An Evening at the Firefly Club & Blind Pig

Despite the cold, I ended up venturing forth with Jim to check out some music at the Firefly Club last night. We went and saw the Maypops and if UltraViolet was totally lacking in originality, the Maypops made up for their lack of creativity. They played a number of songs off their cd "Spirits of Agnew" including "Blackeyed Susan", "Yola My Blues Away", "The Bloom is Off the Rose", "Stuck in First" and "Hangman." They also played a song called "Avalanche" which was just generally an awesome song, I wish it was on their cd. There's a tremendous amount of talent in that band and watching George Bedard play was nothing short of amazing. I still am blown away by people that can actually sing and play an instrument at the same time and do both well but to play as well as George Bedard...holy crap. Amazing. Overall it was a good set and I have to give Khalid Hanifi credit for writing some pretty amusing lyrics (I mean, how often do you hear the word "hubris" in rock?).

From there we ended up heading over to the Blind Pig to see what was going on there. When we got there there was a fairly poor rapper on stage, but again, gotta give him credit for having the guts to get up there and do it. However, I think that some of the poets I saw at the poetry slam had more passion and more lyrical ability (and performance talent) than this guy had. After that there was a good rock band (I think they were called Wylde) who had sort of a Incubus-Red Hot Chili Peppers-Linkin Park thing going on. Some of their songs were really good, particularly "Pacifica" and I had sort of hoped their set would be a little longer. After them was Approaching Zero (again, pretty sure that's what their name was) and, as Jim astutely observed, it seems like they must listen to a lot of Korn... They were my least favorite of the night, even below the so-so rapper that started things at the BP. At the risk of sounding like my mother, it didn't seem like much more than them screaming and playing their guitars really loudly, I mean, Wylde was loud, aggressive and impossible to understand their lyrics, but there still seemed to be more musical talent there than with Approaching Zero. All in all it was a really fun night, we got to see some cool music, go to some new places (I'd never been to the Firefly Club and hadn't been to the Blind Pig since I was in college). Must keep trying new things...

I'm having trouble getting into classes at MSU which is making me really anxious...I didn't think everything would be full already. Maybe I can talk my way into a class or two...stress. Randomly I found openings for two music related writing jobs, one in California and one in New York and just bit the bullet and sent in my resume. What the heck, it doesn't cost me anything. I doubt I'll hear anything from either of them, but I figured I'd give it a try. I also sent my resume to Rolling Stone and Alternative Press, no official openings there but I might as well give it a try. The worst that happens is that nothing happens and if this is what I want, I need to try even if it's somewhat terrifying.

It's snowing like crazy here, I guess we'll have a white Thanksgiving. Very psyched about tomorrow & getting to see my bro & his wife and eating lots of good food. Well, that's it for now--Happy Thanksgiving!
Ciao,
Sasha