What Cheer, Netop?

Here, have some extremely blurry pictures of David Rawlings and Gillian Welch playing at Nick-a-Nees:

Monday night I heard a rumor that this would be happening. Tonight it actually did. The one thing that is probably clear from those pictures is that I was sitting about twenty feet away from them. They set up where all the bands set up at Nick-a-Nees, which is to say where Chris and I set up when we play there; I'm generally off to the right where Gillian is standing and Chris sets up on the left where Dave is. There was no cover charge, but the bouncer did pass the hat a couple of times over the course of the night for the band;.

Over the course of the night they said a few things that cleared things up a bit. David Rawlings got booked to play at the Newport Folk Festival this weekend; since usually he backs up Gillian (he usually does one or two solo songs per show, I think) he didn't really already have a set or two of material ready to go. So they came out a little early (Dave grew up in Rhode Island and still has family around) and, rather than staying home and practicing in a room by themselves, they decided to go do some unannounced shows around town. This was their second.

Their first show was at Cafe Zog. The way playing at Cafe Zog works is that musicians sign themselves up; there's no booking agent. So Dave went in one day, asked if he could play, and the guy behind the counter said, "Sure, is there a pencil by the calendar?" He signed himself up, but because nobody was really paying attention nobody knew about it, and when they played there ended up being about five people in the audience. That would have been something to go to!

But that wasn't the situation at Nick-a-Nees, which was totally packed; they stopped letting people in partway into the first set, and only let more people in after some of the first batch left. (This led to a bunch of people peering in through the windows you can see behind Gillian and Dave in the pictures, which was funny.) Fortunately, I got there early. katrinkles and Greg turned up later, but happily were allowed in without too much delay.

I don't remember all the songs they did -- I didn't recognize a fair number of them -- but a few I did recognize were: The Big Rock Candy Mountain, Queen Jane Approximately, Elvis Presley Blues (sung by David Rawlings, not Gillian Welch as it is on the album). They did two sets and one encore: Revelator, which is a very beautiful song.

I was very happy for the entire night, but especially when they sang the Gram Parsons song Sin City. This is one of the first songs that Chris and I started playing together, and something about hearing them perform a song in the same spot where Chris and I have played it was just indescribable. (David Rawling's guitar solo in this song was particularly ridiculous.)

Apparently they'll be playing at some other small venue someplace tomorrow, but I don't know where. But I do know that they'll be playing at AS220 on August 4 at 9 pm. I will be there.

At 6 pm today I was afraid that I would have trouble staying awake for the whole show, but right now I think I will be awake for a while yet.

So last week I called the East Side Service Center and made an appointment to get the AC in my car recharged. The idea was: I would drop the car off in the morning, then walk the block and a half to Starbucks (or some other place with wireless Internet), work from there until my car was ready to go, then walk back, get the car, go home, and finish working.

When I showed up at the service center this morning, however, I learned that they were closed and that I would instead have to go to their other center on Hope Street, which was about two and a half miles away. Possibly there was an Internet access point nearby, but if so I didn't know where it was, so this was a horse of a different color.

So this ended up happening instead: drop off the car and get a lift to Thayer Street. Work until 5 pm, then get so sick of working at Starbucks I ask my coworkers if I can leave early. Walk down Blackstone Boulevard to the ice cream shop next to the service station, fortify myself with ice cream, then get the car, drive to Wickenden Street, walk up and down Wickenden putting up posters for Thursday's show, then go home and post to livejournal about the whole thing.

(I also had lunch at the Creperie, which was tasty, and chaos_are_me was working there, which was also nice.)

So today involved a lot more walking than expected. Which is good, really. After practice tonight I think a certain amount of collapsing will be called for, though.

Tomorrow I will get a haircut.

(Oh, and the AC in my car works really well now.)

I must get a picture of the ice cream/taco truck.

Yesterday I was walking down Wickenden street (having stuck up a bunch of posters) and was in front of Tokyo Restaurant when a guy parked and ran across the street towards me. "Hey, you!" he shouted.

I looked around but nobody else was nearby; apparently he was talking to me. "Huh?" I said.

"Does that place sell liquor?" he asked me urgently.

"What?" I responded.

"Tokyo -- does it sell liquor?"

I thought for a minute. I've eaten at Tokyo a few times, but I don't drink as a rule, so I wasn't sure. "Sorry, I don't know," I said. He nodded and ducked inside, presumably to ask someone who actually worked there and was not just randomly walking past it.

I decided to go to the Hi-Hat tonight to see the Superchief Trio. When I got there I noticed some signs in the window that I don't think were there the last time I was there. Here is one of them:



Another sign also forbade tee shirts. One of which I was wearing. However, as it happens, I actually have something which I thought should pass muster: the suit I got so I would have something to wear at last Saturday's wedding.



After a while, the waitress came around and put one of these oddly-worded notices on my table:



$10 turns out to be four smallish Diet Cokes (which is what I was drinking), but I was there with other people who had more expensive beverages so I only ended up drinking two.

The service was OK, which is a change from the last time when the servers ignored me for 45 minutes. I think this is probably because I was dressed up fancy this time, whereas last time I was wearing what I usually wear. (If wearing a tux is being dressed to the nines, I think normally I am dressed to the ones or maybe on a good day to the twos.)

The Superchief Trio were fun as always, though.

This sign has been like this for weeks:



Also, here we see the worst tea ever:



(It is, theoretically, peppermint tea, and it was ordered and partially consumed by christychristy.)

having woken up, and not really feeling like going immediately back to bed, is it worth going outside and doing a round of shoveling?

Answer: probably not, but it can't hurt.

An update on how this works out for me will be forthcoming.

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Update:

Yeah, pretty pointless -- there was maybe an inch of snow and we're supposed to get 10-18, so I doubt I'll even be able to tell when I get up next that I did anything (especially since it's supposed to be pretty windy too).

Anyway, I took a few pictures. They probably aren't that interesting except as a comparison with whatever comes later.

( pics )

I went to get my hair cut today in Cranston, and in front of the cellular phone store next door was an air-powered giant inflatable smiling cellphone with arms.

( pictures )

I also took a little video so you all can appreciate its full flapping awesomeness. You will probably have to right-click on it and then save it to your hard drive to view it. I am not sure what software is required to play .3gp files (although my Quicktime installation seems to handle it OK).