Alex Vernon.com

You tell me what this says. Well looking at it again I think I might be able to make it out (hangover is starting to wear off). The important thing is I have my Dinosaur Jr. ticket. Their new album Beyond kicks some serious ass, you can listen to most of it on their Myspace page. Check out Pick Me Up, six minutes and thirty-two of pure audio bliss. Then get yo ass to Sonic Boom (if in Seattle) or Criminal (in ATL) and pick up a copy. Trust me you will be thanking me, unless you’re into Britney Spears and the like. If you are there’s still hope, maybe Dinosaur can turn you to the Darkside.

Art openings at Roq La Rue and BLVD, The Hands at the Croc and pinball at Shorty’s. Maybe last call at The Hat. Should be fun…

Just got a ticket to see The Flaming Lips in Tampa. I’ll be visiting some good friends and I have friends coming down from Atlanta and Connecticut as well. I have one confirmation so far hopefully the rest can go too.

Hells Yeah!

The past few days I was feeling a little down. Not having a job and the weather was getting to me. Because of this I almost didn’t go to see Steel Pulse last night at the Showbox. None of my friends here like reggae and I didn’t feel like going downtown. I had a ticket already and I love Steel Pulse so I decided to brave it. Lets just say it was a good thing I did. This is the third time I have seen them but the first real concert. The previous times were at On the Bricks and Voodoo Fest so they played shortened sets. This show was absolutely incredible, a great vibe from most of the crowd and a “Happiness Ninja” helped me enjoy the show even more. It was the first time in a long while that I actually sang along and danced (sort of). When they played Your House the whole crowd was into it and singing. Just awesome energy that only comes along in one of about ten shows that I see. Everything is all right in the world now and the sun is shining today, thankfully I got off my ass last night.

Feeling Irie

Edit: About thirty minutes after I posted this, the clouds moved in and it started pouring with a sleet/snow mixture.  Oh well, it was sunny for awhile.

Recently while at a Green Day concert I was introduced to a new phenomenon. Instead of holding up lighters during ballads and such the kids hold up their cellphones. I’m not sure how long this has been going on, considering that most shows I go to are 21 and up, I’m sure I’m late to the party. Needles to say this made me feel old, in defiance I held up my trusty titanium Zippo (which I subsequently lost) next to the Nokias and Motorolas. My protest was short lived however, the AC was cranked up so high in Phillips Arena the flame started burning my hand. I couldn’t bring myself to hoist my phone above my head so I finished the song in darkness with a tinge of sadness in my heart. (ok I’m bullshitting, no sadness) The show itself was great, high energy and lots of explosions. They cut beer sales off really early though. It was also fun to watch all the kids go silent when they played their older songs. The highlight of the show for me was when they did a cover of Operation Ivy’s Knowledge. They ended up bringing some kids on the stage to play it. Seemed planted but was still pretty cool.

I put a couple of new galleries on my business site. Check ‘em out.

Twelfth Planet at 10 High

http://alexvernonphotography.com/gallery/10High

Brother Henry at Red Light Cafe

http://alexvernonphotography.com/gallery/BrotherHenry

I finished picking out my January shows today. The list is located on the right side if the page. Sometimes the feed b0rks, so try refreshing your browser if you don’t see it or click on this handy link: Alex sux I originally had five shows picked out but added a couple more today. See, I am slowing down and luckily most are spread out which will make things easier. Now the trick will be to see if I can keep to the schedule and not over do it.

-Alex

Last night I saw Michael Glabicki from Rusted Root at Andrews Upstairs. Michael put on an excellent show. It was just him and one out of the five guitars on stage. He had an extremely full sound, I’m glad a braved the crappy weather to go see him. The only downside was the audience, 80-90% of them we’re talking throughout the whole show. Rude motherfuckers, if you want to do that go to the bar across the street. I talked to Michael after the show to let him know not all venues in Atlanta are like that. There are some places that people go to listen to music like Eddie’s Attic and The EARL to name a couple. That was the first time I’ve been to Andrews Upstairs and the sound was good but the crowd and the staff sucked. There was also a small film crew following a couple around. It looked like one of those date shows, thankfully they left after awhile. Anyway if you have a chance check Michael out, good stuff.

-Alex

Ok so my plan a couple of Fridays ago (the 19th) was to see seven concerts in a row (on consecutive nights). I already had a few lined up and I read an article recently in Stomp and Stammer about a music reviewer trying to do the same thing. I figured I might as well give it a shot. Friday night I went to see Neon Christ and Go-Devils. They also had a band called Ladies Night playing between the other band’s sets. That confused me at first because I thought the website meant ladies night at The EARL. That didn’t make any sense because they never have a problem getting people in there and that’s the cheesy kind of thing they do in Buckhead and Midtown. Ladies Night had there name on lite-brites in front of their setup. Lite-Brites (check out the link) cool, I’ve had hours of fun with them in the past. Anyway they show was very good and my self-imposed mission was off to a good start.

And that’s as good as it got. The next day I was awaken to a guy from down the street doing work on our roof. Since it didn’t seem like I would be getting any more sleep I decided to get up. About an hour later my roommate brought his Little Brother and a friend of his over. Since my roommate went on the roof to watch the work I was commissioned Big Brother for the day. My roommate’s little brother Devante has been bugging me for months to see my guitar and now I had to kids begging me constantly so I broke down. I pull my guitar case out and they comment on my “Don’t Mess with Texas” sticker, apparently the slogan is used in some current song. I open the case and a wave of noxious fumes hits me in the face like a pissed off girlfriend who just caught me checking out another woman. It basically smelled like a dead skunk that was feasting on rotten eggs before his untimely demise. I saw some mold at the end of the guitar and my heart shrank like the Grinch’s. The waning increased when I lifted the guitar out of the case, it looked like an elementary school science project gone awry. Multicolored mold in various stages of fuzziness inside the case and on the back of the guitar and the stench was unbelievable. After I had removed the guitar from the case I noticed the worst part of the damage, the soundboard was caved in. So basically my guitar is toast and probably my case as well. Not the best thing to happen with a wicked hangover.

The kids kept asking me to go play basketball, I was waiting on my roommate so I suggested we play some football in the meantime. Man was that a bad decision. It went well for about five minutes, then we started running routes. Sanchez Devante’s friend was running a couple of routes with Devante running coverage. I kept anticipating incorrectly so Sanchez and I weren’t connecting. I then told Sanchez to run a buttonhook, I guess I didn’t explain it well enough because he ran straight for Devante and instead of turning around he kept faking spins and ran to the right. He was getting close to the fence so I knew he would have to turn around soon, so I fired the pass. Not super hard but with a little pepper on it (this was an authentic fullsize football BTW). He turned around right when the ball was at head level and it promptly smacked him right in the eye point first. I didn’t know a kid his size could scream like that. Man was it loud! There was a slight delay so I think he was playing it up a bit and not being able to open his eye probably scared him more than anything. I get along really well with kids (maybe because we are on the same mental wave length) but a lot of times I seem to end up hurting them unintentionally. I need to learn to pull back a little better I guess. So after icing Sanchez’ eye down and explaining to him he doesn’t have pink eye they resumed their basketball nagging. Since football was out now (they would’ve played some more but I had enough) I finally acquiesced.

Because it was about four and I hadn’t eaten anything all day, I stopped by Australian Bakery first. The woman behind the counter asked if I was “a big brother” that day. I replied that I was subbing. She was really cool with the boys explaining what they had and suggesting things. When they brought out the food, she gave each of them a free bag of chips. Very cool! I love Australian Bakery, I go there quite often and I would make it a regular lunch stop if I worked closer to it. After eating and dropping off a library book (reviewing coming soon) we headed over to Brownwood park. I have two court options by me and I chose Brownwood since we were closer to it. As I pulled up I noticed that the courts were empty, there was a man and his little girl at the jungle gym and some guys playing cards at one of the picnic tables. Here’s where I made my mistake, I had a bad feeling about the guys but instead of going to the other park, I got out. A couple of minutes after we got on the court one of the aforementioned guys came down and asked if he could shoot with us. Sure I said, he seemed to be fairly young and fucked up on something but not too bad. right after that I realized my mistake, the other three were heading down the hill. The first thing I do when I meet another man for the first time is size him up and try to determine if I could take him out or not. It’s nothing personal it’s just something I’ve done for as long as I can remember. It doesn’t matter if it’s a new employee at work or a relative, or friend of a friend. Just habit I suppose. After sizing them up I figured I can take on two relatively easily. Four though would be very tough, the thing that really worried me though was that I had two kids with me. All of them seemed to be fucked up. Judging by their eyes, my guess would be crack. So instead of enjoying the game I spent most of the time conserving energy and keeping an eye on our new acquaintances. Fortunately we left without incident. I dropped the kids off and went home and promptly crashed for an hour or so. Later on that evening I went into work with my roommate to shutdown some servers for an impending power cut and went home after that. I was going to see Helmet that night but after the days events I wasn’t feeling up to it, hence my mission failed.

To sum things up here’s a handy key.

Good:

Got to play with kids
Received my new lighter
The kids said my muscles were “solid rock”
Free chips from Australian Bakery
Nothing happening with the crackheads

Bad:

Hitting Sancez in the eye with a football
Finding out my guitar was ruined
Stressed out from the crackheads
Going into work on Saturday

Winner: Good

-Alex

On Labor Day I went to the 19th annual WRFG Labor Day Blues BBQ. It was held at the Masquerade of all places. For those in the know the Masquerade is usually frequented by younger people the majority of which could be classified as goths. For the Blues fest though the older Atlantians were out in force. I was definitely one of the youngest people there excluding the kids and babies. Yes that’s right, kids and babies. It was pretty funny actually people brought lounge chairs and strollers, it was quite a sight. The senor citizen contingent was represented as well. Everybody was cool though, we were all there to see some good blues and the atmosphere was copacetic. I caught the tail end of Zydefunk a New Orleans style zydeco band, there are a high energy band and they made me start jonesing for my New Orleans trip in October. I also caught the headliner Bob Margolin, man he could play guitar. His band would have been great by themselves but the audience received and added bonus when some of our local artists sat in on some songs. Francine Reed (excellent! check her out if you ever get a chance), Mudcat, Sweet Betty, Tommy Brown and Bill Sheffield all sat in for different songs. Also one of the bartenders working that night was absolutely stunning. She told me her name but I couldn’t hear her over the crowd noise. She had an uncanny knack of remembering peoples names to everyone’s amazement. I was to much of a chickenshit to talk to her plus I already had a couple of Sam Smith’s Imperial Stouts (7% alcohol and my new favorite beer) before going there so that didn’t help any.

Alas I have some sad news to pass along, the Masquerade is being sold soon or already has been. They will keep it open for a year after the sale but then who knows what will happen to it. Whatever they do I hope they don’t demolish the building, it has a lot of character.

http://www.atlanta.creativeloafing.com/2004-09-02/news_feature2.html

Singing the blues for the Masquerade

-Alex