Archive for the ‘Music’ Category

Awesome:

Another new shiny!

Now that I’ve had my new phone for a week, I am really starting to dig it. It’s a pretty badass little device. It’s the Samsung Instinct. It does everything a pocket sized device should do like make calls and send and receive txt messages and emails, as well as flawless pic messaging, internet browsing and an awesome navigation app. It’s got a fairly cool mp3 player that will come in handy if I forget the iPod and it will also play live TV and radio. The camera does pretty well during the day but really blows at night shots. Not a total pisser, but I think it shoud have some camera settings or something to make the night shots easier to look at. Haven’t had a chance to get any apps for it yet and I guess there are a few. Nothing like the iPod but still… some.

Coachella 2009

It’s become apperent that Coachella 2009 is right around the corner. I am so frikkin ready. Check out that linup! wOOOOt!!

Coachella Music & Arts Festival.

(Huge file alert! This post will require some high speed internizzle. Or, at least patience. For those of you who do not want to download the full res photos, you can find them here.)

I’ve been going over it for more than a week now trying to come up with a way to sum up the Coachella experience with words that actually exist. I’ve read the entire internet twice, 3 magazines, the sports section of the Tuesday newspaper, the back of a cereal box, the ingredients of all the food in my kitchen, some braille, and the instructions for 3 folding chairs.

Turns out there is only one word: maltodextrin.

Wait, no. Let me, uh… lemme re-work that…

It’s AWESOME. The word is AWESOME.

3 absolutely fun filled days of audio, visual, and substance debauchery that one really has to check out for themselves. You can check out a collage of video clips by clicking this link. I couldn’t have had a better time there.

I flew in to Ontario airport on Wednesday the 23rd and my uncle Dan picked me up. From there we headed to Joshua Tree National Park to camp for the night and hike around a bit. The park was in full spring bloom and gorgeous. I ended up taking a ton of snapshots and you can find them all in this giant 560Mb zip file.

Thursday – We got up early and, after some Yukon Jack enhanced coffee, puttered towards Coachella stopping along the way at most of the interesting spots. We arrived in Indio around 3:00 in the afternoon. Stocked up on ice and other things and off to Coachella we went. We grabbed our tix at will-call and found a place to park. Went through the the entry where we were searched. Dan’s Leatherman was confiscated from his back pack. All my stuff got through. We set up camp and made a few more trips back and fourth to the car. We met our neighbors, which included, but were not limited to: James & Lani, John, and Angie who were all awesome about the fact that our 12′ x 12′ canopy was in all of their assigned camping areas. It was mutually decided that having shade in the desert would be much better than not having shade in the desert. After set-up, it was time to find a drink. John and I went to the bar area. Where we paid $10 each for 9oz drinks and shot the shit for awhile. We got tired of paying $10 for drinks and set out to find a bar nearby. Dan, John, and I walked around like idiots for an hour only to discover that the nearest bar was like 8 miles away. As luck would have it, there happened to be an empty cab that drove right past us. We ran it down and got a ride to town. While at the bar, it collectively dawned on us that it would cost the same to drink at the bar in the campsite because it cost $40 just to get to and from the bar. After returning to the campsite, it was discovered that Dan had smuggled in some vodka and whiskey. More drinks happened, and then there was crashing because they shut the lights off at night. Note to self: bring glow sticks next year!

Friday – By 8:00 – 8:30 in the morning, it was way too hot to stay asleep in the tent. Everyone was pretty much awake by then. We sat under the shade, had drinks, and chatted until the doors opened. We strolled over to the doors and I soon realized that I would not be able to see all the stuff I wanted to see while hanging out with anyone. I told Dan “there is no way I am gonna be able to stick around all day.” and added ” see you back at the tent!” The first day I made it my goal to know where everything was. And I found it. I knew where all the bars were, all the watering holes, and all the smokers lounges. American Spirit was there giving away free smokes. Frickin sweeeeeet! Oh yeah, I also saw some music, in kind of this order:

• Redd Kross
• Sebastian
• The Breeders
• Goldfrapp
• Aphex Twin
• The Raconteurs – AWESOME!
• Serj Tankian
• Fatboy Slim -Too wasted by this point to form any kind of opinion, but I think it was cool

Saturday – Today I started off with the same extreme heat in the morning. Followed by vodka drinks and chillin in the shade. At this point I was so stoked to see the lineup I think I peed a little. The only bummer of the whole trip happened today… my iPod fell into a cooler and was completely submerged. It will be missed. Noon rolled around and we all headed to the gates. This was by far the busiest day. I really don’t know, but if I had to guess, I’d say there were about 8 or 10 thousand people there, and that may be a little light. I didn’t think it possible, but I found even more things to do inside. A Heineken dome that was air conditioned and had a mini-rave inside, the Playstation3 tent, and FREE water refills. I spent $50 on water the day before. Dumb ass. I also found the best Mexican food on the planet in one of the food courts. Nom nom. This was also the day I made sure to walk the entire perimeter of the venue. Only stopping to see music:

• Carbon / Silicon
• James Zabiela
• MGMT
• Cold War Kids
• Cafe Tacvba
• Cinematic Orchestra
• Junkie XL
• Kraftwork
• Sasha & Digweed
• Portishead
• Flogging Molly -AWESOME!
• and of course, Prince! He had Sheila E. with him. -AWESOME!

Sunday – I was a bit overheated on Saturday and chilled at the campsite until about 5:00. Once inside I spent most of the time socializing with people that were as fubar’d as I was. This is weird because I’m just not much of a social creature. Met tons of cool peeps and not one asshole. I did get a chance to see some music too:

• Danny Tenaglia
• Metric
• Simian Mobile Disco -AWESOME!
• Roger Waters – performing Dark Side of the Moon and some of The Wall -AWESOME!

This was the only day I had remembered to bring my camera. Which was OK i guess because I filled up all the storage I had brought with me. You can get the pics by downloading this giant 477 Mb zip file.

Monday – Somehow we managed to get all of our stuff packed up in such a way that we only had to make one trip back to the car. Sweeet. We stopped at the In & Out burger for breakfast, got some gas, and headed towards Ontario. We had enough time on our hands to stop at the Palm Springs Tramway. This was pretty cool. Check out the pics in this 313 Mb zip file. We got to the airport early, so we went looking for a bar. We found a brewpub called Babe’s with Ice cold beers and drank them. Things are a little fuzzy so I’m not sure if this is the correct order in which things happened at this point.

All in all it was a fucking blast. I am definitely going next year and all of you should too. The more campers we have = the more space we can get. To keep cool, we could bring a carport and an inflatable pool!

JTQ – ITHOTI

One of the best studio albums ever put together.

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