Her Morning Elegance by Oren Lavie
Monthly Archive: February 2009
Feb
26
Permanent link to this article: http://www.rhinoblues.com/thoughts/2009/02/her-morning-elegance/
Feb
22
to love…
graciously stolen from tamie (who got it from someone else):
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in a casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless- it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is hell.”
-C.S. Lewis
Permanent link to this article: http://www.rhinoblues.com/thoughts/2009/02/to-love/
Feb
22
The Sweet Remains @ The Roxy
One of the guys in The Sweet Remains, used to attend the same church as I do in LA. So when his band was booked to open for K’Naan and Mishka at The Roxy in West Hollywood, a bunch of folks from church decided to go.
I got to the club a little early, and asked someone who looked like they worked there if he knew when they would be selling tickets. He asked for which show, and I said tonight, to which he responded…”I think tonights sold out.” Since I hadn’t eaten yet, and there was still plenty of time before anyone I was going to meet was going to be there, I decided to walk down Sunset in search of some food (I hadn’t eaten yet.)
Around 7pm, a few of the folks I was meeting showed up, and the ticket office opened. We tried to get our ticket and were told that sorry, the show was sold out. It was looking kind of bleak for awhile. Eventually, a couple of the folks in our group who were on the list, were able to get in and talk to the guy in the band, who was able to talk to the folks at the venue and they let us purchase tickets (though we were supposed to leave after they played).
Most of my group filtered out after The Sweet Remains were done, but I hung around, curious about Mishka and wanting to see at least a little bit of K’Naan’s set.
Mishka, was celebrating the release of his new album Above the Bones, his first release on Matthew McConaughey’s record label. Matthew was of course in attendance as well. I hadn’t heard of Mishka before, but I enjoyed him quite a bit. He’s got a mellow reggae style…definitely influenced by the beaches and “roots reggae.”
The last act of the evening was K’Naan, who I was first introduced to when he opened for Stephen Marley at the Roseland in Portland. He’s a Toronto based, but Somali born Hip-Hop artist. His music is definitely influenced by the rhythms of Africa and reggae as well. In fact, he recorded the majority of his new album at Bob Marley’s home studio in Jamaica.
K’Naan is a blast, and I had wished it wasn’t a work night, so I could have stayed for the whole set.
Permanent link to this article: http://www.rhinoblues.com/thoughts/2009/02/the-sweet-remains-the-roxy/
Feb
13
Club Nokia: Michael Franti & Spearhead
I’m really behind in posting things…but I feel like procrastinating right now…so here we go…
Thanks to LA Metblogs, I was able to check out Michael Franti & Spearhead @ Club Nokia on Jan 30th. Club Nokia is part of the newish LA Live development next to the Staples Center. It is designed to complement the much larger Nokia Theater. It is still a fairly large venue, holding up to 2,300 people. It has two levels…the main floor and a balcony. For this show, the main floor was open floor space, and the balcony provided seats (Most of which were also general admission).
My friend and I staked a claim to a couple seats in the balcony to enjoy the show in a more relaxed setting than the “pit” of fans directly in front of the stage. Despite getting there shortly after 8pm (when the show was supposed to start), the second opening band was already on stage. The first thing I noticed, was how incredibly good the sound quality was. The mix was spot on for the space. No distortion, and the vocals weren’t overpowered by the instruments. Second, there really isn’t a bad seat in the place. The balcony seats all still feel very close to the stage, so for such a large venue, you still get the feel of an intimate show.
Franti & Spearhead were amazing. They came on around 9pm and played for a little over 2 hours. I wouldn’t have been disappointed at all if I had paid for tickets.
Permanent link to this article: http://www.rhinoblues.com/thoughts/2009/02/club-nokia-michael-franti-spearhead/
Feb
02
Relentless7
Relentless7 is Ben Harper’s new band. They announced two shows around noon on Wednesday at The Mint, a small venue near my house. I decided to throw caution to the wind and get a ticket to the Thursday night show and check it out.
Technically the Thursday show, was actually on Friday, as the doors opened at midnight and the show was scheduled to start at 12:30am. Thankfully, the show started pretty much on time. I found a nice spot near the middle of the stage, with only a couple of girls in front of me. Basically I was no more than 3-5 feet from Ben Harper.
The show was fun. The band played an 11 song set. It’s a little more “rock” oriented than his stuff with the Innocent Criminals. There were a few issues with the sound, but I think that mainly was because of the venue. Too many clubs have the mains up so loud, and then the guitars/bass/drums up so loud, that the vocals can get drowned out. A few songs into the set, Ben had them turn around one of the monitors to use it as a vocal field. So yeah, the mix wasn’t great in the venue.
I’ve got a couple pictures from my Blackberry, that I may upload later, I haven’t had a chance to see if they are worth putting out there.
Permanent link to this article: http://www.rhinoblues.com/thoughts/2009/02/relentless7/
