Here’s a photograph of a photographer photographing.
Last Friday Night my wife an I ventured (with several members of Gentlemen of Leisure) up to the Great White North of Ballard (the Sunset Tavern to be specific) to watch a rocks-and-or-rolls show featuring our friends to Cortese Brothers, who make up the band Electric NoNo.
Normally Electric NoNo consists solely of Jared Cortese on Guitar/Vocals and Dom Cortese on Drums/Backing Vocals/Every-Once-In-A-While-Keyboard. But this time they were sporadically joined by a whole bevy of additional musicians: a saxomophonist, an additional guitarist, and none other than Julia Massey on Keyboard/Backing Vocals!
As is my nature, I made some animated .gifs of the performance:
O Winged Jared!
It’s Skeletom Dom!
Julia + Jared Sharing the Stage!?
The show was a record release for Electric NoNo’s new EP, Rain City Blue. GET IT GET IT GET IT!
The only thing wrong with this album is that it’s an EP, and I wants me an LP! Hop to it, Bros!
Also, expect some exciting announcements soon from Gentlemen of Leisure, as well as a joint Julia/NoNo venture called “Warren Dunes.” Stay tuned, dear reader…
Also that episode were Smokey Brights, who were very good! I don’t think I’d seen them before, but they seemed familiar. I think that’s because most of the band members were also in other bands, and I’d seen some o’ those. An unusually cool thing about Smokey Brights is that it is a five-person band (which is unusual in itself these days), and four out of the five sing. There were many songs that featured full four-part harmonies!
I did not manage to take good enough photos to make an animated .GIF out of them. I did, however, make this cool little collage:
A collage both smokey and bright!
So here is probably the most-epic animated .GIF I’ve made yet. It’s of JM+FFD. It’s over 5 MB. And it features subtle camera movements and everything!
The Epicness of Animation!
There you have it. I’ll let you know when this episode of “Band in Seattle” airs.
Whelp, we’re off to Portland for the weekend. We’re gonna go to OMSI and the Oregon Zoo! I’ll try to take mucho de photos and tell y’all ALL about it, ‘kay? ‘Kay!
Did you miss last night’s music show in Tacoma? FOR SHAME!
‘Twas a great music show last night in Tacoma at Grit City Grindhouse! I’d never been there before, and it turns out to be a very cool venue. It’s kind of a warehouse space behind a skate shop. There’s a li’l skate pipe/ramp off to one side in there (a quarter-pipe maybe?) and everything! It was an all-ages show and kids under 10 got in free, so it turned out there were about half-a-dozen kids running around and going crazy in front of the stage for much of the show. It was like a mosh pit for kids. A moppet mosh pit?
There were three music acts. The first one was Pete Jordan and two other members of Cloud Person. The be-bearded Mr. Jordan sounded a bit like a cross between Mike Doughty and folky sea shanties. Sorry I didn’t snap any photos of them, but it was mostly because I was enjoying the music and also because I was distracted by the junior mosh pit in front of me.
Next was Kye Alfred Hillig, who mostly did depressingly-lyric’d, folky, guy-with-acoustic-guitar stuff. But his lyrics were intelligent and very clever and sometimes rather funny. One of my favorite lines was, “My young love was as blind as Ray Charles.” Mr. Hillig also had absolutely excellent between-song banter going on, where he would make an assertive declaration and then immediately say that it was a complete lie. He also made some jokes about how his songs weren’t really kid-friendly. Very funny, and a nice contrast to the mostly-depressing content of the songs.
Wait… you mean that song wasn’t about Clifford the Big Red Dog!?
Third was Julia Massey & half of the Five Finger Discount (only Dom on drums). The FFD is in-between bass players right now. Geoff left toward the beginning of 2015 and they have a new one, but they haven’t played live with him yet. He wasn’t there because he was on a cruise or something lame like that. Pfffft, excuses. Anyway, Julia + Dom is still a great show, and they played TWO songs Carrie & I had never heard before, both of which were excellent.
And, as is my nature, I made an animated .GIF of them for us all to enjoy:
This is one of the better animated .GIFs I’ve made. And check out that great lighting!
So in conclusion: Good show. And it started at 7:00 so it was pretty much wrapping up by 9:00, which was great for a couple of old people who have a baby and need to get up the next day to go to work.
Another conclusion: Good venue. It’s nice to know there is another place in Tacoma where good musics can happen now. Although I’m not entirely sure why there is a painting of Marvel Comics interdimensional supervillain Shuma-Gorath on one of the walls…
At the big musics show last week in Tacoma (the one at New Frontier Lounge), something very suh-weeeet happened. I was taking photos with my phone as is my habit. I did not have my flash on. However, someone else in the audience did. And by sheer happenstance, the two of us took a photo of Trees and Timber at the exact same moment, so that I took a photo using their flash! It looks so neat!
Trees and Timber: a Flashy Band!
You know what we can do? We can solve the mystery: whose flash did I steal? Let’s take a look at that photo. The lead singer of Trees and Timber is wearing a baseball cap that casts a very distinctive shadow. Let’s line from the tip of the shadow’s brim down to the tip of the real person’s brim, and then continue that line down from there. Let’s also do the same with the back of his head. Since the shadow looms larger than his actual head, the two lines will likely converge (or get near each other) at some point.
That’s right! It’s time to…
TRIANGULATE!
(And just for good measure, the big shadow head on the right seems to belong to the guy standing directly in front of the drummer. So let’s draw a line across them, too). Here’s what we get:
Jumpin’ Jack Flash!
The lines converge on that guy in the lower-left! More specifically, they converge on the flash box of the camera that he is holding in his hands. Hey, waitaminute… I know that guy!
That’s musician, photographer, and all-around awexome guy Gary! I took a photo of him that night too… and it’s a photo of him looking at a photo…
Dutch angle, go!
WHAT IF GARY IS LOOKING AT THE PHOTO WHOSE FLASH I STOLE!? My head asplode.
Anyhoo, as is my nature I also made a couple of animated .GIFs of the bands that evening. Voila!
GIF for Jesus Rehab!
GIF for Fruit Juice!
I didn’t get a good .GIF of Trees and Timber or The Hoot Hoots, but c’est la vie.
Last Thursday I was invited (thanks, Hoot Hoots!) to go to a live taping of the relatively-unknown TV show called “Band in Seattle.” This show airs Saturday nights on CW11 in the Puget Sound Area, and in each of its 22-minute episodes it showcases one or two local bands. Well, this week they were taping the season-2 episode that would be showcasing two amazing Seattle bands, The Hoot Hoots and The Jesus Rehab!
Understandably it was a pretty badass show with two such amazing, rockin’ groups taking the stage one right after the other. You might have noticed that I do happen to be quite a fan of bothbands. And, as is my way, I made some Animated .GIFs of the evening. Take a look!
Hootie Hoot!
Dance, Jesus Rehab, Dance!
I’m not sure when the episode is actually gonna air, but you’d best believe I’ll let you know. I was standing right up front for both bands’ sets, so I wouldn’t be surprised if I got a few seconds of screen time here and there! *winku* After all, who wouldn’t want to see this face on TV:
Project: Handsome Runway Man
Honestly, I wasn’t even aware that “Band in Seattle” was a thing until I was invited to it. But it looks like an excellent way to discover some great local talent. Season 2 just premiered on Saturday night featuring none other than another one of my favorite bands, Leeni’s Prom Queen! The episode isn’t available to watch online yet (that I can find), but you can see Prom Queen’s performance here:
Carrie & I went out Wednesday night and saw Mates of State live at Tractor Tavern in Seattle! Wha-what!? We went out to a show TOGETHER!? And on a SCHOOL NIGHT!?
Yup. That’s how we roll.
Is that why I am so tired?
Anyhoo, the opening act was a band called Fictionist. They were very good! They were like a guided tour through the best of 1980s music.
Real? Or Fiction?
After that was, of course, the two-person power-pop of Mates of State! And as is my habit, I made an animated .GIF outta them!
Animated Mates AND States!
It was a very nice show. It was fut to go out on a weekday night with my wife and a good friend. It wasn’t so nice to have to get up and go to work the next morning. Mais, c’est la vie! No regrets.
Saturday night was the album release party for Julia Massey & the Five Finger Discount’s new album A.L.I.T.E. at Conor Byrne Pub up in Ballard. Carrie & I (and a bunch of our friends) went to it.*
There were two opening bands, neither of which I made an animated GIF:
Honey Noble
NOT Rider or Lemon
I must confess I have a hard time remembering the name of this band, because whenever I start to think of a two-letter name that starts with “Honey” my brain automatically tries to fill in the second words as either “Rider” (from James Bond) or “Lemon” (from Big Hero 6). Honey NOBLE had a really cool, 1970s lounge/jazz sound to them. And I really, really loved the inclusion of a clarinet in the ensemble. I’ve only been able to find one song of theirs on the internets, and it isn’t terribly representative of how they sounded on the Conor Byrne stage. I liked it!
Roaming Herds of Buffalo
A Herd of Four.
An interesting group with a mainly relaxed, indie-rock vibe, but with a lead guitarist who plays like he’s in a thrash metal band. You can download their first album for free!
Julia Massey & the Five Finger Discount
So here they are, the animated GIFs you’ve been waiting for all post long!
Group love.
Geoff B. Gibbs on Bass!
Ms. Massey!
The one of Julia is a little blurry (my phone’s camera don’t do so well zoomed in in darkened rooms), but you may notice a wee bit of a belly bump. Yes, she has caught the preggers and is well on her way—baby is due between Chrissymiss and the New Year.
I bet Geoff can tell you which song his GIF was made during just by how he’s playing his instrument and which instrument he’s playing. SPEAKING of “which instrument,” Geoff used no fewer than FOUR different instruments during the course of the show, including the debut of his brand-new, hand-built, custom bass:
Photo credit: J. Howard Boyd
In all it was an excellenté show, but a bitt bitterr sweeett in that it was Geoff’s final official show as a member of the FFD.
*It was also a very unusual show in that Conor Byrne was at capacity. Sold out. So many people love JM+FFD that they packed the bar so much that they couldn’t physically let anyone else inside. Unfortunately a good handful of my friends were counted in that bunch, and they couldn’t get in until some other people left, so that was a wee bit on the lame side. But the place was packed with other people I knew. And I also ran into a woman I hadn’t seen since we were both sixteen!
But next time, Julia, choose a larger venue for your album release party! Conor Byrne is awesome, but it is pretty tiny.
Also even though this was an album release party, it doesn’t look like the album is available anywhere online yet, but I’ll be sure to let y’all know as soon as it isUPDATE! The Album Has Been Released! You can git it here:
• http://juliamassey.bandcamp.com/album/a-l-i-t-e
DOOO EEEEET!
