This is it. Last chance to see EL… Jeff Lynne’s ELO. So many great songs tonight but Turn to Stone was the best. Massive analog synths driving the song along. Ohhh maaan. I bet you wish you were there now! Listen to that! He’s never been the best stage performer as he really just stands there, but what he lacks as a performer he makes up for it with a great light show. So cool. A few other highlights were Mr. Blue Sky of course, Telephone Line, and Don’t Bring Me Down all at the end of the set. Oh and waaay too much time between songs Jeff! Come on pick up the pace! So I got to see two of the Traveling Wilbury’s live. Dylan and Jeff Lynne are now the only ones left. If Dylan sang Christmas Carols outside my door I’d probably watch but in his current mumbly nature I’d pass on anything else. I keep forgetting that I got to see Petty at The Gorge. So ding ding ding that turned out to be a worthwhile trip. Electric Light Orchestra. That’s a hefty name, but now they will fade into obscurity over the next few decades. The cutoff right now is the 1940s. No one actively listens to music from the 1940s. Within 20 years the 1950s will get left behind and then the 1960s music will fade. It will just be left to the music scholars who archive or teach history. Side notes to and era of music. I’d like to get to one of the final shows in L.A. but I think I get off the bus here. Oh and sign outside only ever said Jeff Lynne’s…
The Struts are my Taylor Swift. I just love them. Last time at the Commodore Ballroom they blew the roof off a 1000 seat theatre and tonight, just 10 months later, they’re now in a sold out 3000 seat theatre! My concert bro couldn’t join me tonight but we’re both at ELO coming up. I had about a 20th row seat and at one point Luke came down the aisle doing his Freddie hey oh, hey yey oh thing with the audience and it was hella loud. They spent so much time interacting with the crowd I think they lost track of time and they cut two songs from the encore. Pretty Vicious and One Night Only. Oh well. Good to see them again in such a short turnaround time.
What the hell John Fogerty? You’re acting like you’re in your twenties and it’s working for you! This was a shocking show at how amazing he was. The stories he told, the excitement and pure happiness he exuded, and having his sons on stage playing guitars made it all look a little like a time machine of CCR from ’69. What is happening down there on the stage?!
Well, that happened. First show of my Summer Night Concerts at the PNE Fair this year and 7th row! Daryl Hall, then John Fogerty and then Barenaked Ladies. He got through 3 songs and called it night. Maneater, Dreamtime and Foolish Pride. Ugh, the next song on the set list was supposed to be Rich Girl. So close, ha. Anyway the refund is forthcoming but yeah the time it took get there and the $25 parking is a little irksome. I saw Hall and Oates at the Hollywood Bowl in 2011 so no big loss. He’s looking terribly old now and I’m trying to get any classic rockers in while they’re still kickin’ the can down the road. Unfortunately the Pacific Coliseum only looked about 1/3 full so it seems Daryl on his own is not the concert draw that he might think he is. Not that Garfunk… Oates does much but back up vocals. A brand name will still draw in more than an ingredient. So, sorry Daryl the musical bell has tolled for thee. Gotta be rough and looks like he starts crying while walking off.
Lots of cool shit I did in San Francisco. Lorem hipster ipsum dolor amet mustache knausgaard +1, blue bottle waistcoat tbh semiotics artisan synth stumptown gastropub cornhole celiac swag. Brunch raclette vexillologist post-ironic glossier ennui XOXO mlkshk godard pour-over blog tumblr humblebrag. Blue bottle put a bird on it twee prism biodiesel brooklyn. Blue bottle ennui tbh succulents.
Lots of cool shit I did in San Diego. Zombie ipsum reversus ab viral inferno, nam rick grimes malum cerebro. De carne lumbering animata corpora quaeritis. Summus brains sit, morbo vel maleficia? De apocalypsi gorger omero undead survivor dictum mauris. Hi mindless mortuis soulless creaturas, imo evil stalking monstra adventus resi dentevil vultus comedat cerebella viventium.
Well hello Black Crowes, we meet again! The first time I saw them was with Jimmy Page in 1999. Most of the set was Zeppelin with a sprinkle of Black Crowes songs. Then I was supposed to see them on September 11th, 2001 at The Greek. That whole day didn’t happen. So my buddies and I flew to New Orleans to the Voodoo Music Festival in October. Earlier in the day, Snoop Dogg went on late, and then stayed on waaaaay too long. The Black Crowes being the headliner, and last band of the day, had their 1.5 hour set cut to 40 minutes because of the 11pm curfew. Thanks a %$@#&^ lot Snoop. Then I flew up to The Gorge to see Tom Petty with The Black Crowes opening. So yet another abbreviated set. What the? Now finally a full concert! Well, they stopped playing really long shows but it was a tight 90 minutes. And the opener Billy Tibbals was great. Bowie, Marc Bolan, and The Jam all sorta rolled up into one. Cool front man.
So, with a lack of friends to go to concerts with (sad haha), I befriended the new head of my son’s school. He used to go to tons of shows in London, and wrote for some magazines. So we hit it off pretty well at a mutual parents party and agreed we’d take in some shows around town. First up The Black Crowes! Couple more planned are The Struts again this summer. Gawd I love them. Also Jeff Lynne/ELO. Gawd I love him too. Last tour and in fine vocal form. I’ll be in L.A. when Sarah McLachlan is playing home town Vancouver. Booo.
What else? Oh yes new phone. Had to break down and replace my iPhone. So yes the above very nice clean concert photos are courtesy of the iPhone 15 Pro Max ABC7’s Live Mega Doppler 7000 HD or something like that. Next up in May, Los Angeles. Hitting all the usual spots. Paco’s, Tito’s, Rickey’s (oh no tragedy, he’s moved to Bakersfield)… just every Mexican place I love. Getty, Coffee Bean, Disney Studio Lot, Universal Studios, Gladstones, and of course Disneyland! Who’s excited?! You, me?
And yes Funko Pop! you finally got me. You hit the right buttons. The girl in the blue dress from Rush’s Permanent Waves, and Exit… Stage Left albums and Luke Spiller from The Struts?!?! What the? That is amazing and in a bit of a Freddie Mercury suit. Before a go karting birthday party this weekend I took X and his friend to Toy Traders and had a peep around. Such a cool store, you should really go there next time you’re in Langley.
After spending the latter part of last year playing in the sandbox of the Russo Brothers latest film Stormwind, err… I mean The Electric State, it’s been great to have had some time off during the holidays. Of course nothing says awesome Christmas gift from Santa like a dystopian apocalyptic war graphic novel along with an upgrade to the Quest 3. But you know it’s a great science fiction art book at the very least and the Quest is a stop gap for the arrival of the Apple Vision Pro juggernaut. Everybody loves robots until they maim you. With the strikes taking down Grammar Rodeo, err… I mean Star Wars: Skeleton Crew last summer, it’s nice to be rolling back onto it this month. Also had a few months on a prequel to the Quiet Place films. Then I’m rolling back onto Electric State to help finish it this summer. So it’s been Star Wars, monsters, and robots, and even more monsters since last summer. Been fun.
No, I didn’t. 6° Celsius water temperature, I’ll watch. The 104th year of freezing your whatever you have off. I usually walk down to English Bay and on the way think, “you know, next year I’m really going to do this.” Then I get down there and look at the horror on people’s faces and say yeeeeah, no, they are not having a good time.
My favorite camera ever by far and I currently own about 100 cameras. How did that happen? In 1999 I was working in beautiful downtown Palo Alto. Should of bought a house there, ugh. Anyway, Hasselblad came out with a special new camera called the XPan. I rented it and thought it was amazing. Then I rented it again and thought it was amazing again. So I bought one and it was really amazing once again but now I could use it all the time! It was $1999, like the year, which was an extraordinary amount of money for me at the time, but I was so happy.
One of the reasons I wanted to purchase it is because I was going to Bora Bora and I wanted some special photos. I think every photo I took there was a keeper. Just amazing. Then it broke. Not sure how or exactly when but I was under the Golden Gate Bridge and while looking through the viewfinder it wouldn’t focus. I was standing there wondering what was wrong and I pointed it to a group of people all lined up and silhouetted which I thought was more interesting than the bridge. As I’m looking through the camera being puzzled by what was wrong, I sense this person approaching and come up to my left side. I bring the camera down and look and him and he says with a deep growl, “don’t you fucking take pictures of me you mother fucker”. Uhhhh, what? Who the hell are you? Anyway I just said I don’t know what you’re talking about but I think my camera’s actually broken dude. He just glared at me and walked away. Well then… roid rage anyone? You’re not suspicious at all but I don’t want to die so yeah I’m heading out. So that’s what I think about when I see the Golden Gate Bridge. My broken XPan and someone who is probably locked up now for killing someone at this point in time.
After I moved back to Los Angeles I took it to Steve’s Camera in Culver City and they fixed the viewfinder and all was well. Just a mechanical problem. I also then took it to China but I have never properly scanned those images. I’m anxious to see those so many years later now that I have a scanning setup that is really awesome. Then life happened and the camera went into storage in beautiful downtown Burbank. Ya know, digital was everything now. It sat there for years and it was really the only thing I would want if the whole storage facility burned down. Finally after I went and rescued the storage unit a few years ago I had my XPan back and all was good. Or was it? It didn’t turn on! Noooooo! XPan’s are notorious for being difficult to fix and Hasselblad had to stop making them because they used mercury in the soldering. The European Union banned them and so they’re a rare commodity now and only about 16,000 were made. If the electronics are shot I’ve got a bricked camera and it’s just going on the shelf.
From Vancouver my friend Kevin said when he gets back to LA he’d take it into Steve’s again to see if they can fix it. 1 month, nothing. 2 months, nothing… 5 months later still radio silence. WTF Steve? Where’s my camera? Kevin called the shop and they said they got it to power on for a second then when they put it back together it didn’t come back on. They said they’re done with it and can’t fix it. Come pick it up. Ugh. The only glimmer of hope I had was that they did get power to it so the electronics must not be fried! Now what do I do? Nobody really fixes these things anymore. I resigned myself that it was now a shelf queen.
I did the occasional search over the last couple years. Reddit, Flickr, Discord, photo.net, Facebook XPan groups. One name did keep coming up. Wilco. Wilco Jannsen. “Wilco fixed mine!” “Yeah Wilco is great!” “Wilco brought mine back to life!” Oh wow, maybe there is an XPan whisperer out there! So I wrote Wilco in The Netherlands and told him what was wrong and that someone else had tried to repair it. His first question was what did they do and hoped they hadn’t messed it up even more. He said he sees that a lot. Well because children take up all your extra cash (worth it) I never really got around to sending it to Wilco. Then one day I just did. Sorry kid, no new ipad for school. All the way to The Netherlands it went, or almost. About 5 days later the package I sent off came back to me. Yadda yadda yadda you can’t ship batteries inside a camera. But it didn’t have a battery!!!!! I even showed the guy working behind the counter at Canadian Post, look no battery! I packaged it up in front of him and then he only wrote “camera” on it. That was all it took for someone in customs to say “camera, must have battery” so back it goes! OMG So off I went to FedEx a few days later and sucked up the $90 to ship it and whoosh it went on it’s way this time.
About a day after it arrived Wilco wrote me… I thought oh damn he’s got bad news already, but no! He said that’ll be $690 for the repair plus the shipping back. Here’s what is wrong, here are the parts, and yes the last place that worked on it looks like they just stuffed everything back inside like the monsters that they are. Do I approve the price for him fixing it? Oh hellz yes! OMG my camera is going to work! About two weeks later it showed up and there were even fresh batteries in it! When I turned it on all the lcds lit up and the shutter fired. What a beautiful sound. XPan is back baby! One of the things I read on a Reddit thread was from a technician who said “the best way to keep an XPan working is to use it”. Alrighty then, no more storage units for you oh mighty XPan. Also the last two actual sales on eBay for this camera were for $6,500. So I think I made the right initial purchase AND the right decision to get it fixed, but I’ll never sell it.
So here we are, we stopped by the fish hatchery along the Capilano river this week for a short hike to Cleveland Dam. Unfortunately the roll shot by the dam was a bad roll or something. Ah the perils of analog film.
Do you like Queen? Bowie? Slade? T. Rex? Sweet? Well I know I certainly do. I finally got to see The Struts at the Commodore Ballroom and they were sooo freaking great! The setlist was amazing and it included guitar and drum solos, band introductions, and they even joined hands at the end of the show and did bows! There was a lot of “come on baby! that’s right baby!” too. They’ve got that Big Arena Rock Energy! In the Houston clip below you can see Luke keeps a Freddie Pop! figurine on his piano. It’s like having a mini Beethoven bust. Strange Days into Could Have Been Me was such an excellent encore. As I write this a few days later I’ve kept thinking about the show and it’s the best I’ve seen in years and years.
Fun fact about the Commodore Ballroom is that when it was originally built for dancing, the floor was designed with tires stuffed with horsehair overlaid with 2×3 boards and then covered with shiplap. It gave the floor this bouncy feel so when everyone was dancing the whole floor would feel a bit like a trampoline. They have since updated the floor with layers of plywood, drywall, cork and foam rubber. It is a little disconcerting feeling a 1000 people jumping up and down shaking the building. You can’t spell disconcerting without concert. See what I did there? I might add that this venue is on the second floor so some day when the ballroom comes crashing through the ceiling it’s got a hard landing onto a bowling alley.
Oh also, I just got my Hasselblad XPan back from the Netherlands were it was finally getting fixed
by someone who isn’t a flounder. More on that fascinating (depending on who you are) journey to get it working again. I’ve taken it all over the world so it’s good to have it back. Look at all that film pano goodness!
I’ve had a few of these cast member badges over the years (see below). They sent out badges to every Disney employee around the world. Weird how 100 years doesn’t seem that long ago anymore. Only 34 years before I was born. That would be 1989 for someone born today. The very beginning of the Disney Company. Oof, mortality. I do like shifting timelines though as a mind exercise. Such as shifting The Beatles to where we are today. If they were to release their last album Let it Be today, that would mean the whole of The Beatles catalog would have been released between 2016-2023. The Beatles would have come and gone in the time I’ve lived in Vancouver. That’s messed up, and quite frankly astonishing. How about this one? Thriller is closer in time to Elvis Presley releasing his very first recording than we are from Thriller’s release. How is that possible?! Or how about Cleopatra timeline that sometimes gets posted about? She is closer in time to us than she was to the building of the pyramids. Even she thought the pyramids were ancient. How about that Kurt Cobain has now been dead longer than he was alive? Oh, here’s a good one I came up with. The movie Grease came out in 1978. It was depicting a time only 20 years before, 1958. That’s like a movie being released today about 2003. Here is a thing I recently read. The tortoise that Charles Darwin brought back from the Galapagos to study and come up with his theory of evolution only died in 2006! That tortoise saw Charles Darwin! And it died at the Australia Zoo owned by Steve Irwin. There are pictures of Steve Irwin with Darwin’s tortoise! WTF. That also plays into the crazy fact that none of the founding fathers of the U.S. knew what a dinosaur was. Yet we cling to the second amendment that was written during the time of muskets. Things change people. Especially fire power. I knew I could get politics in here somewhere. Feel the Bern. Also, one of the Wright Brothers got to see planes destroy Pearl Harbor and drop the bombs on Japan. So that plays right into this thought. The debut of MTV is closer to Pearl Harbor than we are to MTVs debut. Well, I’m glad we had this conversation about my badge.
Some things of note. Dinosaur is included in that image above. Aladar on the right in back towering above everyone. Dinosaur was very controversial when it was being worked on and some didn’t consider it part of the Disney Animation oeuvre. We were even in a different building deep in the bowels of Burbank. So, glad it’s in there. Also, Peter Pan is riding on the back of Pete’s Dragon. Get it?
Awww look at everyone sitting there nicely enjoying some music. My fifth time seeing Peter! Forum 2x, Staples, Irvine Meadows and now Rogers Arena. I doubt it will be the last as I expect he will do a ‘this is it’ tour as so many others are doing now. Pete (he told me to call him Pete) was in fine vocal form. Bonus is he’s not having to change the vocal lines to suit his voice like Bono and Elton have to. The band with Tony Levin, Manu Katché and David Rhodes is always amazing. David Rhodes was the musical director and guitarist for the Kate Bush shows in London. Tony is a god amongst bassists.
You know what’s great about living in Vancouver, or at least downtown? You get to walk to all the major concerts. And it’s all downhill! Both wa… well one way! I look down the street and there they are! Right there! I see you big BC Place stadium, big Rogers Arena, large Queen Elizabeth concert hall, medium sized Orpheum venue, and in between all you smaller Commodore-like clubs. All that and we still don’t get a visit from Tay Tay. Come on Taylor. Yeeeeah, I don’t really care.
I knew the set list (as generated below, I love setlist.fm for that) going in, and that half of it was all new material. I’m not fond of the new album so I bought a cheap ticket just to be in the building. Let’s face it ticket prices are absurd. I had a front row end seat above the wheelchair section near an exit tunnel. Which worked out great because after songs I wanted to hear I could go walk around the arena and marvel at the concession prices. One slice of pizza for $11! Amazing. That’s like seven Costco hot dogs just across the street. No wonder Costco’s concession is packed on event nights. Walking to the far side of the arena, which would have been behind the stage, I just sat down for a bit and listened. I was there all by myself. Nobody around, nothing. Pretty cool to hear Gabriel echoing through the promenade. Then I would walk back and hear Red Rain or whatever. Then I’d go look at merch or mooch around and look at the high end vending machines. There’s a lot of those now. Even a cake one. So back in my seat, Big Time, which isn’t my favorite song, it was the highlight though! Unbelievable staging and graphics going on. Just loved it. And of course Solsbury Hill. Who doesn’t love a song in the 7/4 time signature? Solsbury Hill, Money by Pink Floyd, All You Need Is Love The Beatles, the keyboard solo in Jive Talkin’ (seriously), verses in Tattooed Love Boys by Pretenders. It schwings baby, go ahead tap those songs out. I dare you baby! Could an Austin Powers movie actually get made these days? Anyway, I had decided I was going to leave before the encores to get a jump on the crowds, but come ooooonnn! In Your Eyes and Biko! Ya gotta stay right? Turns out with all the crap going on in the world Biko is still excellent and feels current. I stayed to the end which I haven’t done in awhile and then right outside I hopped on an electric Citybike and was home in just minutes! In Your Eyeeees… someone really needs to dress up as John Cusack and walk down the aisle towards the stage with a boombox above his head. Oh me? No not me, but someone should.
He did address AI and all things avatarry. Themes of his latest release. Stating that ABBA made themselves younger but that he, meaning the Peter on stage talking to us, was actually his avatar but his was 20 years older and 20 pounds heavier than real Peter. Real Peter was lying horizontal on a beach in the South of France with an Adonis style body. Oooooo Abba, he referenced something I worked on! Whoop! Planning a trip to Venice next year with a stop in London and they’ve extended the Abba Voyage dates through the summer so I might actually get to see it! Voulez-Vous! That’s French for “Do you want (to)?” Why yes I do.
So… upcoming concerts, Stephen Sanchez (oh bloody hell, ugh, just cancelled day of show). Sorta Twin Peaks meets Enchantment Under the Sea meets Elvis. Oh well. Springsteen (ugh, was postponed), Kiss (last one), The Struts (Freddie vibes), Big Wreck (Oh Canada!). Skipped Iron Maiden last week but they aren’t going anywhere and I’ve seen them a trazillion times.
Goodnight Peter. Goodnight Rogers Arena. Goodnight $11 pizza slice. Goodnight Chinatown station. Goodnight future Fogo de Chão location (see you next year), Goodnight Granville and Georgia hot dog vendor. Goodnight giant British lions at the art gallery. Goodnight cargo ships sparkling out on the water. Goodnight Moon and goodnight to you.
Project time. I’ve had this guitar an awfully long time. It even made an appearance in the before times here. I had it made in 1986 by a luthier in Fountain Valley. Gary Erickson. Super religious dude that held bible studies in his shop during non working hours. He made good guitars though and after 37 years it needed some love. I’ve always loved the zebra wood and it was pretty rare even back then. A chunk this big would jack up price like crazy so fake zebra wood guitars are now a thing and they look atrocious so I got lucky. After all this time and a couple of different storage unit stints the brass hardware was looking pretty junky and it didn’t stay in tune anymore. I decided to black the hardware out much like my favorite look for motorcycles. Fortunately I could buy all the replacement parts online. Kahler is still in business for the bridge, Schaller is still going for the tuners, and a knock off jack plate from China as Fender doesn’t make black ones. All in for a couple of hundred bucks and it’s back baby! It’s back! Now time for some strings and to intonate it up. (Fake update to make it seem like time has elapsed) Update! It sounds amazing all amped up and jammin’ some Crüe. And get a load of that circle gallery.
I’ve been listening to Night Moves a lot this year and out of curiosity I had thought “hey, are they out on tour?” Wouldn’t you know it they have an upcoming gig in Vancouver! What timing for that thought. At The Cobalt though? Isn’t that a slumlord building that is about to be condemned but has a club on the bottom floor? Why yes it is, and yes the concert was moved to The Wise Hall due to all the danger of dying in a fleabag concert venue. Anyway, skipped the opening band and showed up at 10pm for Night Moves and it sure is nice to be back out seeing small shows again. Not gonna lie. Love their sound. I also brought out my Canon 7NE loaded with Ilford HP5 film to capture some of that tasty 70s vibe on silver halide crystals. Look at those sprockets! Don’t you just love them? It’s like it’s 1976 all over again and Jim Ladd is playing Bob Seger’s Night Moves the song on The Might Met I’m under the covers listening to my transistor radio on a school night and it’s past midnight. Magical days. So Carl Sagan the song from Night Moves the band on Splotchified while you stare at the picture.
For the last 20 years or so I’ve used Mediatemple as my website host. Ya know, they were based in Culver City so home town team vibes and all. They were great. If I ever had a problem I could chat to them on the website and they fixed any problem within minutes. Well along come Godaddy and they bought out Mediatemple and when they flipped the switch last October my website immediately stopped working. Way to go. You could view some of it but I couldn’t log in anymore and any links to other parts of the site downloaded small php files. So it sat and sat and sat… then I thought I’d try to contact Godaddy. No reply, months and months. Then I texted them and had a chat with a bot on my phone until finally it said I’ll connect you with an agent. !!!!!wHaT?? Then my phone sat there for hours because bot said they had high demand. This never happened with Mediatemple. 4 hours later an agent finally texts back and I had to jump through so many hoops to prove who I was and this all played out over about 6 hours. Then they said they had to hand it off to someone higher up to help fix the problem and I never received another text. So I tried again today and same thing, wait wait wait and I tore a strip off poor Santosh when he finally came on. I had to go through the same verification processes and I just said ugh forget it and closed the chat. Useless. After a few hours of research I finally found an answer to my problem. Thank you random internet poster. One stupid line of code I had to delete out of an access file and all is well. Ugh. So anyway happy it’s fixed but annoyed at Godaddy support. I didn’t choose you Godaddy and I hated your boob-centric ads too.
