Live Music Weekend and "The Joneses" (Film 66)
Holy crap! What an amazing weekend, which was absolutely needed after a long week at school.
First off, I spent Friday night in the nostalgia lane because my buddy Brian's band The Fogcutters backed John Popper (Blues Travelers) and Chris Barron (Spin Doctors) at Port City Music Hall. The Fogcutters have always been amazing, every time I've seen them and this time was no different. The arrangement of old 90s tunes that I grew up on sounded great. I've begun to really enjoy music that includes a fantastic horn section. It was a "best of" setlist, but that's what everyone paid to hear anyone. It was hard to tell if John Popper was sick of playing those hit songs because he seemed to mask his indifference with alcohol (he seemed to be rather drunk, or at least his banter with the crowd made it seem that way). I didn't care though, because that guy can still wail on the harmonica, although he seemed to hold back a bit this time around. Having never seen Blues Travelers live in their heyday, I guess I'm going to have to settle for this one-night-only thing. And apparently Popper and Barron and old high school friends from New Jersey and that's why they were touring together.
I am so proud of my buddy Brian for all the success he is amassing these days, playing with some 90s 'icons' and going on tour around the country with another band. Hell, he even told me that he'll be recording with a band in LA and the producer is Randy Jackson (American Idol, anyone?). And to think we only met by happenstance a few years back when we both went on a "baseball trip/course" through our college (University of Southern Maine). That trip was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. You know when you have certain experiences where when they are done, you wish you could do it again, but you know if you attempt to try and rekindle the flame of the experience, it will never match and meet your expectations. It was that kind of trip. There was a small group of us, having never met before, that instantly clicked after spending about 2 or 3 hours on the bus. Then we all hung out for the next 14 days together, seeing baseball, eating, riding a bus (sometimes for 10 hours at a time). We went as far west as St. Louis and made some great memories with some amazing people. I've only had one other experience like that in my life, so far, and that was another road trip, one that I took on my own, but had the chance to meet some incredible people along the way, as well.
And then, Saturday night came a concert that I'd been looking forward to for months...Lady Lamb the Beekeeper's record release show at SPACE Gallery (which is perhaps my favorite place to see a show, maybe because I'm a self-proclaimed hipster). This was her first show with an entire band backing her and she sounded incredible. Every time I see her I am in awe of her talents. She has one of the most amazing voices. I went with my good friends Chris and Vanessa. We had dinner at Duckfat before the show. We always seem to meet really interesting people when we go out as a group. It's always so much fun. The conversations we end up having turn funny and bizarre. Also, finally got to see my friend Celina whom I went to high school with and we keep seeming to miss our opportunities to hang out. We always seem to hit the same shows but never cross paths. So, we finally connected at SPACE. Anyway, it was such a great show and there's a lot more shows coming up that I'm lined up for. Oh, one more thing, though, SPACE is a small space (pun intended) and someone in front of us kept farting and it left a lingering, pungent smell. it was wafting. Awful. But I tried really hard to just focus on the music. I wasn't going to let anything ruin the show for me. Vanessa had a hard time with it though.
...............................................
"The Joneses" is a straight to DVD film starring David Duchovny, Demi Moore (where the hell has she been?) and Amber Heard, as well as a rather unknown actor and Gary Cole.
The film is about a seemingly perfect family of four people who are extremely good looking, popular with everyone, affluent, and always ahead of the curve when it comes to the latest gadgets and such. Everyone wants to be them, or at least have everything that this perfect family has. And here in lines the problem (and the joke): These people are not real. I am they are real, but they are a marketing unit set up as a family to sell things to everyone around them, competing for higher numbers with themselves only, in order to stay a family/marketing unit. As someone familiar with the marketing field, through college courses, reading several books, and doing some research of my own, I've learned of a marketing term called "early adopters" or what Malcolm Galdwell calls the "tipping point."
The film did not really work for me because it could have been something more, if it was solely a marketing-based film. Instead, the script called for conscience dilemmas. David Duchovny's character has the flaw of being human, and not a programmed robot, designed to just sell, sell, sell. This plot point drives most of the movie, since the problem stems from Duchovny wanting to live a normal life while remaining sort of behind the screen. He falls for Demi Moore and it becomes a slight love-story, which was infuriating, since the film was very superficial and only focused on surface.
It was a bummer of a film that never seemed to work or really take off.
First off, I spent Friday night in the nostalgia lane because my buddy Brian's band The Fogcutters backed John Popper (Blues Travelers) and Chris Barron (Spin Doctors) at Port City Music Hall. The Fogcutters have always been amazing, every time I've seen them and this time was no different. The arrangement of old 90s tunes that I grew up on sounded great. I've begun to really enjoy music that includes a fantastic horn section. It was a "best of" setlist, but that's what everyone paid to hear anyone. It was hard to tell if John Popper was sick of playing those hit songs because he seemed to mask his indifference with alcohol (he seemed to be rather drunk, or at least his banter with the crowd made it seem that way). I didn't care though, because that guy can still wail on the harmonica, although he seemed to hold back a bit this time around. Having never seen Blues Travelers live in their heyday, I guess I'm going to have to settle for this one-night-only thing. And apparently Popper and Barron and old high school friends from New Jersey and that's why they were touring together.
I am so proud of my buddy Brian for all the success he is amassing these days, playing with some 90s 'icons' and going on tour around the country with another band. Hell, he even told me that he'll be recording with a band in LA and the producer is Randy Jackson (American Idol, anyone?). And to think we only met by happenstance a few years back when we both went on a "baseball trip/course" through our college (University of Southern Maine). That trip was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. You know when you have certain experiences where when they are done, you wish you could do it again, but you know if you attempt to try and rekindle the flame of the experience, it will never match and meet your expectations. It was that kind of trip. There was a small group of us, having never met before, that instantly clicked after spending about 2 or 3 hours on the bus. Then we all hung out for the next 14 days together, seeing baseball, eating, riding a bus (sometimes for 10 hours at a time). We went as far west as St. Louis and made some great memories with some amazing people. I've only had one other experience like that in my life, so far, and that was another road trip, one that I took on my own, but had the chance to meet some incredible people along the way, as well.
And then, Saturday night came a concert that I'd been looking forward to for months...Lady Lamb the Beekeeper's record release show at SPACE Gallery (which is perhaps my favorite place to see a show, maybe because I'm a self-proclaimed hipster). This was her first show with an entire band backing her and she sounded incredible. Every time I see her I am in awe of her talents. She has one of the most amazing voices. I went with my good friends Chris and Vanessa. We had dinner at Duckfat before the show. We always seem to meet really interesting people when we go out as a group. It's always so much fun. The conversations we end up having turn funny and bizarre. Also, finally got to see my friend Celina whom I went to high school with and we keep seeming to miss our opportunities to hang out. We always seem to hit the same shows but never cross paths. So, we finally connected at SPACE. Anyway, it was such a great show and there's a lot more shows coming up that I'm lined up for. Oh, one more thing, though, SPACE is a small space (pun intended) and someone in front of us kept farting and it left a lingering, pungent smell. it was wafting. Awful. But I tried really hard to just focus on the music. I wasn't going to let anything ruin the show for me. Vanessa had a hard time with it though.
...............................................
"The Joneses" is a straight to DVD film starring David Duchovny, Demi Moore (where the hell has she been?) and Amber Heard, as well as a rather unknown actor and Gary Cole.
The film is about a seemingly perfect family of four people who are extremely good looking, popular with everyone, affluent, and always ahead of the curve when it comes to the latest gadgets and such. Everyone wants to be them, or at least have everything that this perfect family has. And here in lines the problem (and the joke): These people are not real. I am they are real, but they are a marketing unit set up as a family to sell things to everyone around them, competing for higher numbers with themselves only, in order to stay a family/marketing unit. As someone familiar with the marketing field, through college courses, reading several books, and doing some research of my own, I've learned of a marketing term called "early adopters" or what Malcolm Galdwell calls the "tipping point."
The film did not really work for me because it could have been something more, if it was solely a marketing-based film. Instead, the script called for conscience dilemmas. David Duchovny's character has the flaw of being human, and not a programmed robot, designed to just sell, sell, sell. This plot point drives most of the movie, since the problem stems from Duchovny wanting to live a normal life while remaining sort of behind the screen. He falls for Demi Moore and it becomes a slight love-story, which was infuriating, since the film was very superficial and only focused on surface.
It was a bummer of a film that never seemed to work or really take off.
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