Sara and I had the privilege to see Max Raabe & the Palast Orchester at the Overture Center in Madison, WI tonight.  Immediately we were transported back to a pre-WWII time in Germany when the music was beautiful, ironic and a little creepy.  The closing credits to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (Midnight, Stars and You) immediately came to mind.

The musicianship was outstanding and Max Raabe is just fun to watch.  Standing on stage leaning on the piano, hair slicked back while wearing a tux with full tails, your band playing while you wait to sing–you can’t look much cooler.  It was a solid show and the sound at the Overture didn’t disappoint.

Playing a lot of big band songs in high school as well as the UW Band, I have an appreciation of the tightness of the 12 piece Palast Orchester surrounding Max.  Many of the members played 2 or 3 instruments, crossing from trombone to violin with ease.  The crowd at the Overture, while by no means packed, was also very appreciative.  Max and company did a couple of enthusiastic encores.  The fact that most of the songs were in German added a mysticism to it all.

If you have a chance to see them live, I’d highly recommend it.  I don’t know of an act touring that is anything like them, especially at their level of ability.  I bought their live CD at Carnegie Hall, but they also have a DVD available.   Good stuff.

What: “Untitled 17” a Photo Midwest Show
Opening Reception: Sunday, October 12th, 2008 @ 1:00pm – 3:00pm
Other Viewing Hours: October 13 – October 31, 2008 M-F 10am – 5pm
Why: a chance to see some of Matt Apps’ photography!
Why #2: You can see other students of Madison photographer, Tom McInvaille
Where: Commonwealth Gallery (Madison Enterprise Center)
Address: 100 South Baldwin Street, Madison, WI 53703
Cost: FREE!

Every other year, Madison hosts a celebration of photography called “Photo Midwest” in the month of October.  This year, I have the privilege of showing my work in one of the exhibits with 17 or so other students who have taken a Master Photography class with Madison great, Tom McInvaille of Studio M in Madison, WI.  Since the style and theme of the show is guaranteed to be all over the map, we decided to name the show “Untitled 17“.

I’ve taken Tom’s class 3 times and the series I’m showing would probably be considered my most ‘successful’, if also not the most bizarre.  A sample (untitled currently) is included above…

Mark your calendars for Sunday afternoon October 12th, 2008 from 1-3pm, the reception is free, and you can see some interesting photography.  I think there may even be some food!

This is my first time showing my photography in a gallery, so I’m quite excited–hope to see you there!

Since the death of the floppy disk a number of years ago, almost everyone I know has seen or used a USB flash drive to move files around.  I’ve broken a few ‘freebie’ drives that I’ve gotten from vendors, so I decided that I needed one that was reliable.  The two main criteria for me are that it can fit on a key chain, and can take some abuse.  I don’t need the thing to have a ton of storage–4GB should be good enough.

It has a strange name, but I finally found this little drive, the Super Talent Pico-C that met all my criteria (it’s even waterproof!).  It was cheap too, at only $16!

Check out my one-take video review of it as well:

If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll occasionally get a message from me saying that I’m geocaching. So what the heck is geocaching?  Quite simply, it is an organized way that folks hide boxes or ‘caches’ around the world with specific GPS coordinates.  The coordinates are then posted to a website to allow others to find them and record their visit.  This global treasure hunt is quite fun, and after you get yourself a GPS, it’s also pretty much free.   Here’s my geocaching how-to:
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Caught the Poison show last night in Madison, WI, with Sara and some friends.  Not a bad show–a decent, albeit strange crowd of blasted out 30 and 40+ year olds reliving their high-school years in the 80’s.  There was more than one real mullet in the crowd.  If I were to rank the music, it would look something like this:

1. Dokken – They rocked!  I was surprised at how good their sound was.  No George Lynch on guitar, but whomever they got to fill his shoes could really tear it up.

2. Guns ‘n Roses playing on the PA – Before Poison played, they played GNR on the sound system.  Yes, this was better than…

3. Poison – They aren’t known for their musicianship, and they proved that tonight.  But they can put on a good show, and everyone was having a good time, so it was fun.

4. Sebastian Bach – He has a good voice, but he didn’t prove it tonight.  His sound was terrible and his band awful.  Thank goodness I missed most of this.

Some pictures from the show, in order of how they played (Sebastian Bach, Dokken and  Poison):

I also shot some videos at the show.  Here’s Poison doing “Talk dirty to me”: