Sleep Spent

Yesterday evening I got to attend the Pat Spurgeon benefit at The Independent. It was the most remarkable concert I’ve ever been to, I think, and one the best I’ll likely ever attend.

Pat is the drummer for Rogue Wave, and he was born with only one kidney. He had it replaced 13 years ago, but the new one has worn out, and he needs another one. But he apparently doesn’t have insurance, and it’s going to cost him a great deal for the surgery, once he finds a compatible kidney (which hasn’t happened yet). To help raise some of that money, he and some friends held a benefit concert. Here was the lineup:

• The Whiskeychuggers
• The Moore Brothers
• John Vanderslice
• Ben Gibbard
• Nada Surf
• Rogue Wave with special guest Ryan Miller (of Guster)

And it was emceed by Daniel Handler, a.k.a. Lemony Snicket. Incidentally, Daniel plays the accordion.

The concert started at 9 and ended at about 1. Though technically the artists came on in the order I listed above, they all helped each other out. There were plenty of covers:

• “I’m Only Sleeping” by The Beatles
• “Cuddly Toy” by Harry Nilsson and popularized by The Monkees
• “On a Plain” by Nirvana
• “(What’s So Funny ’Bout) Peace Love and Understanding” by Elvis Costello
• an excellent song covered by Nada Surf I sadly didn’t catch the name of
• “Debaser” by the Pixies
• “The Kids Are All Right” by The Who

There was a raffle! There was a woman (Daniel’s sister) personifying a kidney! There was pandimonium and a stage party! I had a great time, and the mood was decidedly upbeat and positive.

I stuck around for awhile afterwards and talked to some of the acts. John Vanderslice stuck out as the most personable and unbelievably friendly guy. He seemed genuinely pleased to meet me, and we talked about his rendition of “White Plains” (one of my favorite songs by him). He said I should come see him and his band when they performed at Noise Pop, and I assured him I would. That ought to be a great show.

I also talked briefly to Pat. He was so kind and grateful. And was taking it all in stride with his sense of humor intact. He seemed like a really good person who I would be happy to have as a friend.

I have some pictures from the concert up on Flickr. I took nearly 250, but only a handful came out. I reeeeally want a new camera. I hope to have it soon, preferably in time for the two Decemberists concerts coming up in three weeks’ time!

Was that so hard?

Hello,

I apologize for all of the confusion on our part regarding the “At The Point” album. The distributor that we receive this album from asked us to pull the album temporarily and then re-delivered it to us. As you speculated, it was re-delivered with a new ID following some changes the distributor made to the album. When an album is re-posted with a new ID, our system detects it as a brand new album. This is the reason you were unable to download the album as you expected-our system read your request as a request for a new album and not the album you previously downloaded. With the large amount of albums we receive daily, an issue like this can occur on the site. I’m not offering this as an excuse- instead, I wanted to make sure you received a fair explanation as to what happened.

You are correct in stating this this was an issue completely outside of your control. Because eMusic acts in good faith in regards to its redownloading policy, I have added 17 courtesy downloads to your account to compensate you for the full album. I have set these downloads to expire one year from today so you don’t have to feel pressured to use them in the short term. As long as you remain an active eMusic subscriber, those downloads will be available for the next year.

We’re deeply sorry for the frustration and inconvenience you encountered in trying to resolve this issue. We hope this is a reasonable resolution for you.

Regards,

Erick
eMusic Customer Support Team

Thank you, eMusic, for doing the right thing.

A few months ago, Matt Nathanson released At the Point, a live album. I bought it on eMusic, but due to their lack of rollover song downloads, I had only 13 downloads left. (There are 17 tracks on the album.) So I bought 13 of the 17 tracks. When I got 40 more DLs in my account the next week, I was shocked to find that the album had been removed. I e-mailed them about it and their response was, “tough luck.” I was a bit miffed.

I checked back about a month later, and whaddaya know, the album was back! So I downloaded the last four songs. But when I looked in my Downloads list, I saw only that I had purchased the last four tracks, not the original 13. “Odd,” I thought.

A number of years ago, I wrote down my thoughts about the meaning behind the songs on Death Cab’s fantastic We Have the Facts and We’re Voting Yes. It was up here for a long time, but then I changed my site all around and it stopped being directly linked. Google seems to have forgotten about it, which is a shame.

So I’m putting it back out there. Your comments are welcome. It’s still incomplete; “Lowell, MA” is a tough nut to crack. But I think it still has some really interesting ideas about what Ben was trying to say with this masterpiece.

A lyrical analysis of We Have the Facts and We’re Voting Yes

Get your tickets now! I predict he’ll be sold out in a few weeks.

Mike went on a date last night with a girl who worked for a music promotion company. He said something about Bloc Party and she mentioned that they would be playing another, makeup show on the 31st of this month. And tickets weren’t on sale yet!

I was up and online yesterday night when Mike relayed the news to me. And it’s a good thing he did, because I got my two tickets this morning, but he forgot and didn’t get his set. Which is too bad; I was going to try to trade two of them for two others to the Fillmore show.

But, on the bright side, this will be the second time I’m going to get to see them in a month. Woohoo!

We arrived at about 2:30. We walked twenty minutes to the entrance, where we queued to have someone check our tickets and bags. Once inside, we grabbed some food ($7 for a hot dog!!!!) and headed straight for M83. Here’s the list of bands and times for Saturday.

So we saw M83. That was all right; a little repetative and boring. (Mike and I agreed that it was good music to listen to while coding, but not really concert-type music.) Then I headed over to see Snow Patrol. They were pretty good. They played a few new songs and a bunch of songs off Final Straw, but nothing from any of their other albums.

I stopped by The Kills next and was unimpressed, so Mike and I laid down for a bit in the shade. We got up in time to make a Bloc Party CD/poster signing. I got pictures with them too! :-)

The part of the Wilco set we saw consisted only of songs from the new album, which I hadn’t heard. One of them got jamming pretty good, but they were mostly only so-so. I took in Weezer next. They split their time between songs from the blue album and ones off their new album. Nothing from Pinkerton, sadly. Again, their set was all right, but nothing to write home about.

After them I headed over and caught the end of the Secret Machines set, and they were excellent! They were having a great time on stage, you could tell. And they tore it up. I’ve been meaning to put one of their songs on the SOW list since last year when Mike turned me onto it, and I’m going to do that as soon as we get back.

After Secret Machines, some people left and the rest of us tried to get as close to the stage as we could. Bloc Party showed up and kicked some serious ass. They played all the songs I hoped they would, and the crowd was really into it. I must admit, there were a couple times where I couldn’t understand what Kele was saying between songs, but it all worked out. The (completely psycho) drummer took off his shirt after the first song. This was the best set I caught all of the first day.

After Bloc Party I wandered over to the big stage and watched Coldplay. They were the exact opposite of Weezer, totally excited to be playing here, digging the huge crowd, putting on a great show. For one of the songs Chris asked us to all take pictures at one point. That was a pretty neat effect, to see all the flashes continuously.

I left Coldplay before the encore to hit up the last 15 minutes of Spoon. They were all right, but not anywhere as excited as the last two bands.

And that was it. We came back to Mike’s dad’s place. I read a fascinating and deeply disturbing article in The New Yorker about how climate change has effected civilizations before ours. (This article was the second in a three-part series. The first one is available online.) And then bed. We’ll be leaving for Day 2 shortly.

Mike and I left at 11:30 this morning. Sadly, he ended up not getting the Z4. Instead, we’ve got a 3-series coupe. It’s still a Beamer; you won’t find me complaining! We stopped at the Harris ranch on the way down and bought some steaks.

I bought four mags on the way down (_The New Yorker_, Out, Harper’s and The Economist) and read some from all of them. This issue of Harper’s has two very interesting stories about the new Christian fascism. I recommend it highly.

Mike’s father, whose place we’re staying at, lives about 15 minutes from Coachella (the town and the festival both). It’s amazingly close. And his place is practically a mansion. I’m sitting in the round dining room right now writing this. There’s a massive kitchen, a decent sized pool, a whole patio area, a hot tub, four bedrooms, a bunch of incredible bathrooms... It’s just spectacular. I think this is the nicest house I’ve ever been in. :-)

Mike and I grilled up some steaks (which were fabulous) and ate once we got here. Then we had a soak in the hot tub. Then we hung out with friends of Mike’s sister (Ashlee).

Tomorrow: attend Ashlee’s VIP-only partee in the morning/early-afternoon, then head over to the festival around mid-afternoon. Return, crash, repeat.

Tomorrow morning, Mr. Margolis and I will head south to Coachella. I’m very excited to see Bloc Party and Coldplay and the Flaming Lips (again). This is going to be just non-stop fun, assuming I can find my tickets....

Oh, and we may get a loaner Z4 to drive down with!

Tickets to Bloc Party at the Fillmore went on sale this morning at 10. I knew this. And yet somehow, when I got up, I completely forgot about it. I checked just now, and they’re sold out already.

Damn! This happened with Scissor Sisters too. I guess I’ll have to do the Craigslist thing.