taylor did two really interesting covers. one was of justin timberlakes “what goes around”
and the other was of perry’s hot n cold where the spunky santa barbaraian popped up and did a duet with swift on the very stage where taylor was ridiculed for dueting with stevie nicks.
none of the 19k screaming girls cared about anything other than having fun. which made it fun.
taylor flips her hair around awkwardly. she struts around on cue. she raises her sparkling guitar in the air and holds each pose as if she needs to catch her breath. all small details which the 20 yr old will iron out as she continues to headline tours.
but whats most important is she can write a pop song that her audience can relate to.
only question i had was, hows she supposed to write about those no good boys who break her heart if shes locked in her ivory tower while on the road?
the weirdest tune was the finale “Should’ve Said No” which brought up images of Blue Man Group and Flashdance because of the banging on the garbage cans ending in a drenching of water to end the gig.
cuz everyone knows the shows over when the hair and makeup are ruined. 🙂
i left the STP show at the austin music hall early cuz thats what you do when 2000 bands are playing over 4 days.
because of that i missed their encore when Robby Kreiger of the Doors joined the band on stage for the classic tune with all the famous lines
my favorite being, well i woke up this morning and got myself a beer.
its funny that there was all this Doors stuff going on because as i left the show and described how shocked i was at how good Scott Weiland was, i often compared him to Jim Morrison, in the sense that he was wild, unpredictable, and ridiculously handsome.
but then i saw this video this morning and i was all, meh.
sunday and monday were a blur of good times. mostly because of this one up there.
lindsay came down from milwaukee on sunday and got us a room at the swanky conrad hotel on rush street. we met at 4:20 had some drinks, and headed over to the best pizza restaurant in the world, Gino’s East which turned out to be closer than expected. ($5 cab ride).
wait, a pizza restaurant for a date? well it was either that or steaks, but because lindsays last bf was a billionaire, we agreed that there wasnt any restaurant in the world that i could taker that would impresser so we decided to just eat somewhere that tasted good and we could relax. so she picked ginos. which made me happy.
what made me even happier was we got there in time for the fourth quarter of the Bears game. now take notes ladies who wish to woo me: when we got to the hostess who was set to sit us i asked “where can we sit with a view of the TV?” hostess said, “sorry only place to see the game would be at the bar.” at that point i figured, guess i wont be seeing the end of the game, but miss wisconsin was all, we can totally sit at the bar. and after about two minutes there, i was like, i dont care what happens the rest of the night because right now i have a great view of a tie bears game in front of me, an Old Style in my hand, a deep dish pizza being cooked for me, and a super hot babe beside me. how much better can it get?
besides the pizza being freaking delicious and 100 times better than it should have been, da bears miraculously beat the Super Bowl champs with a field goal with mere seconds left to play in the game. an hour later we were at chicagos united center, best known as the place where Michael Jordan won his last few rings. we had great seats to see Bruce Springsteen and he put on one of the best shows id ever seen, and easily the best Bruuuuce show id ever attended.
he played all of Born to Run, and 20 other tunes, in a three hour marathon show that had no breaks, no time outs, and no encores, just one great tune after the next. i sang almost the whole night and somehow i still have my voice tonight. in fact its 3:19am and i cant believe im alive.
why? because after the show we thought it would be easy to catch a cab back to the hotel. we knew we were going to be drinking the whole night (which we did) and there we were walking around not the best part of chicago. plus lindsay was decked out and strolling around atop some very high, high heels. i was all, sorry i didnt have this planned out better, but she was a trooper and didnt complain.
after a while it became apparent that because of all the cars leaving the area, no cabs could drive in, so when we spotted a Billy Goat Tavern (home of the SNL classic skit “cheezborger, cheezborger, no pepsi, coke” we decided to grab a quick cheezborger and another drink.
the line for burgers was long but moving along mighty fast. but we sidled up to the bar first so we could have some drinks in our hands as we waited to place our food order. the place was loud and happy because most of the crowd was there post-bruce and the rest of them were there to celebrate da bears’ upset victory.
one guy even tried to get on top of the bar to demonstrate the boss dancing on top of the piano until a very authoritative voice told him to get the f down. it was classic chicago. “BECAUSE I SAID SO” was eventually yelled. we ate we drank we made friends with people from Detroit, we drank more, we drank even more and soon we were some of the last people left.
got a cab and sped back to the hotel. got there and it was only 1:15am. strangely wasnt drunk. wasnt even close to being drunk. all senses. all smiles. no apologies. wanted more booze. whats this a room service menu? ordered booze to the room, ignored the price. bro popped open the bubbly. bubbly got drained faster than either of us realized and for hours we laid in bed talking and talking and laughing and talking
until i said now is the part of the evening where i have you do some crazy ass shiznit. to which she said, let me drain my glass first. and she emptied it and did stuff that she could honestly say she didnt dream of doing. ha! then we got comfy and talked even more. good, deep, discussions about real things. imagine that.
and this morning we woke up, decided brunch was the right call. ate in the same place as the handsome bears tight end, who was easily recognized because he had a bears hat on (backwards), and as we said goodbye penciled in seeing each other again on new years. will it come true? who knows. but i do know i really fell hard for chicago this time out. maybe it was the weather, maybe it was the company, maybe it was all the learning that went on during my two days working at the trib. maybe it was da bears, maybe it was da bruce. maybe it was all of that mixed with celebrating my moms birthday and reuniting with all of my old grade school friends, most of whom turned out way more successful than i ever hoped theyd be.
if the plane ride gets hijacked by martians and you never see me again, its because i had one of the most fulfilling working vacations ever, and theyre trying to suck the fun out of my brain like i was a human slurpee of happiness. which is kinda what i feel like right now.
they also had a silent auction. which our friend Karisa was very happy to show you, the busblog reader.
i dont know how good this video quality is, so if you want high def(fer) click the video and then click “to view in higher quality” or something. i dont know
im tony the blogger, not joe the plumber, i dont know everything.
update: i blogged about it here at the Times. apparently those bands werent there for me?!?! can you believe this?!?!
i was all just come to my birthday party on wednesday at the redwood. she was like, no no, other than that, of course i will come to your party, but what do you want on top of that?
i was like, i dont care, lets just hang out if you have some time either the weekend before or the weekend after. she said duh, but what? i was all, lets eat somewhere and see a movie or something.
but karisa doesnt like movies so she said “how about i get some of your favorite bands together, i know how weird you are about getting everyone together.”
so i was all, cool! tsar, monster squad, rocket, mere mortals, this will be great! so yesterday she picked me up, i didnt know where the rock was gonna be. and she drove me to the valley, which is weird cuz most of our friends play in silver lake or hollywood or downtown.
we went inside this car dealership where she had rented out this well whole car dealership
and there were remote control cars to play with
and the batmobile was there!
and this crazy space ship car from the Jetsons was there
this car from the future by Ford of all people was there
but i was promised rock. so we went inside and there was Dave Navarro playing guitar with kip bauersfield singing!
then my favorite American Idol, Ryann Starr showed up with these dirty pussycat doll babes and they danced to one of my favorite AC/DC songs “girls got rhythm”
then the guitarist from The Cult came out and everyone sang “Love Removal Machine”
then Steve Stevens came out and they all sang “Rebel Yell”
then Xzibit came out and rapped something crazy but i was getting drunk at this point and i cant remember what he sang but Karisa was fully eating it up
but weirdly, all of that was just the warm up for the good stuff. all of a sudden Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols came out and everyone sang “EMI” and “suffojet city”
then Cypress Hill showed up and did a few numbers including my fave “Rock Superstar”:
with SLASH on guitar!
then they did Welcome to the Jungle!
slash + navarro trading solos was pretty amazing all by themselves
then because karisa is the best. and she hearts me. and i heart her back.
Ozzy
Frickin
Osbourne
busted with Crazy Train, Iron Man, I Dont Know, and S.O.S.
to have taken a crack at questioning David S. Addington in DC yesterday, who seems to be a master debater and overmatched the democrats who seemingly were unprepared for his responses to the questions on matters concerning waterboarding and other means of torture,
the second best place to be yesterday was here in hollywood for the sunset strip music festival.
even though i will have a photo essay review on Soundboard later today, i will give you a brief synopsis of what went down. first off i had a crazy day at work. i really planned on being out of the office at 6pm for the ceremonies that were being held at the house of blues across from the riot hyatt but my plan is always to be out of the office at 6pm and i am hardly ever out of there by any time other than 8pm. which is fine. i love that office and the people in there.
got home in time to shower, read fan mail, change out of my dress shirt and khakis and make it to the sunset strip where my rock partner for the night, ms ali miller of metromix (who you might recall in this photo with ms sarah silverman) met me outside the security gate of the house of blues.
we got patted down, the dude’s metal detector didnt like my wallet chain, and we proceeded to the press table. no one was at the press table. it said something like media check in but there were two empty chairs and two bottles of water.
apparently we were supposed to be there at 5-6 and even though the rock didnt start till 9, which is what the time was at the time, there was no one to give us our credentials. thats cool. we had phone numbers. they had walkie talkies. we ended up meeting the chief of security and the manager of the club and were escorted in. strangely this is nothing unusual. its hardly ever a piece of cake to get into a show. whatevs, within minutes we had beers in our hands and were enjoying the rocking tunes of camper van beethoven.
oddly theyre much older than they were in the 80s. odder still, they seemed to rock much harder. if you closed your eyes you would have sworn that you were still in the time before grunge back when sonic youth and lydia lunch put out one of my favorite singles and when the campers introduced violin to college rock. after a while they played their hit, but not before bitching that their set was only going to be 45 minutes “we’re having our 25th anniversary show at the Filmore in a few days in SF where we will put on a, you know, real 2-hour show”. and then they broke into a long pink floydish jam which led perfectly into the wacky “where the hell is bill”.
soul asylum followed and rocked harder than they did the last time i saw them at the troubadour or wherever that was. princes former drummer seems bigger than ever before which is a pretty tough trick. but their songs were solid and it was nice to sing along to “frustrated incorporated” again.
we did many shots and drank beers and took a cab down the street to the whisky because even though reliving the days when mtv played videos, the crowd was sorta old and sorta lame and this isnt really why al gore invented the sunset strip. may i add that this is why its great to be with someone 22ish like ali who was yawning the whole time at the house of blues.
when we got to the whisky hair metal rock wannabees tattooed millionaire were on stage and most of them were so young that they didnt even have chest hair. the drummer seemed to be a little light in the loafers and definately light on the snare and the singer/guitarist dude was like mick mars’ brother. and even though it was cheesy and even though i would never buy their record, to me it was exactly what the strip and the whisky and hollywood is all about – a good time with a soundtrack of somewhat screaming metal glam rock.
and a front row of dolled up long haired barely legal girls with miniskirts garters and leather.
went home after three songs from LA Guns who werent bad. and was not sad at all that the dude from Warrant had called in sick.
Maria McKee fronting Lone Justice in ’85 – “Don’t Toss Us Away”
Willie Nelson, The Knitters @ Pacific Amphitheatre 2 Live Crew @ The Good Hurt Maria McKee @ McCabe’s Stephen Stills @ House of Blues Os Mutantes, Busdriver @ El Rey Theatre Tex & the Horseheads, Mike Watt & the Missingmen @ Safari Sam’s
do you know how in love with patience i was by the end of the first song?
so in love i didnt even notice annies knee his until i uploaded the pictures that night.
i dont know where the grates are going, but when they come back to your town you really need to see them.
you might also want to get their cd.
courtney said kurdt liked to make lists so heres the list of the top thirteen best cds of 2006 so far, in pretty much order although the top six could be moved around a little because theyre all perfect records.
usually theres only one or two perfect records in a year.
1. the grates – gravity wont get you high
2. the format – dog problems
3. the go! team – thunder, lightning, strike
4. sonic youth – rather ripped
5. christina aguilera – back to basics
6. wolfmother – wolfmother
7. the submarines – declare a new state
8. the bronx – the bronx
9. scissor sisters – ta-dah!
10. guster – ganging up on the sun
11. nouvelle vogue – bande a part
12. el presidente – el presidente
13. blood brothers – love rhymes with hideous car wreck
iv gotta boner the size of long island i dont knwo what the girls do to the bouys 9ut here but they dont finish the Job. thats all oi gotta say,. i dont know if im disgusting or what. of scrourse im disgusting., duh. but still you sohould finsih what youve stared. nbot that i deserve anythig but im just saying the chicks in La unstrdand that if you get naked and start doing shit then you fiunish shit.
i was in the
LES
thats a good thing
we were wathicng the bears fucking dominate
we were trying to figure out who was left in the nfc who could ,make the bears fucking work for a win and we coulndtnt thin of anyone
then she said come with me
then she saidn hi heres my boobies
then she said hi im gonna do stuff to you
then she said omg
then i said ok im gonna barf jst turn yr head
\then she said how about i bring my bff over here
then i said fuck that how abot you sit on the sink and pull up your miniskirt fuck your friend
then she said you want me to fuck my friend then i said i dont wan tto hear abut your friend then she said but my friend is hot then i said everythingspoinning she could be the hottes thing ever fuck yr friend i wanna f one of your pussies then she said i only have one then i said not as far as i can seeee then she said pend over then i said i ant bending ove rfor anyone then she said dont you know who i am
then i said dont you know who iam
then i said not then she said no then we kiss and i almost barfed in her mouth
then we laughed and laughed then she said i love you whoever you ar then i said i love u too
then i said wait did i make out with your rooomate liek A FICKING HYUEAR AGO
\then she said idont know did u
then i said fuck if i know and babies her panties were ruffly and piunk and sweeet and i said i wish i could smell shit cuz i bet you smell good and she said i wish i could smmell but all i see is yr eyes and theyre killing me and i said please lets just hole ond to each other cuz im abo9ut to fall over
and she said fine with me
and then her shirt was off then people were banbging on the mens room door and she said dont worry my friens the owner of this club and i said wht am i doing in a clun and she said do you ha ve a rubbr
and i sai d how old ar eyou
and lemme tel you somethig my friends
and i will tell you this onec and only once
to have taken a crack at questioning David S. Addington in DC yesterday, who seems to be a master debater and overmatched the democrats who seemingly were unprepared for his responses to the questions on matters concerning waterboarding and other means of torture,
id give you the best picture i took this week which was when patience from the grates was talking with annie of giant drag. 
iv gotta boner the size of long island i dont knwo what the girls do to the bouys 9ut here but they dont finish the Job. thats all oi gotta say,. i dont know if im disgusting or what. of scrourse im disgusting., duh. but still you sohould finsih what youve stared. nbot that i deserve anythig but im just saying the chicks in La unstrdand that if you get naked and start doing shit then you fiunish shit.