A group of us from work went to a Greg Laswell concert @ the Belly Up, mostly in support of our fellow, JonT. It was a fun time, and we felt special because we knew somebody from the band. Jennyd and Christine made us some cool custom shirts for the occasion!
Last night, we went to another awesome concert at 4th & b, Morcheeba!
We both really enjoyed the music, they’re as good live as they are on their cd’s. They had a guest lead singer who I didn’t recognize. Her name is Manda, and she’s a French singer who contacted Morcheeba through MySpace! She has a very beautiful voice, full of soul.
They have quite a repertoire of music they can choose from to play for a concert, and they played a great mix of both old and new. It was a fun night.
Saturday night my wife and I went to see Blue Man Group perform at Cox Arena. It was one of the best overall concert experiences I've ever had. I would say that it was quite the Visual Audio Sensory Theater, but of course that's already taken. The amount of creativity they display is awesome! Not only do they make their own random percussive instruments, but they accompany them with a full band and multiple video screens. They had a baby grand piano on its side with the top off, and to get the sound out of it, they banged it with a big rubbery mallety type thing. They also had a thing called a mobkast where if you text messaged them before the show, they would send you random tidbits back during the show. Oh yeah, also, Tracey Bohman opened and was featured in a couple of their songs. Needless to say, we had a great time.
We just got home from a Massive Attack concert at SDSU Open Air Theater. We were in the 4th row, and it was awesome! They had two drummers who were perfectly in sync the whole time, it sounded like drums in stereo. For the encore, they played my favorite two songs: Inertia Creeps and then Unfinished Sympathy.
We went to Lestats Coffee House in Normal Heights to see Tyler Hilton (that guy who played the stuck up musician in One Tree Hill). It was crowded and there were lots of fat chicks, but the music was good and Tyler was a pretty funny guy. It was a fun night 
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We went to a Moby concert at 4th & B. I think this is the first concert I've been to as a married man… which is a long time considering I used to go to one concert a month, on average. As we were walking into the club, this guy from 91x stopped us (I think it's because we were wearing matching bright green shirts) and said, "hey do you want to have a meet & greet with Moby?"! Apparently, 91x had a contest and some of the winners didn't show up so we lucked out! So we actually talked 1 on 1 with Moby, and he remembered signing the last autograph I got of his at Tower Records, in 2001, before his concert at UCSD with Bush. The concert was really good too, and long: 2.5 hours! He had a good mix of all of his music, old and new. That was definitely a memorable experience.
We went to Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach for the first live music we've seen in a few months, Vertical Horizon. I'd seen them before, 3 years ago, with Zak and some other UCSD cronies, and they were really good. Well they were just as I remembered. They even had a rousing rendition of "Eleanor Rigby." When we left, there was a note on my windshield and a dent in my fender. 
Luckily, Kent the doorman saw everything and was very helpful. There was an estimated $1200 in damages.
We drove up to Orange County to see one of Erin's favorite bands, the Supertones. It just so happened that Ali was there for the weekend, so we got to see her too. I haven't seen her in almost a year. We went with Shirley and Ali's friend to California Pizza Kitchen (I highly recommend the Southwest Chicken Burrito (pizza)), and then to the concert. It was good times.
We went to 4th & B to witness a live performance of one of my favorite groups, Thievery Corporation. They were amazingly good live. There were more than just 2 guys up there on stage, which is what one would suspect when looking at their album covers. All together there were about 7 musicians (including a sitarist, a trumpeter, and a saxophonist), and 5 vocalists (3 women and 2 men)! Also, one of the women vocalists (Emiliana Torrini) was one I recognized from another concert I went to. She had a solo act, and opened for Tricky. We also ran into Jason Chen (from our college days) who now lives in San Jose and just happened to be down for the weekend. All in all it was a fun night!
We went up to LA for the weekend for a couple reasons. 1, to have lunch with Erin's parents and older sister. 2. To see my family, and 3. To see this band called Tabla Beat Science. The concert was the most unique I've ever seen! They had a classical Tabla player, and violinist, accompanied by a contemporary drummer, electric bassist, keyboardist, turntablist, saxophonist, another violinist, and 3 singers. You wouldn't think all these things would sound good together, but it was awesome!
