Last night was one of those shows I’m still angry I didn’t tape. Kim and I headed to the Soiled Dove Underground a little later than originally planned, and showed up just as Will Hoge was taking the stage. I knew we were going to be pushing it close, so I didn’t take the recording gear along with me. Had I known how unique the venue was, and how great the show would be I would have definitely changed my mind.

Firstly, the Soiled Dove is a small and intimate venue, where a circular stage sits high above the floor below. On the floor are many tables, each sitting four people. Behind that is another level starting with a bar rail, which is where our seats were. There is an even higher level back behind the second, and both of these are full of more four person tables. All of the seats have a small lighted number post on the table/bar, and there is a little switch on it which when flipped turns on a red light at the top of the post. This is an indication to the servers that you’d like to order something. This setup leads to an incredibly silent room, which I’m sure can lead to some great shows as last night proves.

Will Hoge started off the night by playing a few songs by himself on the acoustic guitar and lots of harmonica playing thrown in as well. It was awesome to hear his distinguished voice in such clarity and mostly silent crowd. Following a few mellow songs, the other two band members joined him on stage for a set of much louder, but still great sounding, songs. I think the crowd was mostly familiar with Hoge, but those who may not have been would definitely have to be fans after seeing this show. At the end of the night, a four or five song encore was played with a mix of solo/acoustic songs and a couple of full band songs to cap off the night.

Note to self, see more shows at the Soiled Dove. O.A.R. played there once back in 2001, and I wish I could have caught that show. Perhaps I’ll have to find the tape from that night.

Another hockey game last night, and another loss added to our record. The good news is that I had another game without an injury. The sad thing is that if we would have played last week as well as we did this week, we would have easily won that game. The team we played last night is one of the better teams in the league, and we managed to go up on them 3-0 at the end of the first. However, we fell apart in the second period and let them tie it up at 3. In the third we started playing well again, but just couldn’t get the puck in the net. The opponent scored one additional goal toward the end of the game, and another empty-netter with under a minute left, to take the game 5-3. Only one more week and then it’s time for the playoffs. Hopefully we can turn it on and win a few games to finish this session out.

O.A.R.’s latest disc, All Sides, is out in stores today! Though I haven’t received a hard copy of it yet, just mp3’s, I’ve heard there is another shout-out to yours truly and oarsa.org in the liner notes. Many fans felt like their prior disc, Stories of a Stranger, was a departure from the bands normal songwriting style and was way too overproduced. I’m happy to report that this one release is back to the old ways and is one of their best albums to date. I would highly recommend picking up a copy as soon as you can, and if you need a little convincing you can listen to the entire thing at VH1.com.

I traveled back to Cincinnati once again this weekend, but this time it was for a bachelor party weekend. I arrived late Friday evening in Dayton where my brother picked me up and we headed down to his pad. We were both fairly tired and had to get an early start the next day, so decided to head for bed after watching a bit of TV.

Saturday, after running some errands for a good chunk of the morning, we met up with my dad and some others to take a canoeing trip down the Little Miami River. Though the authorities have been trying to crack down on drinking while floating down the river, we didn’t run into any problems doing so. It was a great six mile trip that ate up most of the afternoon and into the evening hours. Since we ended up with an odd number of people, I opted to take out a kayak for myself, which I thoroughly enjoyed and would love to do again.

After that we went back to my brother’s, cleaned up, and started up the grill. Lots of others who didn’t go on the canoe trip came over and we had a great little party out on his back deck. Eventually the party moved indoors as the weather got a little questionable. We had lots of games of Rock Band, a beer pong tournament, and lots of good times. A big thanks goes out to my brother, dad, and all else who attended. Oh yeah, thanks to my mom too for dropping of all kinds of good sides and appetizers!

I took a week off from cruise planning to reflect the day at sea we will have on the fifth day. During this time we will be traveling from Naples on the west coast all the way around Italy to Venice on the northeastern coast. Once we arrive in Venice at 1pm on the sixth day we will have lots of time to explore, in fact we won’t leave there until 5pm on the seventh day. Yes, we will be doing an overnight stay in Venice on the docked ship.

With all of this extra time, we really need some suggestions on things to do. It sounds like you can get lost for hours navigating through the streets and bridges that span the many canals. And I don’t think a trip to Venice is complete without a gondola ride. But what else is there to do? I’ve read a little about some of the neighboring islands like Murano but was hoping that someone had some advice. I’ve received a number of emails on previous stops, but I encourage you to post in the comments section. Let’s get some conversation started, don’t be scared!

The itinerary thus far:

• Day One: Cannes / Monte Carlo / Nice
• Day Two: Livorno / Florence / Pisa
• Day Three: Rome
• Day Four: Naples / Capri / Sorrento / Pompeii
• Day Five: At Sea
• Day Six: Venice
• Day Seven: Venice

Kim and I headed back to Fiddler’s Green last night for our second show there. This time the lineup was a little more rocking than the Stevie Wonder show we saw earlier. Another difference was that the tickets were not free this time and were not in the reserved seats either. I must say now after sitting in the lawn, it should be the last time I ever do so there, at least with a crowd of that size. We got there as the first band of the night, Cheap Trick, was finishing up their set and there wasn’t a good spot left on the lawn. Though we missed hearing them play “I Want You to Want Me” we did get to hear the next most popular song “Surrender” and I wish we would have arrived earlier as they could have been the most entertaining of the night.

Next up was Heart, the act I might have been most excited to see. The Wilson sisters and the rest of the band started off a little slow with some of the lesser known songs, but eventually they got into the groove with a toned down performance of “Alone” which later launched into rocking versions of “Crazy on You” and “Barracuda.” I must say that they sounded great throughout the short 45 minute set and I wish they would have played a bit longer. Though they did play a quick encore, including a Led Zeppelin cover. It’s not every day you see an non-headliner play an encore.

Finally, the night was wrapped up with Journey and their latest front-man, Arnel Pineda who was hired after band members saw him performing cover songs on YouTube. Though I’m not sure he compares to Steve Perry, he does a pretty good job filling in and at times you could be completely fooled into thinking Mr. Perry was on stage. There were some good tunes thrown in early, but I felt that they played a few too many new songs as well. I highly doubt many in the sold out crowd were there for the new stuff. But when they did bust out the hits, the crowd went wild!

I finally played with my men’s hockey league team again last night after taking four weeks off for my re-injured ankle. Like I did after my other injuries, I had Kim tape it up real well and then made sure my skate was tied tight and not going to loosen up much as the game went on. I was a little hesitant, especially near the boards, but I was able to skate without much pain at all. I was pretty sore once the game was over, but I made it all the way through and even managed to get a goal and an assist, though the team still lost. We don’t have too many games left, so hopefully I can get a win before it’s all over, the team only has had one win and that was last week.

We decided to have a night at home last night and settled on watching the movie Into the Wild. We flipped through the on-demand listings and checked IMDb for one that was rated pretty well, and this one was at 8.3/10. Here’s the plot summary from the above mentioned site:

Based on a true story. After graduating from Emory University in 1992, top student and athlete Christopher McCandless abandoned his possessions, gave his entire $24,000 savings account to charity and hitchhiked to Alaska to live in the wilderness. Along the way, Christopher encounters a series of characters who shape his life.

Though it started a little slow, by the end Kim and I both were fully engaged by the movie. The adventures that the guy went through were inspiring and makes you want to take a little trip of your own. However, hopefully yours ends up better than his does in the end. I’ve also learned that there is a book of the same name that I may actually try to get a hold of and read. I can’t say that I’ve ever said that before, but I’d like to learn even more about the trips and life of this guy. I’ve already begun reading this 1993 article from Outside Magazine.

Another Pig-Fest has come and gone. As always a great time was had and the weather cooperated for the entire day. This year was a little different than the last few years, as there was no live evening entertainment. As I mentioned earlier, our friend MER was not able to attend this year, so we tried a karaoke machine instead. That pretty much failed just as we started it up. Either people weren’t quite “ready” or just not interested, but only a couple of people shared their voices with the crowd.

So I decided to run a flip-cup tournament instead. I formed nearly 16 teams of 4 players each, and drew up a bracket. The tourney went well into the night hours, and provided plenty of entertainment for the rest of the night. In addition, we had both the standard wiffle ball and cornhole tournaments. I also saw a few games of beersbee, along with oversized soccer and badminton. A full day of activities for sure!

Looks like my mom has already uploaded a bunch of pictures to her flickr page, and I’m sure others will soon follow. Keep your eyes on the Pig-Fest site which will be updated soon.

We attended yet another show last night, this time it was Stone Temple Pilots at Red Rocks. Growing up I was a big fan of the band starting with their 1992 debut, Core, through the middle to late 90s. Having never seen the band live before, I was not going to miss this once in a lifetime opportunity. Soon after tickets went on sale for this tour, I snagged a pair of seats in the twentieth row.

We arrived late last night, at around 8:30, after meeting a friend for dinner. I wasn’t worried though as I had heard much about the delayed start time for the band on this tour and figured they wouldn’t go on until around nine. I pretty much nailed that down perfectly and we found our seats with just a few minutes before the show started. I could have done without the wind at the beginning of the show as it distorted the sound quite a bit, but from what I could tell the band sounded very tight. The singer, Scott Weiland, on the other hand was a bit off and I felt he really struggled through “Big Bang Baby.”

As the show went on and the crowd became more intoxicated, we left our twentieth row seats and moved toward the more open top of the venue. The nice thing about Red Rocks is that there really isn’t a bad seat in the place. We continued to listen to a greatest hits set for the most part, which I was happy to hear and admit that the sound got better throughout the night, both music and vocals. I wouldn’t say that I was blown away by the performance, and probably won’t spend money again to see them play, but it was nice to finally scratch them off my list of acts I’d like to see.