Journal

Pixes, Modest Mouse, special guest Cat Power- Vibrant Music Hall, Waukee, Iowa - 6/24/2024

Nathan and Jenny drove up and we met to go out to eat at Basic Bird. Afterwards, Shannon headed home, and we headed out to Waukee. Most of the same complaints about the venue remain, however the corrected the volume of smell of the men’s bathroom has been corrected from overpowering, to something one would expect as normal.

Cat Power

Enjoyable, though I think she was struggling with her voice a bit, and perhaps leaned on auto-tune on songs where she uses both. I would expect her at a show at a more sit down type of venue, where one doesn’t expect to have to have the assist of sound dampening. I went in blind, and am curious enough to add some of her music to my “to listen”. She had a nice light display and used some of the lights like a mirror ball. towards the audience. Enjoyable, felt like I had a bit of space around me and my body was doing ok.

Modest Mouse

Clearly everyone about our age knows Modest Mouse to one extent or another. I am not super familiar with thier music outside of the most notable items. In support of the band, I suppose, was an extra percussion guy (entertaining to watch, I will admit) and person playing keyboards and various other instruments. For the percussion guy, you can see him get prepared, and then do his percussion part (sometimes a double shake of something, or hitting something else). The light show probably put the lights through the biggest paces. There was a point where they seem to have a sort of color changing very bright light just roll across the stage, and start again with a new color, just cycling through the colors. The crowd had started to close in a bit, my feet and right knee started to complain. Some of the music was enjoyable, some of it was, not my cup of tea? The lead singer was quite expressive, and clearly they are talented at what do. I spent a lot of time watching the lights and the light play on the ceiling.

Pixies

This is who I was there to see. Pixies, for me, were a bit of a high school fascination (a sister’s friend introduced me I think) and a college one, where I spent a lot of time expanding my musical horizons. And went down CD rabbit hole after CD rabbit hole. I still have most of these CDs, somewhere, packed away. I certainly connected more to the lyrics and feelings. After people had left for refills and bathroom breaks, the crowd pressed in again. My feet started to question what I was doing and my right knee was also questioning my choices. There was a nice balance what I knew and loved, knew, and also a handful of items I didn’t know as I’ve slowed down quite a bit on keeping up with bands. I’ve added some newer stuff from the Pixies since last night. For the lights, it was bigger play of the light and the dark, where one was able to step in and out of the light on the stage. My favorite light effect of the whole show was the combination of the smoke from the machine and and the faster and faster twirling of lights which seemed to spin the smoke. I truly enjoyed the show and enjoyed this better then seeing them opening for Weezer.

Afterwards, we collected things and Nathan and Jenny dropped me off and headed back home. I was up for a bit longer as my adrenaline was up a bit and eventually made it to bed just after midnight.

A small part of Where is my Mind performed by the Pixies at Vibrant Music Hall in Waukee Iowa on 6/24/2024

STOMP - Des Moines Civic Center - 6/22/2024

STOMP has been on my vague list of things to see for quite a while. I’ve seen some of the shows on line and the commercials always look cool. We traded tickets from one of the Broadway series shows to STOMP (even losing money), because I still have issues spending money on the intellectual property of that person. We ended up going the same night as Holly and the boys, but weren’t that close to each other. I kept trying to figure out where they were by counting rows back and going over, but I’d get lost and was looking back further then they actually wore, we finally saw them waving.

The set was neat with a mix of an industrial look, but clearly has a purpose.

The show was divided up into, skits or songs, where there was clearly a beginning, middle and end. Most had a humor element, where the foil was usually the instigator of “conflict” or butt of the joke.

One thing I think may have been missed by some, was the shadow play on the walls of the auditorium. Some of the dancing created interesting patterns in shadow on the walls.

We both enjoyed it having a fund time watching people play music on random pieces and the strength of the dance an performance. All without speaking. It was a fun time.

The Play that Goes Wrong - Des Moines Playhouse - 6/8/2024

We saw the Broadway tour of this a bit ago, and I know we’ve seen, perhaps not all, but a good chunk of items on the British show. This was different, but still quite good. I’m quite impressed, again, with the technical details and effects. Acting was good and enjoyable. We have plans to go to another show later this year.

Improvised Shakespeare - Temple Theater - 5/3/2024

We went to the Cheese Bar before, it was a good show, I kinda wanted to yell out “The Tigers of the Dale of Beaver” but someone beat me to the title. Certainly challenging to do, but they did keep mostly to the rhyme scheme and pace, and it did lead to some awkward places.

2024 - Week 17 Cooking

  • Sausage

  • Mac & cheese

  • scrambled eggs and hash browns (direct repeat, but what are you gonna do?)

  • Creamy Sesame Noodles

I am disappointed in the fact that I wont be seeing Steve Vai and Joe Satriani in the prime seats I had, due to surgery that day. I was introduced to them in high school, and it made me, vaguely, want to be a guitarist, but I never really followed that path. I do have other cool concerts coming up, though.

Martha Redbone - Temple Theater - 4/12/2024

We were sitting at one of the comedy series shows and looking at the upcoming items in the Live at the Temple concert series, and just reading the description, without knowing anything about the artist, sounds like something I’d like, so I asked Shannon and she said sure and we bought tickets. As a note, I tried to get tickets for the tables, but several of them had a seat taken and a seat reserved for handicapped, so we couldn’t buy 2 seats at a table, leaving the handicapped seat by itself. So we ended up on the risers. For the most part, we ware on the younger side of those that attended, with a handful, much younger. It was stunningly good. Not knowing what to expect, as I did no research, and Shannon did a little.

We had dinner downstairs and headed up to the concert.

I think we were both stunned. She has an emotive and beautiful voice, and the backing band, including her husband, was quite talented. She moved between classics that she doesn’t want to be forgotten, the album they our touring on, which is based on William Blake poems and the various projects that she’s been involved in.

Of the strong performances over the course of the night, her performance of Blackbird, was fantastic (from another show).

Funny Girl - Des Moines Civic Center - 3/17/2024

So I think I’ve seen the movie, but judging by my wife reminding me that we saw another show already (coming to Ames), I have further doubts of my already knowingly terrible memory. I did definitely recognize the songs. The lead for our performance was quite spectacular. The whole performance was very nice.

Flogging Molly - Road to Rebellion Tour - Val Air Ballroom - 3/5/2024

With Amigo the Devil plus Gen and the Degenerates.

I took today off cause I decided I’m to old to work the next day after a concert. I thought about getting up when my alarm went off, but turned it off instead and slept for another hour and half.

We met up with Jenny and Nathan at Either / Or and had dinner. Afterwards I went off with Jenny and Nathan and Shannon headed home.

The venue, itself, which I haven’t been to in a while (Fall Out Boy maybe?), is definitely improved and more modern. I was reminded in the bathroom of how terrible it was before the remodel. The ceiling is covered in sound dampening tiles, which will help reduce the escape of sound, which made the neighbors a bit annoyed. A good refresh and I’m looking to go to more shows there.

The show opened up with Gen and the Degenerates, which, was not for me. I don’t want to rule them out yet, but I’ll listen to some of there music. Second was Amigo the Devil, which after a song that we didn’t get, immediately was definitely for me. Enough so, that I went to go get a shirt, even after my first exposure. Unfortunately, they didn’t have anything close to my size, so I ended up with a bumper sticker. I added a bunch of the music to my library to parse and dive into.

Flogging Molly, my first time seeing them, came on and just put on a solid fast paced show. It was quite fun, energetic and even overrode the general body complaints that the rest of me started to feed back. Came away with a shirt, even after an explicit discussion from Shannon that I really need to filter out some t-shirts as they are taking up an entire closet and are packed in.