I had the pleasure of a long visit by one of my oldest, dearest friends. Eric arrived here from Hartford last Thursday afternoon, and it was pretty much nonstop fun until this morning, when he flew back. Eric has several weeks’ worth of vacation accrued over the past year, and decided to spend a little of it out here in the Bay Area.
We kicked off the weekend with a trip to the Filmore in San Francisco. This is one of the most revered performance venues in the nation, the home of many a legendary recording. In particular, we went to see a “Son Volt”:http://www.sonvolt.net/. Led by Jay Ferrar, who was originally a founder and member of the band Uncle Tupelo, this powerhouse exceeded my expectations with two hours of grinding, blue-collar alternative country. I highly recommend this group to anybody looking for a bridge between hard driving rock and working class country music. They really define the genre.
The weekend was spent touring the peninsula, hitting cafes and shops. Jodi, Eric, and I visited Gelb Music down in Redwood City and picked up all the various bits and pieces needed to restore my guitars to working order. After stringing up my Kay (a very used and many-times passed on electric guitar) and setting up my drum kit, Eric and I rocked out the entirety of Saturday afternoon. We played some Wilco, some of our old Grushenka tunes (which led to a phone call to our buddy and old band-mate, “Harold”:http://www.solidgoldrold.com, and a voicemail filled with one of our Grushenka hits), and some new stuff Eric has been writing. It was great to not only dust off my drumming after two years of utter stagnation, but also to do it with a great guitarist like Eric.
Monday was definitely the best day of the visit. Eric and I took the CalTrain up to the city and wandered around the “South of Mission” district. Mostly we were looking for independent record stores, of which tere were painfully few (none that we found), but we were also killing time for our lunch date with the publicist for the Grateful Dead. Eric had interviewed him, and interacted with him about music stuff, in the past, but this was their first meeting and I got to tag along. We had lunch at a GREAT Thai place on 3rd and Brannan, where we discussed the “music biz”, politics, and even science (and intelligent design!). I was told that given the color of my politics, Eric and I should definitely hit “City Lights” an indy book store over on Kearny that was the home of the beat movement back in the 50s and 60s. The likes of Jack Kerouac spent much time there, and with his contemporaries defined the rebellious literary movement.
Indeed, Eric and I did head there right after lunch. We walked the 20 minutes from Brannan to the intersection of Kearny and Columbus, and spent an hour or so in the store before walking back to the CalTrain station to meet Jodi at Stanford. We even managed to get on one of the “baby bullet” trains, which makes infrequent stops and shaves 10 minutes off the 50 minute trip from SF to Palo Alto.
All in all, a pretty goddamn rock-and-roll week!
