Monday, June 11, 2007

Monday Newsy Bits: English Beat, Street Scene, Tim Pyles, Smoosh

I'll get to the regular blog later, but until I get to it, enjoy Smoosh covering Blog Party's This Modern World:


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My speculation turns to fact since Cold War Kids have in fact, been added to the Street Scene lineup. Now, since they're touring together, we wait for the White Stripes to confirm.
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One of my favorite people on the planet has started a little blog of his own. Tim Pyles started a website and with all his access in this town, you know it's gonna have some tasty nuggets. Check out The Local Pyle here.
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I'm in a mood for rambling today.

This story is gonna be a long drifting tale, but bear with me. This weekend I was thinking about some of the coolest music moments I've had in my life...you know, like small brushes with fame that for about two seconds make you feel like the cool kids let you in the club. This came up partially because while at indie jam I had a photo pass, and everyone is up in the photo pit with their super mega cameras, and there I am like a dork with my little sony coolpix, given the opportunity only because I'm a blogger.


Anyway, one of those cool times came back around 1996. Friends of friends hooked me up with Goldfinger, and every time they toured through southern California, I got to hang out, and go to their shows here, LA, and San Bernadino, and got to hop around the stage taking pictures of them (again, with little point and shoot camera) . So one time, while backstage in San Bernadino, I got to meet all the other bands playing that particular radio festival. Evan Dando was one of them, but back in those days, his drug habit was pretty well known. Anyway, he's fucking around, I take a picture of him, he doesn't like it, he leaps at me and tries to wrestle me for my camera which I tucked into my jeans. He's kinda choking me and it all happens pretty quick, but the guys from Goldfinger come to my rescue, as does Dave Wakeling of English Beat. They pull Evan off of me, make sure I'm ok (a tiny neck scratch) and the Lemonheads pull Evan away and apologize to me for our altercation.


This long winded story all to say that I've always been a fan of Dave Wakeling because of that night, though he probably would never remember it. That said, Dave Wakeling has some tourdates coming up that I thought I'd post...


The English Beat has some summer tour dates. They're hitting the states and will appear at the Belly Up July 5th and 6th. That's gonna be a weird week, with 4th of July falling on a Wednesday, so it should be a great week for going out and not having to worry about a long dragging work week. They will also be at Coors Amphitheatre on August 18th with 311 and Matisyahu for the "Unity Tour".

The afterthought to that story is that years later I met Evan again and told him about our incident while standing outside the Zombie Lounge while our friends got drinks inside and he apologized profusely. Even being choked never stopped me from being a fan.
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