Kristen’s Playlist

Triple Door- Seattle

My first time to Seattle was a couple weeks ago, with Tommy, and we took the city by storm. Maybe not really by storm but we walked all over downtown, ate our way through many restaurants (love Tom Douglas), scoured the fish market, witnessed the underground, sailed the lakes, rode the monorail, skyrocketed to the Space Needle and slipped into the Triple Door.  The hard part about visiting a new place is having to find the cool gems of the city.  The Triple Door is one of Seattle’s gems. In looking over their acts, you can tell they don’t really book main stream artists but the scene and stage are such an artistic vision itself that you don’t really need an amazing singers or bands to enjoy it. 

I especially love that the Triple Door was inexpensive to get into and there weren’t any drink minimums even though they seat everyone in these cool, old school half-moon booths.  You step into the basement of this old hotel and step back into time.  I half expected a crooner to come on stage. It’s a sight to see.

The night we were there, we watched Sean Nelson (in Nelson Performs Nilsson). Talk about a random act! But he has a great voice and he is actually quite entertaining. He has great stories and he’s funny as hell. If he comes to your town, check him out or just check out his MySpace page.

What’s your favorite live music venue in Seattle? I’ll be sure to check out it out on the next trip.

Work Life Imbalance & New Artists

As you can see between my two posts below I let over a month pass before blogging! My bad.

I guess my work/life balance is a little off. It’s been pretty much all work with some life. I’ve been on and off planes from LA to NYC to SF and was supposed to get to Chicago but due to bad weather cancelled the flight and therefore my entire 48hr trip.

As I was walking off my Jetblue flight from NYC, I thought it was a pretty crazy image to see all these TVs running various shows set by passengers. There is so much media surrounding us everyday…there I am watching some show about America’s Next Top Designer Model Idol then on commercials tuning into my iPOD for my quick song before going back to the show.  Then as soon as we land, turning on my Treo to download my emails and check messages from friends and family asking me where I am today. I walk past all the ads in the airport to arrive at baggage claim where Disney has paid to create an illuminated faux luggage ad telling me that the magic is all at Disneyland! And the truth is, I wanted to go to Disneyland where I feel happy and carefree. Then it just made me mad that I was stuck in frickin baggage claim waiting for my dopey bag to come down the shute.

You may be asking, “Wait a minute, so what songs were you listening to on your iPOD?”…oh yes, back to the music my friends. Well, what got me through all the travels are some cool new artists that I’ve become big fans of…

Amy Winehouse- You Know I’m No Good (favorite song)

James Morrison - Undiscovered (inspirational song)

John Legend - Save Room (reminder that some things are worth the risk)

Check them out if you haven’t already. They’re not NEW NEW but pretty new to me

And BTW- I have tickets to see the Police and John Mayer in June so stay tuned for reviews!

The Ring of Fire

Like Jonny Cash sang, it burns…the ring of fire. I was thinking about that as I drove home last night from work. I had heard about a fire at Griffith Park (I work about 20min away from it). I didn’t know what started it or how bad it was…apparently it’s bad since they were still trying to contain it 24hrs later.

I snapped this image of the smoke blowing from the flames off the top of the hillside as I approached the freeway on ramp to head home. A home that was safely far away from these flames… 

Though I try to connect my life experiences to music, I’m not sure what song would best describe this scene but i can tell you that I happen to have been listening to MatisYahu.