Most of the time, I have a very bloggable life

...so why don't I blog more? Why am I the prodigal blogger (or Prodigger, if you prefer)?

I am fairly confident it is because I make too big a deal out of the content. I want my posts to be masterpieces, the lot of them. I want to make sure I include every detail that is awesome and work the delivery of every sentence.

But I believe I've decided thats a bad idea. It instead encourages me to wait too long to spend time to blog, which in turn declines readership and when readership is down advertising dollars soon follow. This in turn discourages me from writing anything until its good enough to bring in the masses and the money. But what am I thinking? People won't come if updates are sparse. Oh, and also I don't have ads. So theres that.

In other words, I plan to go for quantity instead of quality.

Now, with out further ado- I present to you "New York- a less then concise recap":

Back a few months ago, I caught wind of the concert pairing I had been hoping- neigh, YEARNING after for years. Eisley, the indy-fresh angel voiced, mild mannered super stars in hiding from Texas band, and Mute Math, the amazingly creative and hard touring, always-the-best-show-you've-ever-scene-every-time band from New Orleans. I rounded up a group of 8 other people brave enough to drive down to New York with me in a 15 passenger van (and who's schedules lined up) and headed down 95 one bright October thursday morning.


The trip down there was a good time- I had friends from different social circles, but they gelled very well together which made me quite happy. Since I was driving I didn't get to be part of much of the conversations in the back, but I could hear them having a good time over the engine noise and stereo- which was quite an interesting set up in itself. I had obtained a 5.1 speaker system from the last geek swap fest I went to for a measly $20, and thanks to Jarin's 300 watt inverter, we were able to power the monster all the way to NY, booming the bass and blasting the treble. Quite fun.

In addition to driving down there, I also got to drive in NYC traffic. When I told this to people before I left, they would always give me a sympathetic "that sucks dude" kind of look (if I told them I was doing this in a 15 passenger van they went pale and thought I was sui or homicidal). But after I got into the traffic, I really enjoyed it. In NYC you have to be aggressive, you see. Its like a competition for the road- winner takes the lane, loser has to wait a few more seconds. If you look at it that way, I think I played a pretty good game. After seeing so many yellow cabs that were basically moving traffic law violations, I realized that the cops in this town had real crime to deal with. As long as you don't kill anybody, just about anything goes. Instead of being flustered with this revelation as people cut me off left and right, I instead took it like a liberating breath of fresh air. I knew my driving abilities and limits and now I could actually drive how I wanted to the best of them. I had a blast earning respect in the concrete jungle. I think my favorite part was when I played chicken with a semi- I was behind a double parked car, and the light turned green. I knew the semi at the light had several gears to get through before he got to me, so I veered around the cab into the opposing lane straight towards him and stepped on it, getting around the cab before he could ever be a threat and turning onto the lane I needed to get to with out loss of life or limb. It was pretty jokes, man.

Even though we left about and hour behind schedule we still got there with time to see a bit of the city. After getting some coffee and using the bathroom, we strategized about our next move. Renee suggested we go to times square, and all concurred it to be an idea of merit and achievability.

Apparently, our group was always moving very fast.

We got there via the subway, meeting a few colorful characters along the way (an awesome guy who explained to us some of the meaning in a big artistic display on a building, a man singing a soulful rendition of "work all day, party all night" while handing out flyers).

New Yorker explains to us features of a building

Before long we got to our stop and walked over to Broadway street.

Wow. I don't think you can ever quite capture the larger then life scale and dyanmics of this place on film. You really just have to see it to believe it. After being there in person, I am pretty much convinced that it is the place where all the display manufactures go to sport their newest technology because every single one was brighter, bigger, and higher resolution than anything else I have ever seen or heard of. And the shapes of the screens- its like everyone was trying to out do eachother in the I-have-more-curves-and-deformations-then-you contest. But the effect overall was spellbounding. I tried not to gawk like a tourist at NY the whole trip, but when your in the middle of times square I swear its almost impossible. Its just that incredible.



Another thing thats incredible about times square (and Broadway st. in general) was the amount of street entrepreneurs that would come right up to you and try to hard sale you on something right away. They had no fear! We ended up having this little joke we'd say to eachother if someone slowed down or stopped for a few seconds. "Don't stop, you'll be solicited!" we'd say. And it was true- it was like they could smell a tourist who didn't quite know what they were doing from blocks away. We had people try to sell us a few things- but I can only remember two. One was a print copy of "The Onion". The other was a rapper bumping his demo.

He at least was a good experience. The man came up to us and started his introductions, started to ask us if we wanted to hear his demo- then stopped himself mid sentence as if he had forgot something very important earlier. "First of all, let me just tell you- I've never killed anybody, never shot anybody..." We laughed, and it broke the ice a little bit. He had a practiced somewhat weary demeanor that comes from trying to sell all day to people who don't care. But we gave him the benefit of the doubt, and I took a listen on his portable CD player- expecting perhaps a somewhat novice sound- rough recording, genuine emotion, maybe desperate lyrics. He was after all, bumping his CD on the streets of NY. You gotta be desperate at that point, right?

But within seconds I was impressed. A symphonic chord filled the headphones as one of the tracks started off, and his voice, strong, clear and determined came on the track. "Yorel," it said, "spit that fire." His intro continued cinematically. "So much pain... come on, tell me what pain is." The beat dropped and I was already strainging my ears to hear where he was taking this. Soon I realized he was quite different then I had first thought:

"9/11 was supposed to brake us- all we did was wake up.
Many tears fell as mucas caked up, say what?
Lest we forget- those 4 planes hit,
My uncle died 9/11 so he ceased to exist.
Me and my tear drops are on the line and became best friends
Mines will be falling down my face till my death
We fall and we rise- so rise up and come to accept it
You'll be an old man looking back on life you neglected"

The song as a whole was a sort of "keeping on" anthem of rising through adversity- waking up and doing something with the days of our lives and bearing the pain necessary for rewards. I was blown away. By this time I saw him talking to some of my friends about the art on the CD. I took my headphones off and listened in "...and this represents us- you see we are born into this life dead, and there is a struggle for our souls between good and evil.

The album art for Yorel's debut disc "Redemption"

So it turns out, the guy is a Christian. And his rap name, Yorel? It is Leroy spelled backwords, in honor of his uncle who died in 9/11 (he was on the plane to Pennsylvania if I recall correctly.). Really interesting guy. I bought both CDs. He was really nice to us, thanking us perfusely for our time and telling us how he was honored with the attention. ("When I blow up one day, and you come to my concert" he said, "You can come up on stage with me.")

But enough of these side attractions- I went down there for a concert after all!

We arrived their two tickets short. Jake and I decided that we would be the odd people out and find some tickets from scalpers- long story short, we got them, but it cost me through the nose. It doesn't matter- the important part is we all got in.

The rest of this I suppose would best be served by footage of the bands. Well, I have good news and I have bad news. The good news is, I did take clips of each band and they came out pretty good. The bad news is, I don't have a couldn't find a firewire cable so I can't get it uploaded till I get one. But I do hope to upload it sometime, because the concert was amazing.


First, Eisley- I had never seen them live. I was not disappointed. Despite some small sound issues towards the begginng of their set, they sounded amazing. They sing just as or more beautiful then they do on their album. They didn't hold back at all- the music was so urgent in the sense that they were totally in it right then. You could feel the emotion; it was palpable. Well, at least for me. Perhaps I'm just a crazy fan though. They played just about all the songs I wanted them too- some from each album, which was really great, and some from before their album which I had heard on various live recordings.

The crowd was really great, too. I was kind of nervous for them going in because it was the north east and they were a little band from Tyler, Texas- not to well known in the mainstream and very different then the "main attraction" band. But the crowd seemed to know their work well, giving them a very warm welcome and being just about as roudy as you can be during an Eisley show. One of my favorites songs was " I could be there for you"- not just because Stacy sang a large portion of that song to me (no I'm serious!) but also because the crowd totally seemed to "get" what was going on when Chauntelle sang her bar of the song- celebrating loudly after she sang the last words with cheers and applause. For those who don't know, since Eisley's been signed (and a bit before), Chauntelle has been the only girl who didn't sing. She used to, but decided for awhile that her voice wasn't good enough. She just wasn't confident singing up on stage. Well, in the process of this album being made she had a bit of a breakthrough- singing guest vocals for a friend, and becoming more confident. So when she sang sang that key bridge, executing it confidently and perfectly, it was really, really neat to see New England cheer her on. I was quite proud to be part of this crowd, which on their blog Boyd called "by far - the most roudy, jam packed crowd" and even concluded that "By the end of the set the crowd had peaked the highest level of this tour.". I couldn't be happier. Now maybe they will come back more often. (I talked to Boyd- their dad and manager- afterwords, by the way and made sure he knew I was much closer to the Boston area and that they should come down their more often, or even to NH. I MIGHT have said that if he went to NH I would bring a crowd at least 20 strong... so...if that happens, please back me up guys, k?)

After their set, I actually gave up my place closer to the stage to go and talk to Eisley. They were singing and hanging out back by their merch booth, and I decided that if I came all the way from NH I had to at least say Hi to everyone. I did. Everyone was just as nice and sweet as I thought they'd be. I also learned that one of our group knew some of them from way back when the Eisley family played worship at a church in Texas. It was pretty cool- Chauntelle recognized them and they caught up a little bit before Mute Math.

Mute Math. Daaaang. After Eisley's set, it was like someone said they were passing out 100 dollar bills, but the catch was you had to walk up as close to the stage as possible, bring 5 friends and not let anyone in edgeways. The crows was pretty big I thought for Eisley, but seemingly out of nowhere it just about looked like it doubled. I have never been in a indoor crowd so packed. But its no wonder why. They started off with their amazing intro like they always do, but this time their was a new element- video. Completely synchronized behind them for most every song was a mostly abstract concoction of video goodness that went along with the lighting, crazy antics and mood set by the band. And as usual, their performances were amazing. They know how to build up energy in a room. There is just such an air of excitement when they play, its amazing. It makes you just overflow with emotion.

The drummer, Darren King, looked very exhausted though, even after only a few songs. Like, really exausted- as in might be dehydrated and fall over any minute. I watched him for a little while, concerned- he wasn't missing any beats, but I could tell he was struggling. I've not ever seen him look so tired. I watched him for awhile through a whole in the crowd and made eye contact. I just nodded my head and smiled, like "You can do it dude; you've got this". It looked like he met my gaze and it was like he just pushed himself through it- picked up his head, pushed it up a notch. It was pretty impressive. Those guys really do give everything they have in those shows. Its one of the reasons I love them so much. Oh, and they do crazy things- like at this one, Darren crowd surfed- standing up! - on his drum. They are just straight up entertaining.

And that my friend, is my story more or less. We went home after that- mom swapping out for me on the road back to NH (thanks mom!) so I could get a bit of rest. We stopped in a sleepy stupor over at McDonald's and had much food and laughter (everything is funny at 3am over French fries). When we got home, it was almost 7am. I crashed and woke up at 1. Ate something, showered and went to work.

Ahh, my life. Tis good.

Most disappointing picture ever? YOU decide!