meeting awesome people is awesome
Jun. 25th, 2008 11:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jlhSo, not that Blake's show wasn't awesome, but the highlight of yesterday was definitely meeting ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lillijulianne! Juli, honestys_easy, ali_wildgoose and I met for lunch right after Ali and I picked up Juli at the train, and then we came back here to my flat, and we just chatted until it was time to leave for the show! And after the show we went out for wontons, as the Canal Room was just near the edge of Chinatown, and then headed back to the borough of kings. This morning Juli and I once again just chatted until she had to head back to JuliLand in the afternoon. Many of you can say you've seen Blake, but few can say you've met Juli, so that's pretty much my claim to fame at present, and I totally plan to escape to JuliLand at a later date!
We're not much on pix, me because I like people to see what I look like when they meet me and Juli because she's all about the anon, but I will say that Juli has a fabu mane of wavy chestnut hair and super intense blue eyes, and when she got off the train and smiled I totally knew it was her. (I look like my chibi.)
We got there a little late because we cared not about the opening act, but still managed to catch her, and she was pretty much as lame as predicted. Some little cookie from Real World Hollywood, and she sang fine, but sort of like a lot of other people, and she isn't writing her own songs, so I ceased to care. (She said she was writing with some guy from Eve 6, but Ari pointed out that he only plays with them, he isn't really in the band; it reminded me of the Ashlee Simpson reality show when she was writing all those songs with that middle aged guy, which gave me the creeps.) But we LOVED her guitarist Brandon. He was hilarious and made watching her bearable, which is saying a lot. She was one of those really tiresome girls with super-flat reddish hair in a nondescript style and a pierced tongue; working the beige makeup look though her features aren't strong enough for it; wearing a tiny Jaegermeister t-shirt completely unironically, the heart pendant of her clunky silver necklace sitting perfectly in the little v-cut in the neck; and super low-rise jeans that puckered in an unattractive way as she sat on her stool to sing. Super boring.
Blake's show was really excellent, and a lot of that was that Blake was so damn happy to be there doing his thing. There isn't a real back stage at the Canal Room, so he just came up from down stairs and thus walked sort of through the crowd to the stage, so I can say like everyone else has that wow, he's really little. I'd thought he was maybe BFF C_____'s size, that is, 5'6", but he's only a little taller than me—5'4" if that. (aside: this means I was so right that Ryan himself is 5'6", aww.) His hair was very normal, so he seemed quite boyish, and in some of his mannerisms and his speech reminded me ofziggy1278, which I'm sure won't please Z, but he probably didn't click on the cut anyway. He has a pretty sick upper body, too, but even though he's really in shape he had a wee tummy, so I was loving that.
I'm sure you can get the set list from more reliable sources, and Ari took tons of great pictures, so I won't give you that breakdown. There were a bunch of guys there who were really grooving to what Blake was doing, especially one guy in a DisneyWorld shirt and the most adorable tiny gay couple right in front of us, and some guy there with his gf, so the variety in the audience was really fun to see. Ali and I ended up on a video taken by his street team of our reactions to the show, but we didn't stay for the meet and greet because they wanted us to stand in a line and LAME, no.
It was fun to see him very in the moment. At one point he was having us sing to him and he hit the wrong pedal by mistake and suddenly this beat comes out and all the stuff he'd laid down went away and he was all, oops! and then started just building on the beat to sing Billie Jean. The way he just went with his fuck ups was really fun. And it was intense to be in such a small crowd; I felt like I was at one of C____'s shows, actually. We were so lucky to see him in such an intimate setting.
All that said, I had the same feeling watching him that I did listening to the stuff he did before Idol; that is, where's the song? It's like he wants to go straight to the remix and not bother with the song, or go straight to the improv and skip establishing the theme. The problem is, while the audience in a club might be interested in going with him on his sonic journey, I'm not sure it works as a recording, and it's the recordings that bring in the audiences in the first place. It's odd because I keep coming back, with both Blake and Chris, to what I set up in Radio Friendly: Blake is all undisciplined creativity, and Chris is all uncreative discipline. Tin hatting aside, it seems like they could make a great duo, at least in the studio, because they match each other's strengths and weaknesses so well. Here's hoping that at least his next label finds him an exec producer whom he respects, but who can also channel his energies into something more than six people will want to listen to.
lillijulianne! Juli, honestys_easy, ali_wildgoose and I met for lunch right after Ali and I picked up Juli at the train, and then we came back here to my flat, and we just chatted until it was time to leave for the show! And after the show we went out for wontons, as the Canal Room was just near the edge of Chinatown, and then headed back to the borough of kings. This morning Juli and I once again just chatted until she had to head back to JuliLand in the afternoon. Many of you can say you've seen Blake, but few can say you've met Juli, so that's pretty much my claim to fame at present, and I totally plan to escape to JuliLand at a later date!We're not much on pix, me because I like people to see what I look like when they meet me and Juli because she's all about the anon, but I will say that Juli has a fabu mane of wavy chestnut hair and super intense blue eyes, and when she got off the train and smiled I totally knew it was her. (I look like my chibi.)
We got there a little late because we cared not about the opening act, but still managed to catch her, and she was pretty much as lame as predicted. Some little cookie from Real World Hollywood, and she sang fine, but sort of like a lot of other people, and she isn't writing her own songs, so I ceased to care. (She said she was writing with some guy from Eve 6, but Ari pointed out that he only plays with them, he isn't really in the band; it reminded me of the Ashlee Simpson reality show when she was writing all those songs with that middle aged guy, which gave me the creeps.) But we LOVED her guitarist Brandon. He was hilarious and made watching her bearable, which is saying a lot. She was one of those really tiresome girls with super-flat reddish hair in a nondescript style and a pierced tongue; working the beige makeup look though her features aren't strong enough for it; wearing a tiny Jaegermeister t-shirt completely unironically, the heart pendant of her clunky silver necklace sitting perfectly in the little v-cut in the neck; and super low-rise jeans that puckered in an unattractive way as she sat on her stool to sing. Super boring.
Blake's show was really excellent, and a lot of that was that Blake was so damn happy to be there doing his thing. There isn't a real back stage at the Canal Room, so he just came up from down stairs and thus walked sort of through the crowd to the stage, so I can say like everyone else has that wow, he's really little. I'd thought he was maybe BFF C_____'s size, that is, 5'6", but he's only a little taller than me—5'4" if that. (aside: this means I was so right that Ryan himself is 5'6", aww.) His hair was very normal, so he seemed quite boyish, and in some of his mannerisms and his speech reminded me of
ziggy1278, which I'm sure won't please Z, but he probably didn't click on the cut anyway. He has a pretty sick upper body, too, but even though he's really in shape he had a wee tummy, so I was loving that. I'm sure you can get the set list from more reliable sources, and Ari took tons of great pictures, so I won't give you that breakdown. There were a bunch of guys there who were really grooving to what Blake was doing, especially one guy in a DisneyWorld shirt and the most adorable tiny gay couple right in front of us, and some guy there with his gf, so the variety in the audience was really fun to see. Ali and I ended up on a video taken by his street team of our reactions to the show, but we didn't stay for the meet and greet because they wanted us to stand in a line and LAME, no.
It was fun to see him very in the moment. At one point he was having us sing to him and he hit the wrong pedal by mistake and suddenly this beat comes out and all the stuff he'd laid down went away and he was all, oops! and then started just building on the beat to sing Billie Jean. The way he just went with his fuck ups was really fun. And it was intense to be in such a small crowd; I felt like I was at one of C____'s shows, actually. We were so lucky to see him in such an intimate setting.
All that said, I had the same feeling watching him that I did listening to the stuff he did before Idol; that is, where's the song? It's like he wants to go straight to the remix and not bother with the song, or go straight to the improv and skip establishing the theme. The problem is, while the audience in a club might be interested in going with him on his sonic journey, I'm not sure it works as a recording, and it's the recordings that bring in the audiences in the first place. It's odd because I keep coming back, with both Blake and Chris, to what I set up in Radio Friendly: Blake is all undisciplined creativity, and Chris is all uncreative discipline. Tin hatting aside, it seems like they could make a great duo, at least in the studio, because they match each other's strengths and weaknesses so well. Here's hoping that at least his next label finds him an exec producer whom he respects, but who can also channel his energies into something more than six people will want to listen to.
