SeVeN » Rambles

Phish ~ Telluride, CO 2010

SeVeN — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 17:20:28 +0000

Finally – getting a chance to sit down and post about this new adventure. Seeing Phish always requires a day or two for me to digest exactly what in the hell just happened.

Also, uploading the pictures (many, many, perhaps way too many pictures) to the gallery has taken quite a bit of time.

Last year we were amazed to have Phish practically in our backyard when they played at Red Rocks. This year we were lucky to have Phish play at Telluride. With a six hour drive this was definitely not in our backyard.

This was the plan:
Sunday – leave around noon-ish and head for Montrose and stay in a hotel. Montrose, being only 45 minutes away from Telluride, would be a perfect stopping point.
Monday – leave Montrose around nine-ish to arrive early enough in Telluride to figure shit out. We were told that they weren’t going to let us into Town Park camping until noon. We also had to meet up with our friend, Jeremiah, to get our tickets to the show. We were anticipating long lines to get to our camp site and other general mayhem.

Unfortunately I spent most of the wee hours of Sunday morning puking my guts out for some inexplicable reason and felt like ass. Thankfully, most of the packing preparations were done the night before and all that was left was to pack clothing and chuck the stuff into the car. The trip came damn close to being called off, but there was absolutely no way in hell that I was going to miss this show! So, only a couple of hours behind schedule, we left Steamboat, got to Montrose, gathered the items we didn’t get a chance to pack (stuff like food), watched some tube in the hotel, grabbed a final hot shower in the AM and headed to Telluride.

I have to stop here and give some serious props to the town of Telluride and the folks who live there. I don’t know if they had any idea as to what they had signed on for when they approved having Phish come to town. Telluride is not new to music festivals. They have been putting on the Telluride Bluegrass festival for 37 years. But Phish is a bit different. The Phish scene is generally perceived to be a bunch of dirty hippies high on various illegal substances. I’m pretty sure that this notion has been completely erased. Phish fans are a community of fun loving folks who also like to spend some cash. It’s amazing that this little community of 3,000 people could host over 9,000 Phish-heads for two days. And to pull it off so smoothly boggles the mind.

We made it to Telluride right on schedule. The deal was if you were camping at Town Park you had to unload all of your gear as quickly as possible and then park your car somewhere. At first I thought this was going to be some crazy, hectic lunacy, but things were pretty organized. Dave parked the car wherever and by the time he got back I had camp all set up complete with Fat Tires at the ready and it wasn’t even noon yet.

The crazy thing about setting up camp was pulling up alongside two of our friends, Matty & Z, from Steamboat – completely random and accidental and awesome.

With camp all set up it was time to kick back and relax, cook some brats and corn on the cob on our baby grill, drink a few beers and eventually head into line for the start of the first night’s show. The Town Park campground is practically spitting distance from the stage and we were actually able to see the stage from our camp site.

Waiting in line:

The views all around the concert area were so magnificent that it was actually difficult to pay attention to what was happening on the stage:

We spent our first night of Phish fourth row, dead fucking center – 4DFC baby!

The second day we got into doing some sightseeing. We rode up the free gondola to get to the Mountain Village, gawk at the awesome scenery and grab some lunch.

Then it was back to camp for some more Fat Tires and visiting with our fellow campers. We listened to sound check from our comfy camp site and met up with a couple more friends, Jill and Mark, that we hadn’t seen in quite some time – five years or so. In fact, we were so comfortable in camp that we couldn’t get our act together well enough to get in line for posters. We decided to take day two a little more casual and not worry about how close we could get to the stage. We managed to grab a comfy spot with plenty of room for all of our friends that we had met up with to join us.

The music was fantastic, the crowd lovely; all in all we had a great two nights of Phish. I’m already looking forward to my next Phish adventure (whenever or wherever that might be).

August 9, 2010 Set-list:
Set 1: Down with Disease, Camel Walk, Ocelot, Light Up Or Leave Me Alone, Summer of ’89, Stash, Cavern, The Wedge, Possum, Julius

Set 2: Sand > Backwards Down the Number Line > Prince Caspian > Tweezer > Boogie On Reggae Woman > Piper > Mountains in the Mist, David Bowie, A Day in the Life

Encore: Quinn the Eskimo1, Tweezer Reprise

August 10, 2010 Set-list:
Set 1: The Squirming Coil, Stealing Time From the Faulty Plan, Ya Mar, Timber (Jerry), Let Me Lie, The Divided Sky, Walk Away, Roses Are Free > Limb By Limb, Bouncing Around the Room, Run Like an Antelope

Set 2: Party Time, Mike’s Song > Crosseyed and Painless > I Am Hydrogen > Weekapaug Groove, Destiny Unbound, Carini > Free > Heavy Things, You Enjoy Myself

Encore: Shine a Light

Rhythm Devils in Steamboat Springs

SeVeN — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 22:38:25 +0000

The whole town came out to Howelsen Hill yesterday to listen to the Rhythm Devils. The show was part of the Summer Free Concert series; huge thank yous for the promoters for finally getting a band other than the Wailers.

For those of you not familiar with the Rhythm Devils, the band was founded by Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead. Over the years their band has had a revolving troupe of members. This summer the Rhythm Devils include the one-man band of Keller Williams (guitar, vocals), Davy Knowles (Backdoor Slam – guitar, vocals), Andy Hess (bass), and Sikiru Adepoju (talking drum).

Set-list:

Sitting on Top of the World
Iko Iko
Comes a Dawn
Fire on the Mountain
Fountains of Wood
Ticket to Nowhere
Good Lovin
Voodoo Zombies
Wrecking Crew

Encore: Almost Cut My Hair

[Show as slideshow]

Show notes: Voodoo Zombies was awesome; Davy Knowles is amazing and Mickey Hart managed to screw up Iko Iko. Seriously, how many times has he played that damn song? Pretty funny.

If you want to give the show a listen, you can download it here: COTapers.org. You will need to register if you are not already a member. Once you are a member you will have access to a treasure trove of wonderful music. Thanks to phrog for flying the mics.

Random Photos of the Weekend

SeVeN — Tue, 18 May 2010 02:51:42 +0000

This is no ordinary exercise ball; we call it “The Orb”. It has been in our yard for well over four years, completely inflated. Every now and then it gets untangled from the willows and floats around in the creek.

The creek was quite high as it had snowed heavily during Friday night and Saturday morning. This Dandelion was caught up in the flood waters.

It’s next to impossible to get this dog to pose for the camera. This is one of the rare times when she decided to oblige.

These Daffodils looked so sad with their heads bowed over looking at the snow wondering when it would ever be Spring.

The Snows of May

SeVeN — Thu, 13 May 2010 02:36:39 +0000

The weather in Colorado can be unpredictable. This is especially true if you live in the Rockies in the northwest corner of the state. In fact, they have a saying around here that if you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes. I usually roll my eyes whenever I hear someone say that. It’s one of those sayings that has been out-said. Unfortunately, this stupid phrase is the best way to describe the weather that we have been experiencing the past couple of weeks. We have had precipitation in all its forms; rain, sleet, hail and snow. There have been brief moments of sunshine followed by house rattling winds.

If you look closely you can see signs that Spring is actually here. The Hummingbirds are buzzing around the feeder and don’t even seem to be bothered by the icicles (photo credit: phrog). The grass is turning green, the trees are budding, and the Daffodils have bloomed (and have now been pummeled into submission). Now I’m hoping that Mother Nature stops with Her shenanigans and gets down with some blue skies, sunshine, and temperatures above 70.

Summer around here is short enough as it is.

The 1971 BMW 2002 Summer Project

SeVeN — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 04:19:12 +0000

The snow is melting, spring flowers are sprouting and temperatures are staying above freezing. These are all signs that “Monster Shed” season is upon us.

The first project in line is a 1971 BMW 2002. Yep, you read that right; it’s a Bimmer! And why would I want to work on such an automobile? Because it can do this:

Granted, I’m not planning on building a rally car, but you never know what will happen until you start turning some wrenches. At the moment I plan on making her a daily (summer) driver.

There are more pictures on the gallery. Stay tuned for updates as we get the project rolling.

Formula One Teams 2010 ~ Hispania Racing

SeVeN — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 17:12:50 +0000

With the Bahrain Grand Prix starting next weekend, a new team has slid into place on the grid. Hispania Racing, formerly Campos Meta, had struggled with financial difficulties and looked as if they would be a no show. However, a last minute deal saw the team purchased by Spanish businessman Jose Ramon Carabante. Although, the team has missed out on all pre-season testing, they are prepared to make it to the grid in Bahrain.

Hispania Racing Team – Spain

Drivers:
Bruno Senna – Brazil
Karun Chandhok – India

Team Principal:
Colin Kolles

Technical Specifications:
The chassis for the Hispania challenger was built by Dallara and the car will be powered by a Cosworth engine.

Here’s one to make you chuckle…

SeVeN — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 14:53:46 +0000

The Whacky Crap You Can Find on the Internets

SeVeN — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 17:52:15 +0000

Due to some unfortunate circumstances, I have been finding myself with an over abundant amount of down time on my hands. This down time, coupled with quite a speedy DSL connection has led me to surf the Internets more than usual. My normal web use generally consists of the mundane; e-mail, news, a forum post or two, Twitter and the rare Facebook visit. Now I find myself clicking on random links just to waste some time to try to overcome my boredom. One great site for random link clicking is Digg.

A couple of nights ago I ran into the following headline that was in the ‘Top in 24 Hours’ list: Best First Page of Any Book Ever? [PIC] With over 4,000 diggs I got curious.

The link takes you to a picture of exactly what the headline describes; the first page of someone’s book. After reading it my first thoughts were, “This can’t possibly be real”. After all, one wouldn’t need to be a graphics genius to whip this up in Photoshop. Being skeptical about the authenticity of this amazing work of literary brilliance, I scrolled down to read some of the comments. The comments on Digg can oftentimes be funnier than the stories and you can count on someone to call out a fake usually within the first few posts.

What I found instead was a post containing some links to apparently vouch for the book’s authenticity. One of the links was to yet another page of the book. While funny to read it still could have easily been Photoshopped. The second link was to the author, Dale Courtney’s, blog on a Barack Obama web site. The site is real enough, however, it wouldn’t take someone too much time to set up the blog account. In fact, in the amount of time that I have already wasted on this post, I could have easily created a Dale Courtney blog.

The third link on this post was to Amazon. The thought that this is some sort of elaborate hoax was beginning to dwindle at this point. Although, anyone can sell items on Amazon (How to sell your stuff on Amazon.com) I find it very difficult to believe that someone would actually put in this amount of time and energy for a joke. By the way, the reviews on the book are quite amusing. I especially like the collectible edition available for $1,000.

While visiting Mr. Courtney’s blog one can’t help but notice a link to his book’s page at Xlibris. For those of you not in the know, Xlibris is a self-publishing book company. This means that anyone can write a book and Xlibris will publish it for you cutting out all of those pesky middle men, such as editors. My theory of this being a hoax, albeit a rather elaborate one, was pretty much destroyed at this point. While it’s true that someone could have planned out this whole thing, Xlibris doesn’t publish your book for free. In fact, the cheapest package they offer is $299. While I can buy the idea that someone or a few someones had an abundant amount of time on their hands to create a very clever hoax, I can’t fathom that someone would pay a few hundred dollars for it.

At this point it gets hard to wrap your head around. If this isn’t a hoax that means we have to believe that Dale M. Courtney really exists (read his bio), he wrote Moon People, and paid Xlibris a few hundred dollars to publish it. But wait – this story doesn’t end here. Mr. Courtney has published a sequel; Moon People 2.

I have one final thought on this entire Moon People saga. Due to the viral nature of the Internets it is actually possible that this book may sell a handful of copies. It is also possible that it may end up on-line in its entirety (the book only has 77 pages) for all to enjoy. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a video adaptation using LEGOs show up on YouTube. Hmm, now there’s a way to waste some time…

Phish’s New Album ~ “Joy”

SeVeN — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:44:27 +0000

In case you haven’t noticed, Phish is back and on tour. They have also been in the studio recording tracks for a new album, “Joy”, due to be released sometime in August.

They have been playing most of these new songs on their current tour. And I gotta say that I rather like them. Of course, I’m also hearing them performed live which is always better then studio recordings.

If you want to give the new album a listen to, they have a nice set-list over at Jamtopia. The site also has lyrics for those of you who need to learn the songs before heading off to your next Phish concert.

Rachel & Her Chariot

SeVeN — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 23:20:26 +0000

Just came across this video and it’s a hoot. Rachel is 89 years old and has been the only owner of Chariot; a 1964 Mercury Comet Caliente. Only in America would this story make the news. See for yourself: