myShoggoth

Amon Tobin, Pitch Black, and Dirty and Grym

Last night was an excellent show, it felt like a mini-USC held at Neumos.  I had an even better time than I was expecting.

Got there pretty early so I caught both opening acts and was very surprised by how good they were.  Dirty and Grym (no website?  nothing?) opened and played to a few of us and were quite impressive.  Their set lasted about an hour and a half and by the end of it the room was filling up and there were a bunch of people dancing and getting into it.

They did their job well to prime the pump for Pitch Black, who did an excellent set.  It was impossible not to dance to it, except for the people standing next to us who appear to have had troubles figuring out the techno beat (hint: it is "oontz oontz oontz oontz oontz oontz oontz") and so just stood there for the most part.  I got home and immediately bought a Pitch Black album on emusic.

Amon Tobin was great.  His recorded stuff is very subtle and weaves together samples in an intricate way that I love.  His live performance is not that, but it was fun and I had a great time.  I admit to being a little disappointed by the difference in the live versions but at the same time I realize that it probably isn't possible to do the kind of stuff he does live without having it be more like "push this button to start song 1, push this button to start song 2".

One of the best shows I've seen so far this year, my feet were cursing my existence by the end but it was totally worth it.

Block Parties!

This weekend I went to two different block parties.  Technically one was an art fair, but whatever.

At the 6th Street Fair in Bellevue I saw Amir Beso play.  He's an amazing guitar player, love his stuff and his CD (which I personally bought via emusic.com but it is available at assorted places, check out his website for more info).

Yesterday I went to the second day of the Capitol Hill Block Party.  I am now thoroughly exhausted.  Here's who I saw:

• Girls - Meh.  They were okay but nothing special.  Not a lot of range.
• The Pains of Being Pure At Heart - They were also okay, didn't blow me away but I enjoyed their show.  They have a couple free downloads on their site which is great, definitely good enough live to check those songs out and see how they are recorded.
• Akimbo - Wall of noise style trash band.  They played the hell out of their songs and were extremely high energy.  At one point the leader singer told us what the next song was about, I'm pretty sure he was being funny because what few words there were were screamed full out at the microphone and impossible to understand.
• PELA - The first big find for me at the party.  I got home and immediately bought their CD on emusic. 
• The Thermals - They were certainly good but didn't blow me away.  Good enough that I'll be checking them out more, not good enough to make me immediately buy their music (see above).
• The Lonely Forest - Wow what a great find, this is a local Seattle band (recently, moved from Anacortes).  Very interesting songwriting, the leader singer has a great voice, and they showed a range of different styles and ideas.  Wow.  I'm going to try to see them in a smaller venue around town soon.
• Future of the Left - Literally just screaming into the microphone.  When they played one song with a keyboard which didn't involve screaming it became clear why they screamed all the time.  Left Neumos a few bars into that one.  Blah.
• The Gossip - Yeah, well, I dunno.  Beth Ditto has a great voice and they have some catchy songs but it didn't hold me.  Having said that, the place was packed for them, so they clearly have a large fan base.
• Noisettes - Half an hour late to start, the best part of the show was the lead singer's outfit coming apart.  She's gorgeous, incredibly talented, and has a fantastic voice.  However, the songs were kinda blah and certainly didn't do her justice.  Left maybe four or five songs into the set.

The Last Year In Concerts

I was asked in a survey what bands I'd seen in the last 12 months.  I thought this was an interesting exercise.  Also interesting is that all but the last two of these performers I've seen since December, so the forward run rate is even better:

• Manooghi Hi
• Deepsleep Narcotics Company
• The Decemberists
• Andrew Bird
• Blind Pilot
• Lady Drama
• The Veils
• Bottoms Up Blues Gang
• Marmalade
• Delhi 2 Dublin
• Railbenders
• 99 Men
• Camera Obscura
• The Crystal Method
• The Prodigy
• Devotchka
• The Janks
• Michael Shrieve (Spellbinder)
• Two Cow Garage
• Brandi Carlile
• Sweet Water
• Faith and the Adam Hunter Band
• Visqueen
• Rebirth Brass Band
• Holly Cole
• Kimya Dawson

The last year and a bit

Hey, I feel like bloggin!

I suspect this is due to the product I'm working on finally being at a point where I think it is usable and useful for enough of the target market that I'm willing to really talk about it and seek out feedback at a bigger scale.

What I'm talking about is VCHub, and the way we like to think about it is we're modeling the startup ecosystem.

There's a lot more to creating a successful new company than just the people in the company itself.  You have law firms, accounting firms, advisers, investors, so on and so forth.

We started with, and the core of the product still is, an online capitalization table.  This is where all the investors, including company founders and employees, are tracked and what portion of the company they own under what terms is tracked.

Most companies currently track this information in a custom Excel spreadsheet, maybe they got it from their law firm or got a hand me down from another company.  I'm not going to spend time in this post on why this is suboptimal, for many I think it will be obvious, and for those who have been in the trenches dealing with the situation the problems are very well known.

Around this core of knowing the corporate structure we also track service providers for the company and those who work with it who may not have a direct investment or option grant.

Then you add on top of that the ability to share this information with others, like the previously mentioned service providers, potential investors, advisers, and so on... and I think we have a compelling product that helps solve an area with lots of current pain, mostly in terms of how much time is sunk into managing, updating, and sharing this information.

I'm going to start to blog about the product, what we're doing, and how I'm building it.  I'm very interested in feedback on all aspects, particularly around technology and how users see the space we're modeling.

The whole thing is early yet, we have beta users and a customer advisory board (and I'm hoping both sets will read this and let me know what they think of where we're at as we go along), but others are certainly welcome to try it out and help influence what direction we take it.

iPhone post

At the gym, on a stationary bike, and I thought to look for a SixApart iPhone app. Sure enough, there it is.

Does this mean I'll post more? Who knows.

Sweet Water at Neumos

So I have this friend, Adam, who I worked with on and off for a few years and then more closely for a year while I was on the Messenger team.  Adam is a rock star coder and an excellent dev lead and a great guy who I am very happy to know.

Then one day, after I've given my two weeks notice but haven't left yet I find out that no, really, he's a literal rock star.  He was the lead singer for this band named Sweet Water that was hot in the 90s and then went back to school and is now a kick ass programmer.  This explained some of the show posters and such in his office.

His band is back together and made a new CD (their 5th) and tonight they had their release party.

They tore it up, I had a great time, only saw one guy get throw out by the bouncers and maybe three or four crowd surf.

I'll definitely hit their shows when I'm in town, they put on a great one.

I was really expecting to see a lot of people I knew but maybe Neumos was a bit edgy for the Microsofties...

Brandi Carlile at Mount Baker Theatre

Oh. My. God.

I think that was one of the most important concerts of her career, I've been to a couple now and in this one she raised the bar substantially.  Instead of being a great Seattle area talent who is starting to broaden to being nationally and internationally known, she made a statement tonight that she's a bigtime international star being born and we witnessed part of the the birth.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I drove 5pm - 7pm on a Friday from Bellevue to Bellingham.  Those of you know who the area and the traffic know that there's serious devotion in that act.  I was far from the only one, I overhead a few people in the audience talk about making the trek from Seattle to see her.

The opener was Gregory Alan Isakov, and this guy is a serious talent in his own right.  His set was solid, varied, and very interesting.  Additionally Brandi came out to sing a few of his songs with him and they announced that she had done so for about half a dozen songs on his upcoming CD.  Worth picking up for that alone by Brandi's fans, but the songs he sang were really good.  It is on my list.

She also announced that he's agreed to open for her entire upcoming tour, so if you go to see her be there in time for his set.

She had a huge range of stuff, part of the reason I think it is her breaking through.  She did fan favorites, stuff from her upcoming CD (which sounds like it will be stunning), and covers that I wouldn't have expected as well as a few I've heard before.

She ended her main set with Folsom Prison Blues, and she tore it up.  They started playing it and I thought it would be interesting to see how this pans out but she blew me away.  They ended it with a bang and walked off the stage to a quick standing ovation.

She did the encore alone (exception for the end of one song where one of the twins came out to whistle) and started with Stand By Your Man.  It was funny and very authentic at the same time.

Totally worth the three and a half hour round trip, that was an incredible show and I feel privileged to have been there for it.

Michael Shrieve's Spellbinder at ToST

Wow.

I expect (and was told to expect) something special at this show but I was still blown away.  A group of exceptionally talented and skilled musicians working their craft.

Michael Shrieve did not disappoint.  When I watch a master at work one question that I always ask myself is whether I'd really like to be able to do what he's doing, and the answer in this case was absolutely!

The other members of the band were amazing in their own right.

I will be going to this show regularly, maybe not every week but at least once a month.  The venue, ToST, is small and intimate and the musicians mix in with the not-too-crowded crowd between sets.

For the price ($6 cover!) you're seeing a performance that could easily be at the Jazz Alley, as an example, for a lot more.  Hard to beat that deal.

Faith and the Adam Hunter Band at ToST

I'll link to the upcoming one rather that the event for Sunday that I went to.

This is, as I remember it, a new collaboration between Faith and the preexisting Adam Hunter Band.  It worked very well, they're still early on and it shows in the performance but the amount of potential and talent is really great.  The band itself worked well, at one point they did a song where Adam (I assume) was singing and Faith did backup, and that went fairly well although Faith's part seemed needlessly tacked on.

Faith has a wonderful voice and clearly loves being center stage and having the attention.

I'm hoping they keep going and really concentrate on tightening up the performance, I really enjoyed what I saw but there's so much potential for more there.

Viqueen at the Tractor Tavern

Man that was a fun show, Seattle-based Visqueen headlined at the Tractor Tavern tonight, a sold out show that really deserved it.

Dale, Jodi and I showed up around 10pm just as they posted that it was sold out, Dale had anticipated this so we all had pre-ordered our tickets.

The band just before them, Department of Energy, started playing a little bit after we got there and met up with some friends.  They were a mixed bag for me, I'm not a fan of their lead singer's... singing, and their keyboards were overpowering and I think took away from the sound.  On the other hand their basic songs were very interesting and have a ton of potential.

Visqueen just rocked the house, I had listened to their music a bit on MySpace when Dale invited me to go but seeing them live was a whole different ballgame.  I instantly fell in love with their lead singer and their new bass player is just plain adorable.  I think there were also other band members, but I can't say for sure.