Nov
21
2009

Get Your Fire For Free

Joe Pena, Muddy Violets & Strange Young Things @ Yucca

(Add / View Comments) (0)PhotosSaturday, November 21, 2009 - 11:45:38 pm
(Posted Under: Tempe Music Scene Tempe Music Scene, Music Music, Live Shows)
What a rockin' night at Yucca. We tend to see a lot of acoustic, or somewhat laid back stuff, so I loved seeing some balls to the wall rock tonight at The Tap.

Obviously Tucson's Joe Pena was both acoustic and somewhat laid back, but was still cool. It was certainly impressive to me that I don't think I've ever heard the same version of a Greyhound Soul song twice! Joe Pena compared to the whole band live compared to the whole band on record are aways so significantly different sounding.

Strange Young Things has a quite impressive merch booth set up behind us - with t-shirts cool! We needed to get one, and I think it took Corey a second to realize we were actually serious. [smile]

Photobox ImageMuddy Violets, who haven't played for at least 2 years as far as I understand were incredibly tight. Huge wall of sound and the set was essentially all songs I knew - Fragile Animal, Pretty, Mr. Jesus Man, Mabalene, Small Town, Big City and Ashamed as well as a few that seemed like new ones. Yucca was quite packed, no doubt with drummed up interested because the band hadn't played in so long, although it thinned out somewhat even before the Violets had finished playing.

Photobox ImageStrange Young Things were in fine form. And quite possibly looking to score some new fans taking advantage of selling merch and completely playing up to the crowd. I haven't seen them enough to know whether their performance was rare form or not, but Corey was certainly being impressively crazy, spending only about half the set on the stage. It was awesome. He was up on the bar, continually moving his mike to the floor, dancing with the crowd, playing guitar solos in the crowd, slithering all across the floor between people. Just totally insane! A lot of people didn't seem to know what to make of it and nearly everyone absolutely enjoyed it. It was really great to see them having worked up the remainder of the Muddy Violets crowd not very far into their set. And by the end of the night had everyone wearing one of the infamous stickers. These guys are just amazing. Not only do they have killer songs, but (particularly Glodie) every rock n' roll move known to man. I wish they played every night!

So yeah, an awesome rock n' roll night. Maybe our ears will stop ringing at some point! [wink]
Nov
21
2009

Papago Park

(Add / View Comments) (0)PhotosSaturday, November 21, 2009 - 06:04:18 pm
(Posted Under: Lust For The Dust, Photography, This Desert Life This Desert Life)
Photobox ImageOn a whim we took a trip out to Papago Park this afternoon, which was awesome. While there are many things we could have done around the house, we were both up for doing something in the desert, particularly since other than the Desert Botanical Gardens we haven't done much in that regard.

I must say that having somewhere so close to home (about 10 or 15 minutes) is really nice. Papago Park, the Desert Botanical Gardens and Phoenix Zoo are all in the same area, smack bang in the middle of Tempe, Phoenix and Scottsdale. We're both looking forward to going out to Tonto, but it's pretty nice that you don't need to leave Phoenix to get the desert experience. It's a great time of year for it too, because while the sun definitely had some kick to it, it was a really comfortable day. Doing the walk we did, which wasn't that long, would definitely require lugging water with us in the height of the Arizona summer.

Photobox ImageWe took a walk and climbed one of the buttes and sat up there for a while, with a reasonably good view of the valley. It was cool to get some good overview shots of Tempe. It also served as a good view to notice that with the exception of Phoenix (obviously), Tempe really is the only high rise area in the valley. Scottsdale, Mesa and looking out to Apache Junction are all reasonably flat, but Tempe really is fairly built up, especially with the development by Tempe Beach Park.

Photobox ImageAs it got later we took a drive around the Papago area, and found a really cool lookout behind the zoo, just as the sun was starting to set, and witnessed a great sunset over the valley from there. It never ceases to amaze me how sunsets here are always awesome. We'll see what it's like over winter, but basically every afternoon we've been out they've been awesome. The lookout was by the tomb of Govenor Hunt tomb, Arizona's first governor.

After the sunset we drove around a little bit more before heading home. We'd half planned to check out the Phoenix Zia's store, but with the rock show tonight quickly approaching, we decided to tackle that another day.

Such a nice afternoon, and a great opportunity for some great photos.

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