Yoav, Pip, Tori, Barak, Hillary, Chris, Mike, Joe, John and Dennis

First of all, Yoav opened for Tori Amos. His show was him, his guitar, and his sample/delay pedal. It was both refreshingly simple in its musical elements, but remarkable in its complex and layered sound. Yoav's myspace page has a few good tracks that are worth checking out. He has an EP out now, available on iTunes, and is releasing a new album in January '08.

Then, there is Tori Amos. The show was fucking amazing! My wife H is a huge fan, and was really excited when she got to hear nearly every song she wanted, culminating with her favorite song as the finale. But the show was so good that it didn't matter if we got to hear the songs we wanted or not. Pip opened the show, the rock/hardcore personality, and was so bad ass! It quickly became the best show H has ever seen (passing indigo girls at the state theater). You can actually purchase a recording of (most of) the shows on this tour. Unfortunately, the Seattle show is not on there, so we will have to remember it in our heads. Which can be even better sometimes :)

On a side note, NPR hosted a radio debate between the hopeful democratic presidential candidates on Tuesday. One thing I found tremendously interesting was the qualitative aspect of the debate. One thing I liked to hear was how each person answered the question. What I didn't like was the candidates who used the opportunity to answer the question to talk about something totally different, usually negative about others. If you're a registered dem, I'd give it a listen to prepare yourself for the primary.

One thing that still sits uneasy with me is the theory/philosophy behind voting for a democratic nominee. In theory you should vote for the candidate you think would do the best job as president. But the nature of our 2 party majority political system, the Democrat will always run against a Republican. So part or your decision is based on who you think would win against the Republican nominee. And that (in my case) is a different person than the one that I think would do the best job. So its a dilemma. Maybe we'll get to cut right down the middle of the bull's horns and get a vp who was our real first choice.