Jared’s Blog

So, this weekend was a pretty good full one. I spent Tue and Wed nights going to see Jason Ricci at Ringside Cafe. It was pretty awesome! Especially Wed night, Sue met me there and we ran into Erik, and TC Carr and Sterling “Mr. Satan” Macgee made a special appearance and played for twenty minutes or so. I feel so fucking lucky to hear Mr. Satan, it is like being back in the 40s and listening to old school blues.

On Tuesday night I was in a seat closest to Shawn Starsky. I got to see him play his guitar all up close and personal like. He is great because he is comfortable playing guitar all slow like, and then can get into this complicated power jam thing that I was watching him really closely to see how he was doing it. I wish I played an instrument like a guitar. I have no talent.

Jason was awesome too. He played that harmonica like nobody’s buissness. He likes to put his harmonica through guitar pedals to give it a unique sound. It is pretty good stuff. I heard some new songs, and I heard some old standards, it was a pretty good mix of both.

On Wednesday I sat on the other side of the room (the seat I was at on Tue was taken) and so this gave me a different angle of taking pictures. I didn’t have a good view of Buckweed this time, but I did have a better view of Steve.

The shows were great, I am glad I got to make it to both shows, it makes up for the last couple of times I missed him. I just wish he made it to St. Pete more often. He has been playing at Ringside every time, and although I love Ringside, they have been failing lately as far as the food and maintenance of the place. There are a lot of tiles that need replacing, and there is a big bunch of cable hanging from one of them on the stage. I am surprised the owner hasn’t spent the five minutes it would take to stuff the cables on top of a tile. It is very distracting when you are trying to watch a show. Also the quality of the food has really decreased too. First the loss of guacamole, and now they are using pace picante sauce for their salsa. That is the second most disgusting salsa ever (The most being Bennigans “salsa” [they use black pepper to spice their salsa]). Because of that I tend to spend a lot less on food than I normally would. I love getting chips and salsa as an appetizer, but when I can’t even stand the salsa, it is now a waste of money, and no more ordering sides of guac either. So very disappointing. Also it sucks that they can’t pay to keep up a website. I think that Ringside has gone through three domains in as many years. Ringside has so much history with me too. The day that I landed in St. Pete the girlfriend at the time took me there, and every time someone comes out and visits, that is the first place I take them too.

If you have never heard of Jason Ricci, I suggest you check out his website, and to hear some of his music, go to his myspace page. If you want to see pictures I took when i saw Jason, click here:

Mood : tired
Music : http://jared.serveftp.net:9000/listen.pls
Tv : Bird