Category: Doing

Charlie’s First Birthday

Char­lie’s First Birth­day, orig­i­nal­ly uploaded by J T. Ram­say.

What an amaz­ing day! We cel­e­brat­ed Char­lie’s big day with 60 of his clos­est friends and fam­i­ly. Char­lie’s birth­day had a music theme and rest assured that he’s spend­ing his time turn­ing all the love­ly instru­ments he received into per­cus­sion as best he can.

I may be let­ting the cat out of the bag, but pic­nic area #2 on Lemon Hill in Fair­mount Park is a gem; it was like 90 degrees, but the area was nice­ly shad­ed from the morn­ing until well into the after­noon. It was great for stay­ing cool while being out­doors, which makes life eas­i­er on adults and babies alike.

Spe­cial thanks to friends and fam­i­ly who lent a hand in mak­ing Char­lie’s birth­day extra spe­cial. We could­n’t have done it with­out you!

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A Tale of Two Upgrades

I’ve been pret­ty adamant about how much I love my iPhone. Since Char­lie joined us last year, it’s been my go-to device for all things Inter­net and com­mu­ni­ca­tion. I still break out my much maligned Mac­book for the heavy duty usage, but the iPhone does what I need for the most part.

It’s an old, 2G iphone that came out in ’08. It’s banged up a bit, but the screen’s still intact, which is more than I can say for most iPhones I’ve seen of that vin­tage. I near­ly jumped to the 3G when it was first announced. What can I say, I have a thing for GPS! But now I’m glad I did­n’t. iPhone 4 is the device I’ve been wait­ing for. Can’t wait to get my mitts on it. The new cam­era, com­plete with HD video, makes it per­fect for tak­ing on vaca­tion. Every­thing about it sounds like the phone peo­ple start­ed imag­in­ing once they held and played with the iPhone when it first launched.

Did I pre-order mine? No. Why, you ask? Because of AT&T. What a night­mare! Do I qual­i­fy for unlim­it­ed data at $30 per month? Yes, I do! But do I real­ly need that much? How does this affect the plan I cur­rent­ly share with my wife? There are so many ques­tions about how to get the appro­pri­ate plan that won’t result in gazil­lion page sur­prise bills at the end of the month. Fun!

Buried beneath the inces­sant iPhone 4 cov­er­age was the intro­duc­tion of a brand, spankin’ new Xbox 360! It’s qui­eter, mean­ing I won’t have to set the sub­ti­tles for every movie I watch on the thing. It has wi-fi, which means I won’t have to use a wonky adapter that did­n’t work well enough to keep Net­flix Watch Instant­ly titles from buffer­ing non­stop. But that’s not all: word is that Red Ring of Death will be a thing of the past! Glo­ry be! The best part? I can sell what I have right now for $205 at GameStop, which gets me with­in strik­ing dis­tance of the $299 price tag.

I should have both of these items in house by the end of the month. I can’t wait!

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Erykah Badu and Janelle Monae

Caught them at the Tow­er The­atre Tues­day night. Cap­ti­vat­ing show. Janelle Mon­ae is an incen­di­ary per­former. I feel bad for any artist who has to fol­low her act. She’s James Brown rein­car­nate with a dash of Sun Ra’s out­er space imagery for good mea­sure. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen any­one sing and dance so well in a live set­ting, much less the some­times hol­low Tow­er, which can be a tough room to warm up even for sea­soned performers.

Her ener­gy com­plete­ly over­shad­owed Bilal’s set, who coast­ed a bit on the strength of the home­town crowd. I must admit that his cov­er of Led Zep­pelin’s “Since I’ve Been Lov­ing” you was a bit inspired, although his band did­n’t real­ly have the chops to real­ly dri­ve it home. As Dan DeLu­ca observes, Bilal had what it takes to be a neo-soul star in the mak­ing back in 2001; now, some nine years removed, who does­n’t shud­der when they hear “neo-soul?”

Erykah Badu mes­mer­ized the audi­ence. Her mere pres­ence com­mand­ed the room’s atten­tion and she held it for two hours, pos­sess­ing them with a mix­ture of songcraft and guile. Badu is a for­tu­nate mem­ber of the neo-soul scene, expe­ri­enc­ing some­thing of a renais­sance since she began the New Amerykah series in 2008. She’s incor­po­rat­ed ele­ments that draw on Par­lia­ment and Funkadel­ic, updat­ing her once staid, Star­bucks soul sound. Even the stuff from her 1997 debut, Baduizm, did­n’t sound dat­ed thir­teen years on. She is a singer at the height of her pow­ers and if you miss her, you’re real­ly miss­ing some­thing special.

Posted on by J T. Ramsay 2

HALLOGALLO!

Yeah, once upon a time I would’ve derid­ed this gig as a shame­less ploy. For­tu­nate­ly peo­ple can change. Can’t wait to see Krautrock pio­neer Michael Rother per­form the music of Neu! at Inter­na­tion­al House in August. Should be a pret­ty amaz­ing experience.

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I Shopped at FYE

I know it’s unthink­able, but last Sat­ur­day when I was at the Cher­ry Hill Mall get­ting my dear Mac­book repaired for the umpteenth time, I found myself alone with my son, need­ing to occu­py some time while Helen replen­ished her sum­mer wardrobe. There aren’t many inter­est­ing options when you’re at the mall, so I took a walk down mem­o­ry lane and stepped inside the sort of store that intro­duced me to music in the first place: an FYE. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

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