i miss the wetlands

I just watched (for the second time) Wetlands Preserved, a beautiful documentary about the legendary downtown venue, the Wetlands Preserve. Between 1998 and 2001, I went to probably around 35-40 shows at Wetlands. Although I was going to mostly punk and hardcore shows there, I always felt a special bond with the place because of it’s hippie roots and dedication to the environment and other social causes.

So after watching Wetlands Preserved, I was feeling real nostalgic. I spent about an hour on YouTube looking for shows I might have been at. The best one I found was this video from a show in December of 2000. Anti-Flag headlined, Flogging Molly played an amazing set before them, and I’m almost positive Bigwig opened the show. I remember it being literally 19 degrees outside, but the Wetlands was known as being the hottest place in NYC, no matter what it was doing outside. After watching the docu, and a dozen other videos on the Tube, I realized that we don’t have anything remotely comparable to what we had in The Wetlands. There will never be a venue like that again. I’m also realizing how good Anti-Flag used to be. Before Justin Sane went all Davey Havok on us. Damn, I probably saw them 3 times at the Wetlands. These days, if you wanna see Anti-Flag you have to go see them open for My Chemical Romance at MSG. UGH!

One of my favorite Christmas songs. Oi! to the punks and Oi! to the skins Oi! to the world and everybody wins (The Vandals)

G. Love and Special Sauce with Tristan Prettyman doing “Beautiful” at the Hollywood Bowl on Saturday. This is pretty much my favorite duet I have ever seen live, beating out Wilco / Feist and The Bouncing Souls/ I forget the girls name but it was also cool. I got to see G and TP do this song last year acoustically at a small bar in Montauk, and it was simply amazing.

Johnny Trash Cash and Oscar the Grouch.

Wilco featuring Leslie Feist “You and I” at Keyspan Park last monday. Although I first thought I was at the HeadQuarters of http://www.latfh.com/ , it was a really, really good show.

It was 14 years ago yesterday that Dan Rather joined REM on stage at Madison Square Garden for “Whats the Frequency Kenneth?” I was unaware that the song was written based on an incident in 1985 where Dan Rather was mugged, and one of his assailants kept on screaming “Kenneth, what’s the frequency?” I read yesterday that they attacked him because they believed that the media had taken control of him. Naturally, learning all of this made me think of which current news anchor I would most like to beat up because the media has taken contron of them. Matt Lauer is too cool and Katie Couric is too hot. I think I would have to go with Sam Champion, even though he is only a weather anchor, I’ve always carried some serious hate for the guy. I cannot find any factual evidence, but I’m almost positive that Sam Champion is not his real name. We all know that his predecessor, Frank Field, changed his name to Storm Field for dramatic effect, so I don’t doubt that Sam Champion’s real name is Porter McElroy or something like that.

Polyphonic Video

Hey I found some amazing videos from The Polyphonic Spree show last Friday.

The first one is right after The Spree left the stage, the crowd kept on singing the chorus of a new song called "The Championship."




It gives me chills.

The other is the insane encore, its them playing "Light and Day"...



They are playing at The Warsaw in Brooklyn on July 1st. You know I'll be there, and I think you should be as well.

I'm getting my laptop back tonight, so hopefully I will be writing alot more. See ya.