One night after seeing a show filled with under 20 year old hipsters I found myself going to see Sebadoh – a 90s indie rock icon.  The crew was Ric, Brian, Maria, John, Zach and I and the place was filled with other aging indie rock nerds.  Quasi opened and they were awesome.  I enjoyed them more when the singer would play guitar, but they were good when he was on piano too.  Well, what’s left of the piano after he kicked it a bunch on the last song.Sebadoh was spectacular.  Click the photo above to go to Reverb magazine for more cool photos and big words describing how radical the show was.  On top of playing great musically they also proved that they are still socially awkward when interacting with the crowd.  Especially Jason.  That guy is crazy.  I love it!  Anyways it looks like they’re basically playing the same setlist every night and I found this one from Seattle’s show:

• 1 Intro
• 2 On Fire
• 3 Dreams
• 4 Too Pure
• 5 Soul and Fire
• 6 Sister
• 7 Shit Soup
• 8 Mind Reader
• 9 Got It
• 10 I Love To Fight
• 11 Drag Down
• 12 Magnets Coil
• 13 Ocean
• 14 Skull
• 15 Rebound
• 16 License to Confuse
• 17 Drama Mine
• 18 Nothing Like You
• 19 Crystal Gypsy
• 20 Careful
• 21 Beauty of the Ride
• 22 Not a Friend
• 23 Together or Alone
• 24 Forced Love
• 25 Sixteen
• 26 Give Up
• 27 Junk Bonds
• 28 New Worship
• 29 Brand New Love
• 30 Worst Thing
• 31 Not Too Amused
• 32 Willing to Wait

John gets the nerd award having successfully guessed the first song and was able to name the most tunes after hearing only the first note of the song.  Brian and Maria left early.  Ric almost puked in my car.  Zach used to make fun of me for liking indie rock instead of just punk rock.  They were charging $20 for a one color t-shirt and Lou was proud of it.  Some dork got called out for the first Dinosaur Jr request of the tour (and no it wasn’t me come on I know they wouldn’t be able to play it good anyways ha). All in all a fun night and they must have played good because I’ve been listening to Sebadoh ever since.Looks like there is lots of youtube clips of the show.

Super tired from the Wavves show / Valentines Day date with Liz I met up with some people that are good at skating transitions and embarrassed myself for awhile.  Dave, Brian and Al ripped it.  I don’t even comprehend how they can do stuff so easily.  They all learned frontside halfcab disasters (with ollies).  I didn’t learn anything.  I did a front smith at one point and Dave said “that was a good smith” so maybe my smiths finally looks like smith grinds instead of slashes.  And I did a back 5-0 to fakie that Brian was hyped on so maybe I am making some baby steps on tranny.  Seriously though, those three ripped so hard.  I went home, took a nap then went to see SEBADOH!

I’m on the new new program going up gaps.    Watch out Leo, Westgate.  Ollie accidental benihana captured a bit early by Julian Bleecker.

Thanks to The Mighty LZA Valentines Day has been one of my favorite holidays over the years.  This one was no exception.  Liz likes Wavves quite a bit.  I do to some degree.  We both really like seeing live music so going to the Fox was an easy date for us.  We started things off with a good wholesome family dinner (pot roast) then Liz and I headed out and had a couple beers before the show at Abos.After walking in to the Fox I saw the ultra trendy Wavves shirt with an upside down cross.  Really?  After I asked the merch booth if Wavves was satanic (they knew it was a joke) we went in to check out the first band.The first band was called No Love.  They obviously love My Bloody Valentine.  They were good, loud and played hard.  Probably actually the best band of the night.Wavves came out with face makeup on.  I’m not sure if they were going for a Kiss or clown look, but it was sweated off pretty quickly.  Not that you can see it from the crappy cell phone picture anyway.I’m not going to lie and say I was overly impressed with Wavves.  They weren’t able to reproduce the same quality noise that’s on their albums, they messed up songs, and every song was played faster then the recorded versions (this isn’t always bad).  They did bring a lot of energy though.  I think they are the NOFX of indie noise rock.  You know, it’s a good entry level band, but once you figure out they don’t have all that much talent you move on.  But who am I to say?  I’m just old and this show made me feel old.  Good thing I’m going to Sebadoh tonight, there will be lots of old people!  Oh, and does anyone else think the chord progression in Wavves song “Idiot” is a complete rip off of Dinosaur Jr’s “Freakscene”?Last up was Best Coast.  I didn’t know much about them, but a few songs in were all I needed.  They are decent, but it’s not something I’ll ever get into.  I listened to enough Letters To Cleo back in the 90s.All in all a fun night.  Liz is the best.

What a weird day.  It started off hungover at Scotty Goodale’s memorial service.  What an incredibly sad event that left me in a funk for the rest of the day.  I didn’t know him very well, but I still felt inspired by his positivity and at the same time destroyed by the situation his family is left with.  Argh.  Life is trife.Late in the incredibly warm afternoon I skated flatground in front of the house.  I skated ok and after some warming up I started trying two lines going back and forth.  One way was halfcab flip, nollie treflip, b/s flip.  Never got the nollie treflip.  Other was was frontside halfcab, heelflip, treflip.  Never got the treflip.  When I would mess up the line I would try some other trick which was normally switch flip.  A few were close.  I think it’s time to curb the beer again.

There is a photographer in town working on a photo book about female skaters and naturally he was given Carleigh’s info so around noon they picked me up and we went on a quest to find something dry to skate other then flatground.  A few failed attempts in Boulder had us driving out the Lville tech center where we found the new manny pad mostly dry.  There was a bunch of snow in the landing so we skated it differently.  Carleigh put some benches after the low part to do tricks over.  She ollied them super easy then went on to do front 180, kickflip and pop shove over too.  Pretty awesome.  I did nothing but ollie them, but I did get a fun run for myself.  Ollie the benches (there was two in a row) then a 360 flip on flat then a quick up a curb to tiny ollie off the drop over a puddle.  I also managed to ollie over a bench up on to the manny pad.  That was not easy for me.  Hyped.Next we went to the ollie into the bank then gap spot where Derek joined us.  I dorked around for a bit doing tricks on the curb before ollieing into the bank and doing the gap.  Carleigh and I had only ollied it when Derek showed up and did 3 tricks down the gap first try.  Pop shove (what Carleigh wanted to work up to), kickflip and 360 flip super easy before tweaking his ankle and reinjuring it a bit.  After that he slowed down.  Carleigh ended up putting down the pop shove super quick and getting a front 180 in a few tries after cracking her brand new board.  I got hung up on trying a line of halfcab into the bank then front 180 the gap.  The first few felt close, but then I started to get worse at halfcabs and very frustrated.  I finally got to the 180 and then slammed super hard.  Ugh.  A few more tries and I gave up.Next we went to the mellow bank to tall ledge spot.  Derek was still hurting and decided to break in some new shoes trying no complies and fakie bigspins over and over.  He also did nose stall and front 50 on the bank to ledge.  I got a backside nose stall and a back crooks.  Carleigh worked for a backside nose stall and got it.  Sick.  At the end I was over the ledge part and just tried to manny the bank which took several more tries then it should have.After this Julian (the photographer) had to leave so Carleigh gave him a ride back to Boulder while Derek and I went to the Lafayette park.  Max and crew were there and I was hyped to see that Dave Fuller was too and we skated the rock section for awhile.  He tried to get me to do rock fakies on the pillar, but I only committed to pumping to fakie most of the way up.  We skated the rock area in ways I hadn’t before.  Dave and Max had some moves.  I tried a front feeble on the 1′ qp and almost did a front 180 out so I started trying it.  I finally landed it and Max ordered some little kids to cheer for me.  Pretty funny.  After that Dave and I started trying front hurricanes.  Apparently he has never done one either.  He got it way before me and did a bunch of them before I finally got one avoiding the freshly fallen goose crap that littered the park.  Dave went on to do a bunch on the lower marble slab too.  So sick.  I took awhile, but finally got a backside flip on the taller marble slab.  Max was doing 20 trick lines that were ridiculous including tricks like front pivot fakie, switch front blunt, etc.  Kid rips.  I was getting super tired and after Dave left I kinda just dorked around a little.  Did a front D in the little bowl finally and did some sketch transfers over the pointy spine and left after Carleigh showed up.  We went to the Bones wheel premiere which was easily the worst premiere I’ve been to.  No crowd in a huge venue and bad projection quality.  The video might be sick, but you couldn’t really tell from that premiere.  We had a fun time at the after party, maybe too much fun as this would result in my third weekend in a row with a hangover.  Not stoked on that.

We got it pretty good weatherwise in CO, but the last couple weeks have been rough.  I haven’t skated outside since Jan 27th.  Wow.  It hit 40 today and it felt super nice out. I left work early, picked up Carleigh and we attempted to find somewhere dry to skate. After a couple nothing spots we ended up at a smooth new parking lot that had a narrow strip without too much sand from snow removal. There was a section of snow we could ollie and a chunk of ice to do tricks over too. Nothing too special, but it was sunny and it felt nice.As I mentioned in the last entry I broke my board trying to ollie a cone.  My shoes were getting really flat and soggy so I didn’t want to do the new board / old shoes thing.  I’m sitting on some shoes right now so I busted out my third pair of eS Square Two’s in a row.  Love these shoes.  To add to the mix I had some new 52mm supernullethane.  This is partly because I’ve had the same wheels forever and partly because I wanted new wheels before SF in 3 weeks, but not brand new wheels in SF.  Aight, so now that I’ve posed out long enough it’s time to talk about skating.After some warming up I settled on a couple runs.  One way no comply 180, f/s halfcab flip, treflip.  Other way ollie the snow, kickflip the ice, nollie treflip.  I never got either line although I did get close.  I gave up at one point and did back 180 a small section of the ice, halfcab flip (horrible) then heelflip (new boards and heelflips are a match made in heaven).  I had landed a couple treflips at one point and even landed with some of both feet on a switch flip.  Carleigh worked on some runs too and was ollieing the snow pile really good.  She bailed a lot of kickflips which bummer her out, but did a line of ollie the snow, ollie the ice, pop shove, front 180, fakie pop shove.  Sick.  She also did ollie the snow then pop shove the ice.  Both of us were having more problems ollie’ing the snow then we thought we should.  Carleigh also through down a few heelflip attempts.  She should do those more.  Or maybe I’ll just go the direct route.  Carleigh, please do more heelflips, you got those.  Pretty fun session.  Nice to be outside.  Warm weather on the way.  Melt snow melt!

Insanity.

Gordon is one of the best dudes ever. Click the link for more info on the contest and learn how having the worst poker hand can make you a winner.

Just couldn’t take not pushing anymore. NoLove and Rampy are a blast, but I was really missing pushing around, doing ollies, flatground, etc. So around 8pm I parked on 9th next to the back stair entrance and walked down to the bottom level avoiding any security sightings. Sweet. It was still super cold down there though and there were cars or puddles by every skateable blue curb. After pushing around for a few minutes I started skating some flat which felt pretty foreign. I found an orange cone after awhile and set it up to ollie over. It was one of those medium height ones, so not super easy for me, but not tall. I ollied it a bunch of times and tried to get some good lines with it. My favorite being the sw front 180, kickflip and then ollie over the cone with more speed than normal. I think I also did a halfcab flip then front 180 over it. I was trying a line of ollie over the cone, treflip, nollie treflip, but never got close. Mainly because I sketched one of the ollies and landed in the middle of the board and put my foot through it. Doh. Happy to have skated and looking forward to a new board, shoes and wheels. Ha.