SAY ANYTHING @ The TLA

On Wednesday night, Maureen and myself took in the Say Anything show at the TLA and it was quite amazing. The night began at the South Street Diner for a lackluster meal and an apparent stench that permeated throughout the diner that Maureen was picking up on, but with my less than stellar sense of smell, I was unable to smell anything. Maybe I'm immune to the inevitable aroma that most diners give off from too many night spent at Tom Jones Restaurant...

I didn't really care much about seeing the opening bands so by the time we got to the TLA, we had already missed the opening band, Weatherbox, but we were just in time to see Biffy Clyro, the second band. Apparently they're from Scotland so already they've earned some bonus points and their music was pretty diverse going between being soft and serene and loud and chaotic. It was a nice mix and they even did some harmonizing between the three band members so that was pretty cool.

After their set, Maureen mentioned that she wanted to get a drink. For the first time in forever, I didn't associate drink with alcoholic beverage so I walked her over to the snack stand and that's when she laughingly said she wanted a drink drink not a soda or water. I guess you'd have to be there to find it funny. But just a heads up, if you're looking to get ripped at a show at the TLA, you should order a rum and coke at the bar. Maureen got one and it was as if they filled the cup with rum and just put a spritz of coke.

Manchester Orchestra came on while we were in the bar area and I have to say I was a little disappointed in their performance. They seemed to have sped up all of their songs and the mellowness of the songs was replaced by an almost chaotic stage pressence which was cool but still disappointing for some reason. Either way, their set was pretty good but they didn't live up to the hype that I had built up in my head.

Quick little side note: In between Manchester Orchestra and Say Anything, they played Beatles songs on the house PA system which was extremely enjoyable. It was nice hearing songs you could sing along to / enjoy instead of random songs you've never heard of / don't want to hear. But The Beatles songs just added to the giddyness I had in anticipation of seeing Say Anything.

Say Anything entered the stage to the intro from their latest record, In Defense of the Genre and broke into the first song off the record, "Skinny, Mean Man" and the energy in the building just exploded. Max Bemis, the lead singer writes amazing lyrics and he definitely backed them up throughout the show with his stage pressence. And musically, the rest of the band was dead on with what they were playing. The music sounded as if you were listening to the actual record. With the variety that Say Anything employs in their songs, each song evoked different responses from the crowd. One minute everyone was rocking out to a straight up rock song and the next minute everyone's dancing along to the beats of a song like "Baby Girl, I'm a Blur". Max even played an acoustic song to which he had everyone in the crowd hold up their cell phones and lighters. It was a pretty amazing show that kept everyone on their feet because you never knew what kind of song was coming up next... I'll definitely be seeing them again the next time they're around.

MARCH MADNESS - The Picks...

Let me first start off by saying that this was the first year in a while that I didn't have a clear cut favorite in mind to win it all. In my mind, there are 3 teams that have a very good chance to win it all: Kansas, UNC, and UCLA. After alot of deliberating, I came to the conclusion that Kansas will be the team that takes it this year. Injuries are what it came down to for me. UNC's talented point guard, Ty Lawson, still isn't 100% healed from a serious ankle sprain which affects his ability to drive to the basket and score. And I wouldn't be able to handle seeing Tyler Hansborough raising the trophy at the end of the tournament. He's the next Eric Montross... And while I think UCLA and Kansas are evenly matched, UCLA's Kevin Love is suffering from back spasms and there's talk that Luc Mbah a Moute, the glue that holds this team together, won't be back until the Elite 8. So what I foresee happening is that Luc-what's his name is going to come back early and try to play through the pain helping to lead the Bruins to the NCAA championship game...where they will fall to the Kansas Jayhawks. BAM!

As for Cinderella teams and major upsets, I really struggled in trying to pick the upsets. A lot of the teams who had been predicted to be upset specials like South Alabama and St. Mary's got bad draws so I don't foresee them going very far. My biggest upsets in my brackets reside in the West bracket. This is based soley on when you're comparing Mid-Majors to Major conferences and not their actual rankings in the brackets. West Virginia will upset Duke to get into the Sweet 16. I've also got the Drake Bulldogs going to the Sweet 16 and falling to UCLA and the closest thing I have to a Cinderella team is....(drum roll)... the Xavier Musketeers making it all the way to the Elite 8 falling once again to UCLA.

Keeping in mind that I will be in three different pools this year with three different entries, here are what I consider to be my best picks starting in the Round of 32:


ROUND OF 32
East
UNC over Arkansas; Notre Dame over Winthrop; Louisville over St. Joe's; Tennessee over Butler
Midwest
Kansas over UNLV; Clemson over Siena; Wisconsin over USC; Georgetown over Davidson
South
Memphis over Mississippi State; Pittsburgh over Temple; Stanford over Marquette; Texas over St. Mary's
West
UCLA over Texas A&M; Drake over San Diego; Xavier over Baylor; West Virginia over Duke

SWEET 16
East
UNC over Notre Dame; Tennessee over Louisville
Midwest
Kansas over Clemson; Wisconsin over Georgetown
South
Memphis over Pittsburgh; Texas over Stanford
West
UCLA over Drake; Xavier over West Virginia

ELITE 8
East
UNC over Tennessee
Midwest
Kansas over Wisconsin
South
Texas over Memphis
West
UCLA over Xavier

FINAL FOUR
Kansas over UNC; UCLA over Texas

NCAA CHAMPIONSHIP GAME
Kansas 75, UCLA 68

MARCH MADNESS baby!!...

Anyone that has known for me a long time knows that this is probably my favorite time of year: MARCH MADNESS. Specifically, I love filling out brackets and the pools that accompany these brackets. I can actually remember when I first became interested in filling out brackets for the NCAA's. I had to be in 2nd or 3rd grade, during the productive years of the Fab 5 at Michigan and Eric Montross' dominance at North Carolina. My uncle and his friends were running a pool where you picked the name of a team out and if they won the tournament, you won the pool. I ended up pulling Arkansas, the year before the won the National Championship - what luck.

My recreational gambling progressed in middle school, when I began running a brackets pool among my friends in 7th grade. That continued on through all the way to my first year of college. We only came close to getting caught once, in 7th or 8th grade when the principal came across one of our brackets. Luckily, we were in the head of the class so we got a simple, "Don't do it again" and we were back on our way to gambling on school property. The most successful year of the pool had to be Senior year of high school, when we even managed to get some of the teachers involved in the pool. Pretty clutch.

In addition to running my own pool, I've always been involved in pools at both of my parents' work places and also in a huge pool run at my Aunt's work. My picks tend to be pretty good so I've won pools here and there. Last year was actually my most successful year when I finished in first place at my Dad's work and in second place at Mom's.

This year, I've been a little more subdued in regards to March Madness because I've been logging too many hours at the credit union and I wasn't able to watch that many college basketball games during the regular season. In the past, I would enjoy taking either Thursday, Friday, or both days off when the tournament begins to take in the games and enjoy the excitement. This year, I'm working 11 hours on Thursday and 8 hours on Friday so I'm going to be missing most of the action.... BEAT.

Finally, I'd like congratulate / celebrate the Temple Owls, my alma mater, for making it to the Big Dance after winning the A-10 tournament. In my four years at Temple, they never made it to the tournament so I was never able to bask in the glory. But, as a Temple Alumnus, I've taken great pride in the team, and although I wasn't able to really see any of their games, I'm extremely excited they're going to be playing and they got an excellent draw in Michigan State who I think they're going to beat. GO OWLS!!

One final F-U to CBS for putting the Temple - MSU game on at 12:30 in the afternoon on Thursday. You couldn't have put it on in the prime time so I could actually see the game... could you?!

Thursday morning before the game starts, I'll be revealing some of my expert picks for upsets, cinderella teams, and who's going to be winning it all...

EWE TOO ROCKS ME - Bad Acoustics...

This past Friday, EWE TOO ROCKS ME made a return to Marty Magee's to a festive crowd that had been hyped up by a Hometown Broadcast at Magee's that same day and it was a disaster...womp womp. Unfortunately for the band, our drummer Gooch had contracted some kind of respiratory infection where he was coughing up blood and was left weakened like a frail boy. So at the last minute, the rest of ETRM decided to go about playing the set acoustically, unplugged while still trying to keep the excitement of our regular show... BAD IDEA. We were only able to practice the night before show acoustically, so we already had that going against us. Throw in the fact that I've been fighting off a cold for the past two weeks and that just spells disaster...

I ended up losing my voice one song into our set...yes one song into the set. And because it was an acoustic show, we had added some songs I had previously done on my own at open mic nights so I was going to be doing even more singing then I usually do which is pretty tough to do when you don't have a voice. So I was singing off key all night, apparently the sound from the guitars never was right, and we learned a valuable lesson about using acoustic guitars as opposed to electric: electric guitars can hide any mistakes you make while playing; acoustics can't...

The crowd for the most part seemed to be having as good of a time as they possibly could. But as musicians, we were pretty disappointed in our performance so we'll chalk this one up as a bad show. As a band, ETRM seems to be folowing this trend of playing a good show, and then following it up with a bad show. Which can only be good news for our show that we're supposedly doing as the opening band for A Certain Tragedy at the Wharf Tavern in Aston... Hopefully we can redeem ourselves...

The Starting Line are Breaking up?!

They had been publicizing on AP.net for the past week about The Starting Line having a big announcement to make and they had chosen AP.net as a place to have an "online press conference". Sure enough, the band announced that they wouldn't be breaking up or taking a hiatus, but instead they would simply be taking some time off which could be a few months... or even a few years. In laymen's terms, they are basically breaking up. All of the members of the band have different side projects going on so that'll be taking up their time and keeping them from reuniting.

The Starting Line is one of those bands that I started listening to in high school, when I was most impressionable musically. They've never put out an album that I didn't love and I'm extremely disappointed they're breaking up, but at the same time I've heard good things about the side projects that they're producing.

They're going to be playing one last show in Philadelphia at the Electric Factory on Friday, April 18th with Bayside and Four Year Strong so I am strongly considering going. Anyone who wants to come is welcome to join me. I'll be purchasing tickets in the very near future because there is a good chance it's going to sell out.