So I went to the dentist again today for a one week check up. He said everything is all healed up perfectly. I had my first solid meal today which was truly nice. A culb sandwich from Park Deli. mmmmmm… Don’t get me wrong, pasta and yogurt are pretty damn good, but when that’s all you eat for a week it just doesn’t cut it. I’m glad to be back to somewhat normal food again. I can’t wait till I can go back to the Turf Club and cook up a nice steak. Might have to wait till Palm Springs though for the steak. One more week of healing and it’s Jordan’s birthday. We’re going out there and renting this pretty sweet house for the weekend. Nothing but lounging around by the pool drinkin martinis.

I’m gonna have to hit my regular dentist up soon though so I can get another root canal. As you can see by the photo above I’ve got some pretty gnarly fillings. On the right of the photo you can see the left side of my face. I got one crown on the bottom jaw and I just need to get one on the upper jaw now. Once I do that I can eat ice cream again with no pain. The filling is so deep right now that the cold shoots through the filling and into the roots and it’s really hard to eat anything cold. It’s been like that for some time now. I think once I do that I should be good with teeth work for some time. Now that I’m older and such I take better care of my self to a degree. I still need to eat a bit healthier so if anyone can suggest some really good, cheap tasty foods let me know.

So yesterday I finally got my wisdom teeth pulled. I was in no pain from the teeth until about a week ago. My dentist wanted me to get em out cause they were starting to come through and they were impacted so it would be hard to brush em and such. I kept putting it off till I noticed the hole where one tooth was coming in was getting bigger and bigger and food kept getting stuck in it. Yeah, I know, that sounds kinda nasty but hey it happens to all of us at some point in our lives.

Everyone was building it up to hurt really bad and I would be out of commission for like 3 or 4 days. It’s not that bad. I get to eat yogurt, pudding and apple sauce all day long without feeling bad about doing so. hahahah I got pain killers that I took a bunch of yesterday and will probably take a few today but not too many. I’m not in a lot of pain which is nice cause then I’ll get better quicker. The weird thing was that they put me asleep during the surgery, but woke up about half way through it. I would keep waking up and opening my eyes when I felt when they were yanking out the teeth, I could hear em drilling, hear the Doctor ask for the stitches and everything. There was no pain I was just aware of everything. Was kinda cool to see all the work they put into pulling teeth out of my mouth. What a crazy job to have.

So yeah, I’m feelin pretty good today. I’m not really that swollen, but I’ll make sure to put ice on my jaw to help with the swelling i do have. Gonna do some running around this morning and then go see the Sword tonight at the Casbah. The it’s back to work tomorrow. I won’t be answering phones or talking much but that’s cool. I got to go back in a week for a check up. He just wants to make sure everything is healing up well. I’ll post some pictures of my before and after x-rays.

Last night was the first of two “home coming” solo shows for Eddie Vedder in San Diego. He played the beautiful Speckels Theater which holds close to no one. At the start of the show he informed the crowd that he was a bit “sick” and by that he meant really hung over which also meant he didn’t get much sleep the night before. He assured us that he wasn’t one of those “angry drunks” but that he gets angry and mad when he’s hung over so he might get a bit angry as the night went on. We all know Eddie to be quite political one many different issues so this was sure to be a good night since I tend to agree with most of his political views. First thing on the agenda was how he was woken up early by a protest on Broadway about Educational Funding here in California. He said something to point of, “At first i was really pissed off at these people making noise outside and for waking me up early until I saw what they were protesting and then my anger quickly moved directly towards Arnold Schwarzenegger. How can you cut funding on education? It’s like a page from the Republican play book. Dumb down the people so they will continue to believe everything you say and will continue to vote for you.”

Talking politics weren’t the only thing he was here to do and what a great night it was. He played songs from the Pearl Jam catalog as well as songs from the “Into The Wild” soundtrack. The songs i was most surprised to hear were I’m Open and Driftin’. Driftin is a song that was only released as a Christmas Single the band sends out ever year to their Fan Club. Never figured I’d hear that song live. Eddie played many different guitars during the night and at one point picked up a mandolin to play Rise and a fan yelled out “DIRTY FRANK”. He stops, looks out at the guy and says, “Dirty Frank?” and starts to play the into of the song. Everyone just starts busting up laughing due to the fact Dirty Frank is a “funk” song written in response to the Red Hot Chili Peppers when they said Pearl Jam couldn’t play funk. After playing the intro he stops and says with a big smile on his face, “Dirty Frank on a mandolin? Now that’s just a stupid request… I told you I’m gonna be a little angry tonight.” There was a lot of interacting with the crowd and it made for an amazing night. At one point he told this story about how Pearl Jam’s old tour manager had just moved to San Diego and that’s who he was drinking with the night before. At one point they were talking about authors and his buddy suggests one guy and gives him a book he thinks he should read. Eddie opens it up and on the first page it says “Dear Mr. Vedder”. A fan threw the book on stage a long time ago and it never got to Eddie until now. He felt really bad cause the person who threw it on the stage might have though Eddie was a complete asshole for never calling her since she had her phone number in the book. So at 2:30 in the morning PST they thought, let’s call her and tell her sorry for not calling sooner. Now the girl who they were calling lived in Colorado so when you think about it, it was probably like 4:30 in the morning where she lived and Eddie was calling her all loaded. She didn’t pick up though. Bummer. They looked again and her brother’s number was in the book as well so they called him. He didn’t pick up either. So he was going to wait until later that night to call em again. HAHAH. Could you imagine waking up in the middle of the night to the phone ringing and you don’t get out of bed cause it’s 4:30 in the morning. When you do get up you check to see who called so damn early only to find a message on your answering machine from Eddie Vedder. How pissed would you be?

One of the highlights for everyone in the place was when Eddie told us about these samplers or voice looping machines he has and how when you get them they are pre loaded with samples and such. He said “98% of the stuff pre loaded is complete shit, but that some of the stuff you just have to keep. This one sample he’s been wanting to use at a show and tonight might just be the night. He lights up a cigarette and asks his lighting guy to give him some mood lighting. Kicks on the sampler and this really cheesy R&B song starts. Think Barry White smooth R&B. The entire place bursts into laughter and then Eddie starts singing, “Awwww baby. You look soooo good tonight.” It was so damn funny. I wish you all could of been there to witness that. After his first set was finished off with the song Porch he left the stage. His crew came out to re-tune the guitars and set up for the first encore where Eddie had the nights opener Liam Finn come out and play a few songs with em. He ends the first encore with the song Arc which he takes multiple loops and layers of his voice and makes a really cool song out of it. The first time he played that song live was at the San Diego Sports Arena and that song is a tribute to the fans that lost their lives at the Roskilde Festival during the bands set.

The second encore started off with the song No More which is about an injured soldier from the Iraq war. After the song he said that some people think he has too strong an opinion on the war and the way in which our current government is running this country. He said he pays his taxes and is allowed to have these views cause that’s the way the United States is set up. Also he personally knows many people who have and are fighting in Iraq, reads tons of fan email from folks over there. One family he knows learned their son had dies in Iraq only to hear the next day that the government declared that there were in fact no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He then went into the son I Am A Patriot. He then got up and switched guitars and a fan yelled out, “Who are you voting for Ed?” He sits back down and says, “I heard my name but not the first part. what did you say?” the guy yells again, “Who are you voting for Ed?” He smirks and says, “I’ve learned that it’s in my best interests to not state my political beliefs.” Again everyone just busted up laughing and then from the side of the stage a HUGE banner gets walked across the stage behind him that says “OBAMA ’08″ and the place goes nuts. I always knew there was a reason i liked Eddie so much.

Here’s the entire set list:
Main Set: Walking The Cow, Around The Bend, I Am Mine, Dead Man Walking, I’m Open, Man Of The Hour, No Ceiling, Guaranteed, Millworker, Far Behind, Rise (/Dirty Frank tease), Soon Forget, Broken Hearted, You’re True, Driftin’, You´ve Got to Hide Your Love Away, Picture in a Frame, Masters of War, Trouble, I Won’t Back Down, Porch
Encore 1: Society, Throw Your Arms Around Me, Lukin, Arc
Encore 2: No More, I Am A Patriot, So You Wanna Be a Rock and Roll Star, Hard Sun

All in all it was a pretty amazing evening. I wish i was going tonight to see him again, but i guess I’ll have to wait till Pearl Jam comes back to town.

I’ll leave you with the video of Eddie’s song No More:

I’ve decided to start doing album reviews just for the fun of it. Maybe you’ll find out about something you never would of listened to before. Maybe you’ll just laugh at my lame ass attempt to write things about music you’ll never listen to. either way i believe it has my name on this here blog so i’ll do what ever it is i feel like doing. Ohh yeah, my ratings are based on a 5 can of hair grease scale.

I first remember hearing about THE SWORD when more and more folks came into Lou’s Records and asked for their last album Age Of Winters. I thought they were some fantasy metal band based on the albums artwork. It wasn’t until someone at a CIMS meeting suggested I listen to them as they were like Queens Of The Stone Age just heavier. Right then I had to check em out. And now they’re back with a new album, Gods Of The Earth.

From the first few notes you get a feel for the album with the mythical guitar plucking and then a punch to the stomach. I’ve run through the album a few times now and I think this is a much stronger album that, Age Of Winters. Each song has many more changes in the structure which get the song more of a full metal band rather than say a slower stoner metal band. The nice subtle touches of acoustic guitar thrown in ever so often gives the album a little bit of character and sets it off from other albums from the new batch of metal bands. From time to time though, there are parts that sound like rehashes from Age Of Winters, not that that is a bad thing. I would have to say that this album is super solid all the way through. The best parts for me are the little “lord of the rings” breakdowns throughout the entire album that help break up the extended rocking like their last album had. Great album to put on, turn up super loud and drive way too fast too. Can’t wait to see them at the Casbah on the 17th, thanks to Megan @ Kemado.

The Rating:

I’ve been thinking a bunch lately about my life. What I’ve done so far, where I’ve been, who I’ve met and all that stuff. I have to say so far i’m pretty happy with things have worked out. I’ve gotten to meet some of my idols like Eddie Vedder and Jeff Ament of Pearl Jam, Jim “Reverend Horton” Heat, The Hives, the guys in Rocket from The Crypt even though that doesn’t really count cause they are from San Diego as well and i have a better chance of running into one of them around town than most folks in the world, Lemmy. I’ve gone to some amazing places like Puerto Villarta Mexico, Vegas, Seattle, San Francisco, Washington DC, Gettysburg, and Philadelphia even though i don’t remember much of the last 3. I’ve played music for over 7 years for people and have gotten to play with some pretty amazing bands like, Reverend Horton Heat, Los Straitjackets, Supersuckers, Van Stone, Lords Of Altamont, Legendary Shack*Shakers and Electric Frankenstein.

I never would of thought i’d ever gotten to do these things, but i want more. I wanna get out of town and see the world. I wanna spend a month in Europe just checking out history and everything over there. I wanna go into space and hang out in the space station. I wanna walk on the moon. I wanna go on tour for an extended period of time. Will i ever get to do this, will i ever move on? i guess that’s up to me isn’t it?

Over the past few days i’ve been doing a lot of online promotion for Thee Corsairs. I’ve got the wheels moving again and all we got to do is find a drummer. Got to find someone who can drum just a good as Big Daddy, but who can head out of town and play shows around the US. we got “Tales Of Rum And Whiskey” sitting in my closet and we need to get em out there. Got to go beyond our safe zone and play for the masses. We probably won’t become millionaires off playing music, but we’ll have some great stories. We already do. In the down time we’ve had with Thee Corsairs i’ve come up with a few more possible songs. When Rex and i get together and nail em down the search for Jose’s replacement will begin. I look forward to meeting new cool people, and catching up with the ones I’ve met so far. This includes meeting the folks I’ve become friends with but have never met in person. I can say I have the internet to thank for lots of my achievements.