Blues Traveler Concert

Recently, April and I went to see Blues Traveler in concert at Villa Montalvo. Yes, Blues Traveler is still touring!  They’re still a lot of fun to see perform, and they still sound great.  They’re longer in the tooth, but you can see they still have a blast up on stage, hamming it up to each other even more so than to the crowd.

Blues Traveler is one of those bands that reached national prominence during my college years, whose music still holds up over 15 years later — man, I’m getting old!  I’m listening to the Four album as I type up this post, and I’m sure I’ll still enjoy listening to this album in another 15 years.

Image via Wikipedia

If you live in the San Jose area, find a reason to go to a concert at Villa Montalvo at least once… beautiful setting, intimate concert amphitheater, and of course, terrific weather in the summer for an outdoor show.  We were third row center, which makes you feel like the band is really playing for just you and a few other people, especially at a venue like Villa Montalvo.  To give you an idea of these seats, if you look at the back of the head two rows in front of me, that’s Steve Wozniak there. As April noticed, The Woz spends a LOT of time looking at Foursquare on his white iPhone 4.

It’s really a good time when you’re at a concert, hearing John Popper singing.

But you know what’s even better?  John Popper on the harmonica!

First Casualty of Concert and Culture Schedule

April and I had a whole bunch of stage shows to attend starting this summer, be they rock concerts, theater musicals, or stand-up comedians. I previously wrote about the Eddie Izzard concert and Avenue Q. We still have a number of other shows coming up in August through October:

• Blues Traveler
  
• Daniel Tosh
  
• Fly By Night
  
• Foo Fighters

Unfortunately, we lost one of our concerts for September, when
Kings of Leon canceled the reset of their summer tour. Too bad, I really wanted to see that show…

It Sucks To Be Me

The Cast of Avenue Q, San Jose Stage Company

No, not really… life is pretty good for yours truly these days

That’s the title to one of the songs from the musical Avenue Q, which me and April went to see last night in their penultimate performance at The Stage in San Jose.

I really didn’t know anything about Avenue Q before last night — I knew it was a musical, that it had puppets but was NOT for children.  Other than that, eyes wide open.

I wish I’d have known how much fun it was going to be.  I would have gone to see it earlier in their run in San Jose, and that would have allowed me to recommend it for everyone to see.  As it is, I can tell you this:  Go see this show when it comes to your city.

If a stage show has musical numbers with titles like:

• What Do You Do With A B.A. In English?
• It Sucks To Be Me
• If You Were Gay
• Everyone’s A Little Bit Racist
• The Internet Is For Porn
• I’m Not Wearing Underwear Today
• My Girlfriend, Who Lives In Canada
• And, my favorite… You Can Be As Loud As The Hell You Want (When You’re Makin’ Love)

You have to see it.

Great job by the San Jose cast, with special kudos to Rinabeth Apostol for getting the sounds right in the song “The More You Ruv Someone”, to Robert Brewer for going falsetto as Bad Idea Bear 2 and then going down several octaves to voice Trekkie Monster, and Monique Hafen for really belting it out when she finally gets to sing solo as Lucy The Slut.

Welcome to America, Spotify!

If you’ve been even remotely connected to the Internet over the past 48 hours, you’ve heard by now that Spotify is now available in the United States.  April’s friend Fayza did a good writeup introducing Spotify.  Of course, I only saw the article after I’d already received an invite to Spotify (thanks @slippytoad!).

I’m still feeling my way around Spotify, but I already like what I see enough to cough up the $9.99 per month for a Premium account.  My iTunes library is pretty extensive already, and now I can play those files through Spotify, as well as discover new music and listen to that one earworm song all the way through without having to purchase it.  I can’t wait to sift through all the links that Lifehacker posted as The Essential Spotify Tools.  And I’m really, really looking forward to more of my friends popping up on the service as more invites are available — it’ll be what iTunes Ping could’ve been for me, but fell completely flat.  Hearing what my friends are listening to is how my own music discoveries are influenced.

If you’re on Spotify already, but not linked with my on Facebook, you can add me on Spotify at “jnassi”.

And if you don’t have Spotify already… I have some invites available