mushpots » concerts

Climb Ev’ry Mountain

Maren — Tue, 19 May 2009 05:30:33 +0000

My mom has been teaching music at Joseph City Elementary for almost as long as she’s been a teacher there. Her music students have three performances a year, and the community loves them. Two and a half weeks ago, my mom had her last concert as a full-time teacher because she is retiring at the end of this school year. One of her dreams has always been that her own children would be like the Von Trapp family and sing together, so for her last concert, all of my siblings surprised her with a performance of “Climb Ev’ry Mountain” from “The Sound of Music.” My mom loved it — and we didn’t even have to flee the Nazis afterward.

P-I battle of the bands

Maren — Sun, 04 May 2008 04:19:44 +0000

I was a little disappointed with Force Majeure’s performance in the second annual P-I battle of the bands. We did OK, but there was no moment of shocked silence followed by delighted screams. I guess we probably qualify as one-hit wonders. I have to admit, I didn’t really think we could outdo our original performance of “Close to You.” I had my usual bad electronics karma — my camcorder battery died in the middle of our third song. Here are our first two songs and some pictures.

“One More Time”

“Paint It Black”

“/blog/slideshows/forcemajeure08/fm08.html”

Glen

Maren — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 07:29:53 +0000

Meg and I went to see Glen Phillips in concert at the Triple Door. He’s always fun to watch. He said he didn’t have any “scintillating anecdotes to lead into the next song, making it all the more poignant,” but he seemed to have a lot to say anyway. Mainly really weird things like creating easily defensible post-apocalyptic villages in big-box stores like Fred Meyer and Costco and sending out raiding parties to ransack the Wal-Mart villages. Uh-huh. His opener was Jonathan Kingham, whom I hadn’t heard of but will definitely check out now. And I can’t wait for the album (tentatively called Fragments) Glen’s putting out with Sean and Sarah Watkins and a bunch of other folks. Hooray!

Stuck in Portland

Maren — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 01:05:54 +0000

My friend Todd and I went to Portland yesterday to see Cake in concert. We drove through heavy rain the whole way down, and we were a little concerned when water was lapping onto the road on the way down, but there was no way we were going to miss that show, so we kept driving.

It was still pouring rain when we got to Portland, so we hung out at Powell’s awhile before the show. Right before the concert, I looked at my cell phone and saw that I had a text message saying I-5 between Portland and Seattle had been closed because of flooding. I didn’t recognize the sender of the text message, so I called the number. Turns out the text was from Candace Heckman, the assigning editor for breaking news at the Seattle P-I. She was actually trying to send the message to a reporter covering the rainstorm, but accidentally sent it to me instead. It was a pretty serendipitous mistake, giving Todd and me heads’-up about the closure.

After the concert, I called my friend Meg to get more info about the road closures and see if we could figure out an alternate route to take home. The Department of Transportation’s recommended detour would have taken us seven hours, so we decided to find a hotel to stay at for the night and see how things looked in the morning.

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The DOT hadn’t changed its recommendation by 9 the next morning, but Todd and I didn’t want to spend the whole day driving, so with the help of the DOT’s website and Google maps, we worked out a different route. Our route took us less than four hours total, and the roads were clear of both water and cars the whole way. It definitely pays not to follow rules.

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By the way, the concert was totally worth it.