Browsing Tag: collectivesoul

    Music

    Collective Soul: So Much Better the Second Time

    September 30, 2010

    I saw Collective Soul in Idaho a little more than a year ago. It was a good show, but I was fighting my first bout of vertigo and probably shouldn’t have made the six-hour round trip to see them. I couldn’t make it through the whole show; wasn’t feeling well and got a little dizzy.

    Round two with Collective Soul happened tonight, much closer to home. They played at the Central Washington State Fair in Yakima — a little more than an hour away. And my vertigo hasn’t been bothering me lately. Sean and I went and it was a blast! They played just about every song I could’ve hoped for (aside from a few more obscure tracks that I love) and, even though the show only ran about 90 minutes, it was pretty much perfect.

    Aside from that stuff, I also used the show to test my iPhone 4 and how well it handles live audio, video, etc. The main thing to use my Ustream account for the first time — to see how it looks and sounds, how it connects with Twitter, etc. Here’s an awesome live version of “December,” which — despite my dancing with the camera in my hand — came out really well.

    There are a couple other videos on my Ustream channel if you’re interested.

    All in all, the live audio/video stuff was pretty easy. Which is good, since I’m hoping to do more next year when U2 comes to the U.S.

    Music

    The World I Know

    June 19, 2009

    Collective SoulI tested myself last night (Thursday). I hopped in the car and drove three hours to a remote part of Idaho to see Collective Soul do a tiny, little warm-up gig before their main tour starts next week. They advertised the show as being in Coeur d’Alene, but it was actually closer to Worley, Idaho, about a half-hour south of CDA.

    I’m still fighting the spinning head thing, but mostly in the mornings. (I see an ENT specialist next week.) Usually I’m doing pretty good by about 11 a.m. each day. At the show, I didn’t have any dizziness issues … but my McDonald’s dinner wasn’t agreeing with me, and since I decided to join the crowd and rush the stage during the third song, I was surrounded by people, getting very hot and sweaty, and extremely thirsty. I left the mob at the front after the band’s main set and found some ice water. Then went back and watched a bit of the encore before calling it a night and leaving early. (No, I’d never leave a U2 concert early.)

    That’s a six-hour roundtrip drive to watch about 80 minutes of live music. And it was all worth it because I got to hear “The World I Know” live — surely one of the best 4-5 songs ever written. I could listen to that 20 times in a row and not get tired of it. In fact, if you check my Last.fm profile, I probably have listened to it 20 times in a row!

    Other than being a little tired from the long drive, and having a small headache, the test went well. But hopefully they’ll play somewhere a little closer next time.

    Here’s my full set of Collective Soul photos on Flickr from last night.