My vantage tonight, seeing Hilary Hahn.  I could have taken the 'leper colony' seats, again, but decided to chance it.  It was fine.  The young lady next to me didn't take her shit out of my seat when I got there, but there was no-one on the other side of me, and it was kind of a bench, so I sat between two seats, sort of.  It was fine at first, but I was sitting right on the seam, so it got kinda old.  At the intermission I was going to ask her to keep her shit, but they never returned, so no problems on either side of me for the rest of the show.

She played a solo violin piece that one of her patrons had commissioned for her that was just fantastic.  Show opened with the first part of that, then it was her and the pianist Cory Smyth playing Mozart, then she played the second part of the new piece, intermission, third part, then the pianist returned for a Sonata by Copland.  This was a much more Hilary-centric concert than the last one, so I was happy.

Hahn is playing that program in SF next week.

Wish I had the funds!

I'm sure it was stellar.

They put some tickets on sale just last week for me, would've been $30 for the anti-social seats, I paid $50 for my choral vantage.

West coasters -- Kaki King dates:

http://www.kakiking.com/tour

Trying to figure out the live Music venues in Chicago.  I got tickets to The Jayhawks in Lincoln Hall and then some big shows Cure, Bob Dylan/Mavis Staples in some big venues.

Good homework coming up, Jeff.

I just saw Abdullah Ibrahim and his Mukashi Trio at SFJazz on Thursday. They never talked about their shoes. In fact, none of them uttered a word. Great stuff.

(Squints)

I have been looking for the "These are my shoes" world tour to come through Chicago....Still looking.

I did snag Wilco tickets at Pritzker in August.

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Karrin Allison at the Green Mill. Really great show in a great venue.

https://vimeo.com/165737456

Seeing Buckethead in about an hour, forgot my hearing protection. 

Fuck.

I don't know the kind of place you're at, but some venues out here have foam early plugs available. Inquire

I did, and was initially told, "no", but was later tracked down and I am now the proud owner of two over-priced bulk earplugs. 

The concert was great, and if you're familiar with Buckethead, you know what to expect -- lots of beat-driven wanking, nunchucks, lots of wanking without beats, he handed out toys out of a big santa-sized bag at one point, some bass ganks...he's largely a Les Paul player, and he has his mostly white -- white body, white pickups, white headstock, white knobs except some... the pickup switch on the upper horn is red, and one of the knobs is red...it took me a minute to figure it out...

Wonderful little underground concert tonight.  Went to see Bent Knee CD release party (they're from Boston, but got signed to Cuneiform, a DC prog label), got introduced to a couple of indie bands I now like.  But back to Bent Knee -- oh, my were they fantastic.  Proggy.  Very proggy.  So much proggy.  Wow proggy.  Harsh transitions, they'll be playing one thing at one moment, then take a hard 90 degree turn and be playing something entirely orthogonal the next.  Lots of spacey, lots of pastoral, lots of rock, all shaken and stirred into a glorious cocktail of music.

I think I might have to go up to upper Baltimore tomorrow night to see them again.  They were that good.

And a cover (I am sitting here giggling over how great this music is):

And also I need to figure out if the bassist really dug me.  (She introduced herself to me.)  I definitely dug her.   Or perhaps she was just high, check her out, playing this shit seriously.

And the lead singer has this weird little vibrato to her voice that I kinda really dig

 

Went again, tonight.  Even better -- they played a longer set, the music room to breathe...I am in heaven.  I was giggling again with how good it was.  Alas, Melissa and company were surrounded by admirers, so I think my profile wasn't as high as the previous day, when I pretty much had her undivided attention.

Oh well.  Still dig  her.

That said, I got to meet the rest of the band -- Courtney, lead singer, keyboardist, magician with reverb; Ben, lead guitarist -- quite the character, tried to be entertaining, enjoyed awkwardly failing.  Example: when he signed my CD, he wrote "slipped on a dog", he said, "because that's funny", I said, "not to the dog", so he wrote, "the dog was fine".  Couldn't stop giggling.

...also Gavin the drummer, Chris, and Vince.

At a BBQ place 10 minutes from home to see bluegrass boys The Hillbenders do their "Opry" version of The Who's Tommy. Tiny room, less than 100 people. Saw these guys last year and tonight should really rock.

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Sarah Jarosz at a tiny Marin club

Nice!

Going to see The Weight tonight, a cover band made up of former The Band and Levon Helm Band members.  Should be as close as I am going to get to the Last Waltz.

That should be awesome Jeff!

One of those groups of guys that I never got to see.

5 hours ago, VPI said:

Going to see The Weight tonight, a cover band made up of former The Band and Levon Helm Band members.  Should be as close as I am going to get to the Last Waltz.

Cool!

I saw The Last Waltz in the theater, that's as close as I ever got.

All female jazz group

Panic! At The Disco with a falsetto masterclass.

2 sets of Ety Plugs paled in comparison to parking, but Zoë's having a blast.

3 hours to get 120 miles. Thanks, Atlanta. Hope the trip home is a little quicker.

9 In The Afternoon. Why they played this at 8:25, the world may never know.

**BRENT**

Noticed last second that Los Lobos and the Tedeschi Trucks band were performing tonight at Riveredge Park so I jumped in the car and headed to Aurora.

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Heading to City Winery tonight for Andy McKee. He always puts on a good show.