Clint Sharp’s Blog an’ Vlog

To the person who thought that the best way to deal with their misguided anger was to attempt communication in a really asinine way, I have a message for you:

You know who you are and so do we.

Well we had a little excitement around here today. It seems that some asswipe went over to our house in Fort Smith and spray painted a “highly intellectual” message on the back porch. All things considered, we have a pretty good idea who is behind this. The evidence initially pointed at one person, a person I’ll call suspect #1. But a re-evaluation of the evidence (which is largely the testimony of one nosy neighbor who looks out her window a lot), and an investigation (including pictures of the crime scene) shed some doubt on #1. Suspect #2 is also a big contender - more-so now that I’ve seen the pics. I simply believe #1 would have done a better job of writing the message. Both #1 and #2 are equally cabable of concocting a scheme of such inadequate porportions. I’m sure the process started with either alcohol or drugs, or both. After the mind altering effects set in, self pity and doubt began to take their toll. After a bit of wallowing in how miserable they had made their life, they realized that the best way to cope with one’s own inability is to blame others. This is where Clint and Melanie enter the picture. You see, both these individuals are under the inaccurate assumption that Clint and/or I have somehow contributed or are even responsible for their miserable lot in life. So this person decided it was a good idea to drive to our house, armed with a can of spray paint, and deliver a message. Here is where I am going to shift the voice of this post. I am now speaking directly to suspect #1 and #2:
Hear this, and hear it well - to know you is to know with 100% certainty that you are capable of destroying yourself completely on your own. This is not the first time you’ve found yourself in a downspin and it most likely won’t be the last. Do you have any interest in knowing why you continually do this? It is because you make bad decisions. You think that you are choosing the noble path - the high road - but you are in fact choosing the path of least resistance. You each truly believe that to stay in a bad, unpleasant, or dead-end situation is somehow admirable. You think you’ll stick it out, give it another chance, and that somehow you will be able to make a silk purse from a sow’s ear. You are emotionally driven. You are overly sensetive (though you manifest this in different ways), and you spend way too much time obsessing over what others say or do. You are also both score keepers, constantly checking where your mark is in relation to others and comparing good and bad deeds. One of you is so filled with rage it is a wonder you are able to function. One of you is so indecisive I’m amazed you are able to dress yourself in the morning. One of you has, to my knowledge, never kept a friend, and one of you, to my knowledge, has never had a friend at all. One of you believes that if you pretend to by “better”, you will simply become that way without any actual effort. One of you believes that others who have more than you think that they are “better” and are thereby keeping you down. One of you is, I fear, just plain evil. One of you is just plain stupid.

Whatever grievances you think you’ve edured, I think we are now even.

I’ll work on having our house restored to it’s previous condition, and you work on restoring your sanity.

You’re not the first to share my bed.
I’ve let others live inside my head.
For days I’ve kept you in my sights.
We’ve laughed, we’ve cried through these past nights.
And even though I’ve held you dear,
I see the end is drawing near.
I’ll shed my clothes and grab a coke.
We’ve only time for one last soak.
I’ve enjoyed your plot quite a bit.
Soon I’ll find a shelf for you to sit.
The water’s cold but there’s still pages to probe.
Just sit on the edge while I reach for my robe.
Oh no! Oh dear! Before my eyes.
You’ve grown to nearly twice your size.
I did not intend to bring you shame.
I might could use you just the same.
Tomorrow I’ll give you another try.
When time has passed to let you dry.
I’m truly sorry - I deserve your wrath.
I regret I dropped you in the bath.

Melanie

So, I finally got to see Dave Matthews Band at the Gorge. If you know me, you know that I’ve been wanting to see them play that venue for several years, after hearing about the awesome show they generally put on at the venue and the absolutely gorgeous surroundings in which to listen to a show. Let me tell you, the venue does live up to its hype, in my opinion. The venue truly is the Gorgeus Gorge at George, Washington (pictures available here).

Both shows we saw were awesome, and I got to see some songs I’ve been wanting to see live for quite some time (Typical Situation, Best of Whats Around, Cry Freedom (yay!), and of course Dancing Nancies). They really do put on a good show. Of course, after getting home I started browsing around on the nancies forums, and it’s simply amazing the stupidity of some DMB fans (I think this would probably hold true for any fan of a band that was as extremely into their band as these people are into DMB). These people watch the setlists and manage to criticize the tour because there were only 55 or 56 songs in rotation this year. Imagine a band going on tour with only 55 songs in their repotoire and rotating between all those songs! These people seriously need to get real. If you went to go see the Rolling Stones, even though they have hundreds of songs at their disposal, if they kept more than 30 in rotation I’d be surprised. Its not like you can just pull a song you haven’t practiced out during the tour unless it’s a really simple song. First of all, most artists probably don’t remember all their songs (not like their fans do anyways). If they even remember performing every song, it’s not likely they remember how to play every one. I’ve written probably fifteen things I’d call complete songs, and I can’t even remember all the ones I’ve wrote (I’m about to start re-recording all the ones I remember so I can go back and re-learn them later).

I’ve also found that there’s a group of people I find more annoying than 12-15 year old girls. Frat Boys. Is there anything more annoying than a group of drunk people who can’t seem to do anything but get in fights amonst themselves? They’re in college, learning and attempting to get a better education, but yet they seem to never have anything interesting to say. I can’t imagine how people like this amount to anything, but maybe that’s because I never felt like wasting years of my life being inebriated.

There were a large group of people at the concerts (I’d say the majority) which were not annoying. I was very thankful for this, it gives me hope for humanity.

I’ve been playing more guitar again this week. I go in spells on being a musician. Some months, I’m really into it. Then I get frustrated and all but stop playing. It seems like every time I’m inspired to play I learn some new tidbit which leads me closer to the holy grail of guitar playing: learning to play good improvised lead. I’m totally lacking inspiration at this point. Bob, my father-in-law for those not in the know by the simple mention of the name Bob, lives 2000 miles away, and while I used to be able to take inspiration for weeks off watching him play for half an hour, I no longer have access to that. I don’t know anyone in Seattle (if you’re reading this and you’re in Seattle, I’m looking for someone to jam with, someone who’s preferably much better than I am), so I haven’t had a chance to jam with anyone since around April of last year when the band the Marks and I were trying to form essentially borke up because I took my current job, which at the time involved a shitload of traveling. I’m going to try to find some musicians to jam with. I had a buttload of fun playing with the Marks, and even though we weren’t much good, we were getting better. I haven’t found anything more fun than really hitting a good song with a couple of other musicians playing along with you, even if you’re the only ones around to hear it. I’m going to get some of these songs recorded, and maybe I can find a set of decent musicians who’d like to get together to have some fun playing together. I’m not even sure I’d want to perform publically, but jamming is just fun. Who knows, maybe those people exist. We’ll see, but I’m on the lookout now.

It’s been a while since I gave an update. I suppose life is pretty boring. Pretty much sitting around and playing guitar, I can’t say I’m really doing much else. I’ve bought a book on learning electronics. I’ve got some ideas for some small electronic devices I’d like to build, and I’ve never really understood how electronics work, so hopefully I can learn to build printed circuit boards and put together my own devices. I’m also looking to get into Amateur Radio, which I think would be a lot of fun. It’s time for some more hobbies to keep me interested, because I just don’t have enough shit to tinker with on the weekends.

So, I suppose thats about the end of my babbling tonight. So, if you get a chance, definitely go see a show at The Gorge. Dave Matthews was talking to God shortly before the Sunday show over coffee and some cigarettes, and God said The Gorge was one of the most beautiful places in the world to play. So take it from God, it’s a good place to see a show. I’d highly recommend the Dave Matthews Band as well, and I don’t care what any of you have to say in your comments about it. I’ll tell you in advance: Fuck Off :).

Thats about it for me. I’ll try to remember to rant on here more often.

If you know Clint at all, you know one thing - he loves the Dave Matthews Band. Even though we were good friends before we began dating, I didn’t know this about him until we’d been dating for a month or so. I remember when I found out that this was his favorite band. I believe my exact response was “Of all the bands in the world, I hate the f*cking Dave Matthews Band more than any of them.” At that time, I meant it - I only knew them as the guys who did “Crash” and lumped them in with Matchbox 20, Ben Folds Five, and Oasis, all of which I disliked. After hearing DMB’s songs over and over for the past 5 years I have to admit that they now rank in my top 5 favorite bands. Actually, they might be #2 - right after Radiohead. Good thing too, cause this past weekend was a fun-filled Dave Matthews extravaganza. As soon as we decided to move to Seattle (actually Redmond, but close enough) I knew that we’d be attending the 3 day concert at the Gorge in George, Wa since it’s only a 2 hour drive. We actually only went to the 2nd and 3rd shows, but still. So on Saturday morning we got up early, packed the up our stuff, and set out for the Gorgeous Gorge in George. I don’t know how many people were camping out there, but it was a lot - we camped way in the back which was actually pretty good because until Sunday evening, there weren’t too many people around. We got to the venue around 5:15pm and it really is a spectacular amphitheatre. You can view pics here . While it was about 85 degrees during the day, when the sun went down it got cold. We had a blanket and sweaters, but we were still decently chilly. The band took the stage around 8:15 and started off with one of my favorites, The Stone and then went into another favorite, Best of What’s Around, It was a great show, they played a lot of good songs and despite the fact that Everday is not a favorite, pairing it with a kick ass Don’t Drink the Water made for an awesome encore. Sunday morning we got up and hung out at the campsite all day reading, listening to our ipods, playing guitar (well, Clint played guitar), and snacking. Oh, and getting sunburned. The sunblock was one of the few things we used out of our carefully put-together first aid kit. We didn’t use enough of it apparently since my face is still a bit pink. We got to the Sunday night show a bit later, but still got better seats. All of the pics of the actual amphitheatre are from Sunday. You’re not supposed to take in cameras, but if you pack a backpack full of extra shirts, blankets, and jackets, the security girl will take pity on you after you’ve pulled it all out and not look into the bottom of the bag and see your camera. Sunday night’s show was even better than Saturday’s in spite of their playing Cry Freedom. It was a more upbeat setlist and included personal favorites Crush, Grace is Gone, Lover Lay Down, and all 4 of the new songs they’ve been playing - Hello Again and Sugar Will being particularily superb and closed with Two Step. And just when I thought things couldn’t get better for me, they came out with Rhyme and Reason and their cover of All Along the Watchtower for the encore. DMB is really one of those bands that you have to see live in order to fully appreciate. The show also left me with the best conversation overheard at a concert. I was walking back from the bathrooms which are right next to the beer garden when I overheard this little gem:

Irritated sounding girl to her obviously inebriated boyfriend: “You need to sober up.”
Obviously inebriated boyfriend to irritated girlfriend: “Yeaaahhh….. well.. you .. need to laugh more…. yeeaaahhh..”

Back at camp that night there were a lot more people camping than the previous night. One of the new campers were a group of Canadians. Now, I’ve never had a problem with Canadians before - I’ve always found them to be quite polite and nice. But these particular Canadians were a different story. Earlier in the day when they arrived, one of them was blaring some shitty hip-hop music. This was odd because it was the only time during the whole weekend that I heard anyone playing music that isn’t currently on my ipod. There was lots of DMB (obviously), and a lot of Jack Johnson - which was cool, I quite like Jack Johnson. I also heard a lot of Modest Mouse, Muse, Jason Mraz, and Red Hot Chili Peppers, which again, was totally cool with me. I spent most of my ipod time listening to Incubus, Radiohead, Modest Mouse, and PJ Harvey becasue I didn’t want to od on DMB, but others didn’t seem to have that concern. Back to the Canadians. So we were pretty tired and cold and generally ready to go to bed so around 1:00am we made our way to the tent. Many people still had their music playing and so it was no big deal that the Canadians had gathered outside with two guitars, bongo drums, and a harmonica. At first it wasn’t that bad - the guy who was singing was decent and while one of the guitars was slightly out of tune, and the bongo guy had obviously never played drums before - it was decently listenable. About an hour later, everyone else had turned off their music and gone to bed except for the Canadians. Within a few minutes the decent voice guy left with apparently the one guitar that was in tune and that’s when things really took a turn for the worse. These guys tried their hand at Gravedigger (off of Dave Matthews solo album), and failed miserably. I don’t think they had even one chord right. Then they moved onto Watchtower. I listened to them try and figure out the chords for a while - I thought about going over there and telling them “Am - G - F - G” (BTW- these are the chords for Dave’s version of Watchtower, not Dylan’s or Hendrix’s or anyone elses so don’t post a comment on how those chords are wrong) but I didn’t - though I regretted that decision for over 10 minutes after they had given up on finding the right chords and proceeded to play some that were very, very wrong. I’d also like to note that I really like that primal scream thing Dave does in many of his songs, Watchtower included, but Mr. Canada does not possess a voice that is capable of making it sound like anything other than a dying giraffe. If they had just gone on slaughtering Dave Matthews songs, I might have been ok. But they didn’t stop there. Oh no - what they did next is grounds for murder in my book. They …… attempted to play Creep …. by Radiohead. Now, Creep is one of my least favorite Radiohead songs but that doesn’t mean I want to hear it butchered. It was awful - they didn’t know any of the chords - they didn’t know more than half the words - and there is no… … I repeat, NO HARMONICA in Creep. They went on to play extreemly inaccurate versions of High and Dry and something that was mostly unrecognizable, but I think they were shooting for Fake Plastic Trees. Apparently they only purchased the first two Radiohead CD’s which I’m quite thankful for because they moved on to other stuff. It was really quite unpleasant. Did I mention that they were also very drunk? Normally, this would excuse some of the bad playing, but trust me, the level of alcohol that would make this kind of mayhem understandable would render a large Elephant unconscious. To quote Don Knotts, “The horribleness and awfulness of it will never be truly forgotten.”
Otherwise, it was a good time. The concert was fantastic, the camping was pretty decent, and I made it home in one piece.
If there are typos and such in the post, forgive me. I am trying to get this up quickly because Clint made it clear that he wanted his take on this weekend at the top because he’s the big fan and it was really his weekend - according to him
Cheers!
Mel