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How to set up a Drum kit

Some tips and a basic configuration on assembling a four piece drum set excluding cymbals.

Yo La Tengo at the Fillmore (4.24)

I admit, it’s taking me long to write these articles. It’s taking me long to write anything. Even though Saturday’s Yo La Tengo gig was the superior one set list wise and heartfelt wise, I’ll talk about it much shorter than I did for Friday’s. I’ll give you less background and context, since you know most of it all, anyways.

Saturday’s gig was essentially the best concert I’ve ever been to. It had all the vital elements that build a show to it’s exact quintessence (which are nowadays frequently lost). There was not a weak moment in the performance. For me, it reached a stage of being a religious experience, not just a spiritual enlightenment. I’m sure two people could go to the same show separately and have two different experiences. Shows that I don’t consider my favorites because of unfortunate contingencies might have been the dead on vision of live musical and social perfection for another, and vice versa. I’ve seen artists who haven’t played the songs I want to hear, whom I am far away back from with an obstructed view, or they aren’t as great live as I predicted and the music seems to become background music to my thinking rather than a show going mode where I’m paying attention to every detail the artist uses. But tonight was my night of spot on. Everything worked. I filled the anticipating hole from last night’s diverse, unpredictable but not immediately satisfying performance. Things that didn’t work out Friday worked out tonight. In my entire history of attending shows, no show did I walk out of with a gratifying sense of stable satisfaction and inner awe. Of course I’d love to see Yo La Tengo again, but in terms of what they did Saturday, it best represented my love for them. This has not been the case with any other singular artist that I sustainably worship and are beyond a period of obsession. I felt that for a while I could live with the privilege of seeing them, and that I wasn’t eager to storm out and beg for them to return. I know I’ll see them again in a casual way, and I will always love them. I’m not done, but I can set the live experience aside and live with the notion that I went. And I loved it.

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