Review: Sunny Day Real Estate, 10/5/09, Granada Theatre, Dallas, TX.

So anyone that knows me, know that I've been beyond stoked about not just the reunion of Sunny Day Real Estate (and ecstatic about the rumors of another record.....), but about the fact that they were coming to Dallas. Yes, I was prepared to shell out whatever it cost to fly somewhere else in the country, if need be, to see them. And yes, I was quite thrilled that instead of that, they decided to play a mile from my house. Seriously, I bought tickets 3m after they went on sale and I've been counting down the days to Oct. 5. I detailed here how and why I got into SDRE, but the fact remains, I was excited about the show. So last night was the night, and I went, and.....

IT WAS FUCKING AWESOME!!!

Seriously, it was better than even I expected. And a simple straw poll of the audience, reflected a similar sentiment. My first observation, say about 30s into Friday was that it was really, really loud. To put things in perspective, not a week earlier I'd gotten a free ticket to go see The Get-Up Kids at the same venue, and while I was never a huge Get-Up Kids fan, I was intrigued.

SDRE simply blew them out of the water. It was the loudest show I've seen since Local H at the Galaxy Club back in 1997 (that show left me hearing static for 3 days), and that's from a guy that's seen Tool, Pantera, Metallica, and more punk bands than you can shake a stick at. It was freaking loud, but not unnecessarily loud....you could hear the notes, you could hear the harmonies, it was just that when they were rocking.....they were rocking. And when it was melodic, well, it was still rocking.

I did a little google research before the show, and so I was prepared for the fact that other than Guitar And Video Games, the rest of the songs would be off of Diary and LP2. Understandable, since this was the first reunion of all 4 members since those records, though I won't deny hoping to hear a little of The Rising Tide. They were on point, hitting every note and I was shocked to hear that Jeremy Enigk still had the ability to hit both alto and falsetto notes at his age (I wrongly assumed his solo stuff had been engineered a bit), and was likewise surprised to hear William Goldsmith rocking out so many fills on the drums.

At one point, my brother's girlfriend remarked to me, "this sounds just like the record!" and I think that's an apt description. There was a little artistic license taken, especially on drums, but all in all they were on....it was as moving, as powerful, and as loud as the records. And it was the best show I've seen in a long time.

Just in case anyone reading this is doing so by googling reviews of the show (as I did....), below is the setlist hear in Dallas. It's also worth noting that they made mention of the possibilities of both being back, and of recording new material, so don't real that out.

Friday
Seven
Song About An Angel
Grendel
Guitar And Video Games
Iscarabaid
Theo B
5/4
10 (i think? it was a new song?)
Sometimes
Circles
J'Nuh

How would you respond if Dallas police kicked in your door?

I really should have taken a picture. I'm really kind of kicking myself for not doing it, because it was quite a sight. Sure the door itself survived, but the frame was destroyed and there were shards of wood all over the floor. The drywall took a bit of a beating too. So why, you might ask, did Dallas Police kick in my door? I'm glad you asked....

It's friday night. I'm just hanging out back in my room watching 'Max Payne' for the second time (don't ask me why.....) waiting for a friend who was coming into town for the weekend from Beaumont. T-bone is about to take the dog, George, for a walk down to the Texaco and my brother is hanging out with his girlfriend in his room.....it's a boring friday night. I mean, really boring. Then I hear T-bone start shouting, "Lock the back door! Lock the back door!!" and I hop up to lock the door in my room and grab a potential weapon. You see, a couple days earlier there'd been a break in a few blocks over on Oram St. whereby the guy had stolen some shit, cops found him, and he ran through a house to escape them...so I knew what he was thinking.

Next thing I know, I hear our front door being kicked in. I run into the hallway where I can see T-bone throwing his arms up shouting "Don't shoot! Don't shoot! I live here!" and immediately think someone has broken into our house and has a gun. Then I see three Dallas police officers, guns drawn, run through our house like a scene from Benny Hill and into the backyard. Thoroughly confused I stand there for a monent, then go into the living room and ask, um, what the fuck just happened?

As it turns out, when T-bone went outside with George, he saw 3 cops with guns out and a hatted man apparently akin to the Hamburglar skulking through our front yard. He thinks the guy is going to make a move for our door, and slams the front door and then shouts for us to lock the back door. Dallas Police, thinking that he is the person they're looking for and just ran into the house, then kick the door in and point their guns at him. They then realize that the man they're looking for was actually the one that took off for our backyard (which seems pretty obvious to me...but I digress) so they run through our house only to have the suspect climbing over our backyard fence as they arrive. I should also mention that they pulled a gun on my brother when he ran into the dining room with a bat (not knowing what was going on either) and that the smartest of all of us, my brother's girlfriend.....she hid in a closet.

And then they're gone. The next door neighbor comes over, and asks what all the commotion was, and finds a Bibbentuckers bag on the side of our house containting an X-Box, some games, and a laptop computer.....apparently the burglar's loot, he left behind when he encountered police. The street becomes a Dallas Police Convention as no less than 10-15 squad cars are driving up and down the street with cops running everywhere looking for this guy. Finally we flag one down and ask, um, "sooo.....about our door you just kicked in....." They eventually send a sergeant over who apologizes and give us a case number to give to our landlord who is then supposed to claim it on insurance or somesuch.....point is, the city sure as shit wasn't going to pay for it.

The next hour is spent with cops combing our yard and asking to search our house, then a K-9 unit in our backyard, and finally an apology from the officer that kicked open our door in the first place. The entire neighborhood is outside trying to sort out what the hell is going on. I'd like to say the story ends there......but it of course, does not.

A neighbor about a half a block down is walking her dog and asks us what all the commotion is, we explain the story and I offer to walk her back down to her house (as though me and a maglite is somehow better protection than a Mastiff, but I once again digress). As we get to her house, her front door is wide open and there's a cop walking up to it. I ask her if she left her door open, she says no, then the officer asks her the same question and asks us to stand outside and he radios for backup. Within minutes 5 squad cars show up with a ten of Dallas' finest, including the obligatory good ol' boy cemonstrably cocking the shotgun as he exits the car. They enter the house shouting, "Dallas police!" and clear the house one room at a time. No one inside, but the backdoor is open. The suspect had made his way back west on La Vista and had run through her house. Then she mentions that her neighbor is out of town, and they discover that his backdoor is open (though there is no one inside....or so they say after clearing that house too).

By about midnite my friend from Beaumont arrives with his old lady, and so I leave for the evening, though apparently as of 2am they still hadn't apprehended this guy, despite having half the police force and a K-9 unit in our quiet little enclave of Old East Dallas. The night was spent with a couch blockading our front door until the landlord could get over the next day to fix it, at which point the handyman Ishmael had the quote of the weekend, saying in his thick Mexican accent, "the police....they like to do this...." and then shaking his head.

Well Hello

My my, has it been a busy couple of weeks. What with the end of month of one of our most stressful months of the year at work (both Diageo and Foster's Wine Estates' fiscal year ends) bookended by two ridiculously debaucherous and alcohol filled weekends, let's just say there just hasn't been a ton of time for writing. Oh, and did I mention getting all the work done for my vacation (a week and a half in Seattle and Portland)? I've been busy to the point that I even cancelled my WAR subscription due to lack of playing time, and havent logged a minute of TF2 in two weeks. So in that vein, some Matt-related quickhits;

-I will admit to getting atleast a little general nerdiness in, as Luq alerted me to the fact that Steam (a service I've totally come around on and really, really love now)was offering EQ2 for the low, low price of $9.99 (all expansions and 30 days free included), an offer I simply couldn't pass up to atleast give the game a chance. Now it was beyond disappointing, something I fully expected, but now I can atleast add it to the extensive list of MMO's I've played and quickly tired of before and since Dark Age of Camelot, bar none the best MMO I've ever played.

-On account of the aforementioned debaucherous weekends, atleast the most recent one, I've had a nice hungover sunday which afforded me and my general uselessness the ability to lay in bed all day with the curtains drawn and watch television, in much the same way I was introduced to True Blood a few weeks back. This sunday though was dedicated to finishing season one of Dexter....all 8 episodes I had left. It was good stuff. While certainly not The Wire, and maybe not even as good as Oz, it made moderately entertaining TV and I'm going to atleast watch season two. The characters can be a little unbelievable at times, but it seems they've begun to develop them quite a bit as the season wore on. Likewise, as any good television show (read: unlike Fourth And Long, which is god awful) does, the plot thickens as the series goes on and sucks you in a bit. I'm not gonna give it the must-see status The Wire gets, but it's good enough.

-I'm now two days from vacation. Ahhhh, sweet sweet vacation. 10 days in the beautiful and not hot Pacific Northwest. And as if things could have worked out any better, after booking the dates it turned out the Rangers are going to be in Seattle this weekend (already have tickets to see them at Safeco) and Mudhoney is playing a free show in Seattle. Throw in a crab dinner, a couple rounds of golf and some time with the extended family and that makes for a pretty nice trip before I head down to Portland to spend a week enjoying the great outdoors and craft beers. Have I mentioned I'm a little stoked?

Tha said, unless you want to hear about the Rangers or how much Beringer/Sterling/BV I had to sell last month (a lot) then I really don't really have a whole hell of a lot more for you. So until I'm back from vacation, I bid you adieu.

Suny Day Real Estate reuniting, touring

I'm not sure exactly when I first got into Sunny Day Real Estate. I remember hearing and liking Diary....and even LP2. I remember liking Rising Tide quite a bit too, but they were always just one of those fringe bands for me.....a band that I liked, but didn't love. When they reunited in 1997 they were a band I'd have liked to have seen, but were certainly nowhere near the top of my list....I was only 16 at the time, and truth be told I think I was just too young to get their music. I'd just started growing out of my metal phase (Pantera/Sepultura) and growing into the drunken indie rock phase (Mudhoney) where I've apparently stalled out all these years later (though I did develop quite a love for rockabilly/psychobilly music as well).

It wasn't until my early to mid 20s that I really started to get into them (somewhere between 2001 and 2005) on account of one night sitting at my computer and Diary began to play....and I listened to it in order in it's entirety. And I realized that there was something new to me about it, something I hadn't heard when I was younger. Most people get into "emo" music when they're teenage hormones are raging and they think the world is out to get them-but I was never one of those people. It wasn't until my 20s that I had the depth of life experiences to appreciate just how powerful and moving the music was. And not just that, but also how musically brilliant it was....how tight it was, how the melodies flow perfectly and how they balance the falsetto and the driving guitar. For me, it was akin to discovering Mudhoney's Superfuzz Bigmuff-something so great that I couldn't stop listening to it. Then I started listening to Rising Tide, and appreciating how similar the music was, and yet how it had grown with age.....Rising Tide was the older, more mature version of Diary. Still just as moving, still just as powerful, but the music had become so much more complex.

Somewhere around 2004 or 05, I started having relationship problems....problems that if you know me you're quite familiar with, and if you don't you really probably don't have any interest in-and I started to fall into a period of self-loathing and guilt-and it wasn't until then that LP2 really hit home, that I really got it. LP2 to, to me, is probably the most beautiful and moving rock record I have ever heard-and between a couple failed relationships and the dying of my Aunt, in many ways Sunny Day Real Estate helped me get through all that. They were able to say for me what I couldn't say myself, they brought out emotions and feelings I didn't know I had and in many ways I believe helped me grow a lot as a person. So as you can imagine, this is a band that means a lot to me.

So a couple days ago when rumors started popping up that they'd be not only reuniting, but touring....and with the original lineup, well let's just say I was ecstatic. Outside of Nirvana (obviously never going to happen) this is the band I most regret having never seen. A few dates started to trickle out....Seattle, San Francisco, Atlanta.....if they weren't coming to Dallas, then I was going to fly somewhere else and see them and that was that. Period, nothing was going to stop me from getting a chance to see SDRE live. So then, you can imagine my delight this afternoon when i read at Pitchfork that they were not only reuniting and touring, but that the tour was set and Dallas was going to be a stop. You can see the full schedule at the above link, but October 5 they're playing Dallas (Granada Theater) and the next two nights Houston and Austin. Anyway, tickets go on sale this friday at 11am for Dallas-and if I can swing it, I'm going to try to do Houston and Austin as well.

In short, I'm beyond ecstatic right now.

Mighty Arrow Pale Ale by New Belgium Brewing Co.

Me and hops have a very odd relationship. Always have and as far as I can tell, we always will. You see, while I accept and am totally OK with the fact that hops are a part of the brewing process, I am of the belief that the American brewer in many cases has taken the use of hops to such an extreme level as to make their beers close to undrinkable. I am of the (apparently unpopular) belief that a beer should not taste like a bar of soap (see: Sam Adams), nor should it be so bitter as to be undrinkable (see: Hop Devil among others). In much the same way as I (and most other people) enjoy a little tannin in a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon but too much ruins it, I want a little hop in my beer but I don't want to be overwhelmed with piney bitterness. Hops is the "spice of beer," and I don't want it over-hopped anymore than I want a cook to dump an entire jar of black pepper in my soup.


Hops perform two functions in the brewing process. They're used to add flavor (again, the "spice of beer") and they act as a stabilizing agent/preservative. A story I've recounted dozens of times (and oddly enough, seems to impress chicks....which I totally don't understand) is that the foundation of the over-hopped beer is the India Pale Ale (IPA), and that it was over-hopped out of necessity-not because they necessarily liked the flavor. When English beer couldn't survive the trip by boat from England to India (then a British colony) without spoiling, thus depriving the English settlers beer (a problem, I admit), some clever brewer realized if you dump a boatload of hops into the casks of beer during the brewing process, it would preserve the beer long enough to survive the trip by ship to India. Voila, now you've got Indian Pale Ale and a bunch of happy English settlers in India. A practical solution to a real problem.


It isn't that people like IPAs that bothers me, everyone is obviously entitled to their own taste in beer, its how the thought process behind the IPA has spilled over into other American beers. Sure an American Pale Ale should be hoppy, it just shouldn't be overly hoppy. It's a Pale Ale, not an IPA. And I think that's my beef with New Belgium's Mighty Arrow Pale...it follows this new trend of making Pale Ales into IPAs.


Which isn't to say it's terrible, it's just not my taste. It's got nice head and a nice body, pours a clear orangish color...from the appearance it looks excellent. But after you take that first sniff, you are just overpowered by bitterness. Sure there's a little orange, but it's mostly just floral bitterness. The taste? Well it's just more of the same. Bitter on the front, bitter on the end....a little caramel and a little citrus mixed in, but at it's heart it tastes like hops. I wouldn't recommend it, but if you're an IPA person, you may very well like it.

Va de Vi Sparkling Wine

In my line of work, we get to taste a lot of wines. I know-you feel bad for me, right? But its one of those things that comes with the territory, and one of the things I not only relish but also find to be necessary for the performance of my job. The portfolio I represent is vast to say the least, and while I can't be intimately familiar with every potential vintage of every wine I do sell, I do my best to have atleast an honest opinion of most everything I do sell. And while I sometimes am required to sell something that-as a person that appreciates good wine-isn't something I particularly care for, sometimes I also get the oppurtunity to sell something which I'm not only impressed with, but fervently enjoy and want to share with other people. Yesterday we kicked off a brand that I can honestly say that I feel that way about, as we kicked off Gloria Ferrer's (who's parent company is Spain's Freixenet, the largest sparkling wine producer in the world)new Va de Vi sparkling wine.

Now I must admit off the bat, I'm a sucker for good bubbly-it seems to be a bit of a family curse, as at family gatherings Champagne doesn't tend to last long. But this was one of those rare wines that I tasted and immediately thought, "Damn, thats a nice bottle of wine" and then took out to my customers and had every last one of them remark something similar and then order cases-not a case, but cases. So what is it?

Va de Vi is Gloria Ferrer's version of an "extra dry" similar to how White Star is Moet & Chandon's. But you see, in confusing Champagne and sparkling wine nomenclature, extra dry is actually sweeter than brut (the driest of the sparkling wines)-a fact that most people don't know. Brut has the smallest dosage (sweetness added to the wine during production) at 15g or less per a liter followed by Extra Dry(25g or less), Sec, Demi-Sec, and Doux in order. Want a little more wine nerdiness? In the US the regulations are lax to say the least for sparkling wines and products such as Andre Brut have over a 20g/L dosage and Cooks Brut and Extra-Dry have virtually the same dosage (25g and 26g/L respectively). The end result is American sparkling wines can label themselves as pretty much anything and while the French and Spanish have tight regulations on labeling, Americans in general don't understand them.

Fun, right?

Which brings us back to Va de Vi. As what would be characterized as an "extra dry" in Europe (it's made in Carneros, CA from Carneros grapes), it does have a bit of sweetness to it-but nothing like a spumante. It's not a sugary sweetness, but instead a very natural and fruit forward one-peaches would be the way I'd describe it. And unlike most Champagnes which are made with something like 33% Pinot Noir, 33% Pinot Meunier, and 33% Chardonnay Va de Vi is 89% Pinot Noir, 8% Chardonnay, and 3% Muscat (hence the peaches and tropical fruit). It's got the body of a great sparkling wine, as well as the structure....there's enough acid to complement the sweetness but not too much of either. In short, it's fantastic...and this is coming from someone that generally shuns sweeter wines. And what's more, it's got a retail bottle price of under $20.....which, with most Champagnes retailing at $40 or more, makes it quite the bargain-especially considering it's competitive quality-wise with most Champagnes.

It's a new product so far launched in only three US markets (Dallas, Seattle, Denver) and not found in grocery distribution, but if you happen upon it I can't recommend it enough. I'm doing a wine tasting for some friends in a couple weeks and this bottle of wine just made the list. If you're in Dallas, you can find it at Kindred Spirits, Mike's, Cork n' Bottle, Parkit Market, and Payless Discount among others. Give it a try, and please....let me know what you think. Cheers!

Fringe

Back in December I wrote a little bit about the new quality TV Programming the Fall of 2008 gave us. And while Heroes has since jumped the shark for the 15th time and I'm totally checked out of that series, and House has resorted to fighting for proverbial plot scraps to maintain my attention (though the hallucination plotline this past season ended on was a good one, I just wish they'd make it less formulaic), there were some high points. No I don't mean the return for new seasons of Gangland and Deadliest Catch (though those do start this week). Nor do I mean a second season of Sons Of Anrchy (which will return in Summer '09 with Henry Rollins. No, I think what impressed me the most was the way they wrapped up the first season of Fringe.

I originally billed it as a bit of a revised X-Files, and while I still think it fits the bill there, its also a bit more linear than the X-Files was. In much the same way Law & Order does things with the X-Files there were certain linear aspects to the story (ie, plot points that carried over from episode to episode and season to season), for the most part each episode seemed to be a stand-alone episode with only a few minutes a week given to the over-arching story. Burn Notice is another show that does this. Fringe meanwhile has each episode contributing to the building of a larger story in the much more traditional format for a drama.

Semantics aside though, what's really impressed me about Fringe is how they've tied together the most confusing (don't mistake that for outlandishly absurd like Lost) and far-fetched beginning of the series and progressed it to the point where it starts to actually make sense, but becomes compelling. At the end of the first half of Season One I was really unsure of the show, but at the prodding of a few friends decided to give it another go and they were dead on-the second half of the first season they actually explained who people were, what was going on, and managed to make the characters more endearing and interesting-in other words, the series finally had life.

At this point in time, I feel fairly confident saying that Fringe and Sons of Anarchy were the best new television shows 2008 gave us, even if Fringe spilled over into 2009-and if you're something to replace a show you've lost, I can't suggest enough giving them a try.