Greetings from the OC.....Just a quick music update from the OC before I head to Vegas for a bachelor party.
Checked out the
VANS Warped Tour last Thurs/Fri.
Bad Religion and Flogging Molly (surprisingly) were really good. Most others were really not. The
Vandals were alright (though they played mostly new stuff) and so were
TSOL, but I didn't really get into most of these newer punk bands. And the angry rockers of this millenium, well, they're just angry.
Julliette Lewis and the Licks could be the worst thing I've ever seen, yet I was still turned on. One last observation: If you close your eyes and listen to
Coheed and Cambria, you'd swear Geddy Lee was singing. Overall: 3 out of 5 because I didn't have to pay. 2 out of 5 if I had paid.
Then there was
The Hootenanny, a show which I have enjoyed tremendously in the past and looked forward to this year, but it utterly sucked. In keeping with our 2004 theme - traffic was abysmal and caused us to miss much of the beginning of the show. Why do promoters choose venues with one way in an and one way out? My original thoughts that this world really needs more tits and tats have gone by the way side - they're all hanging out together in Southern California, god bless 'em. Anyhow, I only caught the second half of the
Kingbees, but enjoyed the 15-20 minutes I saw. Just about every band on the side stage had poor sound quality, none worse than
Jesse Dayton, who I was really looking forward to. He was so pissed, I'm shocked he didn't go kick the crap out of the sound guy himself. What a bummer to sqaunder an opportunity to see him in such a small place. The
Blasters were good, the
Horror Pops were just horrible, and the only great part
The Supersuckers - Eddie Spaghetti and the boys still shred. They deserved much more then the 30 minute time slot they were allotted.
The Reverend Horton Heat had poor sound quality as well (or they just sounded bad, I couldn't tell) and the threat of traffic kept us from staying through the duration of
The Cramps, but I've seen them a million times and they sounded the same. Overall, 1 out of 5, and but for the Supersuckers, it would have been a zero out of 5. Total let down.
Indie 103 FM is my new favorite broadcast radio station, despite the fact that it's owned by Clear Channel, a fact that I have fought hard to not choke on. Give it a listen. Steve Jones of the Clash hosts a show on there from noon to 2 Pacific Time that makes me laugh (though many others hate it). They also have segments of "What's new from the UK" and other cool stuff. For Alt-Country fans, they have an Americana show too.
The new hot single out here is "Run" by Snow Patrol. It's on Indie 103 and KROQ all the time. If you look back to the original Snow Patrol posts I think you'll see how much I liked it back then so it's good to hear it getting some air time.
Social Distortion announced their first show: They're playing
San Diego's Street Scene on August 27/28.
I saw my first car chase in years last night. Over an hour long and covered nearly 100 miles. The guy threatened shoot himself after he got out of the car and the Fox cameras went fuzzy, but the other local channels were willing to let us see it. Good times. I forgot how much I enjoyed those...
Lastly, the lines for Michael Moore's new film, well, what lines? They don't exist. There are more protesters then movie goers in the conservative hot bed known as Orange County.
The weather is too nice for me to sit inside and keep typing so by for now.
Smackie.
