Recently, Hennessy’s on Union Street in Fanueil Hall has started up having original bands play in the upstairs room on Thursday nights. Over the last few weeks they have had bands such as Stained Glass Eye, Electric Sugar, and many others. This week they have a load of good bands including one of my favorites, Sunset is a Battle. This week’s schedule (Feb 22) is:

Doors open at 8:30
Sunset Is A Battle 9:00
Watts 9:50
The Cheater Pint 10:40
Superlow 11:30

Check the room out on MySpace for all the upcoming bands!

Feb. 19th — Bridget and the Squares are playing at The Milky Way.
Feb. 27th — The Antisocialites are playing at The Abbey Lounge in Somerville.

My friends, Sunset is a Battle, are playing in Boston this Thursday night at The Bullfinch Yacht Club. These guys are a great local rock band and you should definitely come and check them out. You can hear some of their music on their myspace page. They are playing along with a few other bands and it should be a good night of rock n roll. The schedule for the bands is:

8:30pm The Antisocialites
9:15pm Topheavy
10:15pm Superlow (ex Jumpsuit Jerry, ex No Luck At All)
11:15pm Sunset is a Battle

The BYC is pretty much just a bar/rock club, so don’t be fooled by the name :) Hope to see you there!

From today’s Ticketmaster e-mail:

Tenacious D with Neil Hamburger
Orpheum Theatre
Boston, MA
Tuesday, November 28 at 7:30 PM
On Sale Saturday, November 04 at 10:00 AM

I MUST MUST MUST go to this show. Love the D!

Looking for something to do on a Monday night? Head over to Hennessy’s on Union Street (right next to Faneuil Hall) and check out Joe Carson. Joe is an incredible guitar player and singer playing a wide range of music. Joe is also a pro at the loop station, so at times it sounds like there’s a whole band playing even though it’s just one man. Many folks have compared Joe to Jeff Buckley and he does an incredible version of Buckley’s “Hallelujah” (which you’ve probably heard on a TV show or in a movie at some point in your life). Hating being back to work on Monday? Pretend it’s the weekend again and go visit Joe :)

Friday night, I went to see Iron Maiden at Agganis Arena over at BU. My friends and I met up at T’s Pub before the show. It was filled wall to wall with folks sporting Maiden shirts from days past right up to the current tour. Some ruckus was made by some which had everyone pretty psyched up and ready for the show.

We skipped the opener and headed over about 20 mins before Maiden hit the stage. Grabbed a t-shirt and a beer (which took WAY too long, they really need to teach their employees how to pour a lot of beer so you can just hand it out instead of waiting for an ID and payment before even starting to pour). I was impressed that they actually did have beer though.

We got in to our seats, which were way in the back, but being Agganis is pretty small, there really aren’t any bad seats. Right around 8:40 or so, the band hit the stage with “Different World” and from there ran right through the whole new album front start to finish. I had heard that this might happen a few weeks ago (on the MTV2 making an album special) and knew they had done it the night before. I like the new album, so this was fine with me. After finishing the album, they kicked in to “Fear of the Dark” followed by “Iron Maiden” and then left the stage. After about 5 mins off the stage they came back with “2 Minutes to Midnight”, “The Evil That Men Do” and “Hallowed Be Thy Name” and that was it.

As I said, I like the new album and had no problem with them playing it. What I would have liked to have seen was them do that, take a 10 or 15 minute break and then play another hour of old stuff. I’ve been listening to Maiden since I was like 14 and this was the first time I got to see the real Iron Maiden (I saw Iron Maiden Lite a few years back at Avalon, but without Bruce, it wasn’t the same). So, 17 years of listening to a band, you want to hear some of the music you have loved for all that time, not just the new album and a couple of old songs (in the end, they only played 3 songs from their first 6 albums, which are by far their best). A 90 minute show where almost 75 of it is material that came out three weeks beforehand is sorta weak.

Other than the bad song selection, I did enjoy the show. Agganis is a bit echoy and you couldn’t hear the singer all that well much of the night (seems like they were having this problem on stage as well, from what their manager said). Overall, I had a good time with some good friends and at least got to see a few of the songs I have been banging my head to for many many years.

If you want to hear some great Schubert — Chopin and Mozart, too — take a look at The Concert, a podcast from the folks at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Six episode so far, and it’s updated every two weeks.

WERS.org :: Events & Giveaways

WERS, my wife’s favorite morning radio program, had a great show called the Coffeehouse, where acoustic … well, coffehouse type music was played.

Now WERS has changed the format of the morning show! It’s a “diverse mix of musical genres” which is not the soothing morning music I need to get ready for work each day.

Please, WERS, bring back the coffeehouse!

JD Power and Associates have released an Airport Satisfaction Study which ranks airports in the US on a number of things. In the end, like all good statistics, they have a brief summary number (metric). Logan is defined as a Medium airport (more than 10 million but less than 30 million passengers per year). How’d we do?

We’re worse than the average for our size. This just screams “No duh!”. I’ve traveled for business quite a bit, and let me tell ya … Logan sucks. Getting to Logan sucks, getting through Logan sucks, getting around Logan sucks…. the list goes on and on….

What do you think? Are we really that much better than Honolulu International and so much worse that LaGuardia?

North America Airport Satisfaction Study

After the Pearl Jam show on Thursday, May 25th, Eddie Vedder and Theo Epstein went to Toad in Somerville for a little jam session.

And I wasn’t there…

DARN IT!

Pictures are here:
Eddie Vedder and Theo Epstein join Bill Janovitz and Crown Victoria at Toad in Cambridge, MA May 25, 2006