So, we played the kickoff party for Grow Radio last nite.  It’s an internet radio station being started by the good folks at the Satellite.  As promised, it was hot hot hot. 

Well, the show itself was a hot show as in the lineup of bands, but also the Common Grounds AC was broken, so it was literally like 20539873 degrees in there.  Luckily it was one of the most beautiful nights outside, so you could steal out for some fresh air and a cool down.

Holopaw (Gainesville natives and Sub Pop recording artists) kicked off the night with a beautifully melodic set.  They were quite good.

Then, we came on next.  Now, I’m writing this because I didn’t recognize many people in the crowd, so our normal “fans” may have missed out.  But thanks to the suggestion of Jason Sanchez, we started the show with Montage, something we’ve never done before.  As you probably know, we almost always close with it.  But we decided that it would be hot to open with it.  The stage lights were all off, we came on, jacketed up, had the mini strobes goin, it was a whammer! 

It was a short set (30 minutes) and only six songs, but each song had corresponding lights and was just hot.

The Common Grounds was packed to the walls and everyone was singing along at the end of “I Found Jesus.”  It really was excellent.

I would say that it easily ranked up in my top 5 favorite shows ever.  Which is cool because this semester has already hosted another of my top 5’s.  I’m very excited about this because we never know what each new school year will bring.  Last year was a little less exciting than 2004/5, but this year is off to a bang.  I’m really excited to see how the rest of these shows turn out.

Thanks to Bill Bryson and everyone who came out last nite. 

ps: has anyone else had problems with the “Now Playing” option of the blog?  I haven’t been able to get it to work for over a month now.

Currently Listening: Wilco / Kicking Television

Currently Reading: Conversations with Tom Petty.

Morningbell’s 3rd full length album is set to drop on February 24th, 2007. 

The release party will be held at the Atlantic.

Stay tuned for more details.

So, this Friday, we’re playing with Gainesville Native/SubPop recording artist Holopaw!  Should be hot.   They go on right after us at the common grounds.  Check em out at www.myspace.com/holopaw.

The show will be broadcast live on the internet on http://www.growradio.net/ as it is a launch party for this Gainesville based internet radio station so listen in!

On a super soft high quality non sweatshop labor American Aparrel Dark Brown T shirt.

Only 10 bucks!!! that’s like less than 2 dollars profit to us.

How about a few cool days in a row!

Wednesday: Shaun Spalding of Inuit Jargon fame hooked us up with the U of F’s Green screen for a sweet music video shoot.  We decided that the more serious we tried to make the video look, the lamer it would come out.  Therefore, we made a video for “Animal Dance” www.morningbellonline.com/morningbell_animal_dance.mp3, a silly song Travis recorded just for fun.  The video is gonna be hot (hopefully).  We have full confidence in Shaun.

Thursday: Tom Petty and the M’Fin heartbreakers playing in Gainesville, FL!  As per most arena concerts, our seats were the second to last row in the entire O-Dome.  Luckily, the O-Dome isn’t that big, so they weren’t that terrible.  It pisses me off though, because I bought them at 10:02 AM (they went on sale at 10:00).  Those are the best available?? So, I tried again 15 minutes later and got some sweet seats in the lower level.  However, I had already paid 200 bones for the 4 tickets I already purchased, so I didn’t get the second set.  Oh well.

It was a hot hot show.  The crowd just pretty much cheered and shouted as loud as humanly possible during every pause in the music.  It was pretty awesome.  They played for over 2 hours and pretty much blew my mind with a hot rendition of Don’t Come Around Here No More.  They also closed with American Girl as usual, but when he said “she could hear the cars roll by, out on 441,” Tom Petty pointed to where 13th (441) is in reference to the stage and the whole place just blew up.  It was really cool, but also lame because it was like “I drive on that street and he just said the name of it and I drive on it sometimes.”  It was probably one of the coolest concerts I’ve been to just because it was Tom Petty’s first visit to Gainesville in 13 years, the band’s farewell tour, and the f’in hometown crowd.  Pretty sweet.

Friday: WMNF’s back to school show at the Orpheum in Tampa kicked off with a Bell set.  It was a cool show and we had a good time.  We have a new T shirt design, which I will be posting tomorrow for you all, but it is so hot it makes me want to take my shirt off.  (see the irony, because it is a shirt).

Anyway, the highlight of the evening was driving past a billboard in Tampa that said “CrushEverything.com” and had a picture of a Hummer underneath.  Then, as if on cue, a Hummer passed us on the right and was fully equipped with a silver plated set of testes hanging on the back bumper.

This has led me to the following slogan suggestion for Hummer. 

Hummer:  FUCK YOU!

e

ps: the Myspace Now playing feature hasn’t been working for me for a few weeks so here you go

Currently listening: Wilco: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

The 6th installment of the Morningbell and Friends Podcast is now available.

If you’re already a subscriber, just click on the podcast button on your iTunes and it should automatically update.  If it doesn’t, highlight the last version and click update in the top right corner.

If that doesnt work, or you’re not already a subscriber, go to www.morningbellonline.com/podcast.htm for instructions.

On this podcast: Inuit Jargon live in the Studio performing “The Yanni Song” / Piano Song (lost Morningbell recordings) / Jake of Maxwell Edison Fame calls in / …and This Is My Odyssey sneak peak / Something Keeps Sucking My Brain Into Outer Space original demo (Morningbell) / Stacie Stops in  / Black Hole (Morningbell)  

The 6th installment of the Morningbell and Friends Podcast is now available.

If you’re already a subscriber, just click on the podcast button on your iTunes and it should automatically update.  If it doesn’t, highlight the last version and click update in the top right corner.

If that doesnt work, or you’re not already a subscriber, go to www.morningbellonline.com/podcast.htm for instructions.

On this podcast: Inuit Jargon live in the Studio performing “The Yanni Song” / Piano Song (lost Morningbell recordings) / Jake of Maxwell Edison Fame calls in / …and This Is My Odyssey sneak peak / Something Keeps Sucking My Brain Into Outer Space original demo (Morningbell) / Stacie Stops in  / Black Hole (Morningbell)  

We saw alot of new faces in the crowd tonight. If it was your first Bell show, we hope you enjoyed it. We want you to know that we’re always trying to change things up so you don’t get bored. You’re guaranteed to never see the same show twice.

We’ve been trying hard to bring something different to each and every show that we do. The show you saw tonight was more mellow and laid back than an average show, but the Orange and Brew is the place to pull something like that off. We hope you enjoyed yourselves, as we did immensely, and hope to see you at future shows where we’ll rock your socks off.

Many thanks to everyone from RUB, Inuit Jargon, and Nim Sum. It’s great to play amongst good friends.

However, tonight was also the first home game of the 2006 Gator Football Season. You see, we forgot that football games make all the assholes come out en masse.

It was really weird. It was like Bizarro Gainesville. The Top was dead after midnight. The Common Grounds porch was full of gator shirt wearin bros and bubbas.

Now, don’t get me wrong, we have many great friends who are Gator fans and are still great people. But none of them were out tonight.

You could taste the testosterone as it poured out of the Ford F-350’s cruising down University. You could smell the virility coming off of the license plates sporting “Beef, it’s what’s for dinner.”

I don’t know. I’m glad Fall is coming, but I”m not sure how much more of the Gator Nation I can take.

Currently listening : Chutes Too Narrow By The Shins Release date: By 21 October, 2003