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Here are a few pics from my life lately. Just thought I’d share. First up is our first trip to Red Rocks Amphitheater. It’s a little west of Denver. We saw the Cure. Pretty cool place, a bit too big of a place for me to see a band but the views were pretty awesome.
During the day before the show from way up top.
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The Cure
random stuff: Fort Collins wating for the train..
Waiting for the train
Hiking Vedauwoo (vay-duh-voo) near Laramie in Wyoming:
Vedawoo Wyoming-Hiking
So we’ve recently heard the cool news that Starbucks is closing 600 stores nationwide. Today we hear the Bennigan’s/Steak and Ale have filed Chapter 7 and are all closing. Besides all the service industry employees that are now out of work I can’t see a downside to any of this. But the question to be asked here is why these places are closing/shrinking? Are the small businesses making a comeback? Are these coffee shops and cookie cutter restaurants starting to cannibalize their own businesses? Either way is fine with me as long as I see these places going away. Of course I’d rather it be that small “mom & pop” shops are making a comeback. Are people finally fed up with the overpriced crap that comes out of these places? I believe starbucks may have gotten too big too fast. Once riding the bus down the 16th street mall in downtown Denver there were starbucks on 6 stops out of the 8-10 that I was on. They bus ride is less than a mile long. We were sitting across from the double doors that open to the sidewalk and businesses on each stop and at least 3 stops in a row the doors opened to that green starbucks sign. I guess the worst part of that is there was people at all of them.
I understand that the baristas at Starbucks are actually fairly well trained so I”m sure they won’t have a problem moving to the Starbucks on the next corner or maybe even a smaller coffee shop. I’m sitting at one of Fort Collins independent coffee shops right now. I have to walk past Starbucks every time to get here and have to shake my head at all the people sitting outside drinking severely overpriced coffee and crapuccinos thinking how cool it is to be part of this great local community. Besides the people that work there, that money doesn’t stay in this economy. While they have tried really hard as of late to portray themselves as a “green” business and use fair-trade coffee they don’t use our local resources, I don’t even think they offer free wireless for fuck-sake! My coffee shop has free wireless, .25 cent refills and an independent bookstore in the back. My coffee shop has always used local resources whenever possible and fair-trade coffee. My coffee shop adamantly supports our local bike community. All of this in my local independent coffee shop is done with lower prices than Starbucks.
Unfortunately the same can’t be said for the employees of Bennigan’s, at least not the waitstaff. I can say I don’t think I’ve ever eaten at a Bennigan’s or if I have its been quite a few years. I can tell you it’s just like all the other bad cookie-cutter chain restaurants all over this country. Horrible service, the waitstaff doesn’t care at all. If you’ve seen the movie “Waiting” its not far off at all. These places have some of the most un-attentive apathetic servers I have ever seen. Not every place can be fine-dining with well-trained servers that realize your attitude and service directly effect the tips you make. That said, I’m not saying all servers are bad, go to Waffle House any late night and watch the servers bust their ass for 2 dollar tips. The employees of Waffle House are probably some of the hardest working people in the biz -in the kitchen and on the floor. There also a reason you can’t go in to one of these places (Bennigan’s Applebees, Olive Garden…) and ask for no sausage in your pasta or no onions in your salad. Its all pre-made, comes in bags/boxes straight off of a truck. These places don’t have chefs or cooks as much as they have food preparers. They open a bag and heat up the food and put it on a plate. And the people in the kitchen will have an easier time finding a new job than the servers.
In all, I’m just glad to see these places slowing down a little. They’re still putting small businesses out of business everyday but its nice to see that these places aren’t totally indestructible. So lets keep this “progress” moving. Lets see these guys eat up their own profits and continue the cannibalization. Stay local. Patron your local restaurants and coffee shops. Keep that money in your local economy.
Yeah, so overall we had a good time cause we met some really cool people and got to hang with our friends. Overall Warped Tour sucks. We’re over 30 and walking around in 90+ degree heat with a bunch of teenagers passing out drunk by 1 in the afternoon is not that cool. So we walked around the actual concert for about an hour before we got to go backstage with our friend James. He had some friends with him that his wife knew that lived in Vail and we met them and hung out with them most of the day. They were really nice and we’re most likely going to hang out again. Some of them used to live in Florida and they listen to good music so we got along. We don’t meet many people in Colorado that listen to good music…especially some cool people that live in the mountains.
So anyway we were at Warped Tour. People over 24 should not go there. We were fortunate enough to be friends with one the bands playing (Against Me!) and got to hang “backstage”. We got to watch our friends band from the stage and drink our own beer and hang in their “tent” area, play foosball and have a good time. I appreciate them for that. They’ve gotten really popular of late and also taken a lot of shit for that but I can say with all honesty that they are still some of the friendliest most appreciative people I’ve met. They were really the only band we saw all day. I wanted to see Pennywise, only cause I never have but we all went to a bar across the street and forgot. We all hung out and had an awesome time without actually seeing any bands (I may also point out that we didn’t pay for any of this) and even got to go to an awesome bar afterwards. The dude from Planes Mistaken for Stars had a huge van and he drove us all to the the 3 kings. We saw some indie rock band from Seattle that I felt bad for cause, people were not against seeing a band, I think we were more just burnt out on seeing live music in general. It was the last show of their tour and it really seemed no one promoted them, no one played with them and worst of all, the road weary and band weary people already there didn’t care to hear another band.
Overall it was an awesome time. We made some good new friends, saw some good old friends and had some good experiences. Andrew even supposedly got me on the guest list for the Dropkick Murphy’s show in Fort Collins, we’ll see if they remember. Anyway here are some really bad pics from the stage of warped tour Denver of Against Me!
Warped Tour Against Me! 2
So I admit I got the new Gaslight through less than honorable means. A few hints about a leaked new album and I just couldn’t help myself, after all they were already one of my favorite bands. I might also point out that I have already ordered a copy of the 7” that’s coming out this month and a blue vinyl full length coming out August 19th.
On to the CD itself. Holy shit, I knew from hearing the first song “59′ sound” on their myspace that this would be amazing. When I first heard that I thought it was amazing but was a bit skeptical of the production and the amount of reverb on everything. As I started to appreciate it I thought “how awesome this would sound on vinyl”. Then they not only put our the vinyl for sale but the first song features some vinyl sounds in the beginning.
I will say this did not have the punch that Sink or Swim had. Maybe not as much angst and his voice doesn’t quite get as aggressive. But these songs really can’t get any more perfect honestly. “in the backseat we’re just trying to find some room for our knees” Brilliant in its simplicity and honesty.
I think over the past 10 years bands have changed the way we look at what kind of music is punk or not punk. Bands like Gaslight, Lucero and Against Me! have taught us that we don’t need loud electric guitars and songs about honesty and emotion is not something to be ashamed of. 10 years ago if you asked me if I would listen to a band like this I might have laughed it off. Now country, Springsteen and Replacements aren’t bad influences and it makes music better than I can ever remember. Those aren’t absent from the new Gaslight and its obvious that these guys have more on their minds than what any scene may think about them. Some blues, folk, soul and still a good dose of punk inspire these guys to write amazing sing-a-long anthems that are perfect for any road trip, BBQ or kegger. I’ve had this CD for about 5 days and listened to it about 18 times so far, its just that fucking good.
The bottom line is this CD makes me want to hang out with all my good fiends drink a lot of beer, sing a long to some awesome music and make some memories for all that is to come. In my book music just doesn’t get any better than that.
