Upstart at Mozambique July 24th

You heard right kids! The Upstart kids are play­ing it up and mak­ing noise again at one of our favorite spots in OC, Mozam­bique, in Laguna Beach.

1740 s Pacific Coast hwy
Laguna beach,
949–715-7100

Start Time is 8:45pm
Entry is free. 21+

Hope to see you all there!

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Toe Knee gig tomorrow night, 3/16, at Genghis Cohen…new song on the site to celebrate!

Howdy,
If you are in the Los Angeles…or even if you are not…I’d like to invite you to join me for an evening of music at Genghis Cohen tomor­row evening at 9 pm. A won­der­ful ensem­ble of musi­cians, includ­ing Austin Per­alta, Nick Camp­bell, Bobby Wilmore, Shea Welsh, and Jen­nifer Tal­ton will be join­ing me.

Amaz­ing Chi­nese food at Genghis if you’ve never tried it!

To cel­e­brate the evening, I put a new song enti­tled “the World Is Get­ting Smaller Every­day” up on the “Media” sec­tion of toekneesongs.com. I recorded it entirely in my old apart­ment and played all the instruments…a lit­tle dis­claimer before you check it out!

Thanks for read­ing. Hope to see you on Tuesday.

best,
toe knee

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Toe Knee at Genghis Cohen 3/16

Howdy Blahg read­erz around the globe.  Hope life is well wher­ever you are.  Jenn and I stayed in Laguna Beach this week­end at La Casa del Camino. We had a great time. If you are ever in the area, hun­gry, and look­ing for a great din­ing expe­ri­ence… GO EAT at “C’est La Vie” on the PCH. We had an amaz­ing din­ner and dessert there Sat­ur­day night while over­look­ing the ocean. To start off the meal, the wait­ress brought a small glass of wine for us to sam­ple. And through­out the meal, the chef sent out dif­fer­ent things for us to sam­ple, includ­ing a Lob­ster bisque and orange sor­bet. I ordered the trout and Jenn had a pasta. Both were deli­cious and served with an artis­tic ele­gance I’ve rarely expe­ri­enced. The dessert was heav­enly too…I seri­ously haven’t been this blown away by any restau­rant in recent memory.

Had to get that out there, now.… I wanted to invite you to an evening of Toe Knee music at Genghis Cohen in Los Ange­les on Tues­day, March 16 at 9 pm. I’m still iron­ing out a few details regard­ing the set, but expect a cou­ple new tunes, some old ones of course, who knows. It will be a good ole time I’m cer­tain. Hope you can make it. Until the next blahg, key pawn raw kin.

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Time to organize those CDs…

So I decided to tackle my CD col­lec­tion last night. I real­ize I’m liv­ing in the past by even tak­ing the time to orga­nize my CDs. I should be shuf­fling my MP3s into nice tidy playlists…but no…sorry…I can’t let go of tan­gi­ble medi­ums of music. I’ll save my love for vinyl for another blog…wax cylin­ders? Okay…too old skool, if that’s possible.

The great chal­lenge is decid­ing how to orga­nize one’s col­lec­tion. Well, hon­estly, for me orga­niz­ing nearly any­thing is a daunt­ing task. I’ve always loved the scene in High Fidelity when Dick asks Rob (John Cusack) how his vast record col­lec­tion is orga­nized, and he replies, “auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal.” I’ve used the auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal sys­tem for years myself. My girl­friend asked me how I could ever begin to find things. I didn’t have a great answer. I don’t know, but I could nearly always tell you the story sur­round­ing that par­tic­u­lar album; what else I was lis­ten­ing to, what I was dri­ving, who I was dat­ing, where I was living…all that. Maybe I get a lit­tle nos­tal­gic for these things, and wor­ried that a whole gen­er­a­tion of down­load­ers will miss out on that impor­tant aspect of music lov­ing and listening.

Anyway…I went with a genre based sys­tem of orga­ni­za­tion for the CDs. Alpha­bet­i­cal is very com­mend­able, and would have been cool…I just couldn’t find the strength to go down that road. I guess it’s still auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal, though; moved into a new place, dug the CDs out of the box, well orga­nized girl­friend moves in…and the story con­tin­ues on…now by genre, of course.

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Live Venue thoughts…

A stu­dent recently asked me to write about my five favorite venues to see live music in LA for the school news­pa­per.  I had a good time writ­ing it, and thought you might enjoy shar­ing your top picks also.


1.  Largo — Great music.  Great ambiance.  I liked the old loca­tion on Fair­fax a lit­tle bet­ter (it was more inti­mate), but the new the­ater on La Cienega is great too.  Jon Brion on Fri­day nights is a must see.


2.    The Mint – Clas­sic.  This place has been a live music venue since 1937!  Many great per­form­ers have graced its stage over the years and they still have great shows every week.


3.    The Baked Potato – Get your­self a baked potato smoth­ered in cheese and enjoy the show!  It’s great that nerdy jazz fusion music still has a home in LA.


4.    The Mayan The­ater — Thought I’d include a larger the­ater in the list.  Built in 1927, so you got the his­tory fac­tor.  Plus, it’s so “Indi­ana Jones and the Tem­ple of Doom” in there…I’m always wait­ing for the wall to open up and that big rock to come try and squash me.


5.    The Light­house – In Her­mosa Beach.  Look­ing at my list, I real­ize that I’m rather nos­tal­gic, and par­tial toward his­tor­i­cally sig­nif­i­cant venues.  But anyway…the Light­house was the home of West Coast Jazz in the 50’s and 60’s.  Although it’s not the great jazz or artis­ti­cally sig­nif­i­cant venue it once was, they still have live music.  It’s a cool spot just a few steps from the sand for well-dressed Sun­day brunch­ers and beach bums alike…oh so California.


My RIP’s – these are venues I enjoyed that have closed since I’ve lived here:


The Tem­ple Bar, the Jazz Bak­ery, the old Catalina’s Bar and Grill, and the Knit­ting Factory.


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