Tomorrow night (Friday the 30th) Dan Wilson is going to catch Jamie Moyer during the first inning of the game. He is retiring at the end of the season and this will be his farewell game.
So, if you are a Dan Fan (how can you not be?) then you'll want to watch and see the ovation that the fans give him. It should be fun to see.
One of my heroes as a journalist and film maker. His Vanilla Sky soundtrack was more or less stolen from my ITunes and he LOVES the Power and the Glory that is Led Zeppelin.
Cool essay indeed.
Music.
Sometimes it?s all you need. No fancy light show. No video screens. No elaborate stage design. No circus midgets. Sometimes, just sometimes, the music is enough.
Pearl Jam proved this beyond a shadow of a doubt last night at the MTS Centre in front of 16,000 screaming fans and you?d be hard pressed to find a single complaint from anyone there.
Armed with only their instruments and some bare bones lighting, the pioneers of grunge showed why they are one of the only surviving bands from the infamous ?Seattle scene.? With no new album since 2002?s Riot Act and not a lot of promotion leading up to the concert, Pearl Jam played to a record (and deafening) crowd at the arena and proved that like a fine wine, they only get better with age.
Even before they took the stage and started playing the opening notes of Betterman, the energy in the arena was overwhelming. They ploughed through almost three hours of material that ranged from set-list rarities such as Sad, In My Tree and In Hiding to grunge anthems Jeremy, Alive and Black. They took old classics like EvenFlow and Daughter and turned them into eight-minute jam sessions and improvs (during Daughter a fan?s cell phone made it onto the stage and lead singer Eddie Vedder led the crowd with a sing-a-long into the phone that may go down in history as the greatest voice mail ever to be received). They took a song like Do The Evolution and used it to turn the entire MTS Centre into a giant pogo-ball. They took all the energy that Winnipeg could muster and gave it right back to us. And yet the crowd just wouldn?t stop giving.
?We have to say that this is without a doubt the loudest crowd,? said Vedder when he finally addressed the crowd after ripping through the first five songs. ?The pre-show crowd, it was insane out here, we didn?t know what the f*ck was going on, and all we could think was, we hope they?re pacing themselves.?
And pace ourselves we did.
For almost three hours fans were taken on a roller coaster ride of music and emotion. From the 58-second intense rocker Lukin to the beautifully haunting Indifference to the arm raising Given To Fly, fans couldn?t help but sing and cheer. For years Winnipegger?s have seen all the impostors come and go. Nickleback, Creed, Default, Lifehouse. Each one trying to imitate Vedder?s booming baritone. But last night, Vedder showed why he can?t be duplicated. It?s not just about his arena filling voice or his trademark wails, it?s about the emotion and honesty that he puts behind every word and action that he does. From his gut wrenching screams during Blood that evoke all the pain of being ripped apart from the inside, to the sincere heart-breaking whisper of, ?we didn?t belong?we didn?t belong together,? at the end of Black, Vedder shows that music means more when you mean it yourself.
But this wasn?t just the Eddie Vedder show. The rest of Pearl Jam played like it was 1992 all over again. Guitarist Mike McCready was by far the most animated of the group. Between his giant jumping windmills or smiling and interacting with the fans by simply pointing and nodding, McCready played with all the appreciation and energy of someone performing in front of an audience for the very first time. Bassist Jeff Ament and guitarist Stone Gossard kept pace with McCready while drummer Matt Cameron proved why he is arguably one of the best drummers alive today. The group has also added keyboardist Boom Gasper to their touring line-up and watching the give-and-take that he and McCready did during the extended Crazy Mary solo was nothing short of musical magic.
And just in case the near three-hour, two encore, 29-song show wasn?t enough, the boys from Seattle decided to end the evening with two songs from ?Uncle Neil? (Neil Young) to the rabid delight of hometown fans. And as the first notes started to play on the evening?s final song, Rockin in the Free World, the house lights were completely up and the sight within the arena was absolutely spectacular. All 16,000 people still going strong, still standing, still clapping and still singing loud enough to almost drown out the music.
?Winnipeg, I?m gonna say this and I mean it,? said Vedder smiling and looking all around the arena in awe, ?you?ve been absolutely f*cking amazing!! Absolutely?f*cking?amazing!!!! ?
The thing is, you?d be hard pressed to find anyone there who wouldn?t say the same thing about them.
Just goes to show, sometimes, just sometimes, the music is enough.
No fancy lighting, elaborate stages, fancy video projectors.
Just the music.
I heard it was good. My idiotic Comcast DVR recorded the recap show.
I would like LOST if anyone has it!
Thanks!
"Arrested Development" premieres at 8 p.m. Monday, KCPQ/13.
The Bluth family's modest but faithful audience will be happy that the show has been picked up for a full 22-episode third season. That same group also may remember it had a full pickup last season, which was unceremoniously cut to 18, and that "Arrested" does not appear on the January schedule.
Series creator Mitch Hurwitz, genius, remains optimistic. "Schedules are often in flux, so what ends up happening is a lot of the stuff they unveil at the start of the year doesn't stick around." While that could include his comedy -- "The choice is always theirs. They always have the option of cutting it back" -- he's confidant "Arrested" is marked to slide into a slot left open by one of fall's dead leaves. (Keep an eye on that "Head Cases" time slot, kids!)
On to happier news. As the family seeks out a mole, Michael is going to start dating a British woman with a secret. "Part of the fun for the audience is the surprise of the show," he said. "We're not really big into mystery for the sake of mystery, but definitely for the sake of laughs. We knew Buster was going to lose his hand all last year." This year's game of Comedy Clue is no different, so let's hope the network doesn't ruin it in the promos.
Elsewhere at Fox: Calm down, I'm begging you -- "24" has not been canceled. It returns midseason.
This guy was on the Daily Show last night and was extremely knowledgable and well-spoken. It's weird some people are still debating issues that 99.9% of scientists agree on.
To All My Fellow Americans Who Voted for George W. Bush:
On this, the fourth anniversary of 9/11, I'm just curious, how does it feel? How does it feel to know that the man you elected to lead us after we were attacked went ahead and put a guy in charge of FEMA whose main qualification was that he ran horse shows? That's right. Horse shows.
I really want to know -- and I ask you this in all sincerity and with all due respect -- how do you feel about the utter contempt Mr. Bush has shown for your safety? C'mon, give me just a moment of honesty. Don't start ranting on about how this disaster in New Orleans was the fault of one of the poorest cities in America. Put aside your hatred of Democrats and liberals and anyone with the last name of Clinton. Just look me in the eye and tell me our President did the right thing after 9/11 by naming a horse show runner as the top man to protect us in case of an emergency or catastrophe.
I want you to put aside your self-affixed label of Republican/conservative/born-again/capitalist/ditto-head/right-winger and just talk to me as an American, on the common ground we both call America. Are we safer now than before 9/11? When you learn that behind the horse show runner, the #2 and #3 men in charge of emergency preparedness have zero experience in emergency preparedness, do you think we are safer?
When you look at Michael Chertoff, the head of Homeland Security, a man with little experience in national security, do you feel secure? When men who never served in the military and have never seen young men die in battle send our young people off to war, do you think they know how to conduct a war? Do they know what it means to have your legs blown off for a threat that was never there? Do you really believe that turning over important government services to private corporations has resulted in better services for the people?
Why do you hate our federal government so much? You have voted for politicians for the past 25 years whose main goal has been to de-fund the federal government. Do you think that cutting federal programs like FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers has been good or bad for America? GOOD OR BAD? With the nation's debt at an all-time high, do you think tax cuts for the rich are still a good idea? Will you give yours back so hundreds of thousands of homeless in New Orleans can have a home?
Do you believe in Jesus? Really? Didn't he say that we would be judged by how we treat the least among us? Hurricane Katrina came in and blew off the facade that we were a nation with liberty and justice for all. The wind howled and the water rose and what was revealed was that the poor in America shall be left to suffer and die while the President of the United States fiddles and tells them to eat cake. That's not a joke. The day the hurricane hit and the levees broke, Mr. Bush, John McCain and their rich pals were stuffing themselves with cake. A full day after the levees broke (the same levees whose repair funding he had cut), Mr. Bush was playing a guitar some country singer gave him. All this while New Orleans sank under water.
It would take ANOTHER day before the President would do a flyover in his jumbo jet, peeking out the widow at the misery 2500 feet below him as he flew back to his second home in DC. It would then be TWO MORE DAYS before a trickle of federal aid and troops would arrive. This was no seven minutes in a sitting trance while children read "My Pet Goat" to him. This was FOUR DAYS of doing nothing other than saying "Brownie (FEMA director Michael Brown), you're doing a heck of a job!"
My Republican friends, does it bother you that we are the laughing stock of the world? And on this sacred day of remembrance, do you think we honor or shame those who died on 9/11/01? If we learned nothing and find ourselves today every bit as vulnerable and unprepared as we were on that bright sunny morning, then did the 3,000 die in vain? Our vulnerability is not just about dealing with terrorists or natural disasters. We are vulnerable and unsafe because we allow one in eight Americans to live in horrible poverty. We accept an education system where one in six children never graduate and most of those who do can't string a coherent sentence together. The middle class can't pay the mortgage or the hospital bills and 45 million have no health coverage whatsoever.
Are we safe? Do you really feel safe? You can only move so far out and build so many gated communities before the fruit of what you've sown will be crashing through your walls and demanding retribution. Do you really want to wait until that happens? Or is it your hope that if they are left alone long enough to soil themselves and shoot themselves and drown in the filth that fills the street that maybe the problem will somehow go away? I know you know better. You gave the country and the world a man who wasn't up for the job and all he does is hire people who aren't up for the job. You did this to us, to the world, to the people of New Orleans. Please fix it. Bush is yours. And you know, for our peace and safety and security, this has to be fixed.
What do you propose? I have an idea, and it isn't a horse show.
Yours,
Michael Moore
www.michaelmoore.commmflint@aol.com
Take your parents. Take your kids. Take your friends. You will smile for an hour and a half straight.
Acoustic Set:I Believe In Miracles, Small Town, Off He Goes, Lowlight, Man of the Hour, I Am Mine, Crazy Mary, Black, Hard to Imagine
Main Set:Last Exit, Save You, Do The Evolution, Alone, Sad, Even Flow, Not For You, ??, Corduroy, Dissident, MFC, Undone, Daughter, In My Tree, State of Love and Trust, Alive, Porch, Love Boat Captain, Insignificance, Rearviewmirror, Betterman
Encore 1:I Won't Back Down (Ed solo), Last Kiss, Crown of Thorns, Blood
Encore 2:Yellow Ledbetter, Baba O'Riley
more later...
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/pop/239144_pearljamq02ww.html
Download the whole show here. I have mine. The quality of the recording is very good.
Patrick MacDonald of the Times never can give a 100% positive review of course, but here it is anyway.
