Sunday, March 30, 2008

Mark's musical adventure

We stopped in Austin, Texas because I had this weird urge to go see the statue of Stevie Ray Vaughan. It's pretty big.


The night we got here, both Les Claypool and Fu Manchu were playing in town. Decisions decisions decisions. After weighing the options, I settled on Les Claypool - I've seen him before and it was a great show!


This time was excellent as well and even the opening act was good. It was Tim Fite. I'd never heard of him, but he was pretty rockin'. When Les came on, he had a bit of a strange assortment of characters with him: namely a xylophone/marimba/percussion guy, and a saxophonist who used heavy effects on his sax (I've never heard a distorted saxophone before).


There were several amazing xylophone solos, which, believe it or don't, is NOT sarcasm! Les also played a variety of basses, including one that looked like a banjo that I'd never seen before.


He also played an upright bass while wearing a pig mask.


There was an awesome and interactive version of D's Diner (Who wants to go to D's Diner? I do. Who wants to go down to D's? Me!), and he closed the show with a cover of the Black Sabbath song Electric Funeral. Here's a short snip.


Les Claypool vs. Fu Manchu? Les wins.

5 comments:

Taras said...

Geez man,
Don't you know that bootlegs are copyrighted material?

You just ripped off the poor artist. I'm soo not seeing the show now!

..dials RIAA while mark is in their territory..evil laughter

Mark said...

At least I paid for the ticket to get in...

I don't think a couple of grainy pictures and a 10 second clip is much of a substitute for the real show either :P

I was just really glad that nobody took the time to copy my hard drive while crossing any of the borders. Knock on wood..

Anonymous said...

Fu Manchu would have been pretty cool but I believe Claypool was the correct decision.

The best part about NS is that on any given night you can go see someone with the last name Rankin play. Oh no wait, that's the worst part.

Basement Troll said...

Wow, Stevie Ray Vaughan was tall!! Or Mark is really short. Or the statue was not life-sized. Could be any of those, really.....

Julie said...

Hey Bonnie, maybe it's all three...it could be that Mark's like 4 feet tall, Stevie Ray Vaughan was like 8 feet tall in real life, and maybe they made the statue 9 feet tall!! It's a conspiracy!