Rockin' in the House

I went to go see Neil Finn and Crowded House Friday night for the second time in just over a month. It's certainly good to see that they're mixing the shows up quite a bit, and I got a bit different of a concert than I experienced back in Seattle on the first of September. It was a great concert, and a great crowd.

It was interesting that they handed out earplugs before the concert. These were handy for the opening band, which did indeed play a bit loud. Crowded House wasn't overamped, but there were a few fans that screamed loud enough to almost entirely drown out the band. Ouch! It was my first experience with a show in the Volkshaus, which wasn't a bad venue. Though Neil did mention that the place had some interesting harmonics, that I also noticed.

I was scanning a few photos in, two of which are very appropriate to this post, but it looks like I'll have to put them up a bit later. I don't even have a photo of the Domain scanned...so, here's a picture of Mitre Peak.

Sitting at the foot of the Cascades....

Well, we're back on our yearly trip to the wonderful Pacific Northwest again. Out visiting a few folks, and specifically my parents.

The trip out was pretty good. I didn't sleep at all, though Alice got in some sleep. We were on Air France this time, as they added non-stop from Paris CDG to Sea-Tac. The flight from Zurich to Paris was a bit bumpy, and the plane was a bit cramped as it was a BAE-146 with 6 across seating. But the service was pretty good, and with a Pain au Chocolat as the breakfast, I was pretty happy. We were nervous about the connection and having to take a bus across the airport, after having nightmares with the same sort of setup in Heathrow, but the connection was fast and efficient. We were in the last row of the aircraft, but that was nice as we didn't have to worry about how far we leaned the seats back, we leaned them all the way back. The food was pretty good, the best we'd had on any flight in many, many years. Also, being in the back meant that I could drink as much water as I wanted, and I'm pretty much recovered from the Jet Lag. As for in-flight entertainment, "Blades of Glory" is a movie that is amazingly funny. There were quite a number of folks staring at those of us watching it as we laughed throughout the flight. I did only watch it three times though....

After a couple of days with the folks, we went up and hung out with some friends and saw Crowded House at Bumbershoot with them. The show was great, and they played a lot of the new songs, which were quite interesting and enjoyable. Neil Finn mentioned that they had a limited time to play, so they packed in as many songs as they could. He apologized for not chatting to the crowd a bit more, though he and Nick Seymore had some pretty funny comments. It will be interesting to see how their show in Zurich will differ from the one we saw here in Seattle.

After the show, we were off to visit some more friends for a couple days. And after that we're off with my parents for a couple of nights on the Oregon Coast.