It's called you can take it with you

So Wednesday was the Lemonheads concert at the North Star. God I love that venue. Anyway, the night started with some Yards and yet another random encounter with a girl I know dated one of my friends and ended in an awkward big bang of sorts. Good thing I had long hair then and am pretty much invisible now to random people I met whence the locks were in place. Anyway, the first band to play was called Hymns. It was kind of a lame name for a band. But I'm glad they played as they did a mean cover of Neil Young's "Don't Cry No Tears" from Zuma which was the highlight of their longer-then-it-needed-to-be set. The other reason why I was glad Hymns played was because the next band on the line-up was simply named Vietnam. Hmns and Vietnam. Doesn't get much better than that.

So it was this...

Then this...

Then this...

Anyway, the guys in Vietnam take the stage. They looked like they were going to rollick with some insanely loud, obnoxious punk. However, that was not the case. Vietnam was a classicly rock sounding jammy band that had some amazing hooks and awesome stage presence. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a guy wandering to and fro drinking Stella and I immediately ID him as none other than Evan Dando of the nights headlining act, The Lemonheads (duh.) He kept chugging away and wandering the crowd pretty much incognito. Anyway at one point he walks in front of me and stands next to Kevner right on the edge of the stage. He stumbles back into me and apologizes. THen turns around and goes "Isn't this band awesome?" Of course I agreed because, well, they were. Anyway, it was just fun to see Evan Dando wandering around.

So the Lemonheads crew is setting up and the guy plops down a huge 2-pager set-list filled with amazing song selections including and not limited to "Hannah and Gabi", "Rudderless", The Turnpike Down", "The Great Big No" and new tracks like "Pittsburgh" and "Let's Just Laugh." He gets on stage, stumbles over his words ridiculously and Kevner, Ryan and myself know that its gonna be good. He kicks it off with "Confetti" which if you saw the set-list was the second song to be played. The rest of the night was a train-wreck of jumping all over the place and such to rock out songs. He played songs so out of the order that was on the set-list that it was a free for all. It was glorious. At one point when he was really drunk, he fell over and demanded the roadie hold his mic up to him for the next song. He started to replay a song he already did. Halfway through the song "Tenderfoot", he stops playing and is like, "wait a second... we did this one!" Overall the show was a delightful riotous train wreck of sorts. The tour has 2 more dates so it was nice to see artists just having fun and getting blackout and playing songs they dont really want to play. He even did "Mrs. Robinson" with some douche fag from the audience "doing the vocals" even though he didn't know the lyrics. What an ass. It sucked too because the girl he was psuedo with (we still aren't too sure about that as she looked both displeased to be associated with him and was ignoring this kid in a Cobra shirt [I bet that was the only draw]) was amazingly gorgeous and sweet. Plus when Ryan screamed "Play some Toadies", she turned and was like "that was my first concert! Are they even still touring?" What an awesome lady. Anyway, they closed with "Rudderless" than attempted to plug a casio into his guitar amp, a hollow bodied into the bass amp and Sir Dando started playing a lefty bass but put it on like it was a right handed bass so the strings were facing his chest. We left about 3 minutes into the riot that was happening on stage as it was kinda hard to watch and we assumed it was done since it was like 1:20am.

In other news, new animal added to the extinction list. That kinda rules because it was a freshwater dolphin... and you know what dolphins can do.

Last night was Kildare's in the Yunk this time for Alicia of Psy D @ La Salle university fame. That ruled. I didn't want to leave as the attractive lady quotient was through the roof. Dancing was done, the sandwich sucked, but the Guiness was as always tasty.

Today is yet another work Christmas party. That should rule. Dinner at the Bistro. No money, no honey. All expenses paid.

It's going to be a good weekend. Saturday, work and then probably the Arbor Records Christmas show. Sunday is work then Back to Back to Back to the Future at Mullers. Monday is work, but I have off Tuesday so that means I need to get blackout monday night.

Christmas is right around the corner too. Jesus. I can't even belize it.

Until next time.