“The intermediate stage between socialism and capitalism is alcoholism.”

Friday, August 12, 2005

Riding through the desert on a horse named Earl...

Wow, sorry about the impromptu leave of absence I apparently took over the last couple of weeks...I've been swamped at work and things have been pretty busy outside of work as well. Here's a couple of the things that I've been up to...

Bud Bash 2005 - Houghton Lake, MI
Last weekend I, along with a couple thousand other people, headed up to Houghton Lake for the annual Bud Bash party at the Limberlost bar. The Limberlost is right on the lake shore and during the day roughly 400 or so boats all anchor right out in front of the bar. The atmosphere is "Mardi Gras"-like as drunken revelers party it up losing inhibitions along the way. Knowing that I had a long day ahead of me I held off on starting the drinking until around 1pm. A good time was had by all as we had perfect weather to be outside. The water was warm and the beer was ice cold, what more could you ask for? I put together a little photo collage to help illustrate what it was like there...


Click on the image for the full size version!


Velvet Revolver Concert - Soaring Eagle Casino; Mt. Pleasant, MI
Last night I went to see Velvet Revolver play an outdoor show up at the Soaring Eagle Casino in Mt. Pleasant, MI. I had gotten tickets for free from a guy at work and figured it would be worth the drive just to see Slash play some guitar. I gotta admit, I'm not a big fan of Scott Weiland but I suppose STP did have a couple of good albums back in the day. So after work the wife & I headed up there for an 8pm show. The concert didn't get going until around 8:45pm (luckily, no opening act) and quite honestly it started out a little shaky. They started with a couple of the lesser known tracks from their Contraband album and Weiland's vocals were pretty out of whack (not to mention that the sound mix had the vocals barely audible for the first few songs). Once they started playing "Fall to Pieces", and the crowd had time to down a couple of beers, things went a little smoother. As expected a couple of Stone Temple Pilot's numbers were in the mix, "Dead and Bloated" turned out pretty good and was the song that got the crowd really into the show. They also did a pretty good job on "Sex Type Thing". Of course a few GNR numbers were on hand as well. Somewhere around the middle of the show the band played "It's So Easy" from the Appetite for Destruction album which had everyone singing along. The only other GNR song didn't come until the encore where they played "Mr. Brownstone", pretty fitting song for Weiland given all his personal problems with Heroin. The encore actually started out pretty sweet with Slash taking the stage with a double-neck guitar to perform a cover of Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here". This really got the audience fired up and we were all singing along of course. I tried to use my cell phone to record this part of the show, the results were eh, mixed. Parts of the recordings are filled with the high pitched screams of a couple of girls right in front of us but occasionally you can hear parts of the song fairly well. It's broken up into three parts due to the 60 sec. limitation for voice memo's on my phone. I also tried to snap a few pics with the cameraphone but they didn't turn out so well either. Anyways, you can click on each picture to download the mp3 files for Velvet Revolver's encore performance of "Wish You Were Here".








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