I was less than 2 weeks away from seeing Blind Melon in Cleveland when Shannon Hoon passed in October of ’95. I always since assumed that I would never get another chance to see them, and if I did, I knew it just wouldn’t be the same without Shannon on vocals. I have periodically kept tabs on the band to see what they were up to. Over the last year or so, I found that they had added vocalist Travis Warren to their lineup and were working on releasing a new album. I have to admit that at first, Travis just didn’t do it for me but in March, when I saw that they were coming to Austin, I figured what the hell. I would pay twenty bucks to see a good cover band of Blind Melon, why not for the actual band with this new cat on vocals. Since buying my tickets, I kept listening to the new stuff they had on their Myspace page. As it turns out, just like their previous stuff, the more I listened to it, the more it grew on me. Despite this, while looking forward to it; I still did not have the highest expectations for the show. Having never seen them before, I just didn’t know what to expect.

The anticipation was high in the near capacity Antone’s. I was able to bring my “good” camera in so I wanted to get as close as I could without being obnoxious. I was able to get about three people back from the stage on the right side in front of Rogers. They started the show with Galaxy and the crowd was immediately singing along to every word. I seriously had no idea there were this many Melon Heads. Most people I know say “aren’t they the guys that had that bee video?” I tried keeping track of the set list, but between that, trying to get some good pics, and enjoying the show, something had to give. If any of you have the set list, please send it to me and I will post it. (Added 4/23/08 - Thanks to Karen at blindmelonforum.com, here is the set list)

Galaxie
2×4
Toes Across the Floor
For My Friends
Soup
Drive
Paper Scratcher
Sleepyhouse
Sometimes
Last Laugh
Wishing Well
Change
Hypnotized
Skinned (with bubbles!)
Soak the Sin
Wilt
No Rain
The Pusher

Encores:
Mouthful of Cavities
Cheetum Street
Time

The new singer Travis was right on. He rocked the old stuff without coming off as a Shannon Hoon impersonator. After five or six songs, I decided to put the camera away and just enjoy the show. And did I ever! It was an amazing performance by the whole band. I could have done without Travis comparing the Austin crowd to the Detroit crowd. Seriously? Does anyone even still live up there?

Wishing Well and Last Laugh were a couple of the new songs mingled in the set. They transitioned from a great jam session into a slowed down, somewhat similar to the Ripped Away version of No Rain. I was hoping they would do the whole song this way as the original has just been so overplayed that it would have been nice to hear it otherwise. However, when they kicked it into gear, I couldn’t help but sing along as loud as I could. Even though I usually skip this song when it comes up on my ipod or the CD, I have to appreciate it for if not for it, I may not have ever heard of Blind Melon. The crowd went especially nuts when they busted out the harmonica and played my personal (and apparently most other Melon fan’s) favorite Change. I wish I would’ve picked up a kazoo before the show so I could have kazoo’d along to another sing along favorite of mine Skinned.

(Added 4/23/08 - Youtube clip courtesy of Meredith at blindmelonforum.com)

They concluded the show with a three song encore including Mouth Full of Cavities and what is soon to become a central Texas favorite Cheetum Street which references the Cheatham Street Warehouse in San Marcos.

Overall, this show far exceeded my expectations. If you are having any doubts about checking them out when they roll into your town, cast those doubts aside and be prepared to witness an amazing show. The same goes for the new album For My Friends, I am still getting acquainted with it, but so far so good. It is great to finally have some new Blind Melon material for my collection! On behalf of Melon heads everywhere, I just want to extend a big THANK YOU for having the courage to pick up where Shannon left off.

For more pics, check out my flickr Blind Melon Set.

Model: Vanessa

Dress: Eugenia Ochoa

Bow: Fabiana Hernandez

Teddy Bear: Baby Gap

Earlier this month, we went on vacation to the Miami/Ft. Lauderdale area. Many of my readers who know me well know that I am not a fan of Florida at all. However, this was not meant to be your standard Florida vacation but rather a chance to visit family that both live in the area and that were visiting from Venezuela. Our home base if you will would be Weston. Weston is a suburb about 15 miles west of Ft. Lauderdale. It has become a very popular landing place for well-to-do Venezuelans looking to escape Hugo Chavez’ socialist style revolution. So many Venezuelans have ended up here that Weston has been nicknamed Westonzuela. Thanks to our fantastic hosts, we had a great time down here and I can say that I am now a fan of…………

……well South Florida anyway. You can keep Orlando, Mickey Mouse, Shell World, the scenes of 90% of all Cops episodes, the Florida Gators, the Miami Dolphins, and everything else which represents the touristy or tacky side of Florida. None of which by the way was experienced on this trip. Here are a few highlights.

Mountain bike riding at Markham Park – When my brother in law Paul said that we would do some mountain bike riding in Florida, I figured that the flat Florida terrain would be perfect for my out of shape self. After all, it has been a good 15 years since I have done some quality off road riding. The park has quite a wide variety of terrain and obstacles. Paul did his best to keep my father in law and me off of the expert trails, but we did end up on a couple of them. Overall, I did pretty well and only wiped out once. It brought back memories of my old BMX days and has inspired me to get my bike dusted off, tuned up and start hitting some of the local trails in Austin.

Miami Seaquarium – On Friday, we took Marcos, Mathias and Vanessa to this Sea World-ish park. This is one of those first time for Vanessa things that we just love as parents. It was such a blast watching her see all of these new creatures for the first time. We were able to catch the flipper show and the sea lion show. Vanessa enjoyed the dolphins but seemed a little freaked out by the sea lions.

Scuba diving – Paul and I decided we wanted to do a sunken ship artificial reef. After doing a bit of research online, we decided to do Hog Heaven. Rated as intermediate and both having not dived in a few years, it looked to be our best bet. It didn’t take the guys at the Coastal Marine Dive Shop long to realize that we didn’t know what the hell we were doing or were we were going. For reasons that I can’t recall, they convinced us to do the Jay Scutti Tug instead.

They were very helpful in getting us set up and explaining how to find it. Just when we finally convinced them that we weren’t complete idiots, we walked out of the shop without our tanks. Even though it was them that reminded us, I am ALMOST positive we wouldn’t have actually left without them. The strong currents made it challenging to get positioned directly over the site. On our second attempt, we decided that where we dropped the anchor was correct and that even though we seemed to drift a ways off, we could follow the anchor line down and find the site. As it turned out, we were almost dead on. Our drop was only about 20-30 feet from the site. This was my first wreck so I was easily impressed. There was lots of coral growing on the ship and plenty of fish. Neither of us felt comfortable enough to enter the ship so we just scouted it out from the outside. After the dive, we cruised around a bit on the boat to try and avoid storms both to the North and South of us and then headed back to dry land to meet the rest of the family for dinner.

Café Canela – What good is a vacation if you don’t overeat right? If you want to start your day off right then head over to Café Canela for the Desayuno Canela [black beans, white cheese, perico (scrambled eggs with veggies), carne mechada (seasoned shredded beef), and an arepa]. I would say that this is a typical Venezuelan breakfast, but most Venezuelans I know stop at the arepa. What they should call this plate is the Venezuelan breakfast for fat gringos. Between this and the chicha (Venezuelan rice and milk drink), I wasn’t hungry until about eight o’clock later that night. The chicha was so good that we almost missed our flight because we just had to have it one more time before we left.

Miami Heat/ Los Angeles Lakers game – My how the mighty have fallen. It is so hard to believe that the Miami Heat won the NBA title less than 2 years ago. All I could keep thinking is that the Heat looked an awful lot like the Washington Generals of Harlem Globetrotters fame. The Lakers gave them dozens of chances to get back into this game only for the Heat to blow these chances with good old fashioned clumsiness. I guess that is why they are worst team in the NBA right now at 10-44. American Airlines Arena is a newer arena with modern architecture and is an overall nice place to catch a game. The Bayside location is great for getting there early and staying late to get your party on. Of course, to be in the mood to party after a game, you would have to be a fan of any team playing against the Heat.

Sawgrass Mills Mall - This is the largest mall in Florida and a key destination for all North and South Americans traveling to the area looking to get their hands on reasonably priced brand name goods. I personally despise shopping so the highlight is that I actually had to spend a minimal amount of time here.

Getting destroyed at Wii Sports – The Nintendo Wii is the greatest thing to happen to video games since the joystick. In this household, Marcos is the clear cut king of all that is Wii. Wii played a lot of tennis which gave Paul a break from being the household Wii chump. All absolutely sucking aside, I found myself getting addicted to this thing. Something tells me that Vanessa may be getting a Wii in her Easter basket this year.

Last but not least, hanging out with family – I hadn’t seen Marcos and Mathias in a while so it was great to hang out with them. There is nothing like being put to shame regarding my Spanish skills by a pair of bilingual 5 year olds. Hopefully, Vanessa will continue this humiliation of her old man. Contrary to the evidence below, Vanessa also enjoyed playing with the boys.

As with Christmas in Erie, Daniella and I were left wishing that we lived closer to more of Vanessa’s cousins. Also, coordinating this trip with Daniella’s parents as well as her Aunt Maria and Uncle Roberto’s family gave us all a chance to catch up and gave them a chance to see Vanessa.

Thank you Paul, Maria-Eugenia, Marcos, and Mathias for hosting and entertaining us for the week. Next time you come to Austin we will surely return the favor.

Upon completing my pre-show homework, it was apparent that Still Remains would be the opening act. After giving them a listen and hearing keyboards, I decided there was no need to get to the show on time to see their whole set. As I walked into the venue, I immediately saw an August Burns Red banner and keyboards on the stage. This was a huge disappointment in two ways. One, I was missing August Burns Red. Two, they had keyboards? How did I not catch this the night before when doing my research? It took me all of about 20 seconds to realize that it was in fact Still Remains and I would not be punished for my uncharacteristic tardiness after all.

Still Remains is actually pretty good. That is until those awful keyboards kick in. Note to Still Remains. We are officially in a recession. By losing the keyboardist, you can cut payroll by roughly 17% while actually making your band better.

The first band I actually wanted to see was Evergreen Terrace. While I didn’t love them by what I heard on MySpace, I was looking forward to squeezing in a bit of hardcore at this predominately metal show. They did not disappoint. As a matter of fact, they won themselves a new fan with the show they put on. I have to give props to their vocalist Andrew for having such amazing patience regarding a certain obnoxious stage diver that kept tackling him. At one point late in their set, he actually had him down on the floor of the stage. I would have gone Phil Anselmo on him after the first time when he put him in a headlock. Instead, this cat just kept wailing along like it was nothing. Their mix of singing with old fashion hardcore style vocals makes for some very catchy tunes and they do a great job playing them live. I will definitely be picking up their latest release Wolfbiker as soon as I get a chance.

Next up would be August Burns Red. The set these guys put on could be summed up in one word. WOW! Until now, I have never used or even thought of using the phrase “rock your face off”. The problem is that right now this is the only phrase I could think of to describe this show. I may even go as far as to say that this phrase may have even been coined after seeing an August Burns Red show. This may have been the most hard hitting, energetic, utter destroyal of a show that I have ever witnessed. I believe there is an unwritten rule that a supporting act is not to outdo the headliner. In my opinion, August Burns Red got about as close as one possibly could to doing just this without actually doing so. I am certain though, that the boys in As I lay Dying would not have taken offense as they too may realize that one day, they may very well be opening for August Burns Red. If every show they put on is this good, this may happen sooner than later. Needless to say, my shopping list just got longer.

Pleasantly surprised by both Evergreen Terrace and August Burns Red I got to thinking that As I Lay Dying may not be able to continue the trend and live up to my hype. After a relatively long intermission, and with much anticipation building in the crowd, it was time for the main event.

I am not sure if it is because I am more familiar with them now or if it is that they are more seasoned, but this show was better than when I saw them on Ozzfest 2005. What stood out most to me this time was that Tim Lambesis had an amazingly dominating stage presence. When performing, he comes off like he owns the place and wants to annihilate you. At the same time he doesn’t hesitate to express their gratitude to the fans. I know most bands give the obligatory thanks to the crowd, but I detected much more sincerity from them. I have only started getting into AILD with the release of An Ocean Between Us and as expected most of the set consisted of tracks from it. Being an AILD newb, I was unable to figure out of a few of the songs in the set list. If you know them, please let me know and I will complete the list.

1. Through Struggle
2. Forever
3. Nothing Left
4. Within Destruction
5. Confined
6. Distance is Darkness
7. Meaning in Tragedy
8. An Ocean Between Us
9. Elegy
10. I Never Wanted
11. Comfort Betrays
12. The Sound of Truth
13. Departed
14. 94 Hours?
15. This is Who We Are?

It was no surprise that audience participation would continue to be encouraged during their set as it was throughout the evening thus far. Luckily they have the budget to employ enforcers which prevented that annoying stage diver guy from getting too carried away. They ended the show by inviting everybody up on to the stage and played their last song amongst the chaos. My respect for bands can come and go when I see them live. In the case of AILD, my respect for them has grown enormously after seeing them this evening.

Overall, this was a terrific show packed with rockolaty goodness. I am glad that I didn’t bail on it as I was thinking of doing earlier in the evening. With the exception of Still Remains, I will look forward to seeing all of these bands again the next time they roll through the ATX.

While I don’t blame anyone but the Cleveland Browns for not making the playoffs this year, I decided the last week of the season, I would absolutely be rooting against the Colts this year.

If you are a pro football fan, you may recall the talk in week 17 about the Titans needing to lose to the Colts in order for the Browns to make the playoffs. To summarize, most of the Colt’s starting lineup sat on the sidelines for most of the game and, in my opinion, Tony Dungy all but gave the game to the Titans. There have even been accusations of collusion between the two teams. After the game, Tony Dungy was quoted as saying “I have to congratulate the Titans and I think it is a feather in the cap of our division to get three teams in the playoffs,”

Well, what happens when you give your team two weeks of rest heading into the playoffs Tony? I think you know now. YOU LOSE! As a matter of fact, the whole AFC South lost their first or second game of the playoffs! I think I can speak for all bitter Cleveland Browns fans and say take that feather out of your cap and stick it Tony!