I've always thought of music as more than words and sounds, something more like inspiration, it always comes and gets me off the ground

I mentioned in March that I went and saw Say Hi To your Mom (who are now calling themselves Say Hi), but that has hardly been my only live musical venture of the ohseven. Nay, not at all. In fact, I dare say that ohsev will go down as one of my most active live musical years to date. See, I don't absolutely love with hearts live music. I'm fine with it, but I will never marry it.

This year, though (2007, for those keeping score), there have been some good show options. There was Mos Def at the University of Utah in April - see above for proof - which happened a day later than it was supposed to and then an hour later after that, but it was pretty good. You know Mos Def, he's the fellow who is scared of dogs in the Italian Job starring Mark Wahlberg. He's the fellow who messed (unneccessarily, I might add) with his voice and starred with Bruce Willis in 16 Blocks. He's the rapper who the hip hop world as been ready to give the hip-hop crown to a few times, but each time he has shied away from it, leaving Jay-Z to claim the crown through no other means that by verbally claiming it. Don't get me wrong, Jay-Z is really good. Just listen to the Black Album ("Dirt Off Your Shoulders" is on of my favorite tracks of all time). But don't listen to that one set of albums that had three volumes - not that great.



In June, there was Sage Francis. Lisa writes more about it somewhere else and I won't add much, except to say that he completely owned the crowd. I don't know if i have seen it to that extent since I listened to hardcore in the late 1990s.

July the 19 brought a free Yo La Tengo show at the Gallivan Center. What a great thing that figured to be: one of my absolute favorites for free. Unfortunately, it didn't live up to the greatness I had expected, and not because of Yo La Tengo. They did a good job of picking my favorite songs to play (Sugarcube, Stockhold Syndrome to name two). It was because of the type of crowd that shows up for a free show at an outdoor venue in the middle of downtown. I wrote this on spockwithabeard:

There is way too many people and only a small percentage seem to even care about the music. Most people are just there to drink and show cleavage.

It's such an astute observation by me. You could hear the wave of casual conversation as much as you could hear the band, even when I was towards the front and in the center.

But there is so much more in store. Labor Day weekend, I will be attending Bumbershoot. Seriously, I have my ticket to the festival and the plane. Three full days of tunes and stuff. Plus, there will some filthy times with Nathaniel.

Anyways, I hope Cindy doesn't can me. Let the record show that if she does, things will be awkward when she moves to Utah.