Sunday, January 27, 2008

A is for Amazon post-holiday party


Layla and I decided to do something for each letter of the alphabet in 2008. So here is our activity for the letter "A."

Last night we went to the Amazon post-holiday party. We don't do anything special during the holidays since it's the most hectic time of year for retail, and that includes e-tail. The event was held in Seattle's own Frank Gehry work of blobitecture, the Experience Music Project/Sci-Fi Hall of Fame. I enjoyed walking around and looking at the exhibits (seeing Jimi Hendrix's cream-white leftie guitar in particular) but the main event for me was the fuzz rock band Presidents of the United States of America (singles include Lump and Peaches, as in "millions of peaches, peaches for me...").

PUSA is great because they are one of the few alternative bands from the 90s that rock hard but don't take themselves too seriously. Throughout their performance, for instance, they called out Jeff Bezos to come up and stage dive ("c'mere little jeffy! c'mon JB!"), although Jeff never came out. We were treated to new songs and old songs alike, including a super-extended versions of Video Killed the Radio Star, Kitty, We're Not Going to Make It and Kick Out the Jams. After finishing, the band genially shook hands with many-a-Amazonian.


The band playing Kitty with a special guest meower from the crowd


The guitar nerd that I am, I had to steal a shot of lead guitarist Dave Dederer's pedal board. I was really impressed by the throaty, creamy, fuzzy tone that the band had. Of course, a lot of their tone also comes from their unsual instruments (a basitar and guitbass).


After the concert Layla, Alan (a co-worker) and I roamed around the museum seeing what other people were up to. We watched some clinically drunken karaoke in front of a projected montage of classic sci-fi movie scenes. We also watched some people playing Rock Band, a game akin to Guitar Hero.

After waiting an hour and a half in the coat check line, we headed back to our car. Layla and I reflected on the evening and decided that seeing PUSA was our favorite part. As we were walking to our car and talking about what we liked about it we realized that none other than Chris Ballew, the lead singer and basitarist, was walking behind us with his date. Our cars were also parked in the same remote corner of the parking lot across the street, so I wished him a safe drive home and thanked him for the music.

4 comments:

Layla said...

I had soo much fun! Thanks for picking Amazon!

lindsey*jane said...

Big brother! Sounds like you had one hunkydory time at the Amazon post-party. I want a cool job like that someday...parties are my kind of career. :)

I've heard of Lump and Peaches...now I'm even more curious.

I love you!

Marc Jorgensen said...

I didn't know PUSA still did shows!!! I think I read on wikipedia not too long ago that they hadn't done anything in a while.. Cool--- Wish I could have seen all that.

MayoStix said...

Man... At my company party we had The Bar J Wranglers play. Is Amazon hiring any pharmacists?