Took this photo what is now about 2 years ago in a funky little club in Pioneer Square district of Seattle.

We got into to downtown kind of late, I think it was a Sunday night. Surprisingly, the streets were nearly vacant. We had some kind of wrappy thingy in a Lebanese take-out joint a few doors down from this club. Then we just walked around trying to find some live music in this part of town famous for its diverse mix of musical flavors for the tasting.

We found nearly none.

Then we walked into this joint and drank Rainier while these 16-year-olds with leg warmers on their arms and pants down around their knees and no shirts on exposing their skeletons and gobs of eye makeup slammed out massively distorted, 3-powerchord progressions from Gibson Flying V’s pumped through old Fender tube amps to the two-dozen or so children pumping their fists in the air.

Pretty awesome actually. We loved every minute.

Officially this is a test post of the SimpleFlickr plugin for WordPress. If I ever get this figured out I want to try to stick a tiny flash object in the template to display down at the bottom of the page or better yet, at the bottom of the sidebar, with some thumbnails that you can rollover and/or click to take you to sets in my Flickr photostream. Was that sentence long enough?

This is my first attempt at extending WordPress and there are some people out there who may read this (shut up Brian S) and giggle to themselves.

Yeah, it’s pretty simple but not for a code moroon. So here goes.

One of my favorite movie lines comes from the great 1980 film “Where the Buffalo Roam.” The film is very loosely based on a number of semi-autobiographical stories written by Hunter S. Thompson. In one scene Thompson, played by Bill Murray, has been kicked off the press plane while covering the 1972 presidential campaign of, presumably Richard Nixon.
However, after drugging a colleague he steals his clothes and credentials and manages to get on the crew plane. Later, while in disguise he finds himself in an airport bathroom when a group of secret service agents come in and carefully check the room and all the stalls. They leave and a moment later the candidate (Nixon,) played brilliantly by Rip Torn, walks in. Continue reading →

Jaysus! What happened to the “Majestic” Ventura Theater?

This place where I’ve spend so many evenings jammed onto a urine-stained, main floor mosh pit, even coming out of there covered in sweat and with a bloody nose, seemed to have morphed into a rest home for the labotmized last night.

With a couple of exceptions there wasn’t even so much of a head bob going on as TR buried the room with a freaking wall of heavily distorted strato-noise.

I doubt if we’ll ever see him there again after such a disgraceful turnout of sleepy geriatrics.

I didn’t really get any photos worth spending more than a second with except for the above, taken upstairs outside the bathrooms.

Took this with the iPhone, there’s something I like about the smeary blues from the star print wallpaper up there. Kind of errie.

Ah, weekend.

Here it is Sunday afternoon, 2:15 and I’m still sitting here in my boxers, only. This is not a pretty sight.

My boxers are green with little snowmen on them, maybe the snowmen help to subliminally cool me off since it’s probably like at least 90 degrees outside. Which I’m not complaining about since last weekend — Labor Day — we couldn’t go outside at all. I think the high was around 116.

So it’s much better this weekend. Ninety degrees is very tolerable.

Later on tonight we’re actually going to drive up to our beloved Ventura, go to our beloved Ventura Theater to see Todd Rundgren.

OK, please. Don’t start with the “Oh, isn’t he the guy that did ‘Hello It’s Me’ back in the 70s?”

Yes, that’s him. But for those of you who aren’t any more familiar with him than that (ie all of you) you should know that there is so much more to TR than Hello It’s Me and Bang the Drum.

I won’t — even though I could — go on for page after page describing his 40+ year career but suffice it to say that he’s been one of the most influential and innovative musician/songwriter/producers ever, always breaking new ground in progressive rock, synthesizers, recording techniques, interactive CDs and DVDs, video and computer programming.

He’s recorded in any number of different musical genres and is one of the most sought after producers in the business. He also sings like an angel and plays guitar as if straight from his testicles.

Am I a fan? Duh.

I’ve probably been to his concerts at least 30 times in 3 different states, own 29 of his CDs or vinyl albums, talked to him on the phone, shook his hand numerous times and finally met him and had my photo taken with him at some record store, which is now defunct, in Hollywood.

That photo is currently in hard copy form only or I’d post it here. It lives somewhere in a box in the rafters of my garage. I’ll get it down and scan it someday.

The photo above was taken at the Royal Oak Theater in Detroit probably around 1978. That’s Kasim Sultan playing bass, Willie Wilcox on drums and Roger Powell playing moogs etc.

This is the core of what would end up being his band Utopia.

Todd’s playing a black Strat through a Marshall stack, not seen.

So, we’ll be up late tonight and I’ll get up early for work tomorrow, tired and hungover, kind of like today.

Hopefully I’ll get a couple of photos worth posting here tomorrow but that’s unlikely since the best camera I’ll have will be a point and shoot Canon or my iPhone.

Stay tuned.