George @ Berklee

Making the most of $40,000

Friday, November 17, 2006

Ladies and gentlemen.. we have a new champion!

Right now I'm probably happier than any other point of time in my life. I just came back from witnessing the greatest concert I've ever seen. Now, I've seen a couple GREAT concerts like Radiohead in 1997, Green Day and Velvet Revolver last year and Nine Inch Nails a couple months ago but Brian Wilson at the Orpheum theatre here in Boston takes the cake. For those of you not in the know, Brian Wilson is the voice/mind behind The Beach Boys. He wrote all the songs and sang the high parts back in their heydey.


My friend Alex and I went together and Matt went with his twin brother, Anthony. It was an excellent time. Brian Wilson played a long show, about 2 1/2 hours and for the 40th anniversary of Pet Sounds (my favorite album of all time), he and his band played the album in it's entirety live. Pet Sounds is an amazing album, it has won countless awards and Rolling Stone listed it as the second best album of all time (only behind Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band) It was a once in a lifetime experience.

In addition to playing Pet Sounds, they played all the big Beach Boy hits like I Get Around, Good Vibrations, Surfer Girl, In My Room, Help Me Rhonda, Barbara Ann and well, you get the picture. They even played Sail on Sailor which is one of my favorites even though it's a lesser known Beach Boys song. Al Jardine (one of the original Beach Boys) was also there and he still has his amazing voice. The harmonies were amazing and washed over us like warm waves of pure love. :)

I ended up buying the sweetest t-shirt too and I think that I want to be buried in it. :D The music was awesome, the venue was awesome, the seats were REALLY awesome and my new t-shirt is completely supercalifragilisticexpialidocious! Anyways, take care you beautiful people and more updates to come! I'll be home in one month, four days!

Thursday, November 09, 2006

With a little help from my friends..

Ahoy maties! It's been another wonderful week here in Beantown because of a couple special guests here on The George Show.

Here's a picture of Lazer! (Liz!) who took time out of her busy schedule to visit me on the weekend. We had some good times, including a really amazing sushi dinner (live sea urchin is phenomenal!) and a full lobster dinner! Let me just say how much I love my little sister (she paid!)

It's weird how when you live somewhere, someone has to visit for you to really see the city. Boston is an excellent city to just wander around in. Everything is close so walking places is very doable and when it's not, the transit system connects places nicely.
Here's some pics from the Arboretum.












It was definately nice to get out of the stuffy practice rooms and get some fresh air for a change! :)







It was a sad goodbye but Boston is so awesome we'll have to do it again sometime soon.

Now, just that would be pretty awesome but WAIT! THERE'S MORE!!

Right after Liz left Ryan and Melissa came to visit. It was a nice respite from frosty weather in Calgary and we had an excellent time. It was nice to have a bit of home here in Boston so to complete the feeling we indulged in good old fashioned Canadian Beer.

Molson Canadian! It's an import here! Also the bottles featured little blurbs on hockey and whatnot. I'm not really sure what to think about someone American learning all they know about Canada from reading a beer label.

We also had to visit a really neat Boston landmark... The bar from Cheers!

Ryan was getting up close and personal with Frasier...












Melissa was adorable... as usual.












Unfortunately, all good things have to come to an end so Melissa and Ryan had to return to Calgary. :( We had a blast in Boston though and it's only 6 more weeks until I'm home for Christmas. (w00t!)

School is going awesome, I've gotten most of my midterms back and I'm look at almost all Aces (my worst mark is B+ in ear training (!) ) so I'm sitting pretty. :D Take it easy everyone, more updates to come!