Christen brought me in all-access when Hey Marseilles and Fences played the Vera a few weeks ago. The result was a veritable slew of off-stage and on-stage documentary-ism, all of which can be seen here. And a lovely little feature on three imaginary girls here.

And Glen... crazy, microphoneless-from-the-edge-of-the-stage, amazing, epic Glen. Let's go here: the show was so good that I was crying. Not "I want to cut myself" good or "it hurts it's so good" good -- like, literally, I was crying, and I had to leave. That's never happened to me before. But the two-thirds I was able to stay for just ate me alive. In a good way. More here, and of course over here.

I am Victoria's multi-show-on-a-weeknight aftermath. We hit the town and caught the likes of Elizabeth and the Catapult, Kay Kay and his Weathered Underground, and caught up with the GIVE comp benefit at the Croc. Still need presents for the holidays? Dig this. Seven bucks, and well worth it just for the remastered "From A Terrace" track. Really.

And the topper to the last handful of shows, for sure, has got to be Hey Marseilles' set last night at Neumo's. They had a 3rd-of-4 slot opening for the Maldives, between Champagne Champange and the headline -- and they just absolutely killed it. 52-cards deep, in fact.

That's all a drive-by, for sure, but there'll be much more to follow before the year is out. Probably. Maybe. Well, I shouldn't be promising that. But I'll be doing a ton of rad stuff that I hope to have time to post. That's accurate.

Happy solstice, or whatever!
V.

What's that? Oh, yeah -- no bigs. Just me four feet away from Ben Gibbard and John Roderick at Bimbo's in San Francisco this past weekend.

Right? Obviously. Of course it's bigs. While a lot of my rockstar interaction has shifted to "file under: things I have gotten used to since moving to Seattle" and all, being front row for a stellar show is still being front row for a stellar show. And being able to do it con camera just takes it all right over the top.

They tell me that after I've lived here for a while that I won't geek out as much. Frankly, my inner cassette tape-playing radio station-calling fifteen year old is still pretty stoked to be here -- I honestly hope I never lose that part. Somehow I don't think I will. This is just way too much fun.

Oh, PS: San Francisco is really pretty. I hear it's also really expensive, but still.

The week prior to Bimbo's, I had the pleasure of seeing Monsters of Folk (Thursday) and Grizzly Bear (Friday) in two of Seattle's awesome, quasi-posh sit-down theaters. MoF was wonderful, although the crowd left a bit to be desired -- I do loves me some M. Ward though, and subsequently will put up with a lot to listen to him fill up a room with sound. Grizzly Bear was sans photo pass, but with so much... everything. It felt like I was inside a dream with however many other people fit into the Moore, getting annihilated with amazingness song after song after song. Not exaggerating / kidding.

Whoopsie. Almost forgot to mention Austin City Limits. I can't write a single word more about it, but you can catch up on my meanderings here. I'm particularly enamored with day two, by far the favorite of the weekend (plus the Girl Talk mud festival on Sunday night).


And for anyone who's keeping score: Chris Pureka = bliss. I couldn't shut up about it.

And last, but by no means least, I did a series of shots of this new display hanging-system thing we have in the lobby of our building at work. I'm not quite sure if my boss ever even saw these, or what's going to happen with the pictures, but I'm pretty happy about how they came out.

I think that's quite enough for one post. Now that we've officially entered the hibernation zone out here in the PNW, I'm hoping to get back to my weekly (or bi-weekly, at worst) Tuesday posts.

Coming up: pulling an overnight at WaMu, Pinback, Blind Pilot, calling shotgun on Wilco, NaNo "holy shit it's November" o, Laura's show, and more getting organized than you can shake a stick at. I might even update the real dot com, imagine that! It would likely behoove you to stay tuned.

Love & other indoor sports,
Victoria

Hey, look! It's 2004 and I'm at a show with my point & shoot. Ha.

The ever-lovely Laura took me along for the second night of Death Cab's double-whammy out at Marymoor the weekend before my little road trip (where I'm off to in two weeks to dig on the Flaming Lips with a couple of fellow imaginaries, yay!). It's really a terrific as far as outside venues go -- the sound is great, the views are great, the layout is thoughtful, it's spread out and intimate all at once -- and everything is sort of in the bottom of a little bowl, so you can be on the "floor" or perched up on a little incline behind it and still have a decent view of the stage. The set just completely killed, the New Pornographers (even without Neko) really brought it home. Courtesy of one Ms. Musselman and one Mr. Roderick, I even got to BFF backstage for a bit post-show. Tres magnifique.

And speaking of magnifique, look what Laura did:

Unreal. As Kristin put it - her pictures really looked like they were alive. There's just no other way to put it. Go geek on the whole batch of 'em here (including some scans of a few awesome film shots that she managed to snag of the night).

That's the news for now -- I'll be back post-tattoo expo and post-Doe Bay with all the stuff that's fit to print. Post. Whatever. You know what I mean.

*Victoria