adrian is rad

Members of the Columbus Blue Jackets (NHL) are recording a Christmas album.

The article’s interesting, but the best quotes are from the studio owner/ engineer:

In the engineer’s booth, as the players took a break and wiped their brows, DiCenzo commented: “I am shocked. It was not terrible.”

and then later:

“But all of them did way better than I expected. When the key would change, most of the time most of them hit it. I really thought I’d be hitting the Excedrin pretty hard by now”

(via largehearted boy)

I went to ten [1] (rediculous!) concerts in October, so I was pretty busy there. There were a couple I wanted to write about but didn’t and now they seem a bit irrelevant. Well, I’m going to write what I wanted to say about them, in brief, now:

• Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, October 7: You get to see great artists (Earl Scruggs, Gillian Welch, etc.) for free, but you have to put up with the worst crowds ever.
• The Long Winters at the Cafe du Nord, October 13: What Made Milwaukee Famous was entertaining, the Long Winters were good. John Roderick was very entertaining. I took some pictures and put them here.
• The Hold Steady at the Great American Hall, October 17: They’re a bar band. They’re loud and rawkus. Craig Finn was almost definitely very drunk. The vocals were too low in the mix for a band that I like largely because of the deep lyrics, but it was still a very fun show.
• Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy at the Great American, Oct 31: While I was standing outside waiting for some friends, who walked up to the will call booth but Mark Kozelek. I barely avoided turning into a total fanboy and played it cool. Oh and the show: Will Oldham is a fantastically weird guy. Parts of the show were great and parts of the show were a bit boring.

[1] for real:

1. Jose Gonzalez at EBF, October 6
2. Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in Golden Gate Park, SF, October 7
3. Sufjan Stevens in Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley, October 11
4. John Vanderslice at the 750 Pub, Stanford, October 12
5. Long Winters w/ What Made Milwaukee Famous at Cafe du Nord, SF, October 13
6. the Hold Steady at the Great American, SF, October 17
7. Damien Jurado at the Swedish American Hall, SF, October 20
8. Beirut at the Great American, SF, October 20
9. David Bazan at Swedish American Hall, SF, October 27
10. Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy at the Great American, SF, October 31