- Met some interesting new people at church. Okay, this didn’t really rock that hard, but usually the greet-the-people-near-you part of the service (before the sermon) devolves into “hi, I’m ____, nice to meet you” unless I already sort of know the people near me. So it was nice to actually have a conversation.
- Went to lunch with friends and had a caesar salad! I haven’t had a caesar salad for about two months, or salad at all really. I need a good salad once in a while, and the kind I try to make at home never turn out good.
- Having lunch with friends for reasons apart from the caesar salad.
- Almost spur-of-the-moment trip to Austin with other friends to see Rilo Kiley (tickets bought on Thursday, so it was planned, just not for long).
- Introducing friends to Waterloo Records, which they loved as inordinately as I do. (Slight moment of suck encountered when I was unable to locate any of the supposed four copies of the Ingrid Michaelson CD they were supposed to have in stock–I find it rather interesting that a lot of the current crop of commercials that use indie pop songs are not very effective at getting me to by the product advertised, but are very effective at getting me to buy the CD with the song on it. Assuming I can find said CD.)
- Suck caused by lack of Ingrid Michaelson CD countered by finding Sons and Daughters EP, which I have been sort of half keeping my eye out for since a friend sent me a mix with “Fight” on it.
- Pulled pork sandwich at Stubbs! And being able to get to the bathroom without fighting my way through a room-full of partying people like the last time I was there.
- First opening band Grand Ole Party, who none of us had heard of, and who rocked pretty hard. Most of the comparisons I’ve seen online tonight have been to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, which I can totally see now that I think about it. At the time, the closest I could come was a young, angry Gwen Stefani while with No Doubt (there’s a similar use of vibrato). Anyway. The weirdest thing is earlier in the day, we’d been mentioning the fact that very few drummers are also lead singers. Well, the lead singer of Grand Ole Party is a female drummer, which is awesome on both the drummer-singer level, and the female drummer level.
- Second opening band The Bird and the Bee, who I hadn’t heard of, but one of my friends highly recommended. And they were really good, too, but very different. Really whimsical, sometimes ethereal, and a bit gimmicky, but in a GOOD way. She had a bubble machine, folks. A bubble machine. It was awesome. They were so adorable, I wanted to pack them up and bring them home with me.
- RILO KILEY. RILO KILEY. RILO KILEY. When I first got into Rilo Kiley I passed up an opportunity to see them open for Coldplay (a double temptation, because I really like Coldplay too, and at the time, they were probably my favorite band), because the tickets were mucho expensive and I didn’t have anyone to go with. This was much, much better. Three times cheaper, plus twenty feet from the stage instead of who knows how far back at the big St. Louis auditorium they were at, plus friends. It was a great show–not sure if it was as good as Snow Patrol back in March, but pretty darn close (and since that’s all I have to compare it to…). And even though they’re promoting a new album (which I haven’t heard enough yet to know all the songs), they still did my two absolute favorites from earlier CDs, as well as a pseudo-cover of one of Jenny Lewis’s solo songs, which was fun. I’m hoping to resurrect Music Monday from its couple of weeks rest to post a song or two from each band.
