Last night was the David Usher concert. Before the show K, sue and I went to Darcy’s Pub for dinner. Mmmmmm. The food was awesome, and the beer was darn good too. Nice pub. Sue and I will definitely go back someday.

On to the show. What can I say. David Usher is just so charismatic. Simply fantastic. The show was more that I had anticipated, and that includes the volume! It was crazy loud, but the crowd was lots of fun.

For me it is hard to distinguish between Moist and David Usher songs. They played quite a few Moist songs. Besides David, the bassist Jeff Pearce was also playing last night. Jeff and one of the other guitarists were having so much fun up on stage. They had huge smiles and were goofing off a bit while playing. It appeared to me that they would have little contests to see who could play loudest/fastest/whatever. Their dynamic helped make the show great.

The vocals were absolutely amazing. How he can go from screaming so loudly to something soft and quiet all in one breath was astounding. His voice never cracked once, which was pretty incredbile since he was putting so much force behind his singing.

David Ushers music is something I can never get enough of. I get his CD the day it is released, and after listening to it once, I am craving a new album already. His lyrics are something I love to read and try to interpret (something I am not very good at). His songs are somehow complex, yet very simple. This dynamic makes them infinitely listenable for me. I hear him play live, and I get a renewed energy to listen to all his music again (rightnow I am listening to Moist’s Creature album).

Unfortunately the sound quality was really lacking. The volume was turned up way, way, way too loud for my liking (and I generally like loud music). When the band was really rockin and David was belting out the song, everything became a jumbled wall of sound. You couldn’t distinguish any one instrument or person. It was simply loud sound. Horrible. At times there was some awful feedback too. This happened way too often. yeuck. The crowd interrupted David a lot too. Some songs the band would stop to be quite for a second before picking up the song again. The queue for them to begin was David singing, but when he leaned towards the crowd to start singing, their cheering was so loud, that he couldn’t start. It threw him off a bit. He also had to ask the people in the front row to keep their hands below his knees :0

He loves the crowd though. He kept reaching out, shaking hands while he was singing. He made eye contact very well. It didn’t feel contrived. Quite a few times he stopped singing and let the crowd do it. He always smiled and thanked us. I lost track of how many times he thanked the crowd for coming.

I really enjoyed the show. The next time he comes back through town I will be getting more tickets. I love his music, his energy, and his presence. It truly is a treat to see him perform.

Friday afternoon I saw the Matrix Revolutions. I was really hoping it was better than the second one.

First a quick recap before a more in depth review. I enjoyed Revolutions much more than Reloaded. Still, it wasn’t as good s the first. Revolutions wasn’t as over the top, yet it attempted to solve the story for you. Some of my aggravations of the second were still in Revolutions. The talking in riddles really confused me in Reloaded. There was less in this one, but I still was sufficiently confused that I wanted to watch it a second time, only to figure out what the hell they were talking about.

Read more for the rest.

OK, spoiler alert !!!

As others have said, the second and third stories did a lot to explain why things were in the first movie. The Matrix was such a mind blowing movie, but I found the second anf third mind numbing. They attempted to explain everything in the context of the movie. This didn’t help me at all.

I really did not enjoy Reloaded. The effects were too over the top. The CGI not good enough. If I can look at a scene and see the CGI in an obvious manner, I usually don’t like it. Some of the fight scenes between Neo and Agent Smith were just ludicrous. The chase scenes, although spectacular, were completely unbelievalbe. The introduction/explanation for phenomena such as vampires, ghosts, etc. was just unneeded, except that it allowed the Wachowski brothers to play with some cool effects. They did not add anything to the story in my opinion.

Revolutions had less of the things I disliked about Reloaded. The stunts were less over the top, and generally more believable. There was some predictability (Neo’s follower saving the day), but it wasn’t too bad.

One thing I got though was something that other reviews I have read touched on, but never really talked about. When Neo was blinded, he started “seeing” things. He could see the guy who was trying to kill him, and he could see the machines. It was a new kind of code similar to the matrix code, but all fiery looking.

It is my belief that the “machine world” as told by the movie was in fact another level of the matrix. What better way to keep the humans subservient than to allow them to think they can escape “the Matrix”. Their struggle to save Zion was created for them to allow their minds to believe they can save themselves. Belief is a very powerful force. When Neo’s eyes got fried, somehow he learned to see the new code. I am not sure if he realized that the meachines were part of the Matrix or not. To support this, remember back to the end of Reloaded? Neo stopped the machines while he was in the machine world? Maybe he learned that he could control the machine matrix like he could control the matrix he was from? That also lends credence as to how agent smith took over the human. He didn’t take over the human insomuch as he took over the machine world matric version of the human.

Maybe the 4th movie will get into this topic (if they create one).