The Best Musical Week Ever

So this week has been pretty awesome as far as music goes! I went to the Hot Hot Heat/Weezer/Foo Fighters concert Wednesday (which was the best concert ever, by the way). And then tonight, I went to 321 Artspace with my brother, Adam, and we saw this guy named Nick Klein playing in his one-man-band, Good Luck Mr. Gorski. His soft voice and melodic guitar were very soothing and it was great to finally get excited about this guy who Adam had talked about so much. There were two other bands that played there tonight, the first was just beat-poetry, which I don't like very much, and the second was another one-man-band called Thanksgiving. He seemed like he would have been pretty good, if he hadn't done as many drugs and messed up his brain. He was pretty creative, and had a good voice, but he couldn't even remember the words to his songs, and some girl who had seen him play before had to remind him of the words.

I got home from this mini-concert and watched about 8 minutes of "The Longest Yard," which my roommate had rented, and Adam called me. He said that Ben Folds was on TV, so I went over to Adam's house to watch that. I caught the last couple of songs and then another guy that I like, Ray LaMontagne, came on and played a few songs. And I thought PBS was just good for Sesame Street!

So, in a four day period, I saw my favorite band in concert with two other bands I really enjoy, discovered a new artist that I like, and saw my favorite solo artist and one other artist that I like on TV. I can't wait to see what happens tomorrow!

Hot Wee Fighters

Well, two Weezer concerts in six months, and they were both awesome. The one last April was no where near as exciting as the one yesterday, but great for a first Weez concert. I was down on the floor in general admission with my friend Alec, and there were only three people between us and the wall in front of the stage. When Hot Hot Heat came on, everyone got excited and pushed to the front and it was just a little tight in there, but as time went on it just got worse. We ended up getting off the floor and going up into the stands a little over half-way through Weezer's performance and that was much better. Mostly just cause I didn't keep visioning my self being trampled, but also because I wasn't getting as much of other people sweat on me while I was in the stands

Rivers Cuomo (the lead singer) was very animated last night, and walked back and forth all over the stage and he seemed to be having a lot more fun than he did at the last concert I went to. He is generally pretty stiff and just stands at the center of the stage and rocks out. But tonight at points he gave up the lead guitar duties to a nameless dude standing toward the back of the stage, and Rivers just had fun running back and forth on the stage. I was excited to see so much action from him.

Weezer did a lot of cool stuff on this tour that they have never done before, which was exciting to see. First was obviously Rivers only singing without playing his guitar at times. The other three guys each sang a song as well. Pat came back from behind the drumset and traded places with Rivers to sing "Photograph." Brian sang "Why Bother" while he played guitar and Rivers played keyboard, and Scott sang lead on "Don't Let Go."

After Pat finished "Photograph," he launched into Blur's "Song 2" (the "woohoo" song), and Brian and Scott joined Rivers and just banged on the drums for the last part of the song. They all walked off the stage at the end of the song, and after a few minutes, Rivers came up on a small stage set up inside the "Sound Booth" on the other side of the arena and played solo singing "Island in the Sun" and "rocking" the acoustic guitar. After that, Scott announced that they needed a volunteer to play "Undone: The Sweater Song" and some lucky guy named Johnny got to go up on stage and play with the whole band!

They played a couple more songs, and finished off with "Buddy Holly" and at the end four cannons of confetti shot off and a bunch of confetti with Weezer symbols fell all over Key Arena. A great ending to a fan-freaking-tastic concert.

Not being able to breathe at times, having more sweat from other people than from myself, and driving a total of 8 hours was definitely worth that concert.