Live blogging from the Minneseries :: 06.28.07

10:23 PM

Oh yeah. It's live, it's a blog. Harbor's onstage right now, churning out some rather solid indie rock/pop. I'm sitting in the back of the Nomad with Peter Leggett, Bill Caperton and my brother, Sean, from Ela. One Negroni down, Corona on the table. I actually tried to order a Negroni, which the bartender heard as Corona. But maybe it's for the best. Drinks with limes are kinda my stee-lo right now: Caipirinhas, etc.

It's finally an honest-to-god pleasant evening in here. It's impressively well-attended. Thanks, y'all.

In other news, the Timberwolves selected Corey Brewer with the seventh pick of the 2007 NBA Draft. I can't help but feel like this is a mistake. The consensus was that Brewer was a Top 5 or Top 10 candidate, but John Hollinger, the master of all things stats-related in basketball, developed this fancy new way to judge prospects, and he found Brewer to be hideously overrated. His being drafted by the Timberwolves would seem to confirm this. According to Hollinger's math, he's the worst of the three past first round picks Minnesota has made (Rashad McCants and Randy Foye being the other two), and they haven't exactly turned into superstars. I mean, Foye looked great last year and the jury's still certainly out. I wish they had taken Noah. He's a character guy, which is what we're sorely lacking, outside of KG, who may be outside of Minnesota before too long. Ricky Davis? Eddie Griffin? These guys do not a team make. You need the glue, and Noah's the glue.

Sean needs some water right now.

10:37 PM

Harbor have wrapped it up, and the members of Ela have abandoned my booth to get set up.

Here's what I saw when I saw "Live Free or Die Hard" the other day. A preview for a Peter Berg-directed film called "The Kingdom" about American investigators going to Saudi Arabia to look into a suicide bombing. And, presumably, to discover how the culturual differences between the Western world and the Islamic world go deeper than we know, but are in fact not so deep as to divide us as human beings, trying to find our way in the world. I'm extrapolating here, but the thing is that I had seen basically this same preview before, but this time, it was cut with "Bullet the Blue Sky" by U2 as the background music. Seemed like a much better film this time around. Odd, isn't it, how music can frame things? The urgency and heat of the U2 track imbued all the clips of the movie with so much more weight and drama. Plus, you know as a viewer that U2 are Irish and have some kind of relationship to the conflict in Ireland, which seems to deepen and broaden the association.

I only bring this up because the track that's playing right now over the house speakers has a guitar part that sounds like "Bullet the Blue Sky."

10:55 PM

Ela opens with "You Die," from their latest, Real Blood on Fake Trees. Or possibly Fake Blood on Real Trees. I can never keep it straight.

11:00 PM

Steve gets a beer.

11:01 PM

Lime in a beer is a scam. The greatest scam ever pulled by a beer company: Our beer's kinda shitty? Well, you just need a lime, my friend. That great ad with the palm trees with the Christmas lights they run around Christmas doesn't hurt either.

You know what? Ela kinda fucking kills it, and I'm not just saying that because my brother plays bass. 'Cause you know what? I wouldn't just say that.

I just realized Knol is playing my Telecaster. I take it all back.

11:08 PM

P.S. Sean's also playing my bass. Kind of trippy right? I mean, maybe not to you. But I bought that bass in New York back in '99 so I could record bass parts on ProTools. And I bought that Telecaster in Amherst, MA back in, oh, 2000, I think, at the Fretted Instrument Workshop for like $400 because I couldn't find an American Tele re-issue that was any good. It's from Japan. And here they are, being played by other people while I blog about it.

The door's propped open. The breeze is nice.

11:22 PM

In the second round, the T'wolves drafted somebody named Chris Richard. Sounds made up to me, like a guy created by the computer in a video game franchise of NBA 2K3.

11:48 PM

Chris Riemenschneider's in the house. He just came from the Black Keys over at the Fine Line, which he said was good, but apparently, there was a pretty large contingent who got their tickets for free through promos and clearly had no idea who the band was. Bobby Bare Jr. opened. I would have liked to have seen that, but I'm really looking forward to catching Mouthful of Bees final show of their stay as the hosts of the Minneseries, especially now that their guitarist, Mark, has returned from tour with Battle Royale.

We Became Actors' singer Jesse Stensby is also here, and his hair's looking flat and great. Apparently, Paul Mitchell De-Tangler is the key. Dude showers twice a day, just so you know, even though he only washes his hair maybe two times a week, he reports. It's nice to be able to just call someone a singer, you know? Not a singer/guitarist or a singer/something. But I went over that last week with regards to Mr. Stensby.

Still awaiting Mouthful of Bees. I may be fading.

11:59 PM

Mouthful of Bees are opening with "Jessica." That's the shit. It is an ugly sweater party in here and all the dudes are skinnier than the chicks. They follow it with "Under the Glacier" which is still my second favorite song from their album. They're just so chaotic and sprawling. Like, explosive and uncalculated, but they always rein it in a bit and never go on too long.

I thought this was a news song, but it isn't. It's "The End." They're pretty great at tacking on these cool little intros to stuff.

12:21 AM

For ther record, singer/guitarist Chris Farstadhas removed his ugly sweater. Perhaps he's conceding defeat here.