Circa Survive

So since I've been slacking off on the posting lately I figured I'd give y'all some mid-week Ross musings.

Last night I headed of with three of my best homies to tha House of Blues to see Circa Survive. Circa is a crazy awesome prog rock band with a singer whose voice is so high he makes Robert Plant and Geddy Lee look like that obnoxious country singer who sings Long Black Train. The show was brutally awesome.

It took us forever to find parking, because that's how the French Quarter is, and we ended up parking 10 or so blocks from the venue. On the way we saw not one, not two, but four groups of crazy hobo/crustpunk/hillbillies sitting on the sidewalk playing jangly tunes on broken down banjos and fiddles while they howled into the sticky southern night. I wanted to stop and watch a particularly large group of these vagrants, and maybe talk awhile about our mutual love for Hank Sr, but it wasn't really my friends' scene, so we endeavored to persevere. We got to the HoB right when the first of three opening bands* was playing their last song. The venue was packed, and we spent the rest of the song and most of the break after the band finished up getting closer to the stage. We got to with 10 or 12 feet of the stage, so we were sufficiently close to see the show.

The second opener, Code7 I think they were called, couldn't decide if they were hardcore or prog rock, which was pretty sweet. They were something like Pink Floyd's weirder stuff, only with more distortion and more noise in general, juxtaposed with something like this. The singer was acting like he was possessed, writhing around while screaming with his eyes rolling back in his head. It was a high energy set.

The next band was called Dredg (pronounced Dredge), and they were really cool. Much more mellow than Code7. Rushesque. After Dredg is when things got awesome. It didn't take the crew too long to set up Circa's Stuff, and when the band took the stage the crowd went nuts. When Anthony Green, the singer, took the stage the crowd blew up. He's one of those singers with fans who absolutely love him. One girl kept screaming "I love you Anthony" every time it was quiet enough for her to be heard, which wasn't often, because once they started playing they kept up a steady stream of awesome until well past midnight. It was a great show: everyone sang along to every song, there were huge banks of lights, a gigantic (the size of the entire back wall) poster of the cover art to Circa's latest album, confetti cannons that went off at various sFz type moments, and huge (3 feet across) balloons filled with colored lights bouncing around the crowd. During the encore they threw even bigger balloons (6 feet across) into the crowd, although they weren't filled with lights.

Overall, one of the better Tuesday nights I've had lately.

*This particular opening band was two dudes slamming on 8 string guitars, which are almost like a guitar and a bass smashed together, and a drummer. All I can say about them is that they were loud. Very very loud.

Sup peeps,

How's it goin? I know it's been a couple weeks since the last post. I'm a terrible blogger. Absolutely terrible.

I've been up to my usual antics: goin' to shows, doin' homework, hittin' on chicas, all that good stuff. School is going well, even though I've had to work more than I like lately. I got a B- on a philosophy paper, which I'm pretty sure is the worst grade I've ever gotten on a paper, so I decided to stop writing them the night before/the day they're due. Other than that things have been relatively uneventful. I signed up for a five mile race on Thanksgiving Day, so I've been training for that.

I saw a gnarly crust punk band called Star F*****g Hipsters last week, and they totally ripped. I talked to one of the singers in the pit during one of the opening band's sets, and he seemed very reasonable for the former frontman of a band called Leftöver Crack. This chick, the other singer from the band tapped me on the shoulder and said "excuse me bud," because I was in her way. It was rage-tastic.

Other than that I don't have too many interesting stories. I don't go out and act crazy nearly as much as I did last year. But since it's almost 3 in the morning I'll call this post good, and I'll see y'all next week!

Shows and Stuff

I know, I know. It's been 15 days since my last post, but that's not really that long if you think in geologic time. But anyways, here's what I've been doin' lately.

Last week was crazy midterms week, I had three papers and two tests due, but I survived. I'm doing pretty well in all of my classes, I think, but we haven't gotten our midterm grades yet so I could be failing I suppose. But I don't think I am.

I've been going to a lot of music lately, which has been cool. I've hit up Frenchman Street four or five times since getting down here, and that's always an adventure and tons of fun. Last weekend I saw a couple hard rock bands at the House of Blues, and it was okay. The crowd was really weird and consisted of groups of annoying bros (backwards caps, popped collars, drunken yelling), middle aged barflys, and camo hat wearin' redneck kids. Not exactly my crowd, but oh well it was a decent show. Tomorrow I'm going to a show that's a little more my style: four punk bands playing an old warehouse in Mid-City, so I'll let you know how that goes.

Let's see, on Sunday my homie Bryan and I went to mass at the Most Holy Name of Jesus Church at Loyola University, right next door to Tulane. It's a crazy beautiful building, so that was pretty cool.

I just got Justin Townes Earle's new album Harlem River Blues on vinyl today, and it totally rocks. Justin is Steve Earle's kid, and he's named after Townes Van Zandt, and this dude can write the hell out of a country song. Y'all should check it out.

Hasta luego,

Ross