We returned, two years after our first time, to Solid Sound at MASS MoCA this weekend. The girls had a great time again, and had even more to do this time than in 2017. It’s the perfect mix of music, art, crafts, and food, and with so much going on that there’s something for everyone. […]

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Grace’s growing Beatles obsession has spawned many conversations (“Who died first?” “Where is Paul right now?”), including ones about what Paul and Ringo are up to these days. Especially since I went to see Paul in Albany last summer, Grace’s interest in actually seeing one of the real Beatles has been on the rise, and […]

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In an era when an artist can release an album upon the world without any advance warning, Blur’s “Magic Whip” was a most pleasant surprise. They’d been hinting that a reconciliation was in the works, but I had no idea they were recording, and when the album came out, it was a huge relief and […]

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Dinner (salsa verde, of course) at El Pelon and then a concert at the Paradise? It’s 2005 all over again. As great as it was to see Ride for the first time last month, it was an even more memorable experience to see them in one of my favorite venues in the world, the renovated […]

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Over the years, I’ve slowly and steadily chipped away at a long mental to-do list made up of concerts by bands I grew up in Alaska loving, but never had a chance to see live. The Pixies were probably the biggest catch on that last, and their now-endless reunion tour gave me ample opportunity to […]

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Despite what we’ve all been used to for the past fifty years, Paul McCartney won’t be around forever, and during his past few tours, I’ve thought of trying to catch a show, but it never worked out. I didn’t want to miss another opportunity, so this week, I drove up to Albany to catch the […]

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Back in the fall of 2007, I attended my first Lebowski Fest in Los Angeles. This year, its fifteenth anniversary, I thought I’d go again, and see the film in 35mm for the first time since it came out. I’d never been to the Saban Theater before, so I was happy to be able to […]

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I’ve been going to Wilco shows since the ’90s, but I’ve never caught them three times in one year. Aimee and I enjoyed a perfect late summer evening at the Hollywood Bowl last night, for my third L.A. show of the year. We had some amazing seats for the final show of Wilco’s North American […]

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I nabbed a couple of tickets to see Thom Yorke, Flea, Nigel Godrich, Joey Waronker, and Mauro Refosco (the only member of the bizarro supergroup I’d never heard of before) at the Orpheum last night. I was able to get rid of my extra ticket (to someone who’d driven up from San Diego in hopes […]

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It’s been a month of settling in to our house, getting ready for our next project (our garage conversion) and preparing for our trip to New Zealand. We’ve had the attic insulated, we’ve moved most of the contents of the garage into the attic, and we should be ready to go when we get back. […]

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It’s time for the end of the year wrap-up, which I haven’t really done with any consistency (see the Best Live Shows of 2004 and Top Ten Films of 2004), but I’m going to give it a shot. 2008 has been an extremely busy year for us, our second full year in Los Angeles, one […]

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I’m sure that’s not really going to be borne out, but so far, it’s been a scorcher, which is really disorienting, even as familiar as we’ve become with the fact that the seasons have little meaning here. We’ve been pretty domestic lately, since I returned from Alaska two weeks ago. We went for a hike […]

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We don’t get a lot of visitors, so when someone comes down just to see us, we try to make it worth their while. Brent flew down from Seattle on Thursday night to spend a weekend built around seeing Radiohead on Monday, so I knew we didn’t have to do much to make the trip […]

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…and August will be over in a flash. We got back from a nice trip to Anchorage on Sunday night, which ended with a twenty-minute conversation with Wilco’s guitarist, Nels Cline, as we waited for our delayed flight at the (soon to be renamed?) Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport. He was really nice and friendly, […]

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I never thought I’d see Jeff Tweedy standing on a temporary stage in a parking lot, singing “Misunderstood” while looking wistfully off toward the Sears Mall and the BP tower, but there he was, last night, playing the band’s second ever show in Alaska. It has been raining almost continuously the whole weekend, and last […]

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