After work I came home, had a sammitch, fed Suki, took care of a couple of sundries around the house, then I headed up to Seattle. It started to snow again while I was on my way up there!
I hung out with Sandy a bit and then we went and got Mathias and proceeded to have dinner at Taki's Mad Greek. This has got to be one of my favorite Greek restaurants evar. Especially the Oven Baked Feta appetizer. And their pork is cooked just right: not too much, but not too little. And everything just tastes really, really tasty.
I also took a photo of the decorations in the men's room:
On the left there we have a completely nude Poseidon, but on the right we have Theseus covering his privates with a leaf! I wonder why. Does he not measure up to Poseidon? I just thought it was funny. After dinner we parked near their apartment and then walked through the bitter cold (though it wasn't snowing at that time) to Neumos, where we met up with Jason and his wife Jennifer, as well as Geoff and Lisa!
Why were we there? Why, to see Busdriver, of course! Look:
The man moves as fast as he raps; it's difficult to get a good picture of him. Just look at the blur lines on his left hand in those pictures! When we got to Neumos we were basically the only people there. Everybody else was in the attached bar. When Busdriver took the stage we were still practically the only people there, but Busdriver plunged ahead anyway. A handful of other people trickled in after he started (30 to 40). Last time I saw him the place was packed so we all thought it was weird, until we figured out that this was a 21-up show, and he usually plays to all-ages at Neumos. I guess only the kids like the Busdriver.
Anyhoo, it was a great set, and he did that cover of Man, It's So Loud in Here by They Might Be Giants that I really like. He played for just under an hour. We all met him over at his merch table, where Sandy bought the last copy of his rarities CD. He told me he'd go to his car and see if he could find another, but I wasn't able to catch him again before we left. I talked to him a bit about that TMBG song he does, and he said it was pretty old and he was thinking of retiring it. He's very shy and awkward off the stage. Hopefully he'll have another copy next time he comes into town.
Sandy kinda creeped him out by showing him a picture of the Busdriver Bot magnet that she made.
An hour after he left the stage the "main attraction," the Gray Boy All-Stars took the stage, and suddenly the theater was swarmed with frat boys, bros, and similar early-to-mid 30s types (and the kind of women who hang out with them). They were a jazzy kind of quintet, with drums, bass, guitar, sax, and keyboards. They were all very skilled musicians, but it was just not what we were in the mood for, and also didn't really sound like what they offer on their MySpace page. They sounded like they were straight out of 1985. Seriously! They even looked it.
At one point Sandy turned to me and said something to the effect that she felt like they were a band that the Huxtables would go and watch on the Cosby show. Mathias summed it up best by saying they were "Sportscoat and Bluejeans" jazz. They didn't go with Busdriver at all, so it wasn't a big surprise that none of their fans came out to see Busdriver go crazy.
We left after four or so songs. Jason gave us a ride back to S&M's apartment, and from there I drove on home.
You can read Mathias's "version" of events over at his website. He's got some really crazy pictures up, too.
Labels: Busdriver, Life, Links, Music, Pictures, Restaurants
