speak.to

Went to Blowoff at the 9:30 Club on Saturday. Bob Mould and Richard Morel gave nice guitar and vocal performances in the middle of their usual tag-team DJ set, backed up with interesting visuals by Nick Lopata. These guys are all incredibly friendly and talented, and draw an interesting crowd with a great vibe. No booth for Rich and Bob, they DJ from right on the floor. I should really go more often, since I can walk to the 9:30 from my house, and actually hang out with these guys, and several dozen--or a few hundred--of their friends depending on which room they’re in.

Speak.to is active again after a while with no activity.

It's not ready for prime time, whatever that might be. It began just as a learning experiment. Interacting with people regarding the web 2.0 kerfuffle prompted me to start working on it again.

Lisening to Maxwell, after being turned on to him by my friend Rodney. A great songwriter who's also got the balls to take on This Woman's Work and does a great job of making it his own.

Saw The Evens Friday at St. Stevens church. Fantastic performance by the group--made up of Ian MacKaye from Fugazi, and Amy Farina on drums. They did 14 songs in a benefit for Positive Force, We Are Family, and Tale of the Tape. Nice crowd of, I'm guessing just under 200 people, at this interesting Mt. Pleasant venue. Started with scenes from the film Black Wax with Gil Scott-Heron.

Went to see Ambulance LTD at the Black Cat last night. Fantastic show! I enjoyed it enormously.

This is my favorite band so far from the Blowoff set lists--though I didn't hear them there. I've just figured out that they tend to play more rock oriented stuff at Blowoff, and Bob Mould's new stuff, earlier in the evening.

For the last few weeks I've been listening constantly to Ambulance's album LP, which has a nice variety of styles and a bunch of familiar influences that can be heard along with the band's own unique sound. Click the Ambulance LTD link above to visit their site where you can listen to tracks from the album and see a live video for Heavy Lifting.

These are beta services that require invitations. Gmail is Google's beta email service. Orkut is Google's beta social-networking site. Rojo is a news-feed reading service with group moderation. If you're interested in trying these services, just add a comment to this entry requesting an invitation to one or more. I'll send invitations to the email address you used to register here.

No need to Google and beg strange bloggers--I've already done it for you. Hmmm... does that make me a beta whore?

This embarrassing photo shoot done by Bill Gates in the mid-80s is hysterical. It also disturbs me somehow. Interesting to see the Mac at his desk too.