En Vogue Webmaster

1/25/2013 - The Tunnel @ Hemlock Tavern

bolsinga@gmail.com (bolsinga) — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 05:00:00 GMT

This was a release party show for The Tunnel's new album. It's great. I bought it on vinyl and it sounds fantastic. The band has a new drummer since the recording. The show was great. It must be interesting to keep your groove when you change up your band after playing with them for years. I'm sentimental, and it will always be great to see your friend rock out just about 21 years after the first time.

1/19/2013 - Yo La Tengo @ Amoeba Records

bolsinga@gmail.com (bolsinga) — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 05:00:00 GMT

A terrific short in-store performance for a band I've been seeing for 19 years now. They played songs off of their new album, just out this week. They said they were doing a west coast record store tour since they wouldn't really be back out here on tour for several months. They also played what a friend told me was a Grateful Dead cover, and one old one from 20 years ago (sheesh) off of "Painful". I picked up the record (another digital download!) and it is great.

1/18/2013 - Ty Segall, Nick Waterhouse, White Fence @ The Fillmore

bolsinga@gmail.com (bolsinga) — Sat, 19 Jan 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Damn this was a great show. The opener White Fence was so fantastic I was worried for the headliner. Fantastic rocking sound with Bob Dylan and more thrown in. Then came up a band with a back up singer, 2 saxophones, a piano player, and a rock band. It was fantastic. Apparently, reading Wikipedia, the kid (he's born in 1986) worked at Rooky Ricardo's (less than a block from my home) and became an expert in soul music, and the set showed it. So so good. Then Ty Segall came out and just rocked the place. Man what a set. At some point he pointed out that the last time he'd been at The Fillmore he was 18 and saw The Cramps. His dad came out and played drums on one of his songs. So good. I can't believe that it was less than two years ago I saw him play at a leather bar. This was a stellar evening of kick ass music.

1/12/2013 - Thee Oh Sees, The Mallard, Warm Soda @ The Independent

bolsinga@gmail.com (bolsinga) — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Whenever I go to a show with three bands, I'm always wary. However, it winds up that this night there was no need to worry. All the bands sounded great and had great songs. Warm Soda was good, but all I recall a week later is the singer / guitarist had an axe shaped axe. The Mallard have this garage-goth vibe, as best as I can describe it. I liked them quite a bit and bought the vinyl. It came with a download code, which is all the rage right now. You can have vinyl and it's also on your iPhone without a lot of rigamarole. Thee Oh Sees pretty much just killed. So good & so fun.

Some Linkage

bolsinga@gmail.com (bolsinga) — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 20:00:00 GMT

I realized that there were four dead links on my home page. It's the death of blogging indeed.

I found an interesting site to read about programming. The surprising thing is the author doesn't code very much anymore. He sounds like he'd be about my age or so. I'll keep my eye on programming in the 21st century.

Death of Blogging

bolsinga@gmail.com (bolsinga) — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 20:00:00 GMT

It's so damn easy to update Facebook, barely anyone I know maintains their blog regularly anymore. Mine has suffered as well. It bugs me that so much of what I'm thinking gets onto Facebook, and not here. This is the stuff that I'll have forever. I'm not sure about what will happen with my Facebook data.

So I have a long term idea to fix this, but no time to implement it. I think I've been saying I'll make this web site generate itself automatically as long as it has existed! Someday when I have free time perhaps.

Rose & I went to Costa Rica over Thanksgiving. It was beautiful and we had a lot of fun. It was my first time out of the country in something like 10 years. My Spanish is still rusty, but I think if I wasn't shy about it I could actually speak it better.

11/7/2012 - The Sea And Cake, Matthew Friedberger @ McNear's Mystic Theatre

bolsinga@gmail.com (bolsinga) — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 05:00:00 GMT

When I read about this show, it seemed like it be interesting to see them somewhere I'd never seen them. They were also going to be playing Slim's in San Francisco, which just isn't a good place to see shows. So this venue is an old movie theatre where many of the seats have been torn out. The old concession stand was now a bar where they served 20 ounce beers. It wasn't very happening on this Wednesday evening. When we arrived there were nearly 20 people sitting at some tables & chairs set out in the back of the auditorium. There was a lone guy on the stage. He had long hair, and walked around speaking into the microphone while music played on a CD in the background. On occasion, as the story required, he'd play a synthesizer or a guitar along with the CD. The story was barely coherent, and it left you with a feeling that here was a guy on stage that knew the sound guy at the venue. He constantly cajoled him to let him open and this was his chance to perform. His set actually made Rose angry. Once Aram showed up, he told us it was Matthew Friedberger, once of Champaign. The set was such that the crowd was a little hard on him, laughing out loud. So then The Sea And Cake came out and played a great set. The opener was soon forgotten. They had Doug McCombs on bass, which I hadn't seen before. It was an intimate show, since I'm pretty sure I haven't ever seen them play to as small as a crowd as this since I first saw them in 1994. More people filtered in after the opener and were standing up in front; some were even dancing. It was cool to see them in a small setting; I'll have to keep an eye out for more shows here.

10/15/2012 - David Byrne & St. Vincent @ Orpheum Theatre

bolsinga@gmail.com (bolsinga) — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 04:00:00 GMT

It was another memorable David Byrne show. He put out an album with St. Vincent. They played songs from this new record, as well as classic David Byrne, Talking Heads, and St. Vincent songs. They were backed by around 8 to 10 horn players (and a drummer and keyboard player off to the sides). The two of them both played guitar. The stage was wide open in the center, with just two microphone stands for the stars. The horn players would march or dance around the two of them while playing. It was really fun to watch. St. Vincent would also do this funny stutter step dance quite often. It's really great watching David Byrne perform. The shows he sets up are just so fun and not like anything I've seen before.

9/22/2012 - Wilco, Jonathan Richman @ Greek Theatre

bolsinga@gmail.com (bolsinga) — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 04:00:00 GMT

I think we got there just as Jonathan Richman started. It was fun to see him on such a large stage. He thanked Wilco for letting him open a few shows. During the Wilco set, Jeff Tweedy compared Jonathan Richman to many stalwarts of music, and thanked him for opening. The Wilco set was another great set by a band that knows exactly what they are doing. During the encore, they played "Via Chicago". The fun thing was while this can sound like a "Wilco song", the back half of the stage spontaneously broke out into some crazy punk rock jazz freak out, while the front of the stage kept the harmonies going as if nothing was going on. It was so abrupt it, that for a moment I seriously thought someone had dropped the live sound and was blasting some other record. I'd really not heard anything like it before. Most everyone around also was caught off guard as well. It's always good to hear something new after seeing shows for so long. It was a great night.

Remember Me?

bolsinga@gmail.com (bolsinga) — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 19:00:00 GMT

I'm updating this over a year since my last update. Interestingly enough I'm home sick from work again. I finally had the time.

I've been busy with work, life, & classes. Unfortunately Facebook is so much simpler to update than my rickety web site code.

6/25/2012 - Philip Glass, Joanna Newsom, Tim Fain @ The Warfield

bolsinga@gmail.com (bolsinga) — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 04:00:00 GMT

This was a terrific show to raise money for the Henry Miller Memorial Library. I was already familiar with Joanna Newsom and Philip Glass. Tim Fain is a terrific violin player that blew my socks off. They played some songs and trios, duos, and solo. The sound was great. Philip Glass played a song that he had done in the past where Allen Ginsberg read his poetry and Philip Glass had written the music. Thankfully he had recorded Ginsberg reading a great poem "Wichita Vortex Sutra". This was terribly moving. The entire show was superb.

5/4/2012 - Lambchop, Michael Nesmith @ The Great American Music Hall

bolsinga@gmail.com (bolsinga) — Sat, 05 May 2012 04:00:00 GMT

I got to go to this show with Aram. He had told me beforehand the secret guest was Michael Nesmith from the Monkees. He played plenty of songs from his post-Monkees albums. They were country-inflected, and clearly personal in nature. The pianist from Lambchop backed him up. Lambchop came up and played with a smaller band than I had seen back at Merge 20. The funny thing was afterwards, when we were out after the show, they were out to dinner in my neighborhood and 2/3 of Yo La Tengo shows up to join them. I was a little too tipsy to handle this, so I went on home.

5/1/2012 - Yo La Tengo @ SF MOMA

bolsinga@gmail.com (bolsinga) — Wed, 02 May 2012 04:00:00 GMT

At this show Yo La Tengo played the sound track to an interesting documentary about Buckminster Fuller. It was narrated live by the director Sam Green. It was a fun documentary about an interesting guy presented in an interesting way. Rose and I got pretty good seats in the theatre as well. A great & unique night out.

4/11/2012 - fIREHOSE @ Slim's

bolsinga@gmail.com (bolsinga) — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 04:00:00 GMT

I bought tickets hoping for the best and that plenty of friends would be there. Well, it was an OK show (Slim's isn't the best place to see a show) and I had to cajole Aram to go along with me.

4/9/2012 - Jeff Mangum @ The Fox Theatre

bolsinga@gmail.com (bolsinga) — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 04:00:00 GMT

So many people didn't get to see Neutral Milk Hotel the first time around. Apparently their albums are some of Merge's best-sellers. So Jeff Mangum went on a tour to play the songs. I'm pretty sure there was only one song I hadn't heard before. The set was mostly him singing along with an acoustic guitar. His voice sure is something to hear. It's far more controlled nowadays (at least to my ear). People were loving the set. So many classics played like you haven't heard them before. It would be nice if a live album was released. It is always interesting to hear artists do their own work later in their lives to see what they bring to it.

1/15/2012 - Willie Nelson @ The Fox Theatre

bolsinga@gmail.com (bolsinga) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Many classics from Willie. Apparently we were standing in the pot-smoking section. I'm not sure what other sections were there.

12/5/2011 - The Sea And Cake @ The Great American Music Hall

bolsinga@gmail.com (bolsinga) — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 05:00:00 GMT

A fun show from The Sea And Cake. They pulled out some older sounds for old people like me. It always amazes me how good this band is.

10/22/2011 - Shellac @ The New Parish

bolsinga@gmail.com (bolsinga) — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 04:00:00 GMT

This was a great show. The band was super. Marc was visiting for the first time since he moved to California. We rocked like it was 1994 and then went up to Mendocino to spend a night in the woods. It was one of the more agressive crowds I've seen in years as well. That is still fun, but makes me feel the worst part of being 25 again.

9/11/2011 - Fleet Foxes @ Henry Miller Memorial Library

bolsinga@gmail.com (bolsinga) — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 04:00:00 GMT

I was happy to get tickets to this one. Fleet Foxes under the stars at Big Sur was fantastic. We got a good spot sitting on the ground towards the center. They had a video behind projected behind them that was typically showing time lapsed stars. Apparently the band had spent some time hanging out in Big Sur before and reminisced about it. Mangus played a song before their set. It was a fantastic show.

9/2/2011 - Archers Of Loaf @ The Great American Music Hall

bolsinga@gmail.com (bolsinga) — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 04:00:00 GMT

The Archers Of Loaf got back together and went on tour and did a fantastic show. Tons of hits and plenty of rock. I'm writing this nearly a year later, so this is about all I have to offer.