September 2006

Pete Wood created the Vox Crossposter plugin for Wordpress to crosspost over to a Vox blog. Alas, it won’t work with old entries or edits until there’s an API; but it seems to be nifty nonetheless. I’m trying it out with my Vox blog at susankaup.vox.com.

I’ve got a bunch of the photos at Flickr taken during the first two days of the NEMO Music Festival. I’ll be wandering around more shows tonight; but will probably spend most of the evening at Harper’s Ferry to see The Long Winters and The Blizzard of 78.

Dig into the rest of the photo set at Flickr.

Last night I went to five clubs around Boston and Cambridge to see and take photos of bands performing at NEMO Music Festival showcases. I saw Plumerai at the Paradise Lounge for a very early 6:30 show and then went to Cambridge to see bands in Central Square at the Middle East Upstairs, Middle East Downstairs and TT The Bear’s. Then I headed back home to see bands at Harper’s Ferry in Allston. I really (really!) wanted to get photos online before I went to sleep; but I ran out of steam. I’ll have lots of photos added to Exploit Boston’s event photo pool at Flickr when I get home later today.

If you’re looking for something to do tonight and Saturday, I highly recommend getting a NEMO wristband for twenty five bucks and wandering around the 30+ venues to see an assortment of mostly rock and pop bands. The best show of the bunch will be The Blizzard of 78 and The Long Winters (from Seattle) at Harper’s Ferry on Saturday night.

I’ll be running around town the next three nights taking photos (and maybe some podcasting tidbits) at a bunch of the NEMO Music Festival concert showcases. Keep an eye on Exploit Boston’s website. If you’ll be at NEMO taking photos, join us at the event photo group at Flickr. Bostonist will be writing reviews/words about the shows they see to compliment my photos.

What’s NEMO?

The NEMO Music Festival is dedicated to giving back to the music community of New England. Our goal is to provide education and opportunities to independent musicians, helping them to advance their careers and fulfill their dreams. We are involved in a number of charitable events that take place throughout the year to support this mission:

Boston Music Awards- Proceeds from this event go to the NEMO Scholarship Fund, providing scholarships to children who want to advance their music education but might not be able to afford to do so. Some of the proceeds from this year’s event also go to support the New England Music Hall of Fame, a non-profit organization that archives the great history of music in New England.

There are a ton of bands to see around town during NEMO. If you buy a writsband for $25, you can get into all the shows for no per-event cost. Otherwise, you’ll pay $5-10 per show. I’m going to try to make it to most of the venues. I’ll add another entry here and on Exploit Boston later tonight noting a few of the shows in particular that I recommend.

The Boston Rocks! group I host at HeyLetsGo is meeting up tonight to see The Bleedin Bleedins and other bands who will be performing at a NEMO showcase at TT The Bear’s Place in Cambridge’s Central Square. If you want to join us, please do! We’ll be gathering outside TT’s at about 9PM.

I went to Six Apart’s excellent shindig for their new Vox blogging service at Vox Populi in Boston tonight. I was a little late to learn about Vox so someone else had already scooped up sooz.vox.com. If you’ve got an account over there, you can add me as a neighbor and/or friend ala susankaup.vox.com. For a brief (humorous to me) moment I thought about setting up theoriginalsooz.vox.com but decided against it. ;) If Vox works with domain mapping I’m very tempted to publish sooz.com through it.

Gonzalo Silva was busking underground at one of the subway stations in NYC this summer when someone waiting for the train listened and bought a CD. The new fan, Sao Paulo director Jarbas Agnelli, decided to use a song of Gonzalo’s to put together a video from travels around NYC. It’s stunning. I was really moved watching this video. Maybe you will be, too.

Speaking of Gonzalo, he’s in Boston this week(ish). If you see him singing and playing his bass underground at a subway station, be sure to give him a few bucks for his efforts.

I’ve helped Gonzalo get his MySpace area up and running the past few months. It’s been such a treat to see how he’s been able to get the word out even farther about his music and connect directly with people (online) who normally only catch a limited glimpse of him while he’s playing underground.

If you’re curious (like me) to know what’s going on in the Boston tech/web startup world, the RSVP list for the upcoming Web Innovators Group meeting is a good place to wander through and then RSVP for yourself. The next event hosted by David Beisel of Masthead Ventures is happening on Monday, September 25th at the Royal Sonesta Hotel across the street from the Cambridgeside Galleria Mall at 6:30 PM. There are three companies (main dishes) who present speedy five-minute presentations in front of the room and another five companies set up tables around the room as side dishes during the networking and mingling part of the evening. I’m looking forward to finally meeting Chris from Tourfilter. His project is one of the side dishes on Monday.

The photo of participants at the July 24th Web Innovators Group event is compliments of Brian del Vecchio.

Yesterday morning a friend suggested we see Nouvelle Vague’s concert at the Paradise later that night. I had never heard of them; but from what Susan said about the band, it sounded interesting. They do bossanova inspired covers of 80s new wave songs. If they weren’t such talented musicians and singers it would have been a novelty-filled show. But it was much more than novelty — brilliant, in fact! My favorites were their versions of “Just Can’t Get Enough” by Depeche Mode and “Sweet and Tender Hooligan” by The Smiths. You can listen to songs on their website including “The Killing Moon”, “Heart of Glass”, “Fade to Grey” and “Bella Lagosi is Dead” from this year’s Band A’ Parte CD.

If I don’t have a photo pass, I am usually shy about pushing my way up front to take photos at concerts. But I decided that I needed to just do it. The rest of the photos I took are in my Nouvelle Vague photo set at Flickr.

HeyLetsGo hosted a huge, free party last night at four connected clubs on Lansdowne Street. The party was originally supposed to happen at Fenway Park; but there were worries about rain so the shindig moved across the street. They kept the ballpark theme with a speed pitching contest, batting contest, popcorn, pretzels and hotdogs. Boston bands Jabe and The Rudds played on two stages throughout the evening.

I’m not sure precisely how many people were there but it seemed like at least a couple thousand. I wandered around taking photos and then at about 8:30pm Frank, Rob, Carol and I went on stage with Rebecca from HeyLetsGo who introduced us as a few of their active group organizers/moderators and then she gave away a bunch of prizes including Red Sox tickets.

If you’d like to add me as a contact at HLG, here’s my profile. The “Boston Rocks!” group I started up is percolating with new members. You should join us, too. The rest of the photos I took are on the HeyLetsGo party photo set at Flickr.