Good Morning Internet

I can’t believe I haven’t posted these videos here yet. I blame the end-of-semester madness.

The Posies played an amaz­ing, short-ish show at the 9:30 Club. Granted, I got there fif­teen min­utes into the set after I raced down to DC directly from class in Bal­ti­more as quickly as I could. Check out these quick high­lights. If you ever have a chance to see them live, do your­self a favor and bask in some power pop greatness.

Related Posts:

• The Posies return to the 9:30 Club Nov. 17
• The year of adven­ture continues

2009 was kind of a rough year for every­one. The econ­omy did a swan-dive into an empty pool and a lot of us lost our jobs.

This year, I declared, would be dif­fer­ent. While watch­ing Olympic hockey and a space shut­tle land­ing (I’m a mul­ti­tasker), I could tell this year would be filled with adven­tures. And wow, yes, it sure has. It’s been bet­ter than I had imag­ined, and I feel so lucky to have had so many expe­ri­ences this year. A quick ver­bal montage:

• Sur­vived the snowpocalypse
• Played a reunion show with Three Track Mind
• Turned 30
• Went to South by Southwest
• Saw the final (sched­uled) launch of Space Shut­tle Atlantis
• Went to MaxFunCon
• Quit an unful­fill­ing job
• Watched the World Cup
• Watched fire­works from my roof
• Met Tom Green
• Found an amaz­ing new job
• Started my sec­ond year of grad school

And now it’s Octo­ber. It’s autumn, my favorite sea­son, and I still have a few adven­tures before the year wraps up. Next week­end, I’m bik­ing 100 kilo­me­ters in the Seag­ull Cen­tury. In Novem­ber, I’m one of the lucky ones going to the NASA Tweetup for Space Shut­tle Discovery’s last trip to space. (That’s right: Two shut­tle launches in one year!) A week later I get to see my all-time favorite band, The Posies, play in DC. And then it’s the holidays.

I feel so incred­i­bly lucky. As I write this, I’m sit­ting at the same table where I was back in Feb­ru­ary, day­dream­ing about all these adven­tures. I couldn’t be hap­pier with how every­thing turned out. 2010 has been filled with expe­ri­ences, friends, and fam­ily I wouldn’t trade for anything.

What was your favorite adven­ture of 2010? How do you plan on top­ping it in 2011?

Related Posts:

• STS-133 NASA Tweetup
• I’m lead­ing a panel at SXSW Interactive!
• The Posies at the 9:30 Club
• Thanks, Mom and Dad, for intro­duc­ing me to space
• 13 days until the NASA tweetup

I saw the Posies for the very first time on June 26, 1996 dur­ing the tour for Amaz­ing Dis­grace. I was 16 years old and it was my first show at the 9:30 Club in Wash­ing­ton, DC. They played with an infec­tious inten­sity that fed the crowd, all of us fans who knew every word to every song. We delighted in the small vari­a­tions of the live ver­sions, pressed up against the stage as we savored each supremely loud note.

After an encore in which they destroyed their gui­tars and drum set, we still didn’t have enough. The club turned on its lights and brought up the house music. We didn’t leave. We cheered and chanted. The tech crew packed away the micro­phones and broke down what was left of the drums. About half of the audi­ence cleared out and left the rest of us beg­ging fool­ishly for more. Ken stepped back on stage, plead­ing with us, explain­ing they just destroyed their equip­ment and couldn’t play another encore. For some rea­son, that didn’t seem like a good enough excuse. We stood firm and he ducked backstage.

Moments later, some­one brought out a pair of stools, fol­lowed by Jon Auer and Ken Stringfel­low, armed with acoustic gui­tars. They asked us sit on stage with them. Then, as if know­ing exactly what we wanted to hear, they dug deep into their cat­a­log, took requests, and even cov­ered “I Am the Cos­mos” and “Sur­ren­der”. And then, finally, after essen­tially giv­ing us two com­plete shows in one, they exited the stage for the last time.

In the months that fol­lowed, I learned all of their songs on my gui­tar. I exper­i­mented with the crazy alter­nate tun­ings they used. I con­nected with some­one on the Dear 23 mail­ing list who sent me a tape of the show, recorded right off the 9:30 Club sound­board. I started to write my own songs. Because of that show, I got more seri­ously into music than I had been before. I was furi­ous that their tal­ent and on-stage charisma hadn’t brought the Posies the super-stardom so many mediocre artists enjoyed at that time, but secretly I was happy that nobody else in my school lis­tened to them. I felt like I was in a secret club. I became obsessed with find­ing other rel­a­tively unknown and obscure bands. My friends would joke that I car­ried around a book of CDs that “no one ever heard of.”

After the “Amaz­ing Dis­grace” tour, it was a few years before the Posies returned to DC. I saw them at both the the old and new Black Cat on acoustic and full-band tours. I saw Ken Stringfel­low open for Juliana Hat­field. I saw Jon Auer on his solo tour. Most recently, at SXSW this year, I saw Jon and Ken, also mem­bers of Big Star, per­form in the trib­ute to Alex Chilton mere days after his shock­ing and unex­pected death.

On Wednes­day, Novem­ber 17, the Posies return to the 9:30 Club with Bren­don Ben­son and Aque­duct. That’s a ridicu­lously cool lineup. It’s going to be a sort of home­com­ing for me, a return to the spot where my love of music and live per­for­mances began half a life­time ago.

Tick­ets just went on pre-sale.

Related Posts:

• The Posies at the 9:30 Club
• The year of adven­ture continues