Dinosaur, Jr. Owned Me

On 4/9/2006, In An Event Apart, Family, Music, Work, By Will

What was antic­i­pated as being the Best Week Ever is now over. It was quite a week. Two extremely excit­ing events were tem­pered by a run of bad luck.

As you know, the week started in Atlanta at An Event Apart, which was excit­ing, fun, and ful­fill­ing. I got to meet Eric Meyer:

Me and Eric Meyer

I came back home to a very sick fam­ily. I worked one day with Posi­tion Builders, my part-time gig, before I had to take the rest of the week off to take care of my fam­ily. Dou­ble ear infec­tions, vom­it­ing, walk­ing pneu­mo­nia, and sinus infec­tions have all been present in this house­hold over the last 2 weeks. I have escaped all of this, somehow.

Bring The Noise
Fri­day came and all was set straight. I went to see Dinosaur Jr in con­cert. I can­not describe how much the sec­ond album by this band, “You’re Liv­ing All Over Me”, influ­enced my drum­ming, my tastes, my life, and my musi­cian­ship as a whole. I was extremely upset the night I didn’t get to go see them in Lex­ing­ton, KY in 1990.

Then the orig­i­nal lineup split ways and things were never the same. Until last night.

Lou Bar­low, J Mas­cis, and Murph were all back together, bygones being bygones, and they absolutely rocked my socks off. I had tears in my eyes at one point. The rag­ing sound that they man­aged to tame into this beau­ti­fully orches­trated bar­rage of power absolutely floored me. It was the loud­est show I have ever been to, and I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. I felt like I was cheat­ing myself and the band by even con­sid­er­ing putting in the earplugs I had in my pocket.

They played only one song beyond the first three albums. This was a good thing for me, though I could tell many peo­ple there were expect­ing to see the poppy Dinosaur Jr of the early to mid 90’s — the Lol­la­palooza ver­sion that was not at all like the orig­i­nal trio.

I think they played all but one song from “You’re Liv­ing All Over Me”. They even played their cover of The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven” — com­plete with Lou’s gut­teral cho­rus line and the abrupt ending.

The level of stoked­ness I still can­not describe.

What more could I ask for??? I am still in awe and unable to grasp the sheer mag­ni­tude of what bom­barded my soul last night. The cycle is now com­plete. The cir­cle is unbroken.

 
2 Comments
Leave A Response

Blogging An Event Apart

On 4/3/2006, In An Event Apart, Internet, Web Dev, By Will

I am cur­rently at An Event Apart in Atlanta. It’s almost noon, and I am finally online. The storms that ripped through here last night wreaked a lit­tle havoc on the net­work here at Turner Field, but thanks to some dude sit­ting at my table, I am cur­rently access­ing the Web through an SSH tun­nel run­ning off his server some­where. Every­one else here, crouched by their lap­tops, keep eye­balling us envi­ously, won­der­ing how we did this.

I haven’t got­ten to meet Eric Meyer yet.

Any­way, the day is half over and so far has been quite inter­est­ing. Eric Meyer started off this morn­ing talk­ing about the impend­ing release of Inter­net Explorer 7 and what it means to web design­ers. Specif­i­cally, he spoke about CSS, bugs, and things that will be fixed. Gen­er­ally, the news is all good.

Still haven’t got­ten to meet Eric Meyer.

Fol­low­ing that, Jef­frey Zeld­man got up and walked us through how he cre­ated brand­ing nar­ra­tives. This was espe­cially help­ful for me since I am ven­tur­ing into the world of work­ing for myself (as of today!). There was a lot of good dis­cus­sion about client rela­tion­ships, con­duct­ing busi­ness, and the flow of a project.

After a short break, Jason Santa Maria got up and walked us through his process of redesign­ing the A List Apart web site. Eric is cur­rently up there talk­ing about how he took Jason’s design, and con­verted it to a CSS layout.

Haven’t met Eric Meyer yet.

This is great! Check back later for an after­noon update.

After­noon Update — 3 PM
Zeld­man is rip­ping into the copy on LuLu.com as an exam­ple of how one can improve the writ­ing on a web site. Pretty funny stuff.

Still haven’t met Eric Meyer.

3:50 PM
Todd Dominey is speak­ing in regards to start­ing your own busi­ness, attract­ing and keep­ing cus­tomers, mak­ing things work smoothly, and keep­ing things in order. He is using his free­lance busi­ness and the Flash-based photo gallery he cre­ated to illus­trate these points.

And no, I haven’t met Eric Meyer yet.

4:15
Woohoo! I just met Eric Meyer and got him to sign my copy of Eric Meyer on CSS for me. He com­mended me on my choice of the Sharpie Ultra-Fine Black pen.

Final Update
Made it back home at 10:30 pm. Whew! It was quite an Event, and I am glad we made the trek. I’m sure I will have more to say about it here soon.

Oth­ers who are live­blog­ging this event:
CSS Insider
Flickr Group for An Event Apart
Jeremy Flint

 
5 Comments
Leave A Response
Go To Top »