I’ve missed a couple of days of blog posting in my 2012 Initiative. I work. I’m tired. Sometimes I sit on the couch for a few hours when I get home. I can’t be in front of this computer all the time.

Here is a list of some tweets that, for some reason, didn’t get sent:

Why does my neighborhood look and feel abandoned?
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Sweetie it’s fucking McDonald’s. Stop doing special orders for your five children. #holdinguptheline
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Loawd give me 2x patience today!
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I’ve dribbled on myself. #vietnamesefood
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Looks like I should start hanging out at this bus stop more often. #mayor http://moby.to/d5d1kq
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Next up in the shuffle: Grace Jones, Erasure, Housemartins, Lightning Seeds, MJ, Beloved, Kylie, Matt Alber, Interpol, ABC, Fischerspooner.
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Picked up my new iMac!
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Street preachers are funny. #andscary
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Every song on this playlist at Noodles & Co is a prime example of what is wrong with pop music today.
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Last Saturday during the beginning of the SNOwhatever I kept getting emails from Matt Alber and Tom Goss concerning their show that evening. It turns out the original venue had cancelled the appearance but Matt and Tom didn’t want to call the event and found an alternative venue, St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church. Since Matt’s music can get a little acoustic and atmospheric, I thought this would be a great place to see it.

When I got there it turns out the show was in their fellowship hall instead of their main sanctuary and I was a little disappointed about that, but I still got a seat in the 2nd row in the center. I was giddy!

I recognized Tom and spoke with him before the show and he thanked me for coming out. I wasn’t that familiar with Tom’s music but after seeing his performance (guitar) I’m a fan now.

Then, came the moment when Matt (!) came out to do his part of the show and it was great to be that close while Matt was performing. He was also pretty jovial with the intimate audience which is always entertaining. After the show, I had to go up and talk to Matt and simply thanked him for his songs, the perspective he wrote them from and how all us little queer boys felt that way growing up. While introducing myself I mentioned futurejunkie on Twitter and he’s like “Oh yeah, futurejunkie!” which of course made me melt right there on the spot.

Here are two clips of Matt during the show, “End of The World” and “Field Trip Buddy” (my favorite). They sang a duet of Elton John’s “Rocket Man” but at that point my iPhone battery was dying and I couldn’t record it. Dang, but it was beautiful.

Thanks for a great show, guys!

Scruffy crooner Matt Alber finally hits the East Coast, not counting one-off publicity/fundraising shows in New York. The “tour” isn’t substantial by any means but he is coming to DC (yay!).

The first show is January 18 in NYC with Celisse Henderson. He shoots down to Va Beach and then Balmer, hon, before coming to the District on his birthday, February 6. He’s teaming up with singer Tom Goss (who I’m unfamiliar with) and playing at Delaski Theater in Adams Morgan. I’ve never heard of this theater but bought a ticket anyway and I’m excited to go. After the DC gig he heads down to Florida for a few gigs sans Mr. Goss. Hopefully he’ll add some mid-Atlantic cities to this tour, check out all the latest at his website, mattalber.com.

In my excitement of learning of the tour and purchasing an immediate ticket, I tweeted my excitement and received a personal tweet back from Mr. Alber. <swoon>

I think I’ve discovered the soundtrack to the present (un)employment events in my life, something that I will realize years from now, when the song plays and it instantly brings me back to this time. It’s not the type of music that I would normally listen to, but I’ve been streaming the debut album, Hide Nothing, from the artist’s website since first seeing his video that fellow blogger and pubcrawl buddy JoeMyGod posted a couple of days ago and I can’t get enough of it.

The artist’s name is Matt Alber and his website is here.  

End of the World is about lovers’ relationship falling apart, Matt saying he penned the autobiographical song five years ago while riding the San Francisco MUNI. The utterly romantic video reveals another side, with an ending of hope and promise.

From Matt’s blog:

“I wrote this song almost 5 years ago in San Francisco—most of it on the #30 Stockton MUNI bus en route to my performing job in a musical revue… The biggest love of my life had fallen out of love with me because he thought I had fallen out of love with him. This was the saddest thing that had happened in my life romantically to date. The song was a real attempt to reconcile with someone who meant very much to me.”

UPDATE: Matt’s Mad Men co-star is Zak Barnett.
photo credit Paul Noblin