the way i am

all day today i felt like this.

and then tonight i went to see my girl ingrid michaelson at the 9:30 club, and now i feel like this.

whew.

i needed that.

ready, set, (ok), go

for the official record, if the lead singer of ok go came up to me right now and asked me to be his wife, i would say yes.

and once we were married i would suggest, as only a loving wife can, that he should maybe not use the f-word 5 zillion times at a concert where his parents are in the audience.

and he would take my suggestion to heart, as a loving husband should, and then we would cuddle and watch his awesome music videos (here and here) happily ever after for the rest of our lives.

(and he would also figure out why i can't ever embed anything from youtube anymore. because that is also a good husband's job.)

the end.

i'll find my way

i ran out of work totally late last night, just in time to catch the last hour or so of a set by brandi carlile at the 9:30 club. if you do not already love brandi carlile, you should. and that is all i am going to say about that.

the opening act was katie herzig, who i had never heard of before, and who i probably never would have heard at all if she and her band hadn't come on stage towards the end of brandi's set (or should i say the end of the end of brandi's set) to perform "wish you well."

and it was heart-felt and it built and it fell and it was loud and soft and everyone was smiling and you could close your eyes and sway and not feel ridiculous and it could have gone on forever and i would never have been sick of it, which is just how a song should be.

i couldn't find anything online that came even close to the awesomeness of last night, but here it is anyway.



according to the little postcard i got on my way out of the club, you can visit www.katieherzig.com and get a free copy of her acoustic record, "acoustic trio," which also seems like something you should do.

and that's all i am going to say about that.

pour some sugar on me

here are some things that are very distinctly "washington d.c."

the white house
cherry blossoms
the smithsonian museums
massive tour groups
politicians
harried hill staffers
monuments
espionage and intrigue (if you believe the jason bourne movies. which i do)
clothes from ann taylor and brooks brothers
think tanks
retired military officers

and, that classic 80s cover band, the legwarmers.

the legwarmers are a phenomenon perhaps unlike anything i have ever seen.

their shows sell out within minutes. their fans are deeply devoted. and those fans show their devotion in several ways.

like by dressing like this:


{yes, those are pleated denim shorts i am wearing. pleated.denim.shorts.}







and also by staying up into the wee hours of the morning, singing, dancing, jumping (in the case of the guy standing next to me i am pretty sure going to the bathroom to partake in some kind of illegal substance) and definitely sacrificing the potential for long-term healthy hearing.

it was all i could do to drag myself home, and that was after patti and i fortified ourselves with lemon-berry-meringue shortcake after the show.

and once i dragged myself home i still had to take a shower to get rid of all that hairspray and blue eye shadow.

my ears were ringing until sunday.

and i would do it all again this friday.

everybody (everybody)

almost as soon as i announced i was moving to (the greater) washington d.c. (area), evan announced that i had to go to a show at the 9:30 club. so, since i am the kind of person who likes to do what i am told, i did.

on friday, to be exact.

with these folks, to be exact.




to see ingrid michaelson, to be exact.




who i love, to be exact.

the 9:30 club is right there in the revitalized u street corridor, and is very hip and happening. it has just the right mix of space and intimacy, though i think i would enjoy ms. ingrid even if she was playing inside a dumpster. i mean, of course i would choose the 9:30 club over a dumpster but i'm just saying. she does not disappoint.

i have yet to download the new album because i am sort of lame like that, but i highly recommend it. here are a couple of my favorites to convince you.





i also highly recommend that everyone experience a show at the 9:30 club, so you just come on over whenever you'd like. okey-dokey?

plan a

on a nothing but ordinary wednesday night, what you probably want to do is untie your moccasin boots, climb into bed with your heating pad and spend the rest of the evening reading a good book and/or watching tv online, all the while trying to forget that it is bitter, bitter cold outside and will be for a long time to come.

but if, instead, you decide to brave the outside world to catch a devotchka concert with amy and elliott, i can promise that you will not be sorry you did. especially because you will feel like you have been to argentina, the world's best carnival, 1920s eastern europe and heaven all within two hours. you will see a burlesque dancer, a lit-up tuba and other instruments whose names you don't even know. you will dance. and when you hear a spare, haunting rendition of this song, you will wish you could breathe in music like air and keep it with you always. and forever.

why, most of the time, summer is awesome

the air conditioning in my car appears to be broken, which is, quite literally, not the coolest thing that can happen in the summertime. on the upside, it's just extra motivation to ride my bike places. if i am going to be sweating, i might as well be getting some exercise out of it, right?

and, luckily, there are plenty of other rad things about summer that make a lack of car air conditioning ok. like enjoying a delicious, organic lunch on the sunny patio of one world cafe with dave. one world cafe is an amazing salt lake institution where there is no menu; the food is prepared fresh every day from local, organic, healthy ingredients, and you just pay what you think your meal is worth. no joke. it can be sort of hit-or-miss as far as deliciousness, but we caught it on a particularly good day and i sauntered back into work a hour (or two) later, full and happy, before realizing that we had left without paying at all.

me in a text to dave: good call on lunch. i enjoyed it so much, i decided to go back and pay.
dave in response: holy crap.

or, there was the jonny lang concert at red butte garden, after which i very firmly decided that if i am to birth children in this life, i would like them to be his. i think you can see why. he is a dream-yacht indeed, not to mention a skilled and soulful musician who makes me want to clap and dance barefoot. and have his babies.

mykel, keri and i had a wonderful time drooling.





and even chelsea, who was a little skeptical at first...



came around by the end.




outdoor concerts also provide some prime people-watching (read: judging) opportunities. there was some extreme picnic-ing...



(these goblet holders kill me. it's like the ultimate form of indulgent laziness)





and darling little kids...





(i would have put this kid in my pocket and taken him home if there hadn't been so much security there. long hair? a guitar t-shirt? painfully cute. i am also pretty sure his equally hip dad is either divorced or a widow, as a thorough ring scan turned up nothing. i told keri and mykel that one of them should tap that, but it went undone. alas.)

also some pretty amazing dancing...





check out keri's magical parking job. a jonny lang miracle!



and did i mention hardcore rocking out and a back-up guitarist who looked like he walked out of the cartoon "fat albert"? because there was some of that, too.







summer is also the perfect time to ride your motorcycle from denver to the arctic circle. if you are my dad, that is.




or, there was the free josh ritter and andrew bird concert at the gallivan center. it was my first official friend-date with anna, which i had been looking forward to for a while. i think it was a success. i hope she asks me out again. i love the gallivan center concerts because we get to watch such incredible music-making for nothing more than the price of battling approximately three million other people (many of them having given up shirts and hygiene) trying to do the same. as a highly dedicated fan(atic), nate was particularly pleased to be there. and i think he decided that if he is to birth children in this life, he would like them to be andrew bird's.

anna and i rounded out the night with mcdonald's sundaes on the porch swing. so there, air conditioning. you can't ruin summer no matter how hard you try.

onions and good concerts make me cry

my first concert was michael jackson. my parents got me tickets for my birthday; i think i was nine. i might have been 10. the three of us went and it was pretty much awesome. it was the tour for whichever album it is where, on the cover, michael's face is a big mask that's also a gate... anyone? maybe it was "black or white." i'm not sure. but he sang "beat it," so i feel like other details don't really matter.

it was a great first concert experience, to be sure, but it didn't really turn me into a concert lover. i feel like i can, and do, appreciate good music, but i've just never been the type of person to spend time and money catching every live performance i can. i have managed a few really great shows in the recent past, including bonnie raitt and the indigo girls and erasure, but i usually only hear about good concerts after they're over. and i'm usually not too bummed.

this weekend might have changed all that, though. thanks to hip and concert-loving em and chelsea, i heard about the hotel cafe tour 2008 and, since tickets were only $15, i decided to check it out. and thank goodness for that. because it was so. good. so. so. good. soul-soothing good. tear-jerking good. dance in front of strangers good. don't mind standing for hours good. can't sleep that night good. never want it to end good. so. so. so. good.

the headliner was ingrid michaelson who i had heard good things about but never really listened to before. now i love her with a love that is true. there is something i appreciate about a busty woman who still wear glasses, and tell stories on stage about chewing her hands when they fall asleep (the hands, that is). she was darling. and i just know we would be friends. my favorite song of hers was one she had just written two weeks before (so new it doesn't even have a name!) about being on tour. i had never before witnessed a newborn song. it was sort of like holding a newborn baby really, comforting and somehow familiar.




and the other performers were oh-so-good as well. meiko was so cute and shy and cruddy on stage and she sang my new favorite song, "you and onions make me cry." it's sort of about hot dogs, and i had a hot dog for lunch that day, so i sort of felt like it was fate.



and jim bianco was kind of like that guy who you love even though you know you shouldn't, the one who can get away with doing and saying all kinds of dirty things because somehow he makes it seem charming, the one who sweet-talks all the ladies, but always makes you feel like it's just you. you know the one? that's jim bianco. (i feel like this could become part of our vernacular. like, "oh, that guy is such a jim bianco!" or "don't pull a jim bianco on me, mister!" i am going to work on this.)



carey brothers sang my favorite song of his, "blue eyes," and told funny stories about having a song on "grey's anatomy" during a montage of a character born with both sets of reproductive organs (yes, you read that right) trying to decide which ones to keep, and about getting dumped and being single and all that good stuff. (i couldn't help but think that if he cut his hair and washed it every once in a while, things might turn out differently for him. but that could just be me.)



carey brothers is also, apparently, the man behind the whole tour concept. and, let me take a moment to say that it is a concept of which i whole-heartedly approve. each of the artists played rotating 15 minute sets, so you got to hear everyone more than once but not all at once, so you never got sick of it. this was especially handy when dan wilson came on stage.



his gyrating hips are nothing to be scoffed at (in fact, i spent most of the night imitating them), but he was a sort of awkward old man with bad jokes and white sneakers and we couldn't figure out what he was doing there. until, in the largest revelation of the night, he told a story about writing a song with his old band about the birth of his son, and then launched into "closing time." holy...!!!! remember that song? semisonic was not joking around. ponder on some of the lyrics and it will all become clear. "this room won't be open 'til your brothers or your sisters come"...? it was right there in front of us, the whole time.

the highlight of the evening, though was when jim bianco announced that all the artists were now going to "penetrate the crowd" (me: "i love being penetrated." em: "blog that!") and the next thing we knew, everyone was down in the crowd, inches away from us, singing a little song. chelsea touched ingrid michaelson, em said "hi" to meiko, and i sang right in the ear of the drummer. i think heaven is probably something like this.




the only non-heavenly part of the evening? the most foul smell any of us had ever endured, coming from one of the people standing in front of us. i don't know what the problem was, but i seriously think it might require medical intervention. em's eyes tell the whole story.



but even that could not ruin a night of magical goodness. and now, all i want is more.

(and thanks to chelsea for all these pictures. credit where credit is due, right?)