Music x3

After seeing the Maccabees supporting Mumford & Sons at Coney Island, they announced they were doing a little show at Le Poisson Rouge, the intimate Bleecker Street venue that we seen Mumford & Sons earlier this year.

We got there about 35 minutes before they went on and timed it just right to get a great view from the left of the stage. It filled up nicely and there seemed to be quite a lot of fans who knew all their songs going way back.

Heather even asked nicely just before they came back on for the encore and the sound guy was nice enough to give here a copy of the setlist to add to our collection.

That was Tuesday. Wednesday night I got to go to Radio City Music Hall for the first time as we saw Belle & Sebastian.

The sound was awesome. The large screen behind them was pretty cool the way it was worked into some songs. They had a few dancers on stage all the way from Scotland and then even brought a little bagpipe action into the end of one song.
It was all seated but pretty much everyone stood after the first song. Combined with last night and running a hard-ish tempo that morning on the way to work killed my quads and calves though, ha ha.
After the next 10K I am definitely getting a massage or two.

Then the following Wednesday we took our camp chairs over to Prospect Park to see, well, listen to Damien Rice. It was a paid Summerstage / Celebrate Brooklyn show so the fences went up but you could obviously still hear it, quite well it turned out.

It was a cold-ish 14 or 15 degree night, combined with it being Damien Rice, meant it was pretty quiet where we decided to sit off to one side on the top of a little hill.

Amazingly when he came on stage he stood right in the gap between the poles and bandshell frame so we had something to focus on rather than just hearing the sound. Sitting in your camp chair, drinking and eating a snack is more like it. Although we left with about 4 songs to go as we were just too cold by that point.

The view in front of us

The normal view

The megazoom view!

Definitely looking forward to going back for more free cheap seat shows, Interpol, Punch Brothers and Willie Nelson to come.

Four weeks to go!

Still training well, just got over the cold which really only made me miss one of the speed sessions.
Last weeks key weekend workout was 18M with the last 14M of that around 7.30 pace. Felt good during but lay on the sofa absolutely knackered later that afternoon.

Then now that we are outdoors for the speed workouts I stepped onto a running track for the first time in years to do a session. 10x400m with a 200m jog rec. Not much lighting when the sun went down halfway through and light drizzle that turned to rain as we finished but in the absence of the two faster guys I led the pack round in fairly consistent 75 to 72 secs.

One of the hardest workouts I've done in ages, the short recoveries were hell.

A slightly different week this week. On Monday, I went with a couple of colleagues and managers to our off-site warehouse (freight company) storage place in New Jersey and basically did a days tidying up of the entire stock we had there.
This mostly meant throwing fixtures away, taking stock of fixtures left there, finding two pallets of stock we didn't know was there and then lining up a pallet of old backpack hip belts to dispose of  due to a (very stinky) dead squirrel being found inside.

It's getting near to my three year anniversary of arriving to stay in the USA.
Three years ago who'd have thought I'd be sitting on the ground, in a warehouse car park, in New Jersey, eating a Subway sandwich!

Thursday our (flagship) REI store had a big event instore. The US National Parks have their centennial celebrations and REI are a main partner associated with this.
This meant a tidy up before a visit from some various big wigs! Just at the end of my shift we went upstairs and provided the audience for the CEO of REI and the Director of National Parks to make their announcements.

The bad news was I was on the edge of the photo and just got shrunk out, the good news, I was one of a few he shook the hand off. I thought that was a pretty cool thing.

This weekend Heather and I went out for a nice meal then went to the Beacon Theater to see Damien Rice.

Apart from one song where he was joined onstage by fellow Irishman Glen Hansard, plucked from the audience no less, he did the whole concert himself.
Similar to KT Tunstall (& Ed Sheerin) he uses the recording loop effect to make different background sounds and even backing vocals for himself.
Really good gig, really strong voice, one of the best I've seen in ages. The Beacon is a really nice old style theater venue too with comfy seats and plenty of leg room, what we look for now, ha ha.
Even though it has some strange Roman architecture thing going on.

Home late but up this morning to do my latest long run, 17M and I threw in a few random hills along the way as I ran through a lot of small parks.

A productive busy week!