Rhythm and Gravy

My new apartment building has turned out to be rather insular. I remember the day I moved in, I said hello to one of my new neighbors and introduced myself. He shook my hand bemusedly and remarked on how little he ever sees any of the other tenants. I haven’t seen that guy since. There’s an unfortunate woman living above me who regularly snores like an asthmatic donkey. I’d love to buy her some breathe right strips or a humidifier, but not if she’s the angry scowling woman I occasionally see in the hall. That woman scares me.

And that’s about it. There are around twenty other people living in the building, and I could get into a bar brawl with any one of them and never know the difference. So much for Fred Roger’s neighborhood.

The one exception is Mark, who lives across the hall from me, and his wife, Annie. My cousin, Brady, was helping me move in when he recognized Mark and called him out. Turns out he’s Ellensburg like us.

Since then, I’ve had the chance to chat with Mark a couple of times. Back in the day, he was with the Screaming Trees, Ellensburg’s claim on the grunge scene. Now, he’s doing the local musician and sideman thing and making a life out of singing and songwriting.

Last weekend, I finally made it out to his show at the Tractor in Ballard. I was blown away. Check out “Let Me Down Easy,” a cut from his new album:

Opening the show was another Ellensburger, Star Anna, much younger and clearly very talented. Catch her tomorrow night at the American Legion. Following her were I Hate The Fucking Eagles, whose I love because of their name (which could only be more awesome if it was “Man Come On I Had A Rough Night And I Hate The Fucking Eagles Man”), and also because they do garage rock covers of Martha Reeves and the Vandelles.

Spend your money on them.

In other news, I now have two SL1200mkII’s. If you know what those are, then you know you’d better watch out ’cause I’m-a go onna tear.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 14th, 2008 at 8:49 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.