Just looked at my last.fm profile and noticed I’m up to 27,340 songs recorded via their iTunes plug-in.

The picture above gives a good indication of who I listen to the most. Looks like I need to create a new iTunes smart playlist to hear some of the other people in my library more often…

Yesterday we went to the Rock the Garden event presented by the Walker Art Center and 89.3 The Current. Artists on the bill included Andrew Bird, The New Pornographers, Cloud Cult and Bon Iver.

The performances were good, but the setup was awful. They shut down Vineland Place and set up the stage across from where the old Guthrie Theater stood. It was pointed east towards downtown, but there were several problems with that: people in the street had to look right into the setting sun, most of the food vendors were also set up in that area and a large part of the crowd sat on the hill to the south, which had terrible sound.

We missed most of the Bon Iver set waiting in line - first to pay at the automated parking kiosk and then to get in to the actual performance area. Once inside, it was wall-to-wall people everywhere. This was made worse by a large fenced off VIP area that hardly had anyone in it. The only uncrowded area was the aforementioned hillside, which would have been perfect if they had any speakers pointed that way. I’m sure that was to appease the neighbors, but it would make the venue so much better.

Most interesting performance thing we saw (before we left early) were the two painters in Cloud Cult creating new artwork during the performance that they auctioned off afterward. Never seen anything like that before…

Last night my wife and I went to see Mary Lucia of the Current interview Chuck D and Slug from Atmosphere and hear Brother Ali perform during their season-ending Fakebook series event at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul.

I didn’t know exactly what to expect, but it was a very entertaining evening. Brother Ali performed two songs at the start (including an awesome version of Letter from the Government with added verses at the end), followed by about an hour interview of Chuck D.

There was a short intermission, then Slug performed a few songs (including Guarantees from the new album When Life Gives You Lemons You Paint That Shit Gold). Slug joined Chuck D on the couch and Mary interviewed both of them. Brother Ali came out again at the end and performed one song solo, followed by a free-style jam with Slug (no old school rap from Mr. Ridenhour though, dammit).

Chuck D talked about the early history of hip-hop, including stories about Rick Rubin at Def-Jam, Flavor Flav, Run-DMC and the Beastie Boys. There were a lot of great quotes and references–hopefully MPR posts the audio somewhere so I can go back and write them down. Not much talk about the future of the music business like I wanted, but it would still be great for the students at HSRA to hear the whole interview. Ironically, he said he visited my high school, St. Paul Central, earlier in the day (”Dave Winfield and Charles Schultz–how can you go wrong?”).

If the Fakebook series comes back again, check it out–great format at a decent price.

There are very few artists I will travel out of town to see, but Richard Thompson is definitely one of them. When I saw he was playing the very small Papa Charlie’s Tavern and Stage in Lutsen, I ordered my ticket and booked a room for Saturday night.

I’ve been to the Papa Charlie’s restaurant before, but had never seen a show there. The ticket said doors at 8pm and I arrived a little after 7:30. Walked right in without showing my ticket and couldn’t figure out how they were going to set up the place. I ended up talking to what I think was the venue manager and he had me turn in my ticket for a wristband and said the small area in front of the stage would be standing room only, with some bar stool chairs along the back wall.

Once I knew the lay of the land, I camped out on the edge of the stage (stage right, about four feet from the mic). The sunken area in front of the stage is barely big enough for a ping pong table (which was actually what was there when I first arrived). A crowd of between 350-400 (per the manager) filled in behind me and we were ready to go at 9pm, when the stage manager turned down the lights.

Unfortunately, they came back up a few minutes later and they announced the show would start at 9:30 instead. Once he took the stage, this is what we got to hear:

• Bathsheba Smiles
• Walking on a Wire
• Crawl Back (Under My Stone)
• Down Where the Drunkards Roll
• Dad’s Gonna Kill Me
• The Hots for the Smarts
• I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight
• Sunset Song
• 1952 Vincent Black Lightning
• How Will I Ever Be Simple Again
• Cooksferry Queen
• Persuasion
• I Feel So Good
• Genesis Hall
• Johnny’s Far Away
• Pharaoh
• Valerie

First Encore:

• Beeswing
• Wall of Death

Second Encore:

• I Misunderstood

I enjoyed the show a lot and just kept staring at his hands for most of the show. Just amazing finger work, with the highlight probably being the solo towards the end of Valerie that closed out the 90-minute main set. I was happy with the song selection–Bad Monkey from the new album being the only song he didn’t play that I would have liked to hear (maybe the next electric show?).

His between song banter was in the usual Richard Thompson style, with my favorite line being “I’ve never been this far away from civilization before.” I brought a paper notebook with to record the set list (”for those of you taking notes”) and got one good shot with my iPhone (see above). The crowd was very receptive the whole night–I’d guess it was about half “true” fans and half skiers looking for some apres-ski entertainment.

Fun, fun time. Thank you Mr. Thompson!

Last Friday I picked up a print we finally had framed after about twelve years in storage. We picked up this Frank Kozik print on one of our visits to London (I believe at the no-longer-open Vinyl Experience store off of Oxford Street). It’s a signed, limited edition (28 out of 75) print of the Kansas City band Season to Risk’s 1992 self-titled album cover.

Didn’t know that at the time–just thought it looked sweet…

Last week I decided to try the new DRM-free music download service from Amazon.com. It worked better than I expected, integrating nicely with iTunes on my Mac at prices that were really great. Click on that Amazon link above to check it out and I’ll get a commission if you buy something. Everybody wins!

Here was my find of the week:

My friend and former co-worker Hans Erickson (aka Hanz Erik) resurfaced a few weeks ago on iChat.

We had a nice discussion about his move to New York City and his current gig at an Internet start-up (Next2Friends). His official title is Content Marketing Director and you can reach him at Hans@Next2Friends.com or read his blog posts here.

Hans also gave me permission to post these unreleased tracks:

Hanz Erik - Kiss

Hanz Erik - Head Over Heals

Awesome covers from a great musician. If you don’t already own it, buy his latest album Copay online at CD Baby or at Cheapo Records in the Twin Cities. It’s a perfect Christmas present for any music lover too!

I really hope we get HSRA NY approved and opened soon so we can make Hans the NY Studio Director and get him back on a nice, fast Mac Pro…