August 2004

Andrea Kremer put together a magical night of pop delights for the Tuesday Night Cabaret at the Paradise Lounge. Mike Viola of the Candy Butchers hosted the evening and was accompanied by his pal Todd Foulsham on drums. Gordon Wright from Fooled by April performed a short set and then was joined by Mike and Tom for a cover of Crowded House’s “Don’t Dream It’s Over.” I was hoping they’d go for something else by Crowded House or maybe a Neil Finn solo tune. But it was good. Great, even! Meghan Toohey from The So and So’s sang a few of her tunes and then joined Mike for Roy Orbison’s “Love Hurts.” My favorite part of the night was when a newish Boston band (who Mike introduced as The Clique but the Q Division websites has a photo of them as Zoo) got up to sing “Jet” by Paul McCartney with Mike Viola standing in front of the stage assessing how well the band administered their popness.

Andrea’s Boston Pop Underground has other happenings coming up including The So and So’s at the Lizard Lounge on September 9th. See you there? Mmmmm pop!

Boston Pop Underground is a live music series featuring the best local and national indie pop artists. Not “pop” as in Britney — pop as in the Beatles, the Kinks, the Beach Boys, the Zombies, Big Star, Cheap Trick, Badfinger, Elvis Costello, Squeeze, the Posies, Jellyfish, Matthew Sweet, Jon Brion, Neil Finn, Michael Penn, XTC… you get the idea. The kind of pop distinguished by memorable melodies, soaring harmonies, thoughtful lyrics, irresistable hooks, and a love of the craft of songwriting.

Just for fun, I tried to set up something at the new drop cash website last night but it didn’t work so well (on Safari, IE and Camino on my iBook G4 running OSX). Everytime I logged in to my TypeKey account, it looped back to drop cash’s homepage, asking me to login to TypeKey. I’m on a Windows computer right now and I didn’t have the same problems. So, if you’d like to contribute to the “Finally Send Sooz to the Iceland Airwaves Music Festival in Reykjavik October 20-24th” … you can finally do so! It’d be a fun event to blog from, indeed.

Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won’t adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words ‘make’ and ’stay’ become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free.

~ from Still Life with Woodpecker, Tom Robbins

[Jesse James Garrett, Jason Shellen and Rebecca Blood at the Speaker Pelosi.com/DCCC Blogger Bash]

Longtime web writer/blogger Rebecca Blood and her husband Jesse James Garrett traveled to Boston from California to volunteer at the 2004 DNC Convention. Read about their adventure. [via Jessamyn]

I’m at Tealuxe in Harvard Square conspiring with Peter Caputa of WhizSpark. They’ve got a web company that helps you publish and promote your own events. Seems nifty. I might use it for the social gatherings I host ala sooz.com, Free Agent Boston events and maybe syndicated events ala Exploit Boston! Here’s my WhizSpark profile. Add your email address if you’d like to be notified when I host my next event through their service.

I stumbled across multipmap.com when I was looking for an easy way to figure out the ICBM coordinates for my new apartment to update my geourl info. Along with coordinates they also provide maps for spots around the world. The directions seem to be for Great Britain only.

Founded in 1987, The MIT Artists Behind the Desk showcases the creative talent of staff at MIT in the visual, literary and performing arts. They’re conspiring on an exquisite corpse project that will feature large scale drawings hanging in a newly renovated Athena cluster on campus (W20-575). The Fall lunchtime performance series starts up on September 8th in Killian Hall. [via mit.edu spotlight]

A friend’s apartment was broken into Friday afternoon while he was home. He heard someone at the door and figured it was one of his roommates coming home. A few minutes later he left his room to go out to say hi and ran into someone else who he figured was a friend of one of the roommates. The guy said “Oh, sorry” and then walked out. Turns out the guy was not a friend but had broken into the apartment.

Six years ago Michael gave into my nagging “You really need a website! Your words! They need a website!” In honor of BunkoSquad.com turning six years old today, August 12th, everyone should buy a BS original “Left Behind” shirt. I insist!

Last month 23 people showed up at the mostly first ever Boston Blog Meetup. So, we’re doing it again on Wednesday, August 18th at 7:00 PM. The gathering takes place at Trident Booksellers and Cafe located at 338 Newbury Street in Boston. Good times!