A Farewell to Farewell Shows - July 25, 2008 - 8pm

The special guests for the night are some of my favorite friends to share the stage with, so you should know all of them and be familiar with their acts… I’ve got over 2 hours of stuff from me planned, so this’ll be fun. I know that you’ve known about this one for a while, but I wanted to have a flyer for it, and I figured a candid shot that I took of my keychain was a nice one for it…

Hope to see some friends out there for it…

On February 24, 2003, I took to the stage at Liquid Cellar Bar and Bistro across the street from UCF. I remember that with their venue, they were just starting out their open mics, so I was given an opening hour long set there. At Natura a few months later, I would be given a similar offer before they got busier and had to cut it down. Not bad, to say the least.

Open mics are tricky things to do, I always thought. You have three songs to play at a place where noone really cares about what you’re playing and they’re just there to drink their beers and sit with their friends. Or, they’re in a band and looking for someone new for their band. Still, they’re not the best things in the world. I used to think they were, but I loved doing my opening sets because it was like weekly shows.

That was the case with this night. Being the opening act at an open mic night like this, I got to play what I wanted and not my three songs in 15 minutes and run off stage without people knowing who I am. And that being said:

1) Introduction - Again, here’s me separating out talking from the tracks. So if you want to loop me introducing myself? You’ve got thirteen seconds here to do so in.
2) “Consistency” - A cover of Ari Hest’s song, I enjoyed playing this one live for a while. It was always something fun to mess around with. And this is back from the days that I didn’t really adjust a song to my voice but just let it loose on what I felt sounded good. Boy, was I wrong.
3) “Grain of Salt” - This original was an interesting one. It was the first time that I started really writing solo and thinking of a band after the breakup of Mindflux. While I thought that I might find another band soon, I intended this to be the “breakout” song. I only played it for a few months, and I’ve since forgotten how to play it. Maybe I’ll relearn it sometime.
4) “Down (Alone Now)” - I wrote this one about a month and a half prior to playing it, and it was the big song that I always played at open mics back then. It was the first piece that I wrote in the breakup of Mindflux and I thought that this was the redefinition of me. From this one, I had the courage to write and start doing the music thing again, because I was fairly devastated at the breakup of the band. I started thinking that maybe I could actually go somewhere, and I tried to enjoy it with this one. By the way, the fadeout on this one? That’s all live, baby. No effects.
5) “Trying So Hard” - Most people know this one and have heard this one from me, but there’s something different about this one, and its why I wanted to share this show. This show marks the very first time that this song was played. At this point, I had written it just over a week before and I thought it was alright and somewhat catchy, but I wasn’t sure where it would go and how it would survive in the long-run. Of course, as most people know, this is “the song” for me. Its interesting to listen to it there and then think of how it’s evolved since then. Definitely a “collectors item” to hear.
6) “Couldn’t Stand the Weather” - With all of these generic pop-rock tracks that I write, you wouldn’t really know that I’m a huge fan of the blues and a huge SRV fan. I used to work this cover into my sets back in the day. While my voice wasn’t there for it, the guitar work always was fun to do. It was a nice change of pace from the poppy other stuff that I’m known for.
7) “In Too Deep” - A rock piece that I wrote just after leaving high school, its the oldest song of mine that I played that night. I wanted to bring it out and I enjoyed playing it. Has a nice twist with the pre-chorus and a strong “sing-along” style chorus.
8) “Waiting For Change” - After the breakup of Mindflux–which I know I keep referring to, was just about 3 months prior–I didn’t want to play “Second Rate Superhero” because I hadn’t taken it back and made it mine. I pushed it aside and ended up writing this track to use as my “big ballad” of the night.
9) “Radiance” - I loved playing this cover and closing my night with it back in the day. The closing track to the album of the same name by Athenaeum, it was the first song of theirs that I learned how to play. I loved closing off the night and just letting this one ride and pouring it all out into the music and just letting it all go.

So there you have an interesting diverse set with some tracks that you don’t hear everyday from me… Something not really what you’d expect, but I think the variety of it and my naïvety helped make it a fun little night there.

And again, remember you need to have an account and be logged in… If your account isn’t working, well, let me know.

Yup, anywhere and everywhere on this site you can find anything from Version 3.0 of Internet Explorer to the original download of GAIM. All of these are mostly pointless and unnecessary, until you actually need them. Sorta like me this past week.

Alright, I’ve got nothing else, enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Well, when she and I first started dating, this was her only computer. And while she had it and it had an ethernet adapter and a modem and all of that fun stuff? It just wouldn’t work. Whenever you’d try to load up Internet Explorer (which was so old on the initial install of the upgraded Windows 98 SE, it was just “Window’s Version), it would give you an error message. Just wasn’t cool, to say the least.

I decided that with us spending a few weeks at her parents and at mine, well, I would be going through internet withdrawals if I had to share a computer and have limited time. Much greater than that, how would I update all of my friends here on my blog? Or even scarier, sync up my iPod nano?

I’m being facetious here. I am addicted, just not that addicted.

So, I set to it last night, starting to see if I could figure out what was going wrong with it. I suspected that there was an issue with the internet driver, so I started plugging away at the old 3Com Fast Etherlink XL card (3C-575TX, for those keeping score on models and all of that fun stuff), and I finally made a breakthrough when I got the computer to do something wonderfully awesome.

Yes, my friends, I got it stuck in an endless reboot loop. You can’t top that.

I broke the loop with a safe-boot to the DOS prompt and then? I tanked the sucker with a reformat. It hadn’t been used since 2003 sometime, so it worked well, to say the least.

All of that accomplished, I had a fresh install with Windows 98 SE running just an hour or so later, and then I put it aside for the evening after updating the ethernet driver and limping around online with Firefox 1.5.

This morning, I picked it up again and started plugging away and figuring out what I could and couldn’t do. I’ve got a few ideas that I might put the laptop to use for, but I got Open Office 1.1, GAIM 2.0, IE 5.5 (because 5.0 wouldn’t run Gmail), and Classic FTP all installed with a few more tricks up my sleeve to apply, and here I am.

Yes, here I am. I’m actually typing this from the laptop. So you can expect that if we stop at a hotel with free internet in the room that I’ll actually be online.

Even if I am limping along with an amazing Pentium machine. Its not like I can sync my iPod nano to it anyways, you know? There’s sort of this issue with the fact that my nano has 4 gigs of space and this HD only has 2.4 gigs free… Yeah, might be a small problem…

MSNBC, I think we have a problem...

I know I just posted, but still, I saw this on TV. I saw the poll posted earlier and something didn’t seem right as I was listening and looking out of the corner of my eye, but now that I looked at it again, well, it all makes sense now.

I guess this explains why McCain spoke to the NAACP today: he must have watched Face/Off last night…

1) My final grade posted online with UCF and its official: I am a Class of Summer 2008 alumni from the University of Central Florida (BA English, BSBA Management). I made the numerical requirement for Dean’s List, but because I didn’t take 12 credit hours for summer, I don’t believe it counts. Still, I’m happy with it.

2) If anyone tried downloading the show from yesterday, I figured out what I did wrong about posting it. See, WordPress had an upgrade to 2.6, so then I had to upgrade my Download Manager plug-in. I upgraded it, but didn’t appropriately upgrade the permalinks and database. Soooo, that being said, I took care of that this morning and it should be working now.

3) I’m looking for a few plugins, if anyone knows of them:
a) Phone/Audio posting similar to what LJ does on their site, if there exists something like that for WordPress?
b) Mobile Picture posting? Something where I can text in a picture from my phone to post it here on the blog?
I’m looking for both of them so I can upgrade on our moving trip in a few weeks.

And a note or two on that in a few days whenever I get around to it.

So here, I’ll start off with one from Mindflux: February 22, 2002 at Wack-A-Doo’s on campus.

Mindflux was my first band here at UCF, with Harry Ticer on violin and Lorn Miller on bass and backing vocals. We played shows from about January 2002 through November 2002, breaking up after being together for just about a year. We never really released any albums, but we did release a few live shows, including this one initially.

For this show, I remember there was a lot of anxiety from me. Wack-A-Doo’s just started a live musician feature on Friday nights and we were the first band to really do that at all. This was only like the second or third show for us, and we were still a little rough around the edges. Add to that the fact that a lot could have gone wrong.

See, Wack-A-Doo’s told us that to play we needed to play acoustic. I only had a regular acoustic guitar, meaning that I’d need a pickup for my guitar and couldn’t use my usual Epiphone Les Paul. Yeah, it was only a cheap Special II model, but it was all I used to that point. So with that in mind, I went to Sam Ash that day and bought a soundhole pickup for my guitar. And also with that in mind, I bought my very own microphone and stand, just to ensure that I’d have something that worked right and that I knew how it’d work. I’d learned with my limited show experience to that point that a microphone could make or break my voice, and I wanted to have that in my hands.

So with all of that in mind, I had dropped about $150 before the show, we practiced, and this is how it turned out. And from there, I think it’s only fitting to talk a little about the set:

1) “Entrophy” - This was the first song we wrote and had a moving solo/interlude section where we all were featured soloists. Fairly simple on the words and melody, it was something that I wrote on the fly to go with the riff that we wrote. The cool part is the interplay of the three instruments: its what we based the whole band off of.
2) “One More Time” - I always lead into it with that joke and yeah, I know it gets annoying just listening to it once there, but I thought it was good. By the way, notice something interesting about the guitar? I’ll explain shortly…
3) Change in Plans - I was a fan of splitting tracks initially to keep talking to a minimum before and after the tracks, so this is just a spot where we stopped and talked about the set.
4) “Wack-A-Doo’s (Breakfast at Tiffany’s)” - Just as it says in the parenthesis, this is a cover song. I thought it would be clever to joke about them being called “Loco’s” at one point, seeing the restaurant had just been renamed. Yeah, its not. I know. God, I was young.
5) “And I Said” - This is the oldest song that I still play to this date, and if you notice there’s actually a guitar solo. Notice the distortion? That’s distortion on an acoustic guitar. I was running my guitar through a Fender Frontman 25R amp, the same as Harry (our violinist) used and I just kicked on the second channel and let it rip. And yes, as you can tell from the recording, it wasn’t the only time that I did that during the night.
6) Thank You’s - Just another brief shoutout and thanks for the “venue.”
7) “Look At Me” - This one was still in development at this point in time of the Mindflux “career.” I had just written it about a week or so before and we had drilled the practice down and made sure we had everyone’s cues in place. As you can hear in the track before, I still hadn’t even learned the lyrics because I requested a chair to put them on. That’s why I think I mumbled the lyrics through half of it. Also, if you’ve heard my song “Naked,” you can tell that it eventually evolved and became that. They have a similar progression, minus the capo on the latter.
8) Request for an Encore - I think they looked over at us from behind the bar and asked us to do another. You can hear shouting for “Second Rate Superhero,” which I ignored. We hadn’t rehearsed it that much and I didn’t want to do two slow songs back to back. You can hear the word “Watchtower” shot out and then Lorn laughing.
9) “All Along the Watchtower” - A cover that we did well, we took elements from Dave Matthews and Jimi Hendrix and melded them together. The thing that always keeps me in awe with this recording is Harry’s solo that starts around 3:45 and goes till 4:49. The key phrase in that solo is at the points between 4:32 and 4:49 that closes it off. Why? If you go back to Hendrix’s studio version of the song, you’ll hear the same exact phrase between 2:16 and 2:31 with some elements from 2:45-2:49. Harry was a HUGE Hendrix fan and studied his phrases and transcribed them for violin and they were just phenomenally done. Because of this, his wah and distortion and other effects on his violin? He could pull off a hell of an impersonation.

That being said, I hope you enjoy this one. I’ll have another one on next Tuesday from an interesting show in my solo history… But for now:

Remember you need to have an account and be logged in… If your account isn’t working, well, let me know.

That’s what makes this site so great:

A bunch of folks found their old mixtapes that old boyfriends or girlfriends made for them and share not only the music in beautiful grainy tape quality, but the stories and memories associated with these analog relics.

Poetry in music if I ever heard of it, if you ask me… And a great way to get a ton of free music too!

Each and every day over the past seven years, I’ve woken up and thought about what class I’ve got this week, next week, coming up this semester or the one about to start. I’ve worried about grades, sat in front of my computer checking for e-mails for class projects, or just stared at a blank Word document, working on parts of a paper in my mind and letting it slowly write itself.

The truth is, now that school is all done? I don’t know what I really have to do, honestly.

The future is something that will scare me a little bit because I’m not walking out and into a job. I’m still working on that end and finishing off the retooling of my resume, but seeing I wouldn’t be able to interview for anything until after August 19th when we’re moved into our new place and hopefully somewhat setup, well, I’ve got to schedule things up till then.

Its different, that’s for sure. And knowing how much things will change, much more than I initially expected or posted about in the past. I still haven’t taken the time to really post about the true changes now, seeing that master plan changed, but I don’t even feel ready for it yet. I think I might do that shortly after I take to the stage a final time in Orlando.

And that alone is scary for me. On July 25th, I’ll be returning to an Orlando stage for my “Farewell Show.” I know that I’ve had almost more of these suckers than KISS and The Rolling Stones combined, but even still, knowing that this isn’t something where I’m heading back to my apartment and talking to the same musical friends across town gives this one a different sort of weight.

With that weight, I’ve got an interesting night planned at Natura. Starting at 8pm, I’ve got a veritable pantheon of my musical friends all sharing a stage with me for one last time. Sure, I couldn’t get Mike Brooks or Gina Riggio or Harry Ticer or Lorn Miller or Rob Somers to be back up there with me, but other than the big names that people remember seeing with me, the only obvious other ones will be beside me that night as I truck through some of the best things I’ve written and some covers that I’ll butcher. And covers there will be.

Matter of fact, head over to my music page if you’ll be heading to the show and feel free to request anything from my back catalog. Don’t forget that they’re all free downloads, just sign up for an account. And if your prior account that you’ve signed up for doesn’t work? Let me know.

If you remember me playing it and its not there? Again, go ahead and request it. I’m trying to make sure I play all that my friends want to hear (and some they probably don’t too) just to make sure that I feel like I “vindicate” myself in the end of it all. Covers too. I don’t care, I want to do what I’ve always intended on doing: walking up to that stage, playing my heart out, and seeing someone smiling and nodding along. And that’s why this last show is going to have so many requests.

This time, it will be the last time.

Natura Coffee and Tea, Orlando, FL
Friday, July 25th, 2008
Starts at 8pm, goes till we’re done and my fingers are bleeding
No cover, tips are always welcome (including “get a haircut” and “get a job”, but money preferred)

That could never be me.

I wouldn’t exactly call myself a foodie because I’ll eat anything that’s placed on my plate. I’ll try everything at least once, and from there if I really like it, well, I’ll have it again. And I truly enjoy ethnic food–and not just the stereotypical “Jew walks into a Chinese restaurant” ethnic food.

Sarah and I frequent a few Thai restaurants regularly, have a favorite sushi joint (or two), love heading across to a good Indian restaurant, and head out to a few Spanish restaurants from time to time. The catch to eating ethnic food isn’t calling Taco Bell Mexican or Panda Express Chinese. Its about delving into the restaurants where you see those of that ethnicity eating and feeding that hankering when you have it.

And for me, today that hankering was Cuban.

Being raised in Spring Hill, Florida, there was a great little restaurant over in Masaryktown just down the road that served Cuban sandwiches and shoestring potato fries. You know, the really thin fries like what you find at Steak and Shake? Well, those.

And from this, with an amazingly rich flavor and the perfect combination of all of the ingredients that are so lovely and un-Kosher, well, I couldn’t be an Orthodox Jew.

Here in Orlando, I was lucky enough to find a great Cuban restaurant a few years ago. I was working for a telemarketing company for outbound timeshare sales and on my lunch break, I stumbled upon a Cuban restaurant that I could bike to from work: Adita’s Cuban Bakery. Right off of University by (what’s now a closed down) Krispy Kreme, they had a small storefront, but an awesome menu. And I’d stop by once a week and get a Mamey shake and a regular Cuban sandwich. It’d run me just about $10, and I’d always throw in a few bucks on top of that as a tip because I really liked the joint. Adita (I presume that’s her name because she was the main woman running it and it would only make sense) would always give me samples or this or that pastry to try, and as I noticed, it was usually about the same price as the tip I’d leave. Sneaky woman. Even still, I loved heading there. Everytime I walked in, I was treated like I was family. She remembered me.

Flash forward to today. With Sarah and I moving soon, I’ve thought about heading back there, but I just haven’t had the time. I’ve been craving that sandwich for a while. And today, I realized that inside the Chick-Fil-A on campus across from the printing shop and next to the Bookstore in the John T. Washington Center? They’d converted a whole counter space of the Chick-Fil-A into a small version of Adita’s shop! I had seen the sign outside for a while and thought they were just advertising their off-campus presence, but I had no idea they were right there, right in front of my nose!

After not visiting the restaurant for over a year, I saw a familiar face behind the counter who looked at me with a huge smile and said “Where have you been?”

Folks, let me tell you. If you can find a restaurant that they remember you and you haven’t been there in well over a year? And that they’re just as friendly as the first day you were there? And you can tell that the food was made with love and care and with respect for the ingredients because while simple it tastes great?

Don’t let a place like that slip out of your grips.

They’re one of the many things I’ll miss about this area… Great restaurant, great people, and I’m glad that I had a chance to meet them. Maybe I can work out some sort of deal to have her ship me a sandwich a week…

I figure for this Sunday Share that I’d actually fully talk about something that I keep referring to from time to time here, there, and everywhere else.

Back a few years ago while I was working the RHAP shift one night, I got bored and I started Googling about getting freebees. I mean, hell, I’m a college kid (something I can’t say much longer), so I might as well get anything that I can for free. And that, is when I found Hey Its Free.

Goob runs an awesome site, and there is a nice little family on the forums there. One of the sites that I truly enjoy visiting and always like talking with the folks on the board.

And yes, I may be a writer for the site, but I wasn’t paid at all for this endorsement. :)

But the one thing I strive not to do is discuss politics today. In all honesty, this is a day we remember our country for how great it is. We overlook the faults of those leading it, and celebrate the legacy since 1776, and we remember all of those who have sacrificed for what we have today. With names that ring true through all of American history, this is a day to stop and remember and celebrate freedom.

This, is our Independence Day.

Needless to say, we were practicing a few times through our presentation and I felt like there was something missing at the beginning of it. So I used ChaCha and grabbed myself a quote to open it all off with. To preface this, let’s back up…

In Capstone, the class that I’m in, they do a strategic analysis paper to cap off the class. Every group in every class does the same exact company, so it gives a more objective grading to it for all of the groups to go up against each other in the final competition. Prizes include exam exemptions and extra credit points for participation beyond the class level, and if you win it, there’s gift cards there too, so its not a bad thing.

For this semester, the company was Harley Davidson, and their mission statement dealt with dreams. I wanted a quote to tie in with that. And on my second try with ChaCha, I got the above Garnett quote. And it was perfect.

See, I’m not the first guy people think of when it comes to sports. Growing up, I played baseball some and participated in martial arts. I always played neighborhood pickup games of roller hockey, football, basketball, or baseball, and I followed a few teams here and there. As a whole, though, when I came to college I focused so much on the music that the sporty side of me was somewhat lost behind that. Add to that meal plan, the freedom to buy pints of Ben & Jerry’s and bags of Swedish Fish, and a glowing computer monitor with an instant messenger window open and I barely strapped on my roller blades anymore. Sure, I did intermurals a few times, but mostly my first few years.

So why would a sports quote be perfect? My teacher is a huge Piston’s fan. Salt in the wound, and make it count and work. And because he’s a nice guy who I knew would appreciate it and laugh at it? I used it.

And not only that, but I concluded with the same phrase to tie it right back in.

Did we make it to the semi-finals?

While “anything is possible,” apparently that wasn’t. We weren’t the top team, but I still feel good about my last presentation and paper from my last class as an undergraduate…

Today marks a half a year that I’ve blogged at least a post a day. Be it all me, or some friendly surrogates, I’ve gotten in at least a sentence or a thought a day. And its good for the writer to do that.

For my first year of having this site, I wanted to do that. And the more and more I thought about it, and the more I realized a lot of the uncertainties and days/times that I might not be able to blog, well, the more I thought about how maybe a half a year was good enough for posting once a day.

As a whole, we’ll see if I keep up with getting in a post a day. I’m going to certainly try to when I have something to say, but I think it lessens the really good deep thoughts that I have when I post the quick lame ones that I’m just doing for the sake of blogging.

But, as a whole, blogging is just about writing what you feel like in your space, as you feel it. We’ll just have to see what I feel…

What it is, is the website of a really unique cell phone service. Running around and have a question? Text your question to 242242 (or “ChaCha”) and in the next few minutes or so, you’ll get a reply back from a real person. Answers change all the time, depending on who’s answering, so you can answer one question and get different answers if its opinion based, but if its factual, well, its a good start.

Forgot who won Superbowl XIV? Ask ChaCha.
Need to know the airborne speed of an unladen swallow? Ask ChaCha.
And if you need a magic 8-ball style answer? Just ask ChaCha.

I’d say that the possibilities are endless. Its just like Googling yourself. Ever do that?