March 2009

And the streak ends… (i think)

I have set a new world record. At least in my world, that is. The past 5 consecutive days I have purchased a concert ticket (or two)

Saturday – Curtis Peoples ticket was bought at the door
Sunday – Tony Lucca tickets were bought
Monday – Jonas Brothers in NY
Tuesday – Push Play in CT
Wednesday – Jonas Brothers in MA.

Today, if I was feeling up to it, I could get a ticket to see The Alternate Routes tonight in Fairfield. It’s relatively close to my house, but no one is available to go with me, so I will probably pass. IF I did go, then probably tomorrow I’d buy a bamboozle ticket just to have a 7 day streak.. but.. nah.

I’m thinking I am going to wait until the set times are announced for The Bamboozle before I decide to go. I’m interested in checking out Tinted Windows, Honor Society and Demi Lovato to name a few… but I’m not sure I can last a whole day there. So if all the shows are within a 2-3 hour period (I’ll keep dreaming) then I’ll consider it. This won’t be announced until April 27th though.

Scrapbook Spending Freeze!

I had to put myself on a scrapbook spending freeze. Which means, I can’t buy any new scrapbooking items until I am done scrapping The Rock Boat. (Exceptions include: adhesive, page protectors and anything on peachycheap that I just can’t live without because it’s only available for that day, provided I can pay for it with my paypal balance)

I kept a) buying tons and tons of things that who knows when I will use them and b) waiting for everything to come before I worked on anything, hoping it would perhaps give me inspiration.

Now that all my shipments are all caught up, I am chugging along on my pages for The Rock Boat (with the exception of titles because my Silhouette is waiting on a new part!)

I also am planning to try and catch up on everything by mid-May – because with 2 (maybe 3) Honor Society shows, Tony Lucca, Josh Gracin and a trip to Oklahoma to see Hanson… well… just imagine how backed up I’ll be with those concerts alone!!

Monday night I did 2 more Artist pages (Curtis Peoples and Tyrone Wells) which were a bit of cheating because the paper is essentially the entire layout, you just add photos. But it’s still 6 or so less photos in the pile that need to be scrapped! It’s progress! Last night I did a page dedicated to the dining room plates (they were creepy, ok? I had to take pics) and put aside some paper and photos for a Cruise Food layout (Not sure yet if it’ll be 1 or 2 paged layout)

Meanwhile, I’ve been getting my magazines – Memory Makers & Creating Keepsakes which have not only been giving me a TON of ideas for layouts, but have been giving me a TON of ideas of things to BUY. Maybe I will reward myself with some new stamps or kits once all this Rock Boat stuff is done and my scrapbook supply is dwindling again!

Once The Rock Boat is done I still have the following things to work on: Baseball Autographs, Me & Celebs book, NYC ABC book, Saturday’s Acoustic Cafe concert… On top of my regular job and all my volunteer jobs!! Good thing it’s so much fun.

Curtis Peoples / Josh Hoge / Ernie Halter – March 21, 2009

At first Jen had said she needed to be home by 12, which we thought was no problem, 3 guys were playing starting at 8 or 9. Then she said she didn’t have to be back at a set time, but that she did have work at 8:30 am so she didn’t want to stay out too late.

Matt York

At about 8:45 Matt York went on and I liked him. He did 4 or 5 songs and said since so many guys were there, they were playing shortened sets so we wouldn’t be there for too long.

Andrew Hoover

A little after 9 Andrew Hoover went on. I’m rarely into “opening acts” unless I already know about them, and if you don’t catch my attention with your first song I am antsy and waiting for you to finish. He told stories in between EVERY song. Now, I wouldn’t mind that if they were actually amusing, but his were not. During his 2nd to last song his guitar went out, and he spent 10-15 minutes making us clap and setting up a new one and then did ANOTHER song. Did he not realize 5 guys had to play tonight? C’mon now.

Curtis Peoples

Curtis Peoples was next and I cant really remember what he said that was funny. OH! He said he’s a big star wars fan and that when him and his band (drummer/guitarist) play, he likes to call them the “CP Trio” hahaha. gotta love geek humor. And he said he looks 12 but he feels old because he used to play CT a lot, even played teenagers birthday and some of those teenagers whos Bdays he played at are now going to college. (it was a 21+ show but those damn teenagers got in…) He also said that it was a Saturday night and no one had to work tomorrow unless you were a priest (or, like Jen, in retail!) so we had to stay there all night. Sorry Curtis, we just couldn’t do it!

Josh Hoge

Josh Hoge was next… he said he was bringing the south to us because he’s from Nashville. And he kept messing with the mic stand for the first song and said he thought it was going to crash to the ground. Backup guitarist (aka Jack Black, who also played with Curtis) was like “What are you trying to do?” and hes like “I’m trying to get it high enough so I’m not singing from my part” and then it was wiggling and hes like “But it’s gone limp. I hate when that happens!” And then he was talking about Chris Brown and Rihanna and was like “I read that she took him back? I don’t know if thats true, but if you let a guy beat the shit out of you and then you take him back, people should just not care about either of you anymore” (though there were a couple of ‘yalls’ thrown in there i think) He also told a story about how an older lady his moms age (60s) came up to him in a mall when he was with his mom (“shes my mom. i can hang out with her!”) and said that there was one song of his that she liked to “do it to” and then his mom said she was proud of him for his music being played while people were making babies LOL And his new album (which i didnt buy, but im gonna have to asap) is all about his ex GF and that she made him move from Nashville to LA for her and he got a job out there working at a surf shop, which made him hate the word ‘bro’ (even though he thought he knew how to surf because him and his bro surfed as childs and then hes like ‘i just said childs. i went through the 7th grade twice’) and that SHE got a job sleeping with other people. And she didn’t even get paid for it. So he took his pug, Nelly, Nelly Pug-tado, and drove all the way back to Nashville.

Ernie Halter

Ernie was next, but it was already 11:30 when he went on, so we stayed for one of his songs, and then had to bail πŸ™ Luckily we could still hear him on the way back to the car so we heard another song or so on the way back. I’ll catch a full set of his one of these days…

Then and Now : Hanson vs Jonas Brothers

I’ve been a Hanson fan since 1997, I’ve seen them close to 40 times live and the majority of my teen years were spent obsessing over them. In 2007 I started getting into the Jonas Brothers, whom I’ve now seen live 5 times. Both bands are similar in that they are brother bands and they draw in the teen crowd.

Lately I’ve been thinking about how much easier it is to be a Jonas fan now than it was to be a Hanson fan then. (And I’m not only talking about the fact that Jonas fans don’t seem to get bashed nearly as much as Hanson fans did – maybe because Jonas doesn’t have long “girl hair”)

When Hanson was first popular, we had just gotten the internet in my house. In order for me to sign on to AOL, I had to use DIAL UP. It took FOREVER and sometimes it found a super slow connection and it could easily take 10+ minutes for an image to load on a website. Now there is DSL and cable and you can load a picture of the Jonas Brothers in seconds.

MP3s were unheard of. We shared Midi (really crappy instrumental files) and WAVs of Hanson.

Message boards were not as prevalent. I met most of my Hanson fan friends on a newsgroup, alt.fan.hanson. (love you girls!)

I used to have to tape EVERYTHING Hanson was on. One of the first VCRs I had in my room was a ghetto hand me down that was my parents. It had no remote and it had no programming feature. If I wanted to tape it, I had to be watching it, and I had to have quick reflexes when shows came back from a commercial break if I tried to “edit” it as I went along (which I rarely did and I ended up with 6-8 hours tapes that had maybe an hour or two of Hanson, if that, on the whole tape!)

With the Jonas Brothers – I haven’t taped a thing. I don’t have to stay up past my bed time to record them on Conan. If I wanted to, I could DVR the appearance, or I could record it to a DVD instead of a VHS.

But the greatest technological advancement to come in the past 10 years or so I would have to say is YOU TUBE. I miss the performance, I get a good nights sleep, and the next morning I watch it on youtube. It’s fantastic.

With Hanson, if people uploaded performances, we’d have to actually send the files to each other. There was no youtube and there was no sendspace or large file sending sites.

I remember Hanson’s first tour, it was announced through their fanclub. Which was a MAGAZINE. That came in the MAIL. Not email, snail mail. Their very first “fan club presale” you had to call a number and say what show you wanted tickets to. I didn’t bother to call so I’m not sure how it workedout.

Now, for both bands, you log into the fanclub website and get all your presale codes and head over to ticketmaster.com (I bought my first Hanson tickets over the phone!) There’s flash intros, the sites play music (that AREN’T midis!) theres message boards, videos can be uploaded… it’s ridiculous the leaps and bounds web design had taken in the past 10-12 years.

I first got interested in HTML and web design because I wanted to make a Hanson website. I started with one on AOL’s free hosting. I also made sites on angelfire and geocities. (Now when I see people using those sites Im like WHAT?! Owning your own domain is the new ‘in’ thing) I taught myself HTML and took a couple classes in college. No one seems to code their sites just by using HTML anymore. There’s tons and tons of affordable web design programs and tons more if you’re willing to spend the money for them.

Now I use dreamweaver… but the need for a “personal site” isn’t needed as much in these days. My site had my concert reviews on it (now I have this blog!) and my photos (now there is myspace and facebook where I upload stuff) but for something fun to do in my free time I keep it. Even if the content is repeated everywhere.

I also think the advancing of the internet is what is keeping the jonas brothers relevant. From 1999-2000 Hanson fans went through what we like to call a “Hanson Drought” We posted on our newsgroup, we called the Hanson Hotline (similar to the new “Say Now”) and waited. Even if the Jonas Brothers aren’t in the spotlight or on tour (busy recording their TV show for disney) they can send out myspace blogs, fanclub emails, etc. (They also are go-go-go making albums where Hanson took the time to put out their records – another thing I think that hurt them) Jonas can also TEXT their fans – where as when Hanson was big and I was 15 I didn’t have a phone. My 15 year old cousin has a blackberry. Times are changing…

I don’t know, “comparing” the bands like this has been on my mind a lot lately.. I just feel like the Jonas fans have it a lot “easier” than us Hanson fans did. You know.. we had to walk to concerts in the snow with no shoes.. up hill both ways!! πŸ˜‰

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