Saturday, July 26th, 2008 at
11:00 am
I made the drive up to Verizon Wireless Music Center last night with my son to see the Dave Matthews Band on their opening night of 2 shows. WOW, properly describes last nights show, the setlist was incredible and I’ve never seen so much energy by Dave and the band.
They opened with Don’t Drink the Water and didn’t slow down from there, playing some of my favorites like, Two Step, Cornbread, Stay, Jimi Thing, #41 and a great cover of Peter Gabriels “Sledgehammer”. The highlight for me was the last song of the night, my favorite DMB song is Louisana Bayou and when Dave strapped on the electric guitar, I knew it was coming. 
They totally rocked Bayou!
DMB Saxaphone player Leroi Moore is out recovering from a very bad ATV accident and was replaced by Jeff Coffin from Bella Fleck and the Flectones, he did an amazing job. Another new addition to the band is longtime friend Tim Reynolds (who plays with Dave on the solo gigs), Tim joined DMB after keyboardist Butch Taylor abruptly left the band in May. I was very impressed with how well Tim fit in and what an incredible addition, he was brilliant.
Dave is known for being a bit eccentric and often engages the crowd with some very funny banter during the shows. These are commonly known as “Davism’s”. Last night was no different than other shows with a very funny incident when Dave had a spider land on his head during a song and start building a web. Dave finished the song without missing a beat then started jumping around and wiping his head…. He explained that a spider was building a web on his head and was trying to figure out how to tell the spider to get the f*** off my head without knowing spider language… it was hilarious.
I think I’ll drive up tonight and see the 2nd show depending on the weather, there are severe thunderstorms in the forecast. I just don’t know how they can top last nights show!
Here are some photos from the show, I didn’t take my camera so I grabbed this from the Noblesville News website.
Find more photos like this on Hamilton County Today
Monday, July 21st, 2008 at
10:25 pm
I knew going to Maui there might be trouble because there were 2, yes 2, Lassen Galleries located there. Christian Reese Lassen (my favorite artist) is from Lahaina, Maui and has 2 galleries on Front St. I was introduced to Lassen about 3 years ago by a friend of mine and have loved his work ever since.
I first saw his work in the Las Vegas Gallery located in Caesar’s Palace. If you get to Vegas, you have to check out the Gallery, his paintings will blow your mind. The are incredible.
If you haven’t seen a Lassen painting he is an incredible artist that paints with vivid colors and incredible passion. I love his sealife and seascapes the best. Up until this week, I had 2 Lassen prints in my collection. The prints are the less expensive versions of the paintings.
There are several different variations of his paintings and the value can range from $500 to $50k per painting with some older originals worth 6 figures. My wife and I went into both Galleries 3 different times during the trip and on the third time, I convinced the wife it was time to purchase our first good Lassen Painting.
One of my favorites is “Miracle of Life” and they had an incredible deal on a CE (Connoisseur Edition Canvas) These are limited to 100 paintings, signed and have 10 – 1pt diamonds in the painting. Yes, I said diamonds!
Here is a picture of me with the Gallery Display, my painting will be delivered in 3-4 months and we chose a different frame than the one in the photo. I still can’t believe we did it! The lighting in the photos isn’t the best and you can see the receipt and certificate of authenticity in my hand and I look a bit excited as well. LOL.
Monday, July 21st, 2008 at
4:13 pm
One of the very first activities Alane and I experienced while on Maui was taking a Kayaking Trip to go snorkeling in Honolua Bay. Honolua Bay is a Conservation District and protected from fishing so it is a great snorkeling spot. We left from DT Fleming Beach and kayaked for about 45 minutes to Honolua Bay.
We saw hundreds of different kinds of fish, Green sea turtles and spinner dolphins all in this area, it was incredible. We spent a few hours there and enjoyed all the marine life and massive amount of coral that was every size, color and type of coral you could imagine.
Once we found the ‘cleaning station’ (A turtle cleaning station is a place where sea turtles congregate in order to get their shells cleaned by various algae-eating fish, and to have their skin picked clean of parasites.) we interacted with several green sea turtles and they came up to the top inches from where we were watching them.
After a few hours of snorkeling and swimming with turtles and dolphins, we headed back to Fleming Beach with the group. It was a great day. We loved this area so much we came back 2 more times for snorkeling by ourselves. This gave us much more time in the water and the 2nd time, we saw 50-60 spinner dolphins and swam within 2 feet of the entire pod. There was even a baby dolphin in the group, it was an incredible experience.
Here’s Alane waving to the camera and the guy behind her flexing underwater, yeah, that’s me.. LOL
