Intensity

Well, I made it back alive from Chicago, the “Windy City!” The hotel I stayed at had a computer with Internet access, but it was $15.00 for an hour or $5.00 for 15 minutes. Screw that! So I had to wait until I got back to blog.

First of all, good review on Hail to the Thief by Brock. Maybe mine should be something to the affect of: “what Brock said.” No, I’ll post a little something.

Let me start off on my post of Chicago with a restaurant review. The place – Sal & Carvao. This was a random pick from the local area guide that’s placed in hotel rooms. It was described as a “Brazilian Steakhouse”. That alone perked my curiosity. They have a fixed price for dining, then there’s drinks and dessert. It was meat heaven! You get a salad bar that is loaded with many different vegetables, including a few that may have been native to Brazil (all I know is that I’ve never seen them before). The place slow cooks fourteen different meats on skewers, all flavored with delicious spices. Each diner gets a coin with a green and red side. You flip it to green when you’re ready to gorge and to red when you need a break. Waiters dressed in authentic Brazilian garb come around with meat and carve it right on the table. I’m guessing I had twelve of the fourteen meats they had! My favorite was the garlic steak – tender, juicy, and full of flavor! I ate until I was ready to burst. You have to at $38 a plate. I guess that’s the only restaurant, so if you want to go, you’ll have to make a trip to Chicago.

The next day we visited the downtown area. What a cool city! We did the Sears Tower, going up the 103rd floor! I took some pictures from there. If they come out, I’ll post them.

Saturday night was the Small Brown Bike/Casket Lottery show. First off was Charlevoix, whom we happened to see here in Phoenix when Brock and I saw Small Brown Bike here. Then Rocky Votolato went on. He’s good friends with The Casket Lottery and also opened for them when we saw TCL here in Phoenix. He did a very good set, despite being very tired from having just flown in from L.A.

The Casket Lottery did an awesome set also, though it was a bit short. They did a new song, which sounds very awesome, and a couple classics. They seemed very into it and sounded the best I’ve heard them. I think they play too loud, though, as it gets very distorted at times. When they were doing quiet parts, you could hear how good of a guitarist Nathan is. They also played a couple from the SBB/TCL EP on their own.

Small Brown Bike was intense. The crowd was big and energetic for both bands. It was nice to finally be part of a crowd like that. Phoenix is lame in that category, though they did have a decent crowd size for SBB. They also played a song from the EP and then did “Wrong Hometown” with Nathan and Stacey from TCL. The crowd loved it! Nathan had that nervous look – “I hope I don’t screw up the lyrics because I haven’t sung in it in a while.” He did mess up a bit on the last line but no one noticed and all was happy.

I spoke with Nathan before the show and he was ultra-impressed that my wife and I came all the way up from Phoenix to see them. So much so that he gave us both free shirts! We tried to pay for them (knowing they don’t make much money) but he wouldn’t have it. Also, apparently they were going to do “Under Pressure” with SBB but SBB arrived too late for them to practice it. Dang nabit!! Oh, well.

I think this post got too long. I taped the show and think it came out good. Perhaps I’ll post an mp3 or two from it. It was also cool to be at the The Fireside Bowl, knowing Braid had played many a show there, including one of their last. A piece of history.