2002 blog

saturday, august 3rd at hopkinton jam - hopkinton, ma

we have so much fun at these things. it's always great to get together with all our friends and family. thanks to all that came and played, or came and drank, or came and watched. and thanks to the mosquitos for staying away. who needs 'em?

saturday, june 22nd at toad - cambridge, ma

toad. the heart of porter square. we thought we were playing from 9 till 2, so booked some of our friends to play along with us... kind of like a mini hopkinton jam. turns out, we had a little less time, so we just compacted everyone together and shared equipment. and it worked out great. the mercy james gang kicked it off, with chris on drums, then goh, then ethan daniel davidson, then goh again, then shiner jones (with chris on drums) and finally goh again. we had a total blast. it was great to see our friends and hear our other friends play. and we just love toad. sometimes it's a bit loud in there (both the crowd and the band), but for what we do, it works out great. we tend to play a little more punk in that place, which is ok by us. how the guitar strings didn't break, we have no idea. it was cool to have steve (the bass player for shiner jones) sit in with us and play some tunes... it was even cooler that it worked out because we never got the chance to practice. we didn't bring shakers, we didn't bring giveaways, we didn't bring bubbles... and due to our forgetfullness, we didn't even bring any cds. oops. we thought it was a pretty cool night of music... we mixed it up for you with the different bands. can you imagine if goh played the whole night? our songs are so short, we'd probably have to play 60 tunes just to fill the night. as it was, we played a few new ones off the upcoming album... that was fun for us to try and work them out live for the first time. thanks to all of you that showed up... especially all the ones that showed up at 1am for the final hour of drinking with goh (toad is open an hour later than most of the bars in the area).

saturday, may 4th in the golden gate park - san francisco, ca

it's not all that often you do something that's cool enough that you'll remember it from years to come. well... we have to give dano credit for having the dream and going through and booking the band shell on the golden gate park. this was where the dead used to put on their shows during the summer of love. and there we were... at the bandshell in the park. and it was spring. it was the spring of love. while we were setting up, a band of jesters were checking us out (stay tuned for the photos). it was a lot of fun that day. goh hadn't played together as a duo since our show in january at the kendall. it was good to be back. fortunately, we had some time to practice the day before so were wern't as sloppy as we could have been. a lot of our friends showed up (alan, renee, beth, jonathan, cliff, david, eric stacey, joe, edie, mango...). it was like a little party in the park. except that a few hundred other people got to hang out as well. it was almost like a west coast version of hopkinton jam...

monday, march 4th at the blue lamp - san francisco, ca

jay - solo

well, i got the hotel utah early, threw my name into the hat and waited around for a bit. ran into kathryn and steve and burke and sylvia and ended up with #38 on the list. that stunk. so i hung around long enough to hear the spoken word from keith savage (as always, very inspirational) and then went on my merry way. since geary street was giving me luck, post open mics, i stopped in at the blue lamp for their open mic, and got #2 on the list. much better. i had a great time there... played 3 songs, hung out, played a little pool, and ran into pete and byron. the host's girlfriend was taking pix... so maybe i'll get a copy of them and post them online.

wednesday, february 20th at ireland's 32 - san francisco, ca

jay - solo

the night began by heading to the lower haight to play the open mic at nickies. for those of you that don't know san francisco, haight street got it's fame in the 60s as being the hippy/funky/peace/love place to be. in some ways, it's still that way. or at least it has souvenir shops to that effect. but that's really the upper haight (between the golden gate and buena vista parks). there's another side to haight street. the lower haight. the forgotten child down the hill. on a wednesday night, it's bustling with activity. outside the bar, some guy kept asking me if i've ever lost a friend, and wanted to make sure that i knew that he wasn't going to steal my guitar. all the while, he seemed part like he was from the hood and part like he was a rich kid (he's been to london, after all). it seemed like drug deals were happening all around me (which may or may not have been true - i tried not to look too hard). but it's that kind of place. and somehow, i felt safe there (though friends claim they saw someone get shot near there not too long ago). that's the lower haight. so i hung out there for a while and realized that at the rate they were going, i probably wasn't going to play. so i went homeward-bound and stopped in at ireland's 32. within a few minutes of getting there, i was already on stage. talk about a different wait. and nobody talked to me about death or losing my guitar. :)

thursday, january 10th at the kendall cafe - cambridge, ma

well, well, well. another new year. since the 2 of us live on separate coasts and hadn't gotten together in a while, you'd expect us to be a little rusty... especially since most of our practice was for refreshing our memories of ethan's songs and teaching ethan and jason a few of our tunes.... but it worked out. it always does. we started off the night as ethan daniel davidson's backup band. we're getting pretty good at those tunes. it's nice that the kendall has drums and amps set up already... that makes the night a whole lot easier. jay was a little jetlagged since he had taken the red eye that day back east... but fortunately you can find a dunkin donuts on just about every corner. coffee is good. we had a fun set. thanks to all of you that came out and hung out with us all. and thanks to jason and ethan for sitting in on a few tunes with us... it was just like we were a real rock band (except maybe that we weren't drunk enough... but we did that later, so hopefully that counts).