mokudekiru

Tuesday. Went to lunch with interns and newhires, and then left work super early to depart for Red Rocks to see R.E.M., Modest Mouse, and The National.

Red Rocks is the most amazing concert venue — beautiful, and great acoustics. We experienced ~2 minutes of rain but otherwise the weather was amazing.

Looking back on the path up to the amphitheatre.

We got there super early and parking was easy. 3 rows away from the amphitheatre.

Line to get in.

Trading post where we bought Red Rocks tshirts before the concert.

Tour buses.

Inside, finding seats.

First up were The National. I was familiar with a few of their songs from the radio, and they were even better live. Good use of some trumpets in a few songs, and violins in others… excellent, but essentially no one was there and it seemed that very few people knew who The National were.

Red Rocks begins to fill up…

Waiting… as beer goes on around us.

Modest Mouse was up next. We wished they played a longer setlist and that the audience would pay more attention to them, but everyone was extremely busy getting alcohol. They did play Dashboard, which was nice, but that was the only major hit in the set.

Then R.E.M. showed up!! Yaaay!!!

Everyone who comes to Red Rocks complains about the altitude (no oxygen -> harder to sing), but Michael Stipe seemed to be doing alright.

After a few songs, Michael Stipe said, “Who here has twitter?” and Ford and I got extremely excited. Then he essentially retracted his statement, “No, I’ll talk about that after about 5 more songs.” So I was waiting for something about twitter, but instead he was asking about that to see if people had been twittering/received text messages about the Obama nomination. The audience’s reaction was more mixed than I expected, but at least the majority was certainly cheering with Michael Stipe. They played a set of politically themed songs. During one, the lyrics went up on the screens behind them:

WHY?

Megaphone!

The set list had a lot of songs from their most recent album, Accelerate. I think most people in the audience weren’t very familiar with this album since it’s so new, and not as good as their older stuff, but it definitely a few good songs. I had listened to that album in preparation, so seeing those songs live was pretty cool, and then the classic R.E.M. songs were of course awesome.

Also, R.E.M. did a good job of interacting with the audience. Michael Stipe spent a while talking to us at the end of the concert, pointing out various audience members he could see, and commenting on them. The best one was, “Hey, guy with your shirt off — put it back on — I like The Cure too!”

Here was the end of the concert, and this was how everyone felt:

But then they came back, and played Losing My Religion!!!

(And a few other songs)

But I know what you really want is not to read about R.E.M. — you want to hear them. So here is Hollow Man:

Waiting @RedRocks for R.E.ModesTheNationalMouse!!

Actually, several things out here reminds me of Japan… hiking through mountains, walking to work with my lunch in hand, generally nice weather… and now, CURRY RICE AND MOCHI. Yessss. We made a trip to Asiana Market, which sells mostly Korean stuff but some Japanese stuff. It’s probably a good thing they don’t have more Japanese food or I would have bought it all. But we came out of there with some good Japanese junk food, noodles, ice cream, nori, furikake, and most importantly, daifuku and mochi. I’m really glad that Ford seems to be such a big fan of Japanese food. David, also a fan of the mochi. We were so excited about our purchases that after we bought our food we just chilled in the parking lot, snacking, debating whether to go in for a second run…

Last night, I was watching an episode of Last Friends and two of the characters were eating curry rice. Ford noticed this too and the cravings begun. So, it was clear we would be doing culinary explorations in Japanese curry:

The carrots and sautéed onions were a necessity — celery, for added fun. And I have some nice bright yellow takuan to finish off the meal. Pocky and green tea/red bean ice cream are also in the freezer.

The curry was extremely easy to make (step 1, buy curry), and tasted exactly like the カレーライス in Japan — just the right flavor, and absolutely no spiciness. Maybe curry udon (or soba!) is next up on the list of things to make… or I’ll venture to do some om-rice… yummyyy.

Another great discovery — yesterday Ford and I went downtown (following Summer and Rhonda, who were going to shop there) — we bought some Wigwam and Smartwool socks, then essentially ran out of money and decided not to continue on to Manitou Springs. Instead, we were walking along this street when Ford says, “I’m thirsty…” and directly to our left I saw a sign that said, “Bubble Tea”!! Yessss… we had some nice green tea and taro bubble tea before heading home (and getting lost several times, due to vague instruction from the navigational assistant… its definition of “turn left” is really suspect).