The distance erased with the greatest of ease

Last night, Doyle, Dre, Lisa and I went to see Vienna Teng at the Triple Door in downtown Seattle. VT is slowly creeping up on Toad the Wet Sprocket and Queensryche as far as the number of times I've seen them live. This was my 4th Vienna Teng concert. I think I've seen TTWS 6 times (alas, no more!) and QR 7 times.

And WOW, what a show. I keep forgetting how much better it is to see music live. This time, VT had a drummer - in the past it was either her, unaccompanied except by her own piano playing, or with a couple of string instruments. But this was a much more rockin' show and I LOVED it. Even more than Weezer/Foo Fighters a few weeks ago. She played Harbor, which I put on the CD of songs we played as the guests were arriving at our wedding. That made my day. It even more made my day when she said it was her experiment in "Progressive Rock". Woo hoo. I'm so amazed that someone smart enough to get a degree in CS from Stanford, who worked at Cisco as a developer, can be *such* a talented singer/songwriter/piano player. Apparently when god was handing out the good stuff, she stood in line twice :)

Just like when I was 13, a good concert will keep me happy for days. The cool thing about VT is that, though I've heard her two CDs a million times, when she does the songs live, there's always something different about them. And not different in that weird Adam Duritz-talking through the song- sort of way, but in a familiar, but brilliant way, that makes me listen to the CD versions and notice new things in them. Which is just AWESOME. Though I do wish she'd come out with a new album SOON. She played some new songs last night which were great too.

And I got to chat with her briefly after the show. The weird part is she said she recognized me from one of the other shows. Sometime last year I think, or maybe even 2003. Anyway, that's kind of cool. I can't quite imagine Geoff Tate from Queensryche saying something like that. Though, come to think of it, Randy, the drummer from TTWS told Jasmine and me he remembered seeing us the last time we saw them in Seattle. Maybe I'm funny looking and that's why.

I have a sore throat again. Boo. Hopefully it won't last four weeks this time.