I went to the 9:30 Club on Thursday night to see The Books with Steve and Coren. It rained pretty hard for the drive there and the drive back. Driving into DC is hard enough without the weather interfering. I have to say I was fairly underwhelmed. I've sort of made it a point not to attend electronic music concerts, but The Books are somewhere in between. On stage, they synchronize a video and a background audio track using a laptop -> projector. Then they pick up the slack and play whatever instruments are not present in the backing track. They don't try to add anything new and do "live" versions.

Overall it was enjoyable, but for me, most of the reason to see a band live is to take in the nuances of the live version. This show had none of that. Afterwards, we met the band and passed Nick one of our earsauce cd's, which he pretended to be enthused about (they are very nice guys).

Yesterday was Stephen's second "Music Together VIVO" class. The premise of this class is this: the parents are the only ones who have to do anything; the kids can do whatever they want (including nothing). All of the kids walk around aimlessly at some point except for Stephen. Stephen sits in our laps the entire time. If an activity requires us to stand/walk/dance, we have to pick him up or he cries. There was a slight bit of progress yesterday in that he was very interested in the instrument portion, but there was also more crying than the first week.

It's been nice working on new music for a change. No more obsessing and re-obsessing over 5-year-old songs. Out with the old, in with the new. Finally.

My "big computer" (the tower) is back to running normally. I had a slew of problems for months, and it was all ubuntu-related. For the time being, everything is running properly, which is why I'm back to posting pictures on here.

On St. Patrick's day, my brother Billy and I went to see Bobby McFerrin in concert at the Birchmere. Tickets were pretty expensive (65 a piece before fees), so the parking lot was less than half full when we arrived at 7:00pm. I found a section of the parking lot that I didn't even know existed, around behind the building. We sat up the right side almost at the front table. We were directly to the right of the stage, about 20 feet away from the performer.

First off, to answer your question: no, he did not sing "Don't Worry, Be Happy"

The opening act was not worth mentioning. It was the most non-distinctive music I've ever heard. They were country songs sung in a non-country style, a white guy and a black girl. They were nice though and the crowd seemed to like them.

Apparently I'm a bigger Bobby McFerrin fan than I realized; I knew just about every song he sang, and I knew the live versions, too. I think he's been doing the same show for the past 25 years. Same songs, everything.

Highlights from his set list:

Drive
Opportunity
Blackbird
Wizard of Oz (whole movie condensed to <8mins)

But beyond the concert, he was just so cool! He would assign different sides of the room different refrains to sing and then point to you when you were supposed to sing with him. He had a portion of the show where he had an extra microphone and anyone could just come up and sing with him. Mostly younger people came up, and most of them were excellent vocalists. Kind of hard to sound bad when Bobby McFerrin is singing backup. People sang classical pieces, oldies, anything they wanted. One kid sang Journey. He also took volunteers from the crowd and formed a choir of 20 people, assigned them different parts, and conducted them while singing lead. He even called the opening act back up to sing a song with them. He was quite generous with his time and his talents.

The encore was just a Q&A session with the crowd. Most of the questions were good, and most of them had interesting answers.

It was really good. I'd recommend going to see him once in your life, but it seems a repeat viewing could get old, as he has been doing the same thing for 20+ years and will most likely continue to do so. It's an interesting way to think about music, all with one voice. Sometimes what he's doing is akin to beatboxing, but he never tries to emulate the sound of instruments. His voice is the instrument, and he doesn't try to make it sound like something that it's not. Overall it was truly excellent, and will ever-so-slightly change the way I perceive music forevermore.

Like everything else in my life, this blog goes in very severe phases. During the times that I actually want to work on it, I develop a backlog of saved drafts to post on later dates where I may not be so motivated. The last several days have been a pretty good example of that. One of my many Useless Facts post, a little post about what I listen to on satellite radio, blah blah. These were pre-prepared.

We got this kid a music-themed activity table. It stands about 18" off the ground and has about 25 buttons you can push and get different responses. It has "speaking mode" and "music mode" which has no words. He only likes it if I put Cheerios in the pocket. Then it's his favorite.

Weekend was great. Concerts were great. Thanks again to Martha and Eric for holding us a table at Leon Redbone. We had good seats. Leon Redbone is a very odd man. Every time I see him in concert, there is more silence between songs, and more weird things like playing the same songs twice. He did two doubles in his set on Friday. Weird.

Last night began the concert gluttony with Gaelic Storm. It was a good concert. Tonight it's Leon Redbone at 7:30. I'm excited.

The forecast for Manassas has changed. Instead of two straight days of snow, it is supposed to rain all day today and tomorrow. Possibly we will get a snowstorm on Thursday now. So maybe the rain will clean up all the snow and sand for a couple days, then it will dry up on Wednesday, and then we will get more snow. We'll see. My car still has snow on it and Stephen has a Dr. appointment at 8:10am tomorrow. I hope the rain comes today and cleans off my car. Then I will have officially gotten away with never cleaning 30" of snow off my car.

There was an interesting story on the most recent 60 Minutes about The Bloom Box. This is yet another alternate power source that people think might slowly start to replace our current grid. It is compact, wireless (yes, wireless electricity) and "clean." John Doerr, the famous venture capitalist in Silicon Valley, has contributed over $100million to K.R. Sridhar and his company, who have raised nearly half a billion dollars in capital. John Doerr has invested in some famous flops, namely the Segway Scooter. Like the Segway was supposed to revolutionize travel in the U.S., this new power source is supposed to revolutionize the way we power our homes. Everyone would theoretically get their own little box (it really is quite small, about 4" cubed) in their back yard and generate their own power. K.R. Sridhar made the same type of invention for NASA before he ventured into the private sector.

I just sent off a request to this place for a week in August. We are trying to take a vacation with both sides of our family. This place would be ideal. It is close to the ocean and right on a lake. This way, my dad could bring his jet skis and Jaime and her dad could go deep sea fishing. It has internet, pool table, two family rooms, three floors, a pool.. even an elevator, hehe. We only have one week of availability because Billy is enrolled in classes all summer and his fall semester starts in late August. We narrowed down the list last night based on availability and pet allowance. Hopefully everything works out. It will be nice to have the planning of this out of the way. It looks like a good place for photos. I may try to rent a zoom lens for that week.

I have a good couple of weeks coming up. My brother Robert is visiting for his spring break the week of March 7. My brother Billy is visiting for his spring break the week of March 14. Back-to-back weeks. I am going to The Birchmere three times in less than two weeks. Gaelic Storm on March 4 with a group of six. Leon Redbone on March 5 with a group of five. Bobby McFerrin on March 17 with Billy. The Birchmere won't go out of business as long as I'm still in this area.

Stephen is officially nine months old today. His Uncle Gavin is officially twenty-six years old today. It was thirty years ago today that the U.S. hockey team (comprised of U.S. college players) upset the four-time defending gold-medal winning Soviet team, which of course had a lot of political implications as well.

Here is an article about many convergent studies on the potentially negative effects of ingesting fluoride, complete with more links and citations than you'd ever care to click. Fluoride is, of course, good for your teeth; a lack of fluoride accelerates tooth decay. That is why fluoride is in toothpaste and mouthwash... but you don't swallow toothpaste and mouthwash. Fluoride is also in nearly all tap water in the United States, and is not removed by Brita or Pur home water filtration systems. It also can not be removed from water by boiling or freezing your water. I don't believe fluoride in our water is a big conspiracy like Alex Jones does, but I leave open the possibility that we as a nation may have rushed into the fluoridation of our water supply without thinking. We seem to place a lot of emphasis on teeth and beauty, sometimes above all else. (What's the first thing Americans say about the British population as a whole? Man, those Brits have some ugly teeth).

On a lighter note: The weirdest video you will see today. This is more a testament to my odd sense of humor than anything.