Over the course of a fine night at Jammin Java, patrons kept buying drinks for Rhett Miller. He was gracious in his thanks and generous in sharing them with the members of Black Prairie, who opened for him and played on a few of his songs. There will be more on the show – including set lists and more photos – soon.
Arteless won the night with a funky set.
I was asked again to judge at Jammin Java’s Mid-Atlantic Band Battle on Tuesday night, which is always a good time and great chance to catch up with local music. Spent this morning finishing an article and photo gallery about it for my DC Concert Photography column at examiner.com. And then the damn Content Management System went all crazy, wiped out the article (luckily, I still have the first draft) and refused to properly publish the slideshow, so it will not be appearing in search engines. (On the downside of being a freelancer, I have no in-house IT department.)
But for you stalwart souls who visit this site, you can view the slideshow here.
I’ll be back at the judges table tonight and will attempt another article/gallery tomorrow, so please check back in.
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B-day greetings from my gal Florence
Somewhere along the line, I signed up for a bunch of email alerts from various musical artists in the Universal label group and they seem to have me listed as having a January 2nd birthday. I just opened a bunch of emails to find a group of rock stars all wishing me a happy day. Nice thought, but it’s curious to see how well – or not – the marketing departments handled my special occasion.
Rufus Wainwright, for instance, goes directly to the sales pitch after a perfunctory HB greeting. “To celebrate your special day, why not grab yourself a beautiful Rufus box set?” And then, even if I wanted to order this 19 disc spectacular, the link connects me to a page that offers all sorts of stuff but NOT the set in question. I love you, Rufus, but that’s a major fail.
The Rolling Stones say something nice (“Hopefully you have a great day and make sure you blast out a few of your favourite Rolling Stones tracks to celebrate!”) before offering a discreet link to their web store.
Keane and Elbow don’t try to sell me anything, while Ellie Goulding and Florence + The Machine thank me for my support, and Snow Patrol suggest I celebrate with some good music and link me to their site, where I can stream some remixes.
But you know who actually makes the moment count? The Beeb! Justin Bieber’s message includes a link to a downloadable remix of him and Usher performing the traditional Happy Birthday song as part of a campaign for the American Cancer Society. The site also offers video greetings from more than 30 artists that you can customize and send to friends. There appear to be some glitches in the system – the link for a “personalized musician phone call” leads to an error message and I’m still waiting for the Debbie Harry test video I sent to myself – but the song’s worth grabbing for future use to enthrall young friends and/or embarrass older ones.
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First day of the new year, sitting in a comfy chair with the new laptop (thanks, Santa!) and watching the House of Representatives try to undo the damage of the “fiscal cliff.” Didn’t Congress get the memo? It’s time to shape up, fly right and get stuff done, dangummit.
Anyhoo, starting 2013 with a new O/CD Tally, this one to be handled via twitter. So, if you’d like to track the accumulation of new music that I get each day of this new annum, follow me @OCDmusicTally. There are already five albums listed (it was a good day of promo emails and surfing), three of which are freebies you can grab for yourself so I hope you’ll check it out.
Tomorrow, it’s on to whatchagonnaplay.com, which is also going to get more attention as part of the CPF 2013 Resolution/Revolution.
Happy New Year, everyone!
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