I’m pretty stoked at the moment. I just received my ticket for Ultra Music Festival 2005. This is supposed to be America’s biggest electronic music event, which is saying something in terms of size. Although I’m expecting it to be multiple times as large as Enchanted (approx. 50,000 people are expected to attend) I doubt it’ll have the same charm as Enchanted as none of my Aussie Enchanted friends will be there! Ah well.
I’m incredibly bloody picky about what electronic music I listen to – a lot of the harder techno styles I think are utter crap and could have been written by monkeys, and most of the dance music I’ve heard whilst I’ve been over here has been… uninspiring. I dunno, if it’s dance music it has to have a certain latin flavour for me to like it but then again it can’t be too laid back. I don’t really like the really hard drum and bass stuff either. Sometimes it sounds like someone with no music knowledge at all sat on a keyboard and pressed record. But then I still do like a lot of other DnB songs. Like I said, I’m picky. So on that front I’m very interested to see what this will be like. Once I’ve recovered from this event I’ll write up a review, or something like that.
I think my flight back to the US was the worst ever for jet-lag and annoyance factor. American Airlines has yet to prove to me they can get me somewhere without being over an hour late. Well, here’s hoping for the future!
I knew things were going to be bad when I arrived in the US because I had a connecting flight through Dallas, TX to Fort Lauderdale. Of course the flight from LA to Dallas was an hour late, so as I touched down in Dallas I was supposed to be boarding my next plane. I ran out of the arrival gate (A24 for future reference) and across the travelators to the adjacent terminal to get to gate C4. Just as I arrived I heard an announcement that the gate had changed to C11. After moving to that gate and waiting for about 15 minutes (yes, not surprisingly the outgoing flight was going to be late departing) we had another gate change to C2. On the way over to that gate there was a guy strumming a guitar with a girl tagging along with him. I said to him “you should sing us a song about all these gate changes!” So he did! It was pretty funny. His name was Ryan and when I asked him what he did he said “Dude! I surf, dude!” (I kid you not). I think he was actually a construction worker by day but lived right on the beachfront in California and surfed at night mostly. The girl he had with him, Krista, was also from California. He was your typical cliche surfer. Blonde hair, even a beard and the most surfie sounding voice I’ve ever heard. If you’ve watched Finding Nemo just think about all those turtles Nemo meets. Exactly the same sort of voice. It was freaking hilarious!
We had not finished the musical chairs with the gates yet – an announcement made over the PA system said that our plane was now leaving from gate A29. This was back at the terminal we’d arrived at originally. Amazing! We sat down – Ryan chose to sit in a wheelchair – and he played some more of the ‘songs’ he’d written. One was about Bambi and how one day Bambi was just minding his own business when a hunter shot him, took him to McDonald’s where they processed him and then put him in a burger. I was in stitches because the words to the song seemed to be… I dunno, influenced by weed when he would’ve written them.
I couldn’t resist taking a picture of a guy sitting in a wheelchair playing a $20 guitar from Target whilst singing songs about Bambi. So here ya go: Nuff said? I think so 😉
Well the one at 8249 W Sunrise Blvd does anyway. I’ve been trying to locate a power supply for my piano (yep, I’m still talking about it) because the power supply I have from Australia can’t run on 110 volts. I went to a piano store today where I got some extremely good service and I bought at very good prices a heavy duty keyboard stand as well as a 12 volt 2 amp power supply for a technics keyboard. This is exactly the voltage and amperage that I required! However I knew I’d have to change the plug for it so that it’d fit into my digital piano. No problem – I thought I’d quickly pop by a Radioshack and get a DC plug adapter kit or something similar.
Queue bad assumption.
I went into the Radioshack store and after waiting 5 minutes whilst the attendants crapped on about nothing I was finally served. I explained my dilemma to an attendant but only got back an impatient blank stare. He said it couldn’t be done, to which I called bullshit. He said that the plugs they had were only rated to 1000mA, which he kindly pointed out was 1 amp, which, thank god, he also pointed out was less than 2 amps. This guy was really, really good! I was also thinking the statement that the plugs were only rated to 1 amp (or 1000 mA, which by the way is less than 2000 mA, 2000 mA being equal to 2 amps) was a bit of bullshit too. I’m pretty sure the plugs could handle a few amps at the very least. The amp limitation with such small scale situations would be with the transformer wiring that the plug is connected to. But anyway, after the attendant “helped” me he moved over to a keyboard/microphone setup and started playing random notes and attempted to sing. Both the keyboard playing and singing were absolutely terrible and nearly caused my eardrums to burst. I got out of that place quick smart. It sort of felt like I was in the twilight zone or something similar. A very, very surreal experience!
Goldberg is a champion of drinking, there is no doubt in that. For his size I just do not know how he stays upright. I guess the only explanation is he has had a lot of practice.
This story begins with the wedding of Adam and Emma. Matt was drinking hard at the reception and was getting more and more drunk. He came to me at some point and said “hey dude… doooo ya reckon youuu can dddrive me into town tonight?? ?? I need a liffffft in becosh I’ve been drinking a little too mussh.” (ok, it wasn’t quite that bad). I had no problem with this as I wasn’t really drinking at all (if you don’t know why then read back a few posts).
What happened for the rest of the night is just amazing. We drove into the city later on and he drank about 1/2 a bottle of Sambuca on the way. We went to the Stamford Plaza on North Terrace. I don’t know why we did, that just felt like the thing to do. Anyway at some point I noticed a grand piano down in the Cascades lounge and said to Matt “you gotta go play that!” About 10 minutes later that’s exactly what he was doing. Remember that at this time he was completely and utterly off his face. The waiter approached Matt and said “can you play this” and Matt said “yeah, of course”. After Matt had been playing for a while the waiter began bringing him free drinks! There were some other people there who were clapping and cheering Matt on too. What happened next was just weird. A few people had congregated around the piano requesting songs.
Not long after that a person equally as drunk as Matt started breakdancing to a bloody piano, or at least attempting to. Bear in mind we’re listening to some of Matt’s original songs, songs by Ben Folds and other songs by Billy Joel.
A guy wearing a kilt sat down next to Matt and started playing. He was a pretty good piano player too. This was when I heard Matt say to him: “You’re pretty cool for a guy who wears a kilt!” I can’t remember why the guy was wearing a kilt at 2am in the morning, but he was a percussionist (and it seemed a regular muso too since he could play piano) and had taken part in the Edinburgh Military Tattoo at least once. Here is a pic of Matt and the Kilt dude to Matt’s right playing the piano.
Matt also plays in a band called “Bernee”. I took some pictures at his latest gig which he’s put up on the Bernee website. I wish I could have used my new f1.4 lens but I had to make do with what I had. Eventually I’ll get around to putting my edited pics up on Flickr. Big emphasis on eventually.
