs and synth-heavy music and you've got yet another winner.
9: A highly-anticipated album that I waited until its release day to hear. While underwhelming at first, I know over time it'll grow on me. I just wish the frontman had more lead vocals on it.
10: I actually did two albums by the same artist. Let's just say that I REALLLLLLLLY stretched the boundaries of my taste on this day, and it was quite weird to listen to at times. While I certainly love the use of lyrical pun and some of the music is actually quite catchy, I can't help but laugh most of the time while I'm listening to this artist for the sheer reason that I probably shouldn't be listening to them.
11: Oh, to have been in my prime in that particular decade...
12: This artist that I recently got into is so bizarre yet makes music so cool that I can't help but love everything they've done that I've heard so far.
13: I'm very skeptical when it comes to "all-ages" music, or at least the music that tends to be popular with teenagers these days cause most of it sucks. But this band defied my expectations and I'm now sold. Gotta get out to a show now sometime cause they're (technically) local too.
14: Love this artist but can't say that I really dug the new/alternate versions on some of these classic songs. But he's still one of the greatest all-time in my book.
15: The 2010 Rock and/or Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony was on this night, so I dug this band's debut album out of the pile downstairs. Not bad, but it wasn't as amazing as I was expecting it to be either.
16: When I came of age musically (i.e., I hit my teens in the late 90's/early 00's), this band's frontman was busy working on another project that I got way more into first. So while I may have had a "backwards" experience with hearing this band, it didn't diminish my enjoyment of this album.
17: This group has always proven to be catchy and cool to my ears, so it was about time I got to hear an album. And it was awesome. Will be getting more albums in the future for sure.
18: Yet another classic album, but one that I hadn't heard the whole way through yet. Gotta love a song where the title is simply just a swear word as well, haha.
19: Arguably one of the most inspiring artists of all-time. The second-to-last track of this album is one of three songs which I associate with literally my most early memories in life, or at least the ones I can remember...
20: A new band on the local scene, those the members were already quite close to say the least. I didn't have any expectations before hearing it but thought it was a cool little album.
21: One of my three biggest musical idols fronts this band, and I'm eventually going to own their whole collection. Though they technically aren't one of my "true favorite" bands (yet), I did get to see them in 2005 and it was quite an awesome (though also quite violent) 2-hour experience in their most pit.
22: Another local band which largely flew under my radar until recently, but as they kept popping up on bills with some of my favorite local acts I started to dig them. They're giving this album away for free now online, so go get it!
23: The frontman for this band already has two other bands which I dig, so it only made sense to hear what his third band sounded like.
24: I shot this band in June 2007 and dug their sound, but they completely fell off my radar until a friend gave me their debut album. And it's awesome! Makes me wish they could tour more often, or at least tour around here anyway.
25: Dug this out of the pile downstairs, and it's the second album I've heard from this band. While I don't think they're as great as my all-time favorite band in this particular genre, I definitely dig them.
26: Someone gave me an advance copy of this album, which I had initially planned to wait until its release date to hear. But with all the talk surrounding it I had to go ahead and give it a listen. It's not nearly as "pop" as their first album but it's still most definitely their sound, or whatever I envision that to be. Either way it's weird, which is not a bad thing in this case.
27: On the rare occasions where I listen to The Current, this band would occasionally pop up and actually impressed me with their catchy tunes. Was definitely glad to give their first album a full listen, and now I am a fan.
28: I wish more bands could be as cool as this one.
29: Back when MTV had TRL (or even music videos on rare occasions), this band's video for their second single was EVERYWHERE. And I liked it. And I had that song on my iTunes for a long time before I ever heard this album, which I had high hopes for upon hearing it for the first time on this day. But, it was way too emo for my tastes unfortunately. Eh, can't win 'em all.
30: A local band that, while gaining quite a following over the past 2 years since I first saw them, didn't really catch my interest until the Saturday before this day when I saw them for the 2nd time ever. I'm now a fan.
31: This band completely blew me away at First Avenue a little over two years ago yet this is only the third album of theirs that I have. I'm very patient with acquiring music from the bands I enjoy, albeit a 1 1/2+ year gap between getting albums that are already released is a little much for me.
We're now 1/4 of the way through the year and I've accomplished my goal thus far, but I was randomly inspired to make March an entirely "new-to-me" music month. Between digging through a massive pile of albums from my roommates' stash downstairs, having albums given to me by a few especially loyal and supportive friends, and buying a few albums I really wanted (or even just on a whim), new music March was a success.
Go to my website and punch in the Konami Code (Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A) on your keyboard to access the "secret" section, then go to March under "Album of the Day". Notice how EVERY date that month has a red box around it? Any "red" tags are albums I hadn't previously owned or heard before, so you can easily figure out what I've been adding and what I already had. Plus each album links to a Twitter post where I say something random associated with it too.
Here's a breakdown of what March was for me, musically speaking of course. (You do NOT want to hear how my March went otherwise.) Want to know what albums & artists I'm actually referring to though? Go to my website!
1: Dug this out of the stash downstairs, and since it includes some of their biggest hits I thought it worthy of my attention.
2: This quirky but cool rock band has always sort of resided on the outer edge of my consciousness, so it only made sense to give this album a shot. Didn't have any real expectations but now I think they definitely rock.
3: This band was TORTURING me for months with their singles from this Grammy-nominated album. Every time I'd hear one I'd love the music/hooks/melodies but would be instantly turned off by the annoying vocals, which is what I refer to as "Oasis Syndrome". (Sorry Oasis fans, I love it when someone covers "Wonderwall" but can't stand the original.) But after hearing one song covered enough by some friends of mine and the two other big singles elsewhere, I decided to give the full album a shot. And it rocked. Not the whole way through, but I definitely don't dislike this band anymore.
4: Another quirky but cool band I've really wanted to see more often (they're local) but haven't really had much opportunity to do so. Though their lead singer refers to this album as "a relic" (it's from 1999), I dug it. Most bands can't even make a 12-minute song, but they can make it and have it be cool even.
5: I love rock supergroups (especially this one), though I didn't actually know who all was in this band until I borrowed this album from a friend.
6: This local band largely flew under my radar until this year. I wish the album would've been recorded a little bit better (the mix seems iffy at times) but it's still totally awesome.
7: Remember the Bee Gees? They aren't all dead yet but they were already reincarnated as this band.
8: The solo debut by the frontman of one of my favorite bands. Imagine that band with longer songs and synth-heavy music and you've got yet another winner.
9: A highly-anticipated album that I waited until its release day to hear. While underwhelming at first, I know over time it'll grow on me. I just wish the frontman had more lead vocals on it.
10: I actually did two albums by the same artist. Let's just say that I REALLLLLLLLY stretched the boundaries of my taste on this day, and it was quite weird to listen to at times. While I certainly love the use of lyrical pun and some of the music is actually quite catchy, I can't help but laugh most of the time while I'm listening to this artist for the sheer reason that I probably shouldn't be listening to them.
11: Oh, to have been in my prime in that particular decade...
12: This artist that I recently got into is so bizarre yet makes music so cool that I can't help but love everything they've done that I've heard so far.
13: I'm very skeptical when it comes to "all-ages" music, or at least the music that tends to be popular with teenagers these days cause most of it sucks. But this band defied my expectations and I'm now sold. Gotta get out to a show now sometime cause they're (technically) local too.
14: Love this artist but can't say that I really dug the new/alternate versions on some of these classic songs. But he's still one of the greatest all-time in my book.
15: The 2010 Rock and/or Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony was on this night, so I dug this band's debut album out of the pile downstairs. Not bad, but it wasn't as amazing as I was expecting it to be either.
16: When I came of age musically (i.e., I hit my teens in the late 90's/early 00's), this band's frontman was busy working on another project that I got way more into first. So while I may have had a "backwards" experience with hearing this band, it didn't diminish my enjoyment of this album.
17: This group has always proven to be catchy and cool to my ears, so it was about time I got to hear an album. And it was awesome. Will be getting more albums in the future for sure.
18: Yet another classic album, but one that I hadn't heard the whole way through yet. Gotta love a song where the title is simply just a swear word as well, haha.
19: Arguably one of the most inspiring artists of all-time. The second-to-last track of this album is one of three songs which I associate with literally my most early memories in life, or at least the ones I can remember...
20: A new band on the local scene, those the members were already quite close to say the least. I didn't have any expectations before hearing it but thought it was a cool little album.
21: One of my three biggest musical idols fronts this band, and I'm eventually going to own their whole collection. Though they technically aren't one of my "true favorite" bands (yet), I did get to see them in 2005 and it was quite an awesome (though also quite violent) 2-hour experience in their most pit.
22: Another local band which largely flew under my radar until recently, but as they kept popping up on bills with some of my favorite local acts I started to dig them. They're giving this album away for free now online, so go get it!
23: The frontman for this band already has two other bands which I dig, so it only made sense to hear what his third band sounded like.
24: I shot this band in June 2007 and dug their sound, but they completely fell off my radar until a friend gave me their debut album. And it's awesome! Makes me wish they could tour more often, or at least tour around here anyway.
25: Dug this out of the pile downstairs, and it's the second album I've heard from this band. While I don't think they're as great as my all-time favorite band in this particular genre, I definitely dig them.
26: Someone gave me an advance copy of this album, which I had initially planned to wait until its release date to hear. But with all the talk surrounding it I had to go ahead and give it a listen. It's not nearly as "pop" as their first album but it's still most definitely their sound, or whatever I envision that to be. Either way it's weird, which is not a bad thing in this case.
27: On the rare occasions where I listen to The Current, this band would occasionally pop up and actually impressed me with their catchy tunes. Was definitely glad to give their first album a full listen, and now I am a fan.
28: I wish more bands could be as cool as this one.
29: Back when MTV had TRL (or even music videos on rare occasions), this band's video for their second single was EVERYWHERE. And I liked it. And I had that song on my iTunes for a long time before I ever heard this album, which I had high hopes for upon hearing it for the first time on this day. But, it was way too emo for my tastes unfortunately. Eh, can't win 'em all.
30: A local band that, while gaining quite a following over the past 2 years since I first saw them, didn't really catch my interest until the Saturday before this day when I saw them for the 2nd time ever. I'm now a fan.
31: This band completely blew me away at First Avenue a little over two years ago yet this is only the third album of theirs that I have. I'm very patient with acquiring music from the bands I enjoy, albeit a 1 1/2+ year gap between getting albums that are already released is a little much for me.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Raining, pouring, what's the difference?
I'm going to be brief about this because I don't want to start a pity party. (Or maybe I should? Whatever.)
Here are the simple facts: I have been unemployed since the end of November and barely scraping by since then, mostly off my photography. But on Friday night, my beloved Canon Digital Rebel XSi camera body died suddenly and without warning. It wasn't a slow-burn death like with my old XTi that died shortly after Lollapalooza 2008; this one just went out of the blue.
I'm fortunate in that the extended warranty covers repairs for my camera free of charge, but now I'm going to be stuck without my lifeblood and only real income source for literally a month while it's in the shop. Any time is a bad time to lose something that's incredibly important to your very existence, but damn.
My initial plan was (after hopefully getting a job again soon) to save for 6-8 months and upgrade my whole setup with the new Canon T2i plus a new lens, bigger memory card (T2i shoots HD video), etc. Then I would have my old XSi, which I figured would be wearing out and in need of repair at the end of 2010, become my emergency backup. I guess my timetable wasn't good enough for fate though, which has proven to be quite fatal.
But in all honesty, all I would need to be back on my feet right now is the T2i body ($799) with an extended warranty (~$70, it's SO WORTH IT) and maybe a spare battery (~$80) because everything else I have is still compatible (except for the battery). Problem is, I don't have a grand lying around. Heck I don't even know how I'm going to pay my rent for April yet...
I'm open to any creative solutions for this nightmare of a problem. Donations and ideas small and large are most certainly welcome; and the sooner I can get back on my feet the sooner I can get out and start shooting again.
Here are the simple facts: I have been unemployed since the end of November and barely scraping by since then, mostly off my photography. But on Friday night, my beloved Canon Digital Rebel XSi camera body died suddenly and without warning. It wasn't a slow-burn death like with my old XTi that died shortly after Lollapalooza 2008; this one just went out of the blue.
I'm fortunate in that the extended warranty covers repairs for my camera free of charge, but now I'm going to be stuck without my lifeblood and only real income source for literally a month while it's in the shop. Any time is a bad time to lose something that's incredibly important to your very existence, but damn.
My initial plan was (after hopefully getting a job again soon) to save for 6-8 months and upgrade my whole setup with the new Canon T2i plus a new lens, bigger memory card (T2i shoots HD video), etc. Then I would have my old XSi, which I figured would be wearing out and in need of repair at the end of 2010, become my emergency backup. I guess my timetable wasn't good enough for fate though, which has proven to be quite fatal.
But in all honesty, all I would need to be back on my feet right now is the T2i body ($799) with an extended warranty (~$70, it's SO WORTH IT) and maybe a spare battery (~$80) because everything else I have is still compatible (except for the battery). Problem is, I don't have a grand lying around. Heck I don't even know how I'm going to pay my rent for April yet...
I'm open to any creative solutions for this nightmare of a problem. Donations and ideas small and large are most certainly welcome; and the sooner I can get back on my feet the sooner I can get out and start shooting again.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
The hell?
Some total fuckwad punched in my car window last night and stole my friend's purse while we were at Transmission at Club Jager. Driving around in February with no front passenger window sucks ass, but that's nothing compared to the 2+ years of writing and poetry that my friend had in a journal that was also lost with her purse. The purse didn't actually hold any money, credit cards, or other items of significant monetary value in it, but that journal was literally priceless to her.
I'm pissed to say the least.
I'm pissed to say the least.
Monday, February 8, 2010
An album a day keeps insanity at bay.
I've been posting a new rock photo every day in my Facebook group since April 2007, which is pretty awesome cause I've now tallied over 1100 photos. I'm currently broke and unemployed though, so I have to be really picky on what shows I see (or you can always put me on the list!) these days.
But another idea I had for 2010 was to try to listen to an album a day. Seemed easy enough at first; I listen to music anywhere from 1-12 hours a day depending on what I'm doing and I'm a bit of a purist in that I still love the idea of the album as a creative format. Singles are nice obviously but albums are what really get you hooked on a band.
In order to make this a reality though, I'm probably going to need to acquire about 100+ more albums since my library isn't as deep as it should be for this idea. Believe me, I've got a lot of great music, but I'm also missing out on a lot of stuff I should have as well. Plus it doesn't hurt to be exposed to new stuff either sometimes.
I'm a very picky dude when it comes to the music I like (I do try to keep an open mind too of course) but if you've got any CDs you'd be willing to loan (or even give) to me, hit me up. And if you'd like to follow along with my album of the day series, enter the Konami Code (Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A) on your keyboard while on www.mikeminehart.com to bring up the "secret" section that also houses some other fun hidden goodies.
P.S. - If you're opposed to sharing music like this, know that I still buy CDs (I don't actually buy off iTunes or any digital retailer) when I'm not broke and I haven't illegally downloaded a song online in over 3 years. I'm not a distributor either; I occasionally receive albums that haven't been released yet but I sure ain't gonna be a prick and leak them to the masses. So show some love for a fellow music lover and lemme hear some of your cool albums.
But another idea I had for 2010 was to try to listen to an album a day. Seemed easy enough at first; I listen to music anywhere from 1-12 hours a day depending on what I'm doing and I'm a bit of a purist in that I still love the idea of the album as a creative format. Singles are nice obviously but albums are what really get you hooked on a band.
In order to make this a reality though, I'm probably going to need to acquire about 100+ more albums since my library isn't as deep as it should be for this idea. Believe me, I've got a lot of great music, but I'm also missing out on a lot of stuff I should have as well. Plus it doesn't hurt to be exposed to new stuff either sometimes.
I'm a very picky dude when it comes to the music I like (I do try to keep an open mind too of course) but if you've got any CDs you'd be willing to loan (or even give) to me, hit me up. And if you'd like to follow along with my album of the day series, enter the Konami Code (Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A) on your keyboard while on www.mikeminehart.com to bring up the "secret" section that also houses some other fun hidden goodies.
P.S. - If you're opposed to sharing music like this, know that I still buy CDs (I don't actually buy off iTunes or any digital retailer) when I'm not broke and I haven't illegally downloaded a song online in over 3 years. I'm not a distributor either; I occasionally receive albums that haven't been released yet but I sure ain't gonna be a prick and leak them to the masses. So show some love for a fellow music lover and lemme hear some of your cool albums.
Monday, January 4, 2010
A list of every show I saw in 2009.
Friday, January 2nd
Ferris at The Fineline [CD Release Show]
With: Breanne Düren
Saturday, January 3rd
The Invincible Kids, Crash/Burn/Repeat, and The Soviet Machines at The Beat Coffeehouse
Saturday, January 3rd
Future Antiques at The Fineline [CD Release Show]
With: Sepia Tone, T Minus Ten
Sunday, January 4th
Farewell Continental at Triple Rock Social Club
Friday, January 9th
The Hopefuls at Turf Club
With: First Communion Afterparty, Greycoats, The Invincible Kids
Wednesday, January 14th
The Zmo Trio at The Varsity
With: The Person and The People, Joie De Vivre, We The Trees, and a cameo by Alicia Wiley
Thursday, January 15th
Boom Booms For Everyone, Faux Jean (solo), and Joey Ryan & The Inks at Turf Club
Friday, January 16th
Dan Rodriguez, Ari Herstand, and Argyle Superstars at The Varsity
Friday, January 16th
ReadyGoes at The Red Carpet in St. Cloud
Saturday, January 17th
Paul Green School of Rock at Trocaderos
Performing: Aerosmith, Hair Metal
Saturday, January 17th
The Melismatics at The Stone's Throw in Eau Claire
Monday, January 19th
AC/DC at Xcel Energy Center
Opener: The Answer
Wednesday, January 21st
The Histronic and Roster McCabe at The Cabooze
Friday, January 23rd
Castle at Trocaderos [CD Release Show]
With: The Rockford Mules
Saturday, January 24th
Sick of Sarah and The Alarmists at 7th Street Entry
With: The Soviet Machines
Saturday, January 24th
The Knotwells and Clawthroat at Nomad World Pub
Sunday, January 25th
Paul Green School of Rock at Minnesota Music Cafe
Performing: Old School Punk, Van Halen
Wednesday, January 28th
Solid Gold at The Uptown Bar
Friday, January 30th
Joey Ryan & The Inks at Kitty Cat Klub
Friday, January 30th
Charlz Newman at Bunkers
Saturday, January 31st
Paul Green School of Rock "Best of Season" at Bogart's Place in Apple Valley
Saturday, January 31st
Mayda, ReadyGoes, and The Invincible Kids at Triple Rock Social Club
---22 JAN---
Thursday, February 5th
The Invincible Kids, The Wannabe Hasbeens, Vienna, and Oh Crap, Mo Is Here at 7th Street Entry
Friday, February 6th
The Notties at Scott Herold's
Saturday, February 7th
Cowboy Mouth at The Varsity
With: Catchpenny
Saturday, February 7th
Solid Gold at Kitty Cat Klub
Tuesday, February 10th
Pantown and Postina at The Fineline
Wednesday, February 11th
Lynhurst at Java Jack's
Thursday, February 12th
Lovedrug at The Varsity
With: ReadyGoes, The Battle Royale
Friday, February 13th
ReadyGoes at The Red Carpet in St. Cloud
Saturday, February 14th
The Blend and 2 Tone Runts at Triple Rock Social Club
Saturday, February 14th
MC/VL and Double Bird at Turf Club
Wednesday, February 18th
Charlz Newman at Bella Sera in Maple Grove
Thursday, February 19th
Alicia Wiley at The Varsity [CD Release Show]
With: Dan Rodriguez, With All Due Respect, The Zmo Trio, and a cameo by Breanne Düren
Friday, February 20th
ReadyGoes at The Fineline
With: The Invincible Kids, Man Is Doomed, Jake Dilley and the Color Pharmacy
Saturday, February 21st
Lynhurst at Java Jack's
With: Stephen Courchane
Saturday, February 21st
The Debut at Big V's
With: Clock Hands Strangle, Joey Ryan & The Inks, The Suits
Sunday, February 22nd
Mike Droho and The Compass Rose at High Noon Saloon in Madison
With: Green River Ordinance, Danielle Brittany
Friday, February 27th
The Wannabe Hasbeens at The Fineline
With: Thru The Static, Transit, The Run
Saturday, February 28th
Roster McCabe at The Cabooze
With: Natty Nation
---18 FEB---
Wednesday, March 4th
Oh Crap, Mo Is Here at The Ugly Mug
Friday, March 6th
Cocaine at The Fineline
With: Castle, The Invincible Kids, The Soviet Machines, Pay Attention
Saturday, March 7th
This World Fair at The Fineline
With: Greycoats, The Parlour Suite, Breanne Düren
Sunday, March 8th
Ari Herstand at The Pause at St. Olaf
With: Jay Nash
Monday, March 9th
Butch Walker at The Varsity
With: The Films
Friday, March 13th
The Notties, Wake Up Bedhead, Thumbelina and the Tangerine Fists of Justice, and Maudlin (solo) at Terminal Bar
Saturday, March 14th
Vita.MN & 89.3 The Current Presents "Are You Local?" SXSW Sendoff Show
With: Solid Gold, Sims of Doomtree, Jeremy Messersmith, The Idle Hands
Monday, March 16th
The Zmo Trio at Kitty Cat Klub
With: Aria Souder, Little Yosemite
Tuesday, March 17th
The Wannabe Hasbeens at The News Room
Tuesday, March 17th
Joey Ryan & The Inks and The Suits at Turf Club
Wednesday, March 18th
Plain White T's at The Varsity
With: Vedera, Single File
Thursday, March 19th
Sick of Sarah at Maplewood Mall Hot Topic In-Store Performance
Friday, March 20th
The Melismatics at 7th Street Entry
With: Sick of Sarah, Maudlin, Boom Booms For Everyone
Saturday, March 21st
The Wannabe Hasbeens at Triple Rock Social Club
With: Future Antiques, The Arrest
Wednesday, March 25th
Me As A Pilot, Pay Attention, and The Wannabe Hasbeens at Turf Club
Friday, March 27th
ReadyGoes at The Red Carpet in St. Cloud
Saturday, March 28th
Copasetic and Dan Rodriguez at The Fineline
Saturday, March 28th
The Rockford Mules and The Pack A.D. at Turf Club
---18 MAR---
Wednesday, April 1st
Treasured Chests Charity Event Singer-Songwriter Contest Finale at Trocaderos
With: Janani Logendran & Toni Lindgren, Nial Hay, Joel Kachel, Tony Ortiz, Matthew Griswold, Gary Pruitt, Jeff Ray, and Tim Mahoney
Friday, April 3rd
The Soviet Machines, Maudlin, and Ralphed at The Beat Coffeehouse
Friday, April 3rd
Cocaine, The Wannabe Hasbeens, and The Invincible Kids at 400 Bar
Saturday, April 4th
So It Goes at The Uptown Bar
With: The Engagement, Lost in Prague, The Debut
Monday, April 6th
The Ting Tings at The Varsity
With: Hottub
Tuesday, April 7th
Glasvegas at The Varsity
With: Von Iva
Wednesday, April 8th
The Blend at The Ugly Mug
Saturday, April 11th
Koo Koo Kanga Roo, State and Madison, and The Invincible Kids at 7th Street Entry
Saturday, April 11th
Lynhurst at Java Jack's
Saturday, April 11th
Throw The Fight at Bogart's Place in Apple Valley
With: Third Supply
Sunday, April 12th
Mates of State and Black Kids at The Varsity
With: Judgement Day
Thursday, April 16th
The Melismatics at Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Thursday, April 16th
Kelly Jo Mitchell at Nomad World Pub
Friday, April 17th
Rock The Cause Presents Campus Glitter Ball at The Pause at St. Olaf
With: Roster McCabe, So It Goes, ReadyGoes, The Notties
Saturday, April 18th
The Wannabe Hasbeens at Augsburg College
Saturday, April 18th
Gingerjake and Sick of Sarah at The Red Carpet in St. Cloud
Tuesday, April 21st
Peter Bjorn and John at The Fineline
With: Chairlift
Friday, April 24th
The Blend at Concert for a Cure Spring Jam Concert at 1601 University
Friday, April 24th
Charlz Newman at Bunkers
With: Stealing Seconds
Saturday, April 25th
Hellogoodbye at Concordia College in Moorhead
With: ReadyGoes
Saturday, April 25th
Punk Rock Prom IV at Nomad World Pub
With: MC/VL, Bouncer Fighter, A Paper Cup Band, Fuck Knights, The Debut, The Shortcuts, The Fillmores
Tuesday, April 28th
Franz Ferdinand at First Avenue
With: Born Ruffians
Thursday, April 30th
Ha Ha Tonka, Ben Weaver, and ReadyGoes at Triple Rock Social Club
---23 APR---
Friday, May 1st
So It Goes at The Garage in Burnsville [EP Release Show]
With: The Invincible Kids, The Wannabe Hasbeens, The Style Biters, Kerns and The Hemispheres
Saturday, May 2nd
Catchpenny at UW-EC SIFE Battle of the Bands on Water Street in Eau Claire
With: State of Mind
Saturday, May 2nd
White Light Riot and So It Goes [EP Release Show] at The Fineline
With: The Invincible Kids
Wednesday, May 6th
Oh Crap, Mo Is Here at The Ugly Mug
Thursday, May 7th
The Invincible Kids at The Uptown Bar
With: Winter Gloves
Friday, May 8th
Maitiera at The Rock Nightclub in Maplewood
Saturday, May 9th
Paul Green School of Rock at Trocaderos
Performing: Black Sabbath, The Doors
Tuesday, May 12th
Catchpenny at Metrodome Plaza
Thursday, May 14th
ReadyGoes at The Red Carpet in St. Cloud
With: The Invincible Kids
Friday, May 15th
Transmission Presents "Tainted Love" at The Fineline
With: The Melismatics, Ruby Isle, So It Goes
Saturday, May 16th
The Invincible Kids and Maudlin at Nomad World Pub
Sunday, May 17th
Paul Green School of Rock at The Rock Nightclub in Maplewood
Performing: One Hit Wonders, The Police, Jimi Hendrix
Wednesday, May 20th
The Farewell Circuit at The Fineline
Saturday, May 23rd
England Swings VIII at The Fineline
With: Johnny & The Moondogs, The Melismatics (as Pretty In Pink), The Wag, Little Man, Robert Wilkinson of Flamin' Oh's, Mars to Mercury, Fab Tab & The Teds
Sunday, May 24th
The Invincible Kids at Memory Lanes Block Party
Wednesday, May 27th
Lobsters at The Fineline
Wednesday, May 27th
Hotdish (cover) at The Ugly Mug
Friday, May 29th
Sick of Sarah at The Town House
Friday, May 29th
Ari Herstand at The Ugly Mug
Saturday, May 30th
Paul Green School of Rock "Best of Season" at Bogart's Place in Apple Valley
With: Attracted to Gods
Saturday, May 30th
The Debut at Turf Club
With: Seymour Saves the World
Saturday, May 30th
The Wannabe Hasbeens at Terminal Bar
---22 MAY---
Friday, June 5th
The Invincible Kids at Peavey Plaza
Friday, June 5th
The Melismatics and Satellite of Love at Scott Herold's
Saturday, June 6th
Maudlin, Mars to Mercury, and Revolver & The Secret Agents at Scott Herold's
Sunday, June 7th
The Crystal Method at First Avenue
Thursday, June 11th
State of Mind at Barfly
Friday, June 12th
Maudlin at Arbor Lakes Mall Hot Topic In-Store Performance in Maple Grove
Friday, June 12th
The Alarmists at The Varsity [CD Release Show]
With: The 757s, The Championship, Coach Said Not To
Saturday, June 13th
Maudlin and So It Goes at Ed's No Name Bar in Winona
Thursday, June 18th
The Wannabe Hasbeens at O'Gara's Garage
Friday, June 19th
The Offspring at Roy Wilkins Auditorium
With: Dropkick Murphys
Saturday, June 20th
Joey Ryan & The Inks at Stone Arch Festival at St. Anthony Main
Saturday, June 20th
ReadyGoes at Trocaderos
Wednesday, June 24th
Lynhurst at Peavey Plaza
Friday, June 26th
Sick of Sarah at Uptown Pride Block Party at Bryant & Lake
Friday, June 26th
Augustana at The Varsity
With: Dan Rodriguez
Saturday, June 27th
Roster McCabe at Famous Dave's at Calhoun Square in Uptown
With: Shoeless Revolution, Sepia Tone, and a finale by The "Roster Revolution"
Tuesday, June 30th
Red Pens, Brute Heart, and Zombie Season at Turf Club
---17 JUNE---
Friday, July 3rd
The Debut and The Invincible Kids at Scott Herold's
Wednesday, July 8th
Hotdish (cover) at The Ugly Mug
Friday, July 10th
Ari Herstand at The Varsity
With: Greycoats, Dan Rodriguez, Breanne Düren
Saturday, July 11th
Green Day at Target Center
With: The Bravery
Saturday, July 11th
Two Harbors at Sauce Spirits & Soundbar
Tuesday, July 14th
Andriana Lehr at The Fineline
Thursday, July 16th
The Melismatics at Music in Mears Park
Thursday, July 16th
Hotdish (cover) at The Ugly Mug
Friday, July 17th
The Melismatics at 7th Street Entry
With: Sick of Sarah, Lynhurst
Friday, July 17th
Maudlin at Scott Herold's
Saturday, July 18th
The Alarmists at Sauce Spirits & Soundbar
With: Greycoats, The Invincible Kids
Tuesday, July 21st
This World Fair at The Sunshine Factory
Wednesday, July 22nd
Lobsters at Station 4
With: Wasted Audio, Wednesday's Bliss
Thursday, July 23rd
The Hopefuls and ReadyGoes at Music in Mears Park
Thursday, July 23rd
Jake Dilley and The Color Pharmacy and The Zmo Trio at The Fineline
Thursday, July 23rd
Red Pens at Nomad World Pub
Thursday, July 23rd
Hotdish (cover) at The Ugly Mug
Friday, July 24th
Maya Elena at Osseo Church of the Nazerene
Friday, July 24th
Castle and The Rockford Mules at Triple Rock Social Club
Friday, July 24th
Bad Association at The Ugly Mug
Saturday, July 25th
Yer Cronies, Joey Ryan & The Inks, and Dada Trash Collage at 7th Street Entry
Saturday, July 25th
Bad Association at The Ugly Mug
Saturday, July 25th
The Knotwells at The Fineline
Thursday, July 30th
Future Antiques at Sauce Spirits & Soundbar
Thursday, July 30th
"Green Machine" (Green Sweater Society + Machine 22) and Machine 22 at 400 Bar
Friday, July 31st
Solid Gold at Minnesota Zoo
With: The Pines, Jeremy Messersmith
---26 JULY---
Saturday, August 1st
Catchpenny at CureDuchenne Benefit at Greenhaven Golf Course in Anoka
Saturday, August 1st
ReadyGoes at The Red Carpet in St. Cloud
Tuesday, August 4th
This World Fair at The Sunshine Factory
Wednesday, August 5th
Kelly Jo Mitchell at The Fineline
Wednesday, August 5th
Hotdish (cover) at The Ugly Mug
Thursday, August 6th
Lynhurst at Music in Mears Park
Thursday, August 6th
Band of Skulls at Triple Rock Social Club
With: ReadyGoes
Friday, August 7th
Six Shot Love, Stealing Seconds, and Transit at The Fineline
Saturday, August 8th
Kid Dakota, MC/VL, and Me and My Arrow at Pizza Luce Block Party in Uptown
Saturday, August 8th
Sonic Jones at The Ugly Mug
Wednesday, August 12th
Pete Yorn at The Fineline
With: Zee Avi
Wednesday, August 12th
Hotdish (cover) at The Ugly Mug
Thursday, August 13th
Communist Daughter, So It Goes, and Boom Booms For Everyone at Turf Club
Friday, August 14th
The Alarmists and The Debut at 7th Street Entry
With: The Arms Akimbo
Saturday, August 15th
ReadyGoes at Station 4
With: State and Madison, See The World
Saturday, August 15th
The Alarmists, Maudlin, The Invincible Kids, and Solid Gold (DJ sets) at Turf Club
Friday, August 21st
Red Pens at Sauce Spirits & Soundbar
Friday, August 21st
The Invincible Kids at The Uptown Bar
With: Mercurial Rage
Saturday, August 22nd
Mark Mallman at Red Stag Supper Club Block Party
With: Chooglin', Heiruspecs
Saturday, August 22nd
All The Pretty Horses at Turf Club
With: Big Jesus and The Homeless Bastards, Maudlin
Friday, August 28th
Cecilia's Birthday Show at Triple Rock Social Club
With: The Melismatics, So It Goes, ReadyGoes, The Invincible Kids
Saturday, August 29th
Sick of Sarah at Live Loud & Local Festival at The Rock Nightclub in Maplewood
With: The Rouge, Smiling Politely, HowlBody, Born Empty, Unexpected Guests, Under None, Machine 22
Sunday, August 30th
The Wailers at Minnesota State Fair
---23 AUG---
Wednesday, September 2nd
A Night in the Box at Lake Harriet Bandshell
Wednesday, September 2nd
Roster McCabe at The Cabooze
Friday, September 4th
Leaving Reason at St. Paul Eagles Club
Saturday, September 5th
Mark Mallman at First Avenue [CD Release Show]
With: Black Blondie, Lookbook
Saturday, September 5th
ReadyGoes at The Red Carpet in St. Cloud
Monday, September 7th
Lynhurst at Lake Harriet Bandshell
With a cameo by: Will Hutchinson
Monday, September 7th
Private Dancer, Voitek, and Teenage Strangler at Memory Lanes
Tuesday, September 8th
This World Fair at The Sunshine Factory
Wednesday, September 9th
Roster McCabe and ReadyGoes at The Pause at St. Olaf
Friday, September 11th
The Blend at DKE Semester Kickoff Concert
Friday, September 11th
Charlz Newman at Bunkers
With: West of Aldine
Saturday, September 12th
Paul Green School of Rock at Pickle Park in Fridley
Performing: Best of the 90's, Iron Maiden vs. Judas Priest, Southern Rock
Saturday, September 12th
The Melismatics & The Alarmists at Full Throttle Battle of the Bands at The Fineline
Tuesday, September 15th
This World Fair at The Sunshine Factory
Wednesday, September 16th
Tyrone Wells at The Varsity
With: Ari Herstand
Wednesday, September 16th
Hotdish (cover) at The Ugly Mug
Thursday, September 17th
The Proclaimers at Triple Rock Social Club
With: The Invincible Kids
Thursday, September 17th
Sonic Jones at The Ugly Mug
Friday, September 18th
Rock The Cause Presents "Rebels With a Cause" at The Music Box Theatre
With: The Alarmists, The Notties, The 4onthefloor, Ari Herstand, and a cameo by Natalie Adams
Saturday, September 19th
The Arms Akimbo and The Invincible Kids at Sauce Spirits & Soundbar
Monday, September 21st
The Melismatics at The Varsity
Monday, September 21st
Ladyhawke, Semi Precious Weapons, Natalie Portman's Shaved Head, and Sliimy at The Fineline
Wednesday, September 23rd
The Debut at The Uptown Bar
With: Bradford
Wednesday, September 23rd
Hotdish (cover) at The Ugly Mug
Thursday, September 24th
Andriana Lehr at The Varsity
Friday, September 25th
Joey Ryan & The Inks at Sauce Spirits & Soundbar
With: Sleeping in the Aviary
Saturday, September 26th
Paul Green School of Rock at The Rock Nightclub in Maplewood
Performing: Queen, U2 Rattle and Hum
Saturday, September 26th
Astronaut Wife, Blue Sky Blackout, and Red Pens at Club Jägerfest
Saturday, September 26th
Hotdish (cover) at The Ugly Mug
Sunday, September 27th
Paul Green School of Rock at The Rock Nightclub in Maplewood
Performing: Metallica vs. Anthrax, British Invasion
Wednesday, September 30th
Hotdish (cover) at The Ugly Mug
---31 SEP---
Thursday, October 1st
Minor Kingdom at Kitty Cat Klub [CD Release Show]
Friday, October 2nd
All The Pretty Horses at Sauce Spirits & Soundbar
Saturday, October 3rd
The Bravery at The Fineline
With: Living Things, The Dustys
Sunday, October 4th
Dan Rodriguez, Debra G, and The Museum of Knives and Fire at The Fineline
Wednesday, October 7th
Hotdish (cover) at The Ugly Mug
Thursday, October 8th
The Idle Hands, The Melismatics, and 500 Miles to Memphis at The Uptown Bar
Friday, October 9th
The Rockford Mules at Sauce Spirits & Soundbar
With: Kill to Kill, The Pissshakes
Saturday, October 10th
The Museum of Knives and Fire at Rocktoberfest at Grumpy's Nordeast
Saturday, October 10th
Charlz Newman at Mayslack's Bar
Tuesday, October 13th
Metallica at Target Center
With: Lamb of God, Gojira
Wednesday, October 14th
This World Fair at Turf Club
Thursday, October 15th
The Goondas at Sauce Spirits & Soundbar
Saturday, October 17th
Two Harbors, Mercurial Rage [CD Release], and The Mood Swings at Sauce Spirits & Soundbar
Tuesday, October 20th
This World Fair at The Sunshine Factory
Friday, October 23rd
Roster McCabe at The Cabooze
With: Jon Wayne and The Pain, Waterstreet
Saturday, October 24th
Mike's Golden Birthday Show at The Music Box Theatre
With: This World Fair, So It Goes, The Wannabe Hasbeens, The Debut
Wednesday, October 28th
The Hopefuls at Mario's Keller Bar
With: Joey Ryan & The Inks
Wednesday, October 28th
Hotdish (cover) at The Ugly Mug
Friday, October 30th
Charlz Newman at Bunkers
With: State of Mind
Friday, October 30th
The Melismatics at Turf Club
Saturday, October 31st
The Melismatics at Baba Louie's in De Pere, WI
With: Mark Mallman, Maudlin
---21 OCT---
Wednesday, November 4th
Sick of Sarah at Kirby Rafters at University of Minnesota-Duluth
With: Ashley Gold
Thursday, November 5th
Phil Solem at 7th Street Entry
With: So It Goes, The Invincible Kids
Friday, November 6th
Zachary Miles Ojeda Senior Recital at McNally Smith College of Music
Saturday, November 7th
White Light Riot at Sauce Spirits & Soundbar
With: We Became Actors [CD Release], The Invincible Kids, Koo Koo Kanga Roo
Sunday, November 8th
Steely Dan at Northrop Auditorium
With: Sam Yahel
Monday, November 9th
Vertical Horizon at The Fineline
With: Stealing Seconds, Howard Jennings
Tuesday, November 10th
Pine Deluxe at The Fineline
Wednesday, November 11th
Hotdish (cover) at The Ugly Mug
Thursday, November 12th
The Blend at The Varsity
With: Lazlo Supreme, Ghost Towns of the West
Friday, November 13th
ReadyGoes at The Red Carpet in St. Cloud
With: Not Like This
Saturday, November 14th
All The Pretty Horses at 501 Club
With: Maudlin
Wednesday, November 18th
Hotdish (cover) at The Ugly Mug
Thursday, November 19th
The Hopefuls at Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Thursday, November 19th
The 4onthefloor at Acadia Cafe
With: Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo
Friday, November 20th
The Notties at 331 Club
Friday, November 20th
Ouija Radio and The Heiz at 7th Street Entry
Saturday, November 21st
Ari Herstand at The Warehouse in La Crosse
With: The Farewell Circuit
Saturday, November 21st
Roster McCabe at The Popcorn Tavern in La Crosse
Monday, November 23rd
Motion City Soundtrack (solo) at Minneapolis Sculpture Garden
Monday, November 23rd
The Book of Right On at 7th Street Entry
Wednesday, November 25th
Fuck Knights, Red Pens, and The Shockers at Turf Club
Wednesday, November 25th
Italian Dunkers at The Ugly Mug
Thursday, November 26th
Heatbox and Roster McCabe at The Cabooze
Friday, November 27th
The Arms Akimbo at Kitty Cat Klub [CD Release Show]
With: The Alarmists, The Invincible Kids
Saturday, November 28th
Cocaine, Castle, and Run:Stop:Explode at The Fineline
---25 NOV---
Thursday, December 3rd
The 4onthefloor and The Fontanelles at Downtime
Friday, December 4th
So It Goes at The Fineline
With: White Light Riot, The Strange Lights, The Invincible Kids
Saturday, December 5th
The Goondas at 331 Club
Monday, December 7th
Rooney at Station 4
With: Tally Hall, Crash Kings
Tuesday, December 8th
The Invincible Kids at Nomad World Pub
Friday, December 11th
MC/VL at 501 Club
Saturday, December 12th
Cedar Avenue at The Varsity [CD Release Show]
With: The Alarmists, This World Fair, Will Hutchinson
Saturday, December 12th
The Julie Puppets at 331 Club
Sunday, December 13th
The 4onthefloor at Famous Dave's at Calhoun Square in Uptown
Wednesday, December 16th
The Italian Hot Drawers at The Ugly Mug
Thursday, December 17th
Cocaine at Roc Bar (above The Ugly Mug)
Friday, December 18th
Joey Ryan & The Inks at Triple Rock Social Club [CD Release Show]
With: Yer Cronies, New Century Masters, Big Lake
Saturday, December 19th
Sick of Sarah at The Town House
Sunday, December 20th
The Melismatics at Sauce Spirits & Soundbar
Saturday, December 26th
Quietdrive at The Varsity
With: Take Cover, Catchpenny, All The Right Moves
Saturday, December 26th
Fucking Sick at Bootleggers
Sunday, December 27th
Lynhurst and Half Demon Doll at Station 4
Wednesday, December 30th
Hotdish (cover) at The Ugly Mug
Thursday, December 31st
Mark Mallman at The Varsity
With: White Light Riot, First Communion Afterparty, Koo Koo Kanga Roo
---19 DEC---
265 total
Ferris at The Fineline [CD Release Show]
With: Breanne Düren
Saturday, January 3rd
The Invincible Kids, Crash/Burn/Repeat, and The Soviet Machines at The Beat Coffeehouse
Saturday, January 3rd
Future Antiques at The Fineline [CD Release Show]
With: Sepia Tone, T Minus Ten
Sunday, January 4th
Farewell Continental at Triple Rock Social Club
Friday, January 9th
The Hopefuls at Turf Club
With: First Communion Afterparty, Greycoats, The Invincible Kids
Wednesday, January 14th
The Zmo Trio at The Varsity
With: The Person and The People, Joie De Vivre, We The Trees, and a cameo by Alicia Wiley
Thursday, January 15th
Boom Booms For Everyone, Faux Jean (solo), and Joey Ryan & The Inks at Turf Club
Friday, January 16th
Dan Rodriguez, Ari Herstand, and Argyle Superstars at The Varsity
Friday, January 16th
ReadyGoes at The Red Carpet in St. Cloud
Saturday, January 17th
Paul Green School of Rock at Trocaderos
Performing: Aerosmith, Hair Metal
Saturday, January 17th
The Melismatics at The Stone's Throw in Eau Claire
Monday, January 19th
AC/DC at Xcel Energy Center
Opener: The Answer
Wednesday, January 21st
The Histronic and Roster McCabe at The Cabooze
Friday, January 23rd
Castle at Trocaderos [CD Release Show]
With: The Rockford Mules
Saturday, January 24th
Sick of Sarah and The Alarmists at 7th Street Entry
With: The Soviet Machines
Saturday, January 24th
The Knotwells and Clawthroat at Nomad World Pub
Sunday, January 25th
Paul Green School of Rock at Minnesota Music Cafe
Performing: Old School Punk, Van Halen
Wednesday, January 28th
Solid Gold at The Uptown Bar
Friday, January 30th
Joey Ryan & The Inks at Kitty Cat Klub
Friday, January 30th
Charlz Newman at Bunkers
Saturday, January 31st
Paul Green School of Rock "Best of Season" at Bogart's Place in Apple Valley
Saturday, January 31st
Mayda, ReadyGoes, and The Invincible Kids at Triple Rock Social Club
---22 JAN---
Thursday, February 5th
The Invincible Kids, The Wannabe Hasbeens, Vienna, and Oh Crap, Mo Is Here at 7th Street Entry
Friday, February 6th
The Notties at Scott Herold's
Saturday, February 7th
Cowboy Mouth at The Varsity
With: Catchpenny
Saturday, February 7th
Solid Gold at Kitty Cat Klub
Tuesday, February 10th
Pantown and Postina at The Fineline
Wednesday, February 11th
Lynhurst at Java Jack's
Thursday, February 12th
Lovedrug at The Varsity
With: ReadyGoes, The Battle Royale
Friday, February 13th
ReadyGoes at The Red Carpet in St. Cloud
Saturday, February 14th
The Blend and 2 Tone Runts at Triple Rock Social Club
Saturday, February 14th
MC/VL and Double Bird at Turf Club
Wednesday, February 18th
Charlz Newman at Bella Sera in Maple Grove
Thursday, February 19th
Alicia Wiley at The Varsity [CD Release Show]
With: Dan Rodriguez, With All Due Respect, The Zmo Trio, and a cameo by Breanne Düren
Friday, February 20th
ReadyGoes at The Fineline
With: The Invincible Kids, Man Is Doomed, Jake Dilley and the Color Pharmacy
Saturday, February 21st
Lynhurst at Java Jack's
With: Stephen Courchane
Saturday, February 21st
The Debut at Big V's
With: Clock Hands Strangle, Joey Ryan & The Inks, The Suits
Sunday, February 22nd
Mike Droho and The Compass Rose at High Noon Saloon in Madison
With: Green River Ordinance, Danielle Brittany
Friday, February 27th
The Wannabe Hasbeens at The Fineline
With: Thru The Static, Transit, The Run
Saturday, February 28th
Roster McCabe at The Cabooze
With: Natty Nation
---18 FEB---
Wednesday, March 4th
Oh Crap, Mo Is Here at The Ugly Mug
Friday, March 6th
Cocaine at The Fineline
With: Castle, The Invincible Kids, The Soviet Machines, Pay Attention
Saturday, March 7th
This World Fair at The Fineline
With: Greycoats, The Parlour Suite, Breanne Düren
Sunday, March 8th
Ari Herstand at The Pause at St. Olaf
With: Jay Nash
Monday, March 9th
Butch Walker at The Varsity
With: The Films
Friday, March 13th
The Notties, Wake Up Bedhead, Thumbelina and the Tangerine Fists of Justice, and Maudlin (solo) at Terminal Bar
Saturday, March 14th
Vita.MN & 89.3 The Current Presents "Are You Local?" SXSW Sendoff Show
With: Solid Gold, Sims of Doomtree, Jeremy Messersmith, The Idle Hands
Monday, March 16th
The Zmo Trio at Kitty Cat Klub
With: Aria Souder, Little Yosemite
Tuesday, March 17th
The Wannabe Hasbeens at The News Room
Tuesday, March 17th
Joey Ryan & The Inks and The Suits at Turf Club
Wednesday, March 18th
Plain White T's at The Varsity
With: Vedera, Single File
Thursday, March 19th
Sick of Sarah at Maplewood Mall Hot Topic In-Store Performance
Friday, March 20th
The Melismatics at 7th Street Entry
With: Sick of Sarah, Maudlin, Boom Booms For Everyone
Saturday, March 21st
The Wannabe Hasbeens at Triple Rock Social Club
With: Future Antiques, The Arrest
Wednesday, March 25th
Me As A Pilot, Pay Attention, and The Wannabe Hasbeens at Turf Club
Friday, March 27th
ReadyGoes at The Red Carpet in St. Cloud
Saturday, March 28th
Copasetic and Dan Rodriguez at The Fineline
Saturday, March 28th
The Rockford Mules and The Pack A.D. at Turf Club
---18 MAR---
Wednesday, April 1st
Treasured Chests Charity Event Singer-Songwriter Contest Finale at Trocaderos
With: Janani Logendran & Toni Lindgren, Nial Hay, Joel Kachel, Tony Ortiz, Matthew Griswold, Gary Pruitt, Jeff Ray, and Tim Mahoney
Friday, April 3rd
The Soviet Machines, Maudlin, and Ralphed at The Beat Coffeehouse
Friday, April 3rd
Cocaine, The Wannabe Hasbeens, and The Invincible Kids at 400 Bar
Saturday, April 4th
So It Goes at The Uptown Bar
With: The Engagement, Lost in Prague, The Debut
Monday, April 6th
The Ting Tings at The Varsity
With: Hottub
Tuesday, April 7th
Glasvegas at The Varsity
With: Von Iva
Wednesday, April 8th
The Blend at The Ugly Mug
Saturday, April 11th
Koo Koo Kanga Roo, State and Madison, and The Invincible Kids at 7th Street Entry
Saturday, April 11th
Lynhurst at Java Jack's
Saturday, April 11th
Throw The Fight at Bogart's Place in Apple Valley
With: Third Supply
Sunday, April 12th
Mates of State and Black Kids at The Varsity
With: Judgement Day
Thursday, April 16th
The Melismatics at Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Thursday, April 16th
Kelly Jo Mitchell at Nomad World Pub
Friday, April 17th
Rock The Cause Presents Campus Glitter Ball at The Pause at St. Olaf
With: Roster McCabe, So It Goes, ReadyGoes, The Notties
Saturday, April 18th
The Wannabe Hasbeens at Augsburg College
Saturday, April 18th
Gingerjake and Sick of Sarah at The Red Carpet in St. Cloud
Tuesday, April 21st
Peter Bjorn and John at The Fineline
With: Chairlift
Friday, April 24th
The Blend at Concert for a Cure Spring Jam Concert at 1601 University
Friday, April 24th
Charlz Newman at Bunkers
With: Stealing Seconds
Saturday, April 25th
Hellogoodbye at Concordia College in Moorhead
With: ReadyGoes
Saturday, April 25th
Punk Rock Prom IV at Nomad World Pub
With: MC/VL, Bouncer Fighter, A Paper Cup Band, Fuck Knights, The Debut, The Shortcuts, The Fillmores
Tuesday, April 28th
Franz Ferdinand at First Avenue
With: Born Ruffians
Thursday, April 30th
Ha Ha Tonka, Ben Weaver, and ReadyGoes at Triple Rock Social Club
---23 APR---
Friday, May 1st
So It Goes at The Garage in Burnsville [EP Release Show]
With: The Invincible Kids, The Wannabe Hasbeens, The Style Biters, Kerns and The Hemispheres
Saturday, May 2nd
Catchpenny at UW-EC SIFE Battle of the Bands on Water Street in Eau Claire
With: State of Mind
Saturday, May 2nd
White Light Riot and So It Goes [EP Release Show] at The Fineline
With: The Invincible Kids
Wednesday, May 6th
Oh Crap, Mo Is Here at The Ugly Mug
Thursday, May 7th
The Invincible Kids at The Uptown Bar
With: Winter Gloves
Friday, May 8th
Maitiera at The Rock Nightclub in Maplewood
Saturday, May 9th
Paul Green School of Rock at Trocaderos
Performing: Black Sabbath, The Doors
Tuesday, May 12th
Catchpenny at Metrodome Plaza
Thursday, May 14th
ReadyGoes at The Red Carpet in St. Cloud
With: The Invincible Kids
Friday, May 15th
Transmission Presents "Tainted Love" at The Fineline
With: The Melismatics, Ruby Isle, So It Goes
Saturday, May 16th
The Invincible Kids and Maudlin at Nomad World Pub
Sunday, May 17th
Paul Green School of Rock at The Rock Nightclub in Maplewood
Performing: One Hit Wonders, The Police, Jimi Hendrix
Wednesday, May 20th
The Farewell Circuit at The Fineline
Saturday, May 23rd
England Swings VIII at The Fineline
With: Johnny & The Moondogs, The Melismatics (as Pretty In Pink), The Wag, Little Man, Robert Wilkinson of Flamin' Oh's, Mars to Mercury, Fab Tab & The Teds
Sunday, May 24th
The Invincible Kids at Memory Lanes Block Party
Wednesday, May 27th
Lobsters at The Fineline
Wednesday, May 27th
Hotdish (cover) at The Ugly Mug
Friday, May 29th
Sick of Sarah at The Town House
Friday, May 29th
Ari Herstand at The Ugly Mug
Saturday, May 30th
Paul Green School of Rock "Best of Season" at Bogart's Place in Apple Valley
With: Attracted to Gods
Saturday, May 30th
The Debut at Turf Club
With: Seymour Saves the World
Saturday, May 30th
The Wannabe Hasbeens at Terminal Bar
---22 MAY---
Friday, June 5th
The Invincible Kids at Peavey Plaza
Friday, June 5th
The Melismatics and Satellite of Love at Scott Herold's
Saturday, June 6th
Maudlin, Mars to Mercury, and Revolver & The Secret Agents at Scott Herold's
Sunday, June 7th
The Crystal Method at First Avenue
Thursday, June 11th
State of Mind at Barfly
Friday, June 12th
Maudlin at Arbor Lakes Mall Hot Topic In-Store Performance in Maple Grove
Friday, June 12th
The Alarmists at The Varsity [CD Release Show]
With: The 757s, The Championship, Coach Said Not To
Saturday, June 13th
Maudlin and So It Goes at Ed's No Name Bar in Winona
Thursday, June 18th
The Wannabe Hasbeens at O'Gara's Garage
Friday, June 19th
The Offspring at Roy Wilkins Auditorium
With: Dropkick Murphys
Saturday, June 20th
Joey Ryan & The Inks at Stone Arch Festival at St. Anthony Main
Saturday, June 20th
ReadyGoes at Trocaderos
Wednesday, June 24th
Lynhurst at Peavey Plaza
Friday, June 26th
Sick of Sarah at Uptown Pride Block Party at Bryant & Lake
Friday, June 26th
Augustana at The Varsity
With: Dan Rodriguez
Saturday, June 27th
Roster McCabe at Famous Dave's at Calhoun Square in Uptown
With: Shoeless Revolution, Sepia Tone, and a finale by The "Roster Revolution"
Tuesday, June 30th
Red Pens, Brute Heart, and Zombie Season at Turf Club
---17 JUNE---
Friday, July 3rd
The Debut and The Invincible Kids at Scott Herold's
Wednesday, July 8th
Hotdish (cover) at The Ugly Mug
Friday, July 10th
Ari Herstand at The Varsity
With: Greycoats, Dan Rodriguez, Breanne Düren
Saturday, July 11th
Green Day at Target Center
With: The Bravery
Saturday, July 11th
Two Harbors at Sauce Spirits & Soundbar
Tuesday, July 14th
Andriana Lehr at The Fineline
Thursday, July 16th
The Melismatics at Music in Mears Park
Thursday, July 16th
Hotdish (cover) at The Ugly Mug
Friday, July 17th
The Melismatics at 7th Street Entry
With: Sick of Sarah, Lynhurst
Friday, July 17th
Maudlin at Scott Herold's
Saturday, July 18th
The Alarmists at Sauce Spirits & Soundbar
With: Greycoats, The Invincible Kids
Tuesday, July 21st
This World Fair at The Sunshine Factory
Wednesday, July 22nd
Lobsters at Station 4
With: Wasted Audio, Wednesday's Bliss
Thursday, July 23rd
The Hopefuls and ReadyGoes at Music in Mears Park
Thursday, July 23rd
Jake Dilley and The Color Pharmacy and The Zmo Trio at The Fineline
Thursday, July 23rd
Red Pens at Nomad World Pub
Thursday, July 23rd
Hotdish (cover) at The Ugly Mug
Friday, July 24th
Maya Elena at Osseo Church of the Nazerene
Friday, July 24th
Castle and The Rockford Mules at Triple Rock Social Club
Friday, July 24th
Bad Association at The Ugly Mug
Saturday, July 25th
Yer Cronies, Joey Ryan & The Inks, and Dada Trash Collage at 7th Street Entry
Saturday, July 25th
Bad Association at The Ugly Mug
Saturday, July 25th
The Knotwells at The Fineline
Thursday, July 30th
Future Antiques at Sauce Spirits & Soundbar
Thursday, July 30th
"Green Machine" (Green Sweater Society + Machine 22) and Machine 22 at 400 Bar
Friday, July 31st
Solid Gold at Minnesota Zoo
With: The Pines, Jeremy Messersmith
---26 JULY---
Saturday, August 1st
Catchpenny at CureDuchenne Benefit at Greenhaven Golf Course in Anoka
Saturday, August 1st
ReadyGoes at The Red Carpet in St. Cloud
Tuesday, August 4th
This World Fair at The Sunshine Factory
Wednesday, August 5th
Kelly Jo Mitchell at The Fineline
Wednesday, August 5th
Hotdish (cover) at The Ugly Mug
Thursday, August 6th
Lynhurst at Music in Mears Park
Thursday, August 6th
Band of Skulls at Triple Rock Social Club
With: ReadyGoes
Friday, August 7th
Six Shot Love, Stealing Seconds, and Transit at The Fineline
Saturday, August 8th
Kid Dakota, MC/VL, and Me and My Arrow at Pizza Luce Block Party in Uptown
Saturday, August 8th
Sonic Jones at The Ugly Mug
Wednesday, August 12th
Pete Yorn at The Fineline
With: Zee Avi
Wednesday, August 12th
Hotdish (cover) at The Ugly Mug
Thursday, August 13th
Communist Daughter, So It Goes, and Boom Booms For Everyone at Turf Club
Friday, August 14th
The Alarmists and The Debut at 7th Street Entry
With: The Arms Akimbo
Saturday, August 15th
ReadyGoes at Station 4
With: State and Madison, See The World
Saturday, August 15th
The Alarmists, Maudlin, The Invincible Kids, and Solid Gold (DJ sets) at Turf Club
Friday, August 21st
Red Pens at Sauce Spirits & Soundbar
Friday, August 21st
The Invincible Kids at The Uptown Bar
With: Mercurial Rage
Saturday, August 22nd
Mark Mallman at Red Stag Supper Club Block Party
With: Chooglin', Heiruspecs
Saturday, August 22nd
All The Pretty Horses at Turf Club
With: Big Jesus and The Homeless Bastards, Maudlin
Friday, August 28th
Cecilia's Birthday Show at Triple Rock Social Club
With: The Melismatics, So It Goes, ReadyGoes, The Invincible Kids
Saturday, August 29th
Sick of Sarah at Live Loud & Local Festival at The Rock Nightclub in Maplewood
With: The Rouge, Smiling Politely, HowlBody, Born Empty, Unexpected Guests, Under None, Machine 22
Sunday, August 30th
The Wailers at Minnesota State Fair
---23 AUG---
Wednesday, September 2nd
A Night in the Box at Lake Harriet Bandshell
Wednesday, September 2nd
Roster McCabe at The Cabooze
Friday, September 4th
Leaving Reason at St. Paul Eagles Club
Saturday, September 5th
Mark Mallman at First Avenue [CD Release Show]
With: Black Blondie, Lookbook
Saturday, September 5th
ReadyGoes at The Red Carpet in St. Cloud
Monday, September 7th
Lynhurst at Lake Harriet Bandshell
With a cameo by: Will Hutchinson
Monday, September 7th
Private Dancer, Voitek, and Teenage Strangler at Memory Lanes
Tuesday, September 8th
This World Fair at The Sunshine Factory
Wednesday, September 9th
Roster McCabe and ReadyGoes at The Pause at St. Olaf
Friday, September 11th
The Blend at DKE Semester Kickoff Concert
Friday, September 11th
Charlz Newman at Bunkers
With: West of Aldine
Saturday, September 12th
Paul Green School of Rock at Pickle Park in Fridley
Performing: Best of the 90's, Iron Maiden vs. Judas Priest, Southern Rock
Saturday, September 12th
The Melismatics & The Alarmists at Full Throttle Battle of the Bands at The Fineline
Tuesday, September 15th
This World Fair at The Sunshine Factory
Wednesday, September 16th
Tyrone Wells at The Varsity
With: Ari Herstand
Wednesday, September 16th
Hotdish (cover) at The Ugly Mug
Thursday, September 17th
The Proclaimers at Triple Rock Social Club
With: The Invincible Kids
Thursday, September 17th
Sonic Jones at The Ugly Mug
Friday, September 18th
Rock The Cause Presents "Rebels With a Cause" at The Music Box Theatre
With: The Alarmists, The Notties, The 4onthefloor, Ari Herstand, and a cameo by Natalie Adams
Saturday, September 19th
The Arms Akimbo and The Invincible Kids at Sauce Spirits & Soundbar
Monday, September 21st
The Melismatics at The Varsity
Monday, September 21st
Ladyhawke, Semi Precious Weapons, Natalie Portman's Shaved Head, and Sliimy at The Fineline
Wednesday, September 23rd
The Debut at The Uptown Bar
With: Bradford
Wednesday, September 23rd
Hotdish (cover) at The Ugly Mug
Thursday, September 24th
Andriana Lehr at The Varsity
Friday, September 25th
Joey Ryan & The Inks at Sauce Spirits & Soundbar
With: Sleeping in the Aviary
Saturday, September 26th
Paul Green School of Rock at The Rock Nightclub in Maplewood
Performing: Queen, U2 Rattle and Hum
Saturday, September 26th
Astronaut Wife, Blue Sky Blackout, and Red Pens at Club Jägerfest
Saturday, September 26th
Hotdish (cover) at The Ugly Mug
Sunday, September 27th
Paul Green School of Rock at The Rock Nightclub in Maplewood
Performing: Metallica vs. Anthrax, British Invasion
Wednesday, September 30th
Hotdish (cover) at The Ugly Mug
---31 SEP---
Thursday, October 1st
Minor Kingdom at Kitty Cat Klub [CD Release Show]
Friday, October 2nd
All The Pretty Horses at Sauce Spirits & Soundbar
Saturday, October 3rd
The Bravery at The Fineline
With: Living Things, The Dustys
Sunday, October 4th
Dan Rodriguez, Debra G, and The Museum of Knives and Fire at The Fineline
Wednesday, October 7th
Hotdish (cover) at The Ugly Mug
Thursday, October 8th
The Idle Hands, The Melismatics, and 500 Miles to Memphis at The Uptown Bar
Friday, October 9th
The Rockford Mules at Sauce Spirits & Soundbar
With: Kill to Kill, The Pissshakes
Saturday, October 10th
The Museum of Knives and Fire at Rocktoberfest at Grumpy's Nordeast
Saturday, October 10th
Charlz Newman at Mayslack's Bar
Tuesday, October 13th
Metallica at Target Center
With: Lamb of God, Gojira
Wednesday, October 14th
This World Fair at Turf Club
Thursday, October 15th
The Goondas at Sauce Spirits & Soundbar
Saturday, October 17th
Two Harbors, Mercurial Rage [CD Release], and The Mood Swings at Sauce Spirits & Soundbar
Tuesday, October 20th
This World Fair at The Sunshine Factory
Friday, October 23rd
Roster McCabe at The Cabooze
With: Jon Wayne and The Pain, Waterstreet
Saturday, October 24th
Mike's Golden Birthday Show at The Music Box Theatre
With: This World Fair, So It Goes, The Wannabe Hasbeens, The Debut
Wednesday, October 28th
The Hopefuls at Mario's Keller Bar
With: Joey Ryan & The Inks
Wednesday, October 28th
Hotdish (cover) at The Ugly Mug
Friday, October 30th
Charlz Newman at Bunkers
With: State of Mind
Friday, October 30th
The Melismatics at Turf Club
Saturday, October 31st
The Melismatics at Baba Louie's in De Pere, WI
With: Mark Mallman, Maudlin
---21 OCT---
Wednesday, November 4th
Sick of Sarah at Kirby Rafters at University of Minnesota-Duluth
With: Ashley Gold
Thursday, November 5th
Phil Solem at 7th Street Entry
With: So It Goes, The Invincible Kids
Friday, November 6th
Zachary Miles Ojeda Senior Recital at McNally Smith College of Music
Saturday, November 7th
White Light Riot at Sauce Spirits & Soundbar
With: We Became Actors [CD Release], The Invincible Kids, Koo Koo Kanga Roo
Sunday, November 8th
Steely Dan at Northrop Auditorium
With: Sam Yahel
Monday, November 9th
Vertical Horizon at The Fineline
With: Stealing Seconds, Howard Jennings
Tuesday, November 10th
Pine Deluxe at The Fineline
Wednesday, November 11th
Hotdish (cover) at The Ugly Mug
Thursday, November 12th
The Blend at The Varsity
With: Lazlo Supreme, Ghost Towns of the West
Friday, November 13th
ReadyGoes at The Red Carpet in St. Cloud
With: Not Like This
Saturday, November 14th
All The Pretty Horses at 501 Club
With: Maudlin
Wednesday, November 18th
Hotdish (cover) at The Ugly Mug
Thursday, November 19th
The Hopefuls at Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Thursday, November 19th
The 4onthefloor at Acadia Cafe
With: Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo
Friday, November 20th
The Notties at 331 Club
Friday, November 20th
Ouija Radio and The Heiz at 7th Street Entry
Saturday, November 21st
Ari Herstand at The Warehouse in La Crosse
With: The Farewell Circuit
Saturday, November 21st
Roster McCabe at The Popcorn Tavern in La Crosse
Monday, November 23rd
Motion City Soundtrack (solo) at Minneapolis Sculpture Garden
Monday, November 23rd
The Book of Right On at 7th Street Entry
Wednesday, November 25th
Fuck Knights, Red Pens, and The Shockers at Turf Club
Wednesday, November 25th
Italian Dunkers at The Ugly Mug
Thursday, November 26th
Heatbox and Roster McCabe at The Cabooze
Friday, November 27th
The Arms Akimbo at Kitty Cat Klub [CD Release Show]
With: The Alarmists, The Invincible Kids
Saturday, November 28th
Cocaine, Castle, and Run:Stop:Explode at The Fineline
---25 NOV---
Thursday, December 3rd
The 4onthefloor and The Fontanelles at Downtime
Friday, December 4th
So It Goes at The Fineline
With: White Light Riot, The Strange Lights, The Invincible Kids
Saturday, December 5th
The Goondas at 331 Club
Monday, December 7th
Rooney at Station 4
With: Tally Hall, Crash Kings
Tuesday, December 8th
The Invincible Kids at Nomad World Pub
Friday, December 11th
MC/VL at 501 Club
Saturday, December 12th
Cedar Avenue at The Varsity [CD Release Show]
With: The Alarmists, This World Fair, Will Hutchinson
Saturday, December 12th
The Julie Puppets at 331 Club
Sunday, December 13th
The 4onthefloor at Famous Dave's at Calhoun Square in Uptown
Wednesday, December 16th
The Italian Hot Drawers at The Ugly Mug
Thursday, December 17th
Cocaine at Roc Bar (above The Ugly Mug)
Friday, December 18th
Joey Ryan & The Inks at Triple Rock Social Club [CD Release Show]
With: Yer Cronies, New Century Masters, Big Lake
Saturday, December 19th
Sick of Sarah at The Town House
Sunday, December 20th
The Melismatics at Sauce Spirits & Soundbar
Saturday, December 26th
Quietdrive at The Varsity
With: Take Cover, Catchpenny, All The Right Moves
Saturday, December 26th
Fucking Sick at Bootleggers
Sunday, December 27th
Lynhurst and Half Demon Doll at Station 4
Wednesday, December 30th
Hotdish (cover) at The Ugly Mug
Thursday, December 31st
Mark Mallman at The Varsity
With: White Light Riot, First Communion Afterparty, Koo Koo Kanga Roo
---19 DEC---
265 total
Monday, September 28, 2009
Part 2: A spark is lit; the powder keg awaits.
As Middlebrook Hall President, my duty was to preside over building council meetings, set the agenda for them, and generally be a positive representative, among other things. I was also obligated to participate in the all-dorm council known as RHA. It consisted of its own executive board, along with all the other hall presidents and some other assorted individuals.
The very first RHA meeting I attended in early September 2005, I got news from the RHA Vice President that a band from Madison would be playing a show in my building on the 28th, which coincided with our very first "open house" meeting for the Middlebrook Hall Council. Cool, I thought. That should help get people to show up, though free pizza was usually the most effective way.
Wednesday, September 28th, 2005. That evening, four dudes rolled up in a van. I felt myself obligated to welcome the visitors, introduced myself as the hall president, and greeted them as they arrived. They were a band called The Profits.
I helped them load their gear in, though it would only be a few instruments as they'd be playing a low-key acoustic show in one of the common rooms. I made a crappy orange sign that read "The Profit$" and hung it up behind where they would be playing, and then lined up a bunch of their CDs on a table underneath it. We then set out on patrolling the building to get people to come downstairs and check out the free show.
People slowly showed up, and The Profits introduced themselves before playing a few acoustic tunes. I sat along the side of the room and snapped a few random photos with my crappy point-and-shoot while listening to this impressive but unknown (at least to me) band out of Madison. "Where did these guys come from?" They were so good but not like anything I would normally have been hearing anyway, as they likened themselves to "Jack Johnson meets John Mayer with vocal harmonies" at the time.
Afterwards, the band spent some time chatting with their many new fans, inviting them all to come out to their show at The Varsity Theater in Dinkytown in two days. I mostly hung back and helped them pack up their gear. Then, after most of the people had left, I chatted with the band some more and showed them a few of the photos I took.
Lucky for me, they thought I was a pretty cool dude too. They signed a flier for their upcoming show and even gave me a copy of their new album along with a spot on the guest list for the show on Friday. Sweet! I figured I'd better bring my camera with and snap a few photos at that as well.
(See another familiar name there?)
The true convincing of this band's greatness though didn't really sink in for me until after they left later that night. I popped their new album, Far From You and Your Everyday Noise, into my computer and was instantly blown away by their music. Sure I already had a positive opinion of the band to begin with, but their songs far exceeded my expectations of a group that I'd never heard of and wasn't any kind of a well-known or nationally-touring act.
To say the least, I was stoked to see them play again two days later.
September 30th, 2005. I biked over to The Varsity, ran into The Profits outside during the opener's set, then promptly realized I had forgotten my camera. I rushed back to my dorm and grabbed the camera before returning to The Varsity pretty much right as the opening act was finishing up. Who was that, do you ask? Why, a guy by the name of Ari Herstand.
I didn't actually see more than maybe a song or two from his set, but a friend who was also at the show that night told Ari to add me on Facebook. He did, and since then I've seen him play 59 times, second only to Roster McCabe at 89. (!) The girl who essentially first connected Ari and I though? Haven't seen her since then, strangely enough.
It was finally time for The Profits to take the stage though, so I positioned myself near the front stage-right and pulled out my camera. Here's a few of the better examples of what I got from the show:
Pretty crappy photos, eh? I was a no-talent nobody without a clue and a crappy point-and-shoot, but I had a lot of fun and thought they were pretty awesome pics at the time. One actually did turn out kinda cool though, and it was a photo I made a point to show the band after the show.
The band was blown away by this photo in particular, and I was amazed that they actually put up every photo I shot at the show on their website. But there was also one last moment that really sealed the deal and convinced me to keep checking out their shows in the future.
About halfway through the set, a pair of girls who I hadn't seen since the previous semester randomly wound up beside me in the crowd. We recognized each other and remarked on the fact that it'd been a while, something like 5 months I believe. They spent the rest of the show by me cause I told them I knew the band and I'd even introduce them afterwards.
Almost immediately after The Profits finished, I snuck the girls backstage at The Varsity and we ran into the band. They were a little bit shocked by this obviously, plus sweating a bit after their performance. I introduced the girls to them and they all obliged in a group photo.
It wasn't my first concert ever or anything like that, but it was my first experience in being at a small show, knowing the band, and thus being cool to some people as a result. To me, it was a very big deal and something I hoped to repeat. After all, I took some pictures that the band liked (and even used!), and also got to hang out with a pair of cute chicks who I hadn't seen in months. "Hey, I could get used to this."
Though I only got to see The Profits 11 times (they broke up about a year later; JP and Ben now continue on in We The Living while Mike and Scott play in Mike Droho & The Compass Rose), they left an indelible mark upon my life. To me, they were like The Beatles. A pair of dynamic singer-songwriters fronting a band with a unique and intertwining back-and-forth style to their music. The Profits never got to be bigger than a midwestern college buzz, but to me, they're where it all began and what prompted me to see more local shows.
(Sidebar: "Sex at Six", their song you will never hear live again, was a kind of college anthem that everyone knew and chanted at the band endlessly, even well after their breakup. I personally am partial to "Atlantic" as their best song though, as the back-and-forth between amazing vocal and lead guitar lines combined with epic lyrics was nothing short of perfect to me. And sorry guys, but WTL just can't do it as well as The Profits did. That first recording is untouchably brilliant.)
Now, exactly four years later, I'm still doing it, albeit a lot more and a heck of a lot better than when I first started obviously. Since 2007 I've been to 600+ concerts, spanning the entire gamut from dead local dive bars and acoustic private shows to being VIP at Lollapalooza and shooting the likes of Rage Against The Machine, Radiohead, and Nine Inch Nails. And all points in-between.
Yet all of this happened simply because a little unknown four-piece semi-acoustic act played a show at my dorm, I thought they were cool, and they thought I was too. Seems to be a bit of a stretch, but at the end of it all I'll know I can trace my roots in the Twin Cities music scene back to a single Madison band that is gone but will never be forgotten (and I'll remember every September 28th):
The Profits.
The very first RHA meeting I attended in early September 2005, I got news from the RHA Vice President that a band from Madison would be playing a show in my building on the 28th, which coincided with our very first "open house" meeting for the Middlebrook Hall Council. Cool, I thought. That should help get people to show up, though free pizza was usually the most effective way.
Wednesday, September 28th, 2005. That evening, four dudes rolled up in a van. I felt myself obligated to welcome the visitors, introduced myself as the hall president, and greeted them as they arrived. They were a band called The Profits.
I helped them load their gear in, though it would only be a few instruments as they'd be playing a low-key acoustic show in one of the common rooms. I made a crappy orange sign that read "The Profit$" and hung it up behind where they would be playing, and then lined up a bunch of their CDs on a table underneath it. We then set out on patrolling the building to get people to come downstairs and check out the free show.
People slowly showed up, and The Profits introduced themselves before playing a few acoustic tunes. I sat along the side of the room and snapped a few random photos with my crappy point-and-shoot while listening to this impressive but unknown (at least to me) band out of Madison. "Where did these guys come from?" They were so good but not like anything I would normally have been hearing anyway, as they likened themselves to "Jack Johnson meets John Mayer with vocal harmonies" at the time.
Afterwards, the band spent some time chatting with their many new fans, inviting them all to come out to their show at The Varsity Theater in Dinkytown in two days. I mostly hung back and helped them pack up their gear. Then, after most of the people had left, I chatted with the band some more and showed them a few of the photos I took.
Lucky for me, they thought I was a pretty cool dude too. They signed a flier for their upcoming show and even gave me a copy of their new album along with a spot on the guest list for the show on Friday. Sweet! I figured I'd better bring my camera with and snap a few photos at that as well.
(See another familiar name there?)
The true convincing of this band's greatness though didn't really sink in for me until after they left later that night. I popped their new album, Far From You and Your Everyday Noise, into my computer and was instantly blown away by their music. Sure I already had a positive opinion of the band to begin with, but their songs far exceeded my expectations of a group that I'd never heard of and wasn't any kind of a well-known or nationally-touring act.
To say the least, I was stoked to see them play again two days later.
September 30th, 2005. I biked over to The Varsity, ran into The Profits outside during the opener's set, then promptly realized I had forgotten my camera. I rushed back to my dorm and grabbed the camera before returning to The Varsity pretty much right as the opening act was finishing up. Who was that, do you ask? Why, a guy by the name of Ari Herstand.
I didn't actually see more than maybe a song or two from his set, but a friend who was also at the show that night told Ari to add me on Facebook. He did, and since then I've seen him play 59 times, second only to Roster McCabe at 89. (!) The girl who essentially first connected Ari and I though? Haven't seen her since then, strangely enough.
It was finally time for The Profits to take the stage though, so I positioned myself near the front stage-right and pulled out my camera. Here's a few of the better examples of what I got from the show:
Pretty crappy photos, eh? I was a no-talent nobody without a clue and a crappy point-and-shoot, but I had a lot of fun and thought they were pretty awesome pics at the time. One actually did turn out kinda cool though, and it was a photo I made a point to show the band after the show.
The band was blown away by this photo in particular, and I was amazed that they actually put up every photo I shot at the show on their website. But there was also one last moment that really sealed the deal and convinced me to keep checking out their shows in the future.
About halfway through the set, a pair of girls who I hadn't seen since the previous semester randomly wound up beside me in the crowd. We recognized each other and remarked on the fact that it'd been a while, something like 5 months I believe. They spent the rest of the show by me cause I told them I knew the band and I'd even introduce them afterwards.
Almost immediately after The Profits finished, I snuck the girls backstage at The Varsity and we ran into the band. They were a little bit shocked by this obviously, plus sweating a bit after their performance. I introduced the girls to them and they all obliged in a group photo.
It wasn't my first concert ever or anything like that, but it was my first experience in being at a small show, knowing the band, and thus being cool to some people as a result. To me, it was a very big deal and something I hoped to repeat. After all, I took some pictures that the band liked (and even used!), and also got to hang out with a pair of cute chicks who I hadn't seen in months. "Hey, I could get used to this."
Though I only got to see The Profits 11 times (they broke up about a year later; JP and Ben now continue on in We The Living while Mike and Scott play in Mike Droho & The Compass Rose), they left an indelible mark upon my life. To me, they were like The Beatles. A pair of dynamic singer-songwriters fronting a band with a unique and intertwining back-and-forth style to their music. The Profits never got to be bigger than a midwestern college buzz, but to me, they're where it all began and what prompted me to see more local shows.
(Sidebar: "Sex at Six", their song you will never hear live again, was a kind of college anthem that everyone knew and chanted at the band endlessly, even well after their breakup. I personally am partial to "Atlantic" as their best song though, as the back-and-forth between amazing vocal and lead guitar lines combined with epic lyrics was nothing short of perfect to me. And sorry guys, but WTL just can't do it as well as The Profits did. That first recording is untouchably brilliant.)
Now, exactly four years later, I'm still doing it, albeit a lot more and a heck of a lot better than when I first started obviously. Since 2007 I've been to 600+ concerts, spanning the entire gamut from dead local dive bars and acoustic private shows to being VIP at Lollapalooza and shooting the likes of Rage Against The Machine, Radiohead, and Nine Inch Nails. And all points in-between.
Yet all of this happened simply because a little unknown four-piece semi-acoustic act played a show at my dorm, I thought they were cool, and they thought I was too. Seems to be a bit of a stretch, but at the end of it all I'll know I can trace my roots in the Twin Cities music scene back to a single Madison band that is gone but will never be forgotten (and I'll remember every September 28th):
The Profits.
Part 1: The decision, and a life nearly completed before it even began
We last left off on a cliffhanger of a tale: What could possibly be such a life-changing decision for me? Is that even possible these days? Well, I'll tell you this... I'm not going to answer that just quite yet. Haha. Instead, I shall share with you a little more of my history to fully lay the rest of the groundwork.
Though I was the inadvertent outcast in high school, I discovered an "in" which tied in perfectly with my penchant for technology and computers. I became... a shutterbug.
During my junior year, I discovered that the front office had a bulky digital camera that, by today's standards, was basically like the glorified joke-of-a-camera on my cellphone. It could shoot about 30 640x480 pixel photos on a 3.5 inch floppy disk (remember those?), as the image compression was so strong that most images were about 40 KB in size. By comparison, a single jpg photo from my current camera, the Canon Digital Rebel XSi, takes up the equivalent of about 3 to 5 1.44 MB floppy disks.
Also that year, I took a class on HTML and wound up as the only person in the class who really cared about it. So much so that I pretty much took over the school's website and did about 8 times as much work on it as the rest of the class combined.
My newfound love for photography combined with the means to distribute it in the pre-Facebook era (remember life before then?) actually gave me a reason to interact with my classmates beyond simple and routine drudgery. Nice.
Anytime there was a sports event or something else happening at school and I cared enough to go, I'd grab the camera from the office as well and get a few random shots of the event and my classmates, both candid and posed. It gave people a reason to talk to me beyond simple and routine drudgery. Nice.
[Green Day's Dookie is my current soundtrack, and "Basket Case" came on right as I hit here. More cool timing.]
Fast-forward to college. Freshman year I didn't do much of anything with my camera, though I did take a black and white film class in the spring semester. Funny side story about that: I actually wound up befriending a girl who I inadvertently captured as she was passing by on her bike in a scenery picture I shot for class. It was pretty much a simple matter of later on running into her in the dorm and being like, "Where have I seen you before?"
Towards the end of freshman year I was presented with the opportunity to become a "U-Crew". Essentially like an assistant CA/RA with none of the perks, though you get to help out with floor events and essentially are a role model for incoming freshmen.
Also, largely on a whim, I ran for Hall President for the following year at my building, Middlebrook Hall. With a campaign centered around a picture of me as Tony Montana from Scarface (it's the only picture I've ever used on my MySpace), I won by only a few votes over a to-be junior who eventually wound up running for and winning the vice-presidency anyway.
Unfortunately, I couldn't be both a U-Crew and Hall President. Not just because the responsibility would have been too great when combined with my classes, but because the U-Crew position that was offered to me was in Bailey Hall on the St. Paul campus.
I was faced with quite a dilemma. Should I stay in Minneapolis in a building I know and be its president, or should I take the U-Crew position in St. Paul and be only minutes away from all my classes for the foreseeable future? I had just recently transferred out of Computer Science in the IT Honors department into Graphic Design in the College of Human Ecology, later known as the more-sensibly named College of Design. (IT Honors was a total fucking disaster; my first college semester's GPA was 1.556 because I basically bombed all my ridiculously hard honors classes, which I hated to begin with. My next semester, which wasn't in IT Honors and didn't suck? 3.5 GPA.)
It was a total coinflip situation, but one in which, had it gone the other way, almost none of you would know me right now. Most likely I wouldn't even exist to your knowledge, which is a strange thought considering that I'm about as inseparable from the Twin Cities music scene at the moment as peanut butter is from jelly. Sure you can take them apart, but it's just not right...
I chose to take the position as Middlebrook Hall President (which you knew or maybe at least had surmised by now) for the 2005-2006 school year and stewed at home in Albert Lea over the summer, eagerly waiting for September to come and my "good" life to begin again in the cities.
[The new album by Muse, The Resistance, is now my soundtrack. It could make for some weird irony if I told you one of my strangest stories about being Middlebrook Hall President, but then again, maybe not. Either way, it kicks ass. Not as much as Black Holes and Revelations, but whatever, I just like good music.]
So how did being president of a dorm make me a rock and roll photographer? It didn't. But I met some people who essentially functioned as my first band-muse, of sorts. (Hey, there's some nice timing.)
Before I break into that story though, I have one last tale of preparation: The night I almost got on stage with Green Day. (It's different than when I saw Green Day for the 3rd time back in July this year, as I actually tweeted that entire show and have a much more tangible memory of it as a result.)
September 16th, 2005. Twelve days before my life changed forever, it already did, in a way.
I had a pair of tickets to see Green Day for the 2nd time that night. I had first seen them less than a year before at the Target Center, and this time around they would be at the Xcel Center.
[Sidebar: While digging through my computer files to find any previous write-ups I've done about this story which I've told many a time to many a person, I found some really emo bullshit I wrote way back when as well. Yikes.]
I brought a female classmate of mine from one of my sophomore design classes to the show and we arrived on the floor right as opener Jimmy Eat World started their opening set. They played all of their well-known stuff, though the only songs I knew were Pain and The Middle. Fun, and a much better warmup than Sugarcult and New Found Glory last time I saw Green Day, at least to me.
After they finished, the wait was on for a while, but as I expected, the infamous pink bunny (or rather, some guy in a costume) that tours with Green Day made an appearance on stage. He was chugging a few beers and tossing small stuffed bunny dolls to the crowd, all to their amusement.
The bunny departed and Green Day came on soon afterwards, opening with American Idiot (recall, this is back in 2005). Played it brilliantly as usual. They followed with Jesus of Suburbia, a great track to be a part of live. Then came Billie Joe's self-proclaimed giant "fuck you" to George W. Bush, Holiday. Estatic. A short interlude followed and they predictably continued into Are We The Waiting/St. Jimmy, smoothly going into Longview after that. Kick ass.
After Longview my mind grows fuzzy on what they played, but I know they did Hitchin' a Ride, Brain Stew & Jaded, King For A Day, 2000 Light Years Away (with a kickass solo that doesn't appear on the studio version), Maria, Minority, Wake Me Up When September Ends, Boulevard Of Broken Dreams, Basket Case, She, All By Myself, a cover of We Are The Champions, a cover of Shout, a cover of something I didn't know, and Good Riddance. Not all in that order though. Thrown in there somewhere was the most important song of the night for the fans though...
At the time, the song they always had people come up on stage to play with them was "Knowledge", a cover of an Operation Ivy song. It's literally only a D C G pattern of closed major chords. So simple that I could do it in my sleep... maybe.
So with my friend and I having successfully worked our way close to the front of the stage, I beckoned Billie Joe like the other 20,000 people in the arena to "PICK ME PICK ME!" to play when that song came up and they were searching for people to accompany them. He grabbed a drummer from the right edge of the T right away, then drifted over our way looking for a bass player.
Amazingly, Billie Joe Armstrong literally looked DIRECTLY AT ME, asked if I could play bass (obviously I responded with "YES!"), and then asked the same of someone next to me wearing a pink shirt and glasses. He spent a short while debating over whether to pick me or the guy next to me, but eventually picked Mr. Pink Shirt. Fuck.
Then he went back to the other side of the stage and got a 10 year-old kid up to play guitar. And as luck would have it, it was literally the kid's birthday that day. The first thing Billie Joe told the kid was something like "Hey kid, you're gonna get laid tonight cause you're playing with Green Day!" Hilarious.
So they went through the rest of the song, as usual, but then the bastard who got to play bass did what still continues to be the stupidest thing I have ever seen. HE SMASHED THE BASS GUITAR TO PIECES ON STAGE. Oh my god. The crowd was in shock for a moment until the dumbass got his ass beaten down by security and dragged off to deafening boos. Total idiot, and Billie Joe played him off as such without missing a beat. The drummer got to do the only stage dive of the night and the kid who played the guitar got to keep it, so long as he promised not to smash it of course...
Truth be told, had it been me up on stage playing with Green Day, I wouldn't have smashed the bass. No, I practically would've kissed Billie Joe and subsequently died a happy 19 year-old at the time.
But that's not what made me a rock photographer, though what did happened in the midst of a few huge shows for me. I already knew that it was a big deal I was getting to see 4 awesome national shows all within a few weeks of each other: Green Day, Franz Ferdinand, Foo Fighters/Weezer, & The Bravery. (None of which I had a camera at, go figure).
Boy, was I in for a (now-not-so-)little surprise though. One that set me on the path which has spiraled out of control to the point where there's no going back, no other choice, nothing I would rather do but live a life deeply connected to rock and/or roll through my photography and my passion for music. Keep on reading for the story of my birth... in the Twin Cities music scene.
Though I was the inadvertent outcast in high school, I discovered an "in" which tied in perfectly with my penchant for technology and computers. I became... a shutterbug.
During my junior year, I discovered that the front office had a bulky digital camera that, by today's standards, was basically like the glorified joke-of-a-camera on my cellphone. It could shoot about 30 640x480 pixel photos on a 3.5 inch floppy disk (remember those?), as the image compression was so strong that most images were about 40 KB in size. By comparison, a single jpg photo from my current camera, the Canon Digital Rebel XSi, takes up the equivalent of about 3 to 5 1.44 MB floppy disks.
Also that year, I took a class on HTML and wound up as the only person in the class who really cared about it. So much so that I pretty much took over the school's website and did about 8 times as much work on it as the rest of the class combined.
My newfound love for photography combined with the means to distribute it in the pre-Facebook era (remember life before then?) actually gave me a reason to interact with my classmates beyond simple and routine drudgery. Nice.
Anytime there was a sports event or something else happening at school and I cared enough to go, I'd grab the camera from the office as well and get a few random shots of the event and my classmates, both candid and posed. It gave people a reason to talk to me beyond simple and routine drudgery. Nice.
[Green Day's Dookie is my current soundtrack, and "Basket Case" came on right as I hit here. More cool timing.]
Fast-forward to college. Freshman year I didn't do much of anything with my camera, though I did take a black and white film class in the spring semester. Funny side story about that: I actually wound up befriending a girl who I inadvertently captured as she was passing by on her bike in a scenery picture I shot for class. It was pretty much a simple matter of later on running into her in the dorm and being like, "Where have I seen you before?"
Towards the end of freshman year I was presented with the opportunity to become a "U-Crew". Essentially like an assistant CA/RA with none of the perks, though you get to help out with floor events and essentially are a role model for incoming freshmen.
Also, largely on a whim, I ran for Hall President for the following year at my building, Middlebrook Hall. With a campaign centered around a picture of me as Tony Montana from Scarface (it's the only picture I've ever used on my MySpace), I won by only a few votes over a to-be junior who eventually wound up running for and winning the vice-presidency anyway.
Unfortunately, I couldn't be both a U-Crew and Hall President. Not just because the responsibility would have been too great when combined with my classes, but because the U-Crew position that was offered to me was in Bailey Hall on the St. Paul campus.
I was faced with quite a dilemma. Should I stay in Minneapolis in a building I know and be its president, or should I take the U-Crew position in St. Paul and be only minutes away from all my classes for the foreseeable future? I had just recently transferred out of Computer Science in the IT Honors department into Graphic Design in the College of Human Ecology, later known as the more-sensibly named College of Design. (IT Honors was a total fucking disaster; my first college semester's GPA was 1.556 because I basically bombed all my ridiculously hard honors classes, which I hated to begin with. My next semester, which wasn't in IT Honors and didn't suck? 3.5 GPA.)
It was a total coinflip situation, but one in which, had it gone the other way, almost none of you would know me right now. Most likely I wouldn't even exist to your knowledge, which is a strange thought considering that I'm about as inseparable from the Twin Cities music scene at the moment as peanut butter is from jelly. Sure you can take them apart, but it's just not right...
I chose to take the position as Middlebrook Hall President (which you knew or maybe at least had surmised by now) for the 2005-2006 school year and stewed at home in Albert Lea over the summer, eagerly waiting for September to come and my "good" life to begin again in the cities.
[The new album by Muse, The Resistance, is now my soundtrack. It could make for some weird irony if I told you one of my strangest stories about being Middlebrook Hall President, but then again, maybe not. Either way, it kicks ass. Not as much as Black Holes and Revelations, but whatever, I just like good music.]
So how did being president of a dorm make me a rock and roll photographer? It didn't. But I met some people who essentially functioned as my first band-muse, of sorts. (Hey, there's some nice timing.)
Before I break into that story though, I have one last tale of preparation: The night I almost got on stage with Green Day. (It's different than when I saw Green Day for the 3rd time back in July this year, as I actually tweeted that entire show and have a much more tangible memory of it as a result.)
September 16th, 2005. Twelve days before my life changed forever, it already did, in a way.
I had a pair of tickets to see Green Day for the 2nd time that night. I had first seen them less than a year before at the Target Center, and this time around they would be at the Xcel Center.
[Sidebar: While digging through my computer files to find any previous write-ups I've done about this story which I've told many a time to many a person, I found some really emo bullshit I wrote way back when as well. Yikes.]
I brought a female classmate of mine from one of my sophomore design classes to the show and we arrived on the floor right as opener Jimmy Eat World started their opening set. They played all of their well-known stuff, though the only songs I knew were Pain and The Middle. Fun, and a much better warmup than Sugarcult and New Found Glory last time I saw Green Day, at least to me.
After they finished, the wait was on for a while, but as I expected, the infamous pink bunny (or rather, some guy in a costume) that tours with Green Day made an appearance on stage. He was chugging a few beers and tossing small stuffed bunny dolls to the crowd, all to their amusement.
The bunny departed and Green Day came on soon afterwards, opening with American Idiot (recall, this is back in 2005). Played it brilliantly as usual. They followed with Jesus of Suburbia, a great track to be a part of live. Then came Billie Joe's self-proclaimed giant "fuck you" to George W. Bush, Holiday. Estatic. A short interlude followed and they predictably continued into Are We The Waiting/St. Jimmy, smoothly going into Longview after that. Kick ass.
After Longview my mind grows fuzzy on what they played, but I know they did Hitchin' a Ride, Brain Stew & Jaded, King For A Day, 2000 Light Years Away (with a kickass solo that doesn't appear on the studio version), Maria, Minority, Wake Me Up When September Ends, Boulevard Of Broken Dreams, Basket Case, She, All By Myself, a cover of We Are The Champions, a cover of Shout, a cover of something I didn't know, and Good Riddance. Not all in that order though. Thrown in there somewhere was the most important song of the night for the fans though...
At the time, the song they always had people come up on stage to play with them was "Knowledge", a cover of an Operation Ivy song. It's literally only a D C G pattern of closed major chords. So simple that I could do it in my sleep... maybe.
So with my friend and I having successfully worked our way close to the front of the stage, I beckoned Billie Joe like the other 20,000 people in the arena to "PICK ME PICK ME!" to play when that song came up and they were searching for people to accompany them. He grabbed a drummer from the right edge of the T right away, then drifted over our way looking for a bass player.
Amazingly, Billie Joe Armstrong literally looked DIRECTLY AT ME, asked if I could play bass (obviously I responded with "YES!"), and then asked the same of someone next to me wearing a pink shirt and glasses. He spent a short while debating over whether to pick me or the guy next to me, but eventually picked Mr. Pink Shirt. Fuck.
Then he went back to the other side of the stage and got a 10 year-old kid up to play guitar. And as luck would have it, it was literally the kid's birthday that day. The first thing Billie Joe told the kid was something like "Hey kid, you're gonna get laid tonight cause you're playing with Green Day!" Hilarious.
So they went through the rest of the song, as usual, but then the bastard who got to play bass did what still continues to be the stupidest thing I have ever seen. HE SMASHED THE BASS GUITAR TO PIECES ON STAGE. Oh my god. The crowd was in shock for a moment until the dumbass got his ass beaten down by security and dragged off to deafening boos. Total idiot, and Billie Joe played him off as such without missing a beat. The drummer got to do the only stage dive of the night and the kid who played the guitar got to keep it, so long as he promised not to smash it of course...
Truth be told, had it been me up on stage playing with Green Day, I wouldn't have smashed the bass. No, I practically would've kissed Billie Joe and subsequently died a happy 19 year-old at the time.
But that's not what made me a rock photographer, though what did happened in the midst of a few huge shows for me. I already knew that it was a big deal I was getting to see 4 awesome national shows all within a few weeks of each other: Green Day, Franz Ferdinand, Foo Fighters/Weezer, & The Bravery. (None of which I had a camera at, go figure).
Boy, was I in for a (now-not-so-)little surprise though. One that set me on the path which has spiraled out of control to the point where there's no going back, no other choice, nothing I would rather do but live a life deeply connected to rock and/or roll through my photography and my passion for music. Keep on reading for the story of my birth... in the Twin Cities music scene.
Prologue: The unexpected preparations for 4 years of unimaginable experiences
Big words, but I speak of something of great importance for me, so it's justified.
As I sit here listening to Abbey Road reflecting on what the last four years of my life has brought me in photographing the Twin Cities music scene and beyond, I can't help but think about the things which inadvertently set me up for this wondrously insane life I've chosen. Then again, sometimes I'm almost certain that it chose me.
Let's lay down some basic groundwork on my past. I was born October 24th, 1985 (Sidebar: Guess what? My golden birthday is this year! Big plans in store, stay tuned.) and raised in a small town in southern Minnesota, Albert Lea. My parents first owned a bar called The Long Branch Saloon in Manchester, a tiny town of less than 70 a few miles out of town. I'm told that as an infant I would crawl about on the pool tables, and as a toddler I would imitate select bar patrons by hitting and cursing at the pinball machine. I call BS on that, mainly because I don't remember it. (Well duh.)
A few years later, my parents sold The Long Branch, bought an old bank building about a block away from the bar, and turned it into a bar/restaurant, the Main Street Bar & Grill. My only sibling, sister Melissa, was born around that time in 1989.
About 6-7 years go by and my parents decide to trade-up, selling the Main Street Bar & Grill in Manchester and purchasing a larger old restaurant in a slightly-larger town (about 650) called Alden, about 10 miles west of Albert Lea on I-90.
They still own & operate the Main Street Grill in Alden, though not without a strong desire to sell and finally get out of the restaurant business for good. It's not like they've just phoned it in though. You'll always find some of the best service and food at a fair price anywhere around down there. Plus I've got a few older prints of my concert photos hanging up on the wall there too.
Long story short: I was raised in the hospitality industry by parents who have toiled away in it pretty much all their lives. However, they've done it without having to work for "The Man", in so much as they own the place themselves. I think that's pretty awesome, and their kindness, generosity, and all-around rapport with the customers instilled a great sense of social openness in me as well.
However, I'm also the awkward type. I say weird, funny, amusing, random, obvious, or just plain dorky stuff at times. Other times, I say other things. Sometimes I'm witty with reflective/observational humor, and I also love puns. I also have a mind that spends a good deal of time in the gutter. I attribute most of that last bit to my dad's sense of humor, which I mostly share.
It's not like it's anything that out of the ordinary, but I think it's because I was actually a really smart kid way back when. Like top 2 or 3 in the class, and a total whiz at stuff like math, history, and vocabulary. (All the big words you find should make that last one obvious.) It put me in a weird position, because I wanted to be "normal" but didn't really feel like it in more ways than one. So to say the least, I never really fit in with any groups growing up.
I remember very little from elementary school, except for the fact that in 1st grade, I got 3rd place in the class spelling bee. I misspelled "better" as "beter". My first crush in 5th grade, Karen Leonard (who eventually got a 34 on the ACT and I always liked because she was one of the very few people I knew was smarter than me), got 2nd place and misspelled "empty". The kid who got 1st place? His name's Erik, and I think he wound up a huge stoner or something random like that. Funny how that works out, haha.
One thing that shaped a lot of my childhood outside of school was baseball, a sport which my dad loves and introduced me to at a young age. I actually wound up as the only kid (out of many dozens of other kids) my age in my town who played baseball every year from teeball at 6 to high school/summer town baseball at 18, so I guess I was the only one who stayed dedicated to it for good.
Never was a power hitter or anything flashy like that, just a scrappy kid with a lot of competition and drive in me. Baseball was something I knew I was average at but felt I had the ability to be more than just that if I kept working hard and hustling.
Unfortunately, not fitting in at school also translated to the baseball diamond, as I found myself regularly on the short end of the stick when it comes to the adolescent boy's need to prove their superiority while cutting down their peers. But that's just a fancy way of saying I wasn't popular.
Still never really figured out why I was the outcast growing up, but between being an outsider-looking-in at school and on the field, I eventually grew a pretty thick skin. Sure I was pretty thin-skinned at times, but these days I laugh off just about anything that you can throw at me in terms of ridiculous ridicule.
I suppose that also explains my knack for self-depreciating humor, which I always tinge with a strong dose of sarcasm (yet another family trait). Better for me to laugh at your ridicule than to let it bother me. It still sucked a lot though, being basically rejected by my peers as nerdy, unimportant, or anything else stupid they could make up in their heads.
Rejection still affects me like no other though. I suppose that's what's kept me a very timid person when it comes to the ladies. I'll befriend practically everybody (that's what happens when you're raised by parents in hospitality) but the overly gentlemanly chivalric code I live by keeps my hormones almost always in the off position when I'm out and about. Better not to be shot down 100 times by girls than succeed once is a weird way of thinking about it, but it's pretty much the story of my life, minus one.
I eventually grew weary of the mostly mean or less-than-caring adolescents in Albert Lea and open-enrolled at Alden-Conger High School in 8th grade. I'm not sure whether or not that was necessary, cause all I did was drop myself in a new environment that was already tight-knit with cliques with kids who had known each other since kindergarten at this K-12 school.
It was convenient having my parents' restaurant a block away from school for lunch, but that was about the only benefit of going to school in Alden. Ironically, the girls in Albert Lea turned out way hotter and the school I landed at was also full of a variety of outcasts such as myself. At the time I was there, Alden-Conger High School had the highest percentage of open-enrolled (out-of-district) students in the state, as something like 40% of the students were from other tiny towns nearby that they too were probably sick of.
It took a mountain of courage for me to even talk to girls back then, but most of the time it was me being a teenage dumbass and trying to be funny but too smart or them just shooting me down. I think I wore a lot of black classic rock T-shirts junior year, which I'm sure didn't make me look very attractive anyway.
[Just finished Abbey Road, now putting on Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits. Music inspires me to keep going, obviously.]
Either way, I wound up as little more than a social nomad in high school, bouncing around between varying circles that all overlapped but still didn't find me interesting enough to include for more than just a moment here or there. I remember a moment senior year where I came back from lunch feeling sick and puked in my hand in the hallway. My sense of humor made me laugh and say "cool" (I watched a lot of Beavis & Butthead and own 120+ episodes on DVD, there's you're clue), but a girl freaked out on me and I found myself disappointed that she thought this random unfortunate happening couldn't just be a minor but amusing mishap not worth more than a minute's worry; cleaning it up.
[Currently running back through this entry and making changes & edits as "Positively 4th Street" plays on my iTunes right as I hit this spot. I love perfect timing.]
I suppose that ties in with my self-depreciating nature, in that I can brush stuff off like nothing. Sure comes in handy sometimes anyway. And though I'm sure I've exaggerated a lot about my experiences growing up, it's still basically true.
Anywho, after finally escaping the confused confines of high school, I moved on up to the north side (i.e., the Twin Cities) for college at the University of Minnesota. And out of my graduating class of 45 (a huge one for that school), I was the only one going to the U. Thus, I would be stepping into a brand-new situation without knowing a single soul.
One might think that with my past this was a recipe for disaster, but it turned out to be quite the contrary. Why? Because this time I wasn't the only one. I believe that the greatest advantage college offers teenagers is that everyone has to start over fresh, with no prior reputation and no past to distort your image in the eyes of a student body who is going through all the same crap you are too.
My good side (the one inspired by the hospitality industry) finally got to shine through in full at college, as I found myself making friends pretty much wherever I went. Freshman year was an enlightening experience in that I finally found like-minded people who were also open-minded and willing to make new friends too. Instead of a social outcast, I was now a social butterfly, bouncing around between varying groups of new acquaintances as needed while also establishing a few preliminary connections that eventually came to fruition in my later days in the music scene.
It really, really, REALLY hurt me on the inside to leave and return home that first summer after freshman year, but before then I was faced with what turned out to be literally one of the most life-changing decisions I've ever made. One that inadvertently made me who I am today. More on that... in my next blog entry.
Ooh, cliffhanger. I'm such a bastard. Luckily it won't be that long before the next post though cause I wanna post it today, the day of the 4th year of an important anniversary for me.
As I sit here listening to Abbey Road reflecting on what the last four years of my life has brought me in photographing the Twin Cities music scene and beyond, I can't help but think about the things which inadvertently set me up for this wondrously insane life I've chosen. Then again, sometimes I'm almost certain that it chose me.
Let's lay down some basic groundwork on my past. I was born October 24th, 1985 (Sidebar: Guess what? My golden birthday is this year! Big plans in store, stay tuned.) and raised in a small town in southern Minnesota, Albert Lea. My parents first owned a bar called The Long Branch Saloon in Manchester, a tiny town of less than 70 a few miles out of town. I'm told that as an infant I would crawl about on the pool tables, and as a toddler I would imitate select bar patrons by hitting and cursing at the pinball machine. I call BS on that, mainly because I don't remember it. (Well duh.)
A few years later, my parents sold The Long Branch, bought an old bank building about a block away from the bar, and turned it into a bar/restaurant, the Main Street Bar & Grill. My only sibling, sister Melissa, was born around that time in 1989.
About 6-7 years go by and my parents decide to trade-up, selling the Main Street Bar & Grill in Manchester and purchasing a larger old restaurant in a slightly-larger town (about 650) called Alden, about 10 miles west of Albert Lea on I-90.
They still own & operate the Main Street Grill in Alden, though not without a strong desire to sell and finally get out of the restaurant business for good. It's not like they've just phoned it in though. You'll always find some of the best service and food at a fair price anywhere around down there. Plus I've got a few older prints of my concert photos hanging up on the wall there too.
Long story short: I was raised in the hospitality industry by parents who have toiled away in it pretty much all their lives. However, they've done it without having to work for "The Man", in so much as they own the place themselves. I think that's pretty awesome, and their kindness, generosity, and all-around rapport with the customers instilled a great sense of social openness in me as well.
However, I'm also the awkward type. I say weird, funny, amusing, random, obvious, or just plain dorky stuff at times. Other times, I say other things. Sometimes I'm witty with reflective/observational humor, and I also love puns. I also have a mind that spends a good deal of time in the gutter. I attribute most of that last bit to my dad's sense of humor, which I mostly share.
It's not like it's anything that out of the ordinary, but I think it's because I was actually a really smart kid way back when. Like top 2 or 3 in the class, and a total whiz at stuff like math, history, and vocabulary. (All the big words you find should make that last one obvious.) It put me in a weird position, because I wanted to be "normal" but didn't really feel like it in more ways than one. So to say the least, I never really fit in with any groups growing up.
I remember very little from elementary school, except for the fact that in 1st grade, I got 3rd place in the class spelling bee. I misspelled "better" as "beter". My first crush in 5th grade, Karen Leonard (who eventually got a 34 on the ACT and I always liked because she was one of the very few people I knew was smarter than me), got 2nd place and misspelled "empty". The kid who got 1st place? His name's Erik, and I think he wound up a huge stoner or something random like that. Funny how that works out, haha.
One thing that shaped a lot of my childhood outside of school was baseball, a sport which my dad loves and introduced me to at a young age. I actually wound up as the only kid (out of many dozens of other kids) my age in my town who played baseball every year from teeball at 6 to high school/summer town baseball at 18, so I guess I was the only one who stayed dedicated to it for good.
Never was a power hitter or anything flashy like that, just a scrappy kid with a lot of competition and drive in me. Baseball was something I knew I was average at but felt I had the ability to be more than just that if I kept working hard and hustling.
Unfortunately, not fitting in at school also translated to the baseball diamond, as I found myself regularly on the short end of the stick when it comes to the adolescent boy's need to prove their superiority while cutting down their peers. But that's just a fancy way of saying I wasn't popular.
Still never really figured out why I was the outcast growing up, but between being an outsider-looking-in at school and on the field, I eventually grew a pretty thick skin. Sure I was pretty thin-skinned at times, but these days I laugh off just about anything that you can throw at me in terms of ridiculous ridicule.
I suppose that also explains my knack for self-depreciating humor, which I always tinge with a strong dose of sarcasm (yet another family trait). Better for me to laugh at your ridicule than to let it bother me. It still sucked a lot though, being basically rejected by my peers as nerdy, unimportant, or anything else stupid they could make up in their heads.
Rejection still affects me like no other though. I suppose that's what's kept me a very timid person when it comes to the ladies. I'll befriend practically everybody (that's what happens when you're raised by parents in hospitality) but the overly gentlemanly chivalric code I live by keeps my hormones almost always in the off position when I'm out and about. Better not to be shot down 100 times by girls than succeed once is a weird way of thinking about it, but it's pretty much the story of my life, minus one.
I eventually grew weary of the mostly mean or less-than-caring adolescents in Albert Lea and open-enrolled at Alden-Conger High School in 8th grade. I'm not sure whether or not that was necessary, cause all I did was drop myself in a new environment that was already tight-knit with cliques with kids who had known each other since kindergarten at this K-12 school.
It was convenient having my parents' restaurant a block away from school for lunch, but that was about the only benefit of going to school in Alden. Ironically, the girls in Albert Lea turned out way hotter and the school I landed at was also full of a variety of outcasts such as myself. At the time I was there, Alden-Conger High School had the highest percentage of open-enrolled (out-of-district) students in the state, as something like 40% of the students were from other tiny towns nearby that they too were probably sick of.
It took a mountain of courage for me to even talk to girls back then, but most of the time it was me being a teenage dumbass and trying to be funny but too smart or them just shooting me down. I think I wore a lot of black classic rock T-shirts junior year, which I'm sure didn't make me look very attractive anyway.
[Just finished Abbey Road, now putting on Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits. Music inspires me to keep going, obviously.]
Either way, I wound up as little more than a social nomad in high school, bouncing around between varying circles that all overlapped but still didn't find me interesting enough to include for more than just a moment here or there. I remember a moment senior year where I came back from lunch feeling sick and puked in my hand in the hallway. My sense of humor made me laugh and say "cool" (I watched a lot of Beavis & Butthead and own 120+ episodes on DVD, there's you're clue), but a girl freaked out on me and I found myself disappointed that she thought this random unfortunate happening couldn't just be a minor but amusing mishap not worth more than a minute's worry; cleaning it up.
[Currently running back through this entry and making changes & edits as "Positively 4th Street" plays on my iTunes right as I hit this spot. I love perfect timing.]
I suppose that ties in with my self-depreciating nature, in that I can brush stuff off like nothing. Sure comes in handy sometimes anyway. And though I'm sure I've exaggerated a lot about my experiences growing up, it's still basically true.
Anywho, after finally escaping the confused confines of high school, I moved on up to the north side (i.e., the Twin Cities) for college at the University of Minnesota. And out of my graduating class of 45 (a huge one for that school), I was the only one going to the U. Thus, I would be stepping into a brand-new situation without knowing a single soul.
One might think that with my past this was a recipe for disaster, but it turned out to be quite the contrary. Why? Because this time I wasn't the only one. I believe that the greatest advantage college offers teenagers is that everyone has to start over fresh, with no prior reputation and no past to distort your image in the eyes of a student body who is going through all the same crap you are too.
My good side (the one inspired by the hospitality industry) finally got to shine through in full at college, as I found myself making friends pretty much wherever I went. Freshman year was an enlightening experience in that I finally found like-minded people who were also open-minded and willing to make new friends too. Instead of a social outcast, I was now a social butterfly, bouncing around between varying groups of new acquaintances as needed while also establishing a few preliminary connections that eventually came to fruition in my later days in the music scene.
It really, really, REALLY hurt me on the inside to leave and return home that first summer after freshman year, but before then I was faced with what turned out to be literally one of the most life-changing decisions I've ever made. One that inadvertently made me who I am today. More on that... in my next blog entry.
Ooh, cliffhanger. I'm such a bastard. Luckily it won't be that long before the next post though cause I wanna post it today, the day of the 4th year of an important anniversary for me.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Finding relevance is a matter of timing.
My life is ridiculously cool right now. I get to shoot bands and shows and parties and all sorts of other crazy stuff while being surrounded by friends and music and pretty girls and fun. I maintain a sort of uncorruptability to my personal choices (it is insane how many people out there have wanted to get/see me drunk but I still stand by my personal choice not to touch the stuff) and I pretty much always try to be a kind, caring, sharing person. To be happy and to make other people happy with what I do is literally the only thing I want in life, and I'm insanely lucky in that I've found out what makes that goal a reality.
It's a sort of wonderful rut I've dug myself into, but a rut can wear itself down to nothing if it is overrun. Do I expect myself to walk away from a life so deeply ingrained in the Twin Cities music scene? I think not. It's still getting exponentially more interesting as time goes on, and good thing too.
But I want to take it to the next level. I want to rid myself of the chains that keep me from being "on top". Not for fame, or money, or anything like that. Just so I can say someday that I did exactly what I wanted to do with my life. What that is could completely change over time, though probably only in that it gets bigger, grander, more ambitious.
Every day I think about music, and bands, and cool people, and how I find myself in the middle of a perfect storm that should be a far bigger deal than it is. Personal biases aside, I think I know what the hell I'm talking about when I say that the music I find myself following most often is the best in town, bar none. Eat your heart out Twin Cities folkies, because rock and/or roll can never die.
I don't question my ability to do what I do because I'm confident enough to say I do it better and with more passion than anyone else here right now. It has nothing to do with quality or quantity; it has everything to do with the fact that I probably would cease to exist otherwise. I exist because everything that has ever happened in the past has created a present that must continue towards the future.
I remember having my mind completely blown the fuck out by the movie Almost Famous in about January 2008 when I saw it for the first time. It was almost too relevant, too eerily similar to the life I was living and was expecting in the near future. I just watched it for the second time earlier, and while it was still pretty freaky, it didn't have that same sort of total freakout first-time effect. But I picked up on new things, new understandings of my life and the people that surround me.
I ramble on and on and on and on with no real direction, delete sentences that don't make sense, rearrange paragraphs to try to create something that seems logical, try to keep this entry to a digestible size. You probably won't read all of this, and if you do, you probably won't get all of it anyway. But that's fine, because someone once said something along the lines of "Only one person needs to get something for it to make sense." I think he blew his fucking brains out from getting too famous though...
So much of the pressure in life is self-induced. I'm in a position where I could almost take over the world if I knew what the hell I was doing. Aren't they supposed to teach you life skills in school? If they did I sure didn't pay attention, and if they didn't then how the hell did everyone else figure it out? I'm so scatter-brained at times, it keeps my wheels spinning at 100 mph while never reaching the finish line.
I question the means to making the life I want a reality.
Do I really want to have to follow the same path as everyone else?
I feel like my mind is both my greatest asset and my biggest downfall.
It's bizarre how I feel like I'm always getting closer to one of my life's current goals yet it always stays a few feet out of reach, both literally and figuratively.
Does being a social nomad make me incredibly adaptable or incredibly outcast?
There's only so much that can be done with bands in one pair of cities, though I will probably never leave here permanently.
I don't want The American Dream, nor do I really know what it is or if it exists. I want my dream. If I have to be completely stubborn about one thing it's that I will not fail at succeeding. But does not failing also equal success? And who's to say that success even equals the happiness which I have already found?
It's all relative to what you think of you, me, we, us, them, everything, and everyone. Life is literally a relative experience. You are literally the center of the universe... but only to yourself. Your brain is the star that all planets orbit about. You will find personal relevance in literally anything if the timing is right.
Certain songs I've been enjoying for most (or maybe just a few months) of my life are now striking me in ways I could have never imagined because they're hitting me at a time where they're relevant. Lyrics are the primary form obviously, but when was the last time a melody or a rhythm pattern actually hit you in the gut and made you think, "Has someone been retroactively reading my mind?"
I'm William Miller. I'm not William Miller.
I am the everyman. I want nothing more than to be myself.
Is it possible to be two completely opposite things at the same time? I think so. Perhaps even more than you think.
This stream of consciousness brain dumping is brought to you by Mike Minehart at his most electrified hour, approximately 2-3 AM.
I have no ability to write without feeling incredibly awkward about it, even if I care and/or know what I'm talking about. Who's to say that what I say even matters?
I find that me writing vaguely makes things more personal and easy to understand because relevance is easier to derive for anyone. Not that I can't go into some juicy details, it's just that I spew so much specific stuff from my mind elsewhere that this random late-night rambling could not be satisfied with placing itself in one definitive category.
I think I was telling a story earlier but I completely derailed myself. I don't want to go back and change any of it because it's so raw and organic and I like having my grammar keep going on and on and on and on with run on sentences because it amuses me for reasons I don't know why.
Selective perfectionism is pretty much where it's at when it comes to something you're really nitpicky about but don't have the time to do the whole way through.
My desktop is ridiculously overloaded with photo folders.
If money were not such a powerful religion I would already have achieved my penultimate goal in life.
I like the fact that I lost 25 lbs. and got a fairly cool new look, but I don't like waiting for my day to arrive when I'm more than good enough for it to have been years in the past. Maybe that's a good thing though. Or maybe you don't know what the heck I'm talking about again. That's good though. I don't like advertising certain facts about myself unless it would seem to be beneficial in changing things for the better.
My life is ridiculously cool right now. My mind is not cooperating. My body is right where I want it to be. Something else is not. What, I both do and do not know at the same time.
I want to keep going but this blog has just about run out of relevance for me. Maybe it'll be relative again later...
It's a sort of wonderful rut I've dug myself into, but a rut can wear itself down to nothing if it is overrun. Do I expect myself to walk away from a life so deeply ingrained in the Twin Cities music scene? I think not. It's still getting exponentially more interesting as time goes on, and good thing too.
But I want to take it to the next level. I want to rid myself of the chains that keep me from being "on top". Not for fame, or money, or anything like that. Just so I can say someday that I did exactly what I wanted to do with my life. What that is could completely change over time, though probably only in that it gets bigger, grander, more ambitious.
Every day I think about music, and bands, and cool people, and how I find myself in the middle of a perfect storm that should be a far bigger deal than it is. Personal biases aside, I think I know what the hell I'm talking about when I say that the music I find myself following most often is the best in town, bar none. Eat your heart out Twin Cities folkies, because rock and/or roll can never die.
I don't question my ability to do what I do because I'm confident enough to say I do it better and with more passion than anyone else here right now. It has nothing to do with quality or quantity; it has everything to do with the fact that I probably would cease to exist otherwise. I exist because everything that has ever happened in the past has created a present that must continue towards the future.
I remember having my mind completely blown the fuck out by the movie Almost Famous in about January 2008 when I saw it for the first time. It was almost too relevant, too eerily similar to the life I was living and was expecting in the near future. I just watched it for the second time earlier, and while it was still pretty freaky, it didn't have that same sort of total freakout first-time effect. But I picked up on new things, new understandings of my life and the people that surround me.
I ramble on and on and on and on with no real direction, delete sentences that don't make sense, rearrange paragraphs to try to create something that seems logical, try to keep this entry to a digestible size. You probably won't read all of this, and if you do, you probably won't get all of it anyway. But that's fine, because someone once said something along the lines of "Only one person needs to get something for it to make sense." I think he blew his fucking brains out from getting too famous though...
So much of the pressure in life is self-induced. I'm in a position where I could almost take over the world if I knew what the hell I was doing. Aren't they supposed to teach you life skills in school? If they did I sure didn't pay attention, and if they didn't then how the hell did everyone else figure it out? I'm so scatter-brained at times, it keeps my wheels spinning at 100 mph while never reaching the finish line.
I question the means to making the life I want a reality.
Do I really want to have to follow the same path as everyone else?
I feel like my mind is both my greatest asset and my biggest downfall.
It's bizarre how I feel like I'm always getting closer to one of my life's current goals yet it always stays a few feet out of reach, both literally and figuratively.
Does being a social nomad make me incredibly adaptable or incredibly outcast?
There's only so much that can be done with bands in one pair of cities, though I will probably never leave here permanently.
I don't want The American Dream, nor do I really know what it is or if it exists. I want my dream. If I have to be completely stubborn about one thing it's that I will not fail at succeeding. But does not failing also equal success? And who's to say that success even equals the happiness which I have already found?
It's all relative to what you think of you, me, we, us, them, everything, and everyone. Life is literally a relative experience. You are literally the center of the universe... but only to yourself. Your brain is the star that all planets orbit about. You will find personal relevance in literally anything if the timing is right.
Certain songs I've been enjoying for most (or maybe just a few months) of my life are now striking me in ways I could have never imagined because they're hitting me at a time where they're relevant. Lyrics are the primary form obviously, but when was the last time a melody or a rhythm pattern actually hit you in the gut and made you think, "Has someone been retroactively reading my mind?"
I'm William Miller. I'm not William Miller.
I am the everyman. I want nothing more than to be myself.
Is it possible to be two completely opposite things at the same time? I think so. Perhaps even more than you think.
This stream of consciousness brain dumping is brought to you by Mike Minehart at his most electrified hour, approximately 2-3 AM.
I have no ability to write without feeling incredibly awkward about it, even if I care and/or know what I'm talking about. Who's to say that what I say even matters?
I find that me writing vaguely makes things more personal and easy to understand because relevance is easier to derive for anyone. Not that I can't go into some juicy details, it's just that I spew so much specific stuff from my mind elsewhere that this random late-night rambling could not be satisfied with placing itself in one definitive category.
I think I was telling a story earlier but I completely derailed myself. I don't want to go back and change any of it because it's so raw and organic and I like having my grammar keep going on and on and on and on with run on sentences because it amuses me for reasons I don't know why.
Selective perfectionism is pretty much where it's at when it comes to something you're really nitpicky about but don't have the time to do the whole way through.
My desktop is ridiculously overloaded with photo folders.
If money were not such a powerful religion I would already have achieved my penultimate goal in life.
I like the fact that I lost 25 lbs. and got a fairly cool new look, but I don't like waiting for my day to arrive when I'm more than good enough for it to have been years in the past. Maybe that's a good thing though. Or maybe you don't know what the heck I'm talking about again. That's good though. I don't like advertising certain facts about myself unless it would seem to be beneficial in changing things for the better.
My life is ridiculously cool right now. My mind is not cooperating. My body is right where I want it to be. Something else is not. What, I both do and do not know at the same time.
I want to keep going but this blog has just about run out of relevance for me. Maybe it'll be relative again later...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)