GLO!!!

You know how much we love music and we went to a concert last weekend with our friends. OMG...Fun!

The Band: Ghostland Observatory

The Venue: Cain's Ballroom Tulsa, OK

In Attendance: The Whites, The Rossows, The Kirchhoffs, The Eberhardts and our "Driver" Brian

I really think it is funny to say our "Driver", but really it is a safe, responsible, heck of a good time. So we were all happy we splurged and rented a limo. The driver just happened to be Randy and Kendra's neighbor. He was very cool. He even took us to his recording studio which is located right by Cain's Ballroom. Little did we know Coach Michael (for some reason when I blog I must still call him Coach Michael even though he and Troy no longer coach the girls' soccer team anymore) can really bang a drum. Holy smokes! He just walked in and plunked down in that seat and went nuts. We were all shocked, and he is now going to get a new drum kit. I'm buying Kelly some earplugs for Christmas. I'm sure the kids are going to dig the new instrument as much as Dad!

Anyway...back to the concert....

OK, so we hit a few bars on the way which was fun in itself. (The Treehouse and McNellie's were our preconcert stops.)

Once we got to the venue the night really took off. I met this guy...

Randy and Kendra introduced us to GLO and we were all hooked and excited to see them live. They are a two man band out of Austin, TX. Their live shows are packed full of choreographed lasers. This is one show that will be making an encore on our concert list. Their music is awesomely catchy and the laser show is just an added bonus.

Here is someone else's video footage. I'm kinda lazy right now, but more than anything wanted to show some good video. I was busy enjoying the show close up...You just need to see them live. But buy your tix in advance. They SELL OUT!

This was my first concert at Cain's Ballroom. I will definitely go back SOON!

Beatles!

I was up LATE last night reading on blogs about the cryptic message that Apple had posted on their website yesterday! Sneaking suspicion said this was what was about to occur. And I am soooooo happy!

iTunes has seriously been lacking some Beatles tuneage! It was a bit absurd actually!

Hurry! Get to downloading before someone tries to sue and they change their minds!

B Sides R Hits 2 Me

In less than 24 hours we will be rockin' out to Tom Petty! We are totally ready! Outfits picked and plans made! We are taking off a half day tomorrow and all day Friday to celebrate Tom Petty in Tulsa! The limo arrives at 5pm to take us downtown Tulsa for some Spirits before the show.

All day today I filtered my iPod to play nothing but Tom Petty. It made me excited about what I wanted to post about today. B-sides!

What exactly is a B-side? Back when 45s were the thing, they were the secondary song on the other side of the "hit" record. You can touch up on your vinyl knowledge here. Let's face it...we are almost out of the CD era already and our hard drives are overflowing with digital music files. I guess now a B-side is kind of an antique, huh?

Tom Petty has been around long enough to have them. And if you are lucky to own it, he has one whole "album" dedicated to B-sides in his box set Playback. Disc 4 is called The Other Sides and it holds one of my favorite Tom Petty B-sides, Gator on the Lawn. This one reminds me of Marley. She loves to do a gator roll and she TOTALLY would steal a steak off the counter. To be completely honest, I have no idea what this song is really supposed to mean! It is just a funny, catchy tune. Catch it here!

Another fun song is Spike. I am not sure if it is officially considered a B-side, but it is on the album Southern Accents.

Music has such an effect on me. Hearing a certain song gives me butterflies in my tummy and I can feel the memory in my body. Tom Petty's music has been with me for so much of my life, so there are soooo many of his songs that have that strong effect. Music is what I collect, and I love to boast about the "pieces" that I have of his.

I also collect coffee mugs, but they are harder to store, and they don't create memories or make me feel nearly and good inside!

...Whatever You're Looking For

Ok, I know I said in my Favorite Album post that it was that album that really got me started on Tom Petty. But really, that was just the deal sealer.

Back in the day, when MTV played videos, I was permanently perched within sight. So when I found that my Grandparents had "The Cable" in Gramps' home office, you can only imagine my thrill! It was there that I first saw the video that would never be topped on my list. I don't know about you, but whenever I picture Tom Petty, The Madhatter pretty much always pops in my head. . They go hand in hand! This video is hauntingly good if you are a 12 year old. Or a 35 year old! It sucks me in every time I see it. Unfortunately, that is a rare occurrence anymore considering TV and music videos do not go hand in hand anymore.

Me and my girls as my groupies

I was bound and determined to be Tom Petty for one of my Halloween parties. But each year I had to pass because I could not find the perfect jacket. Until October of 2005 when I made my annual pre party shopping trip to Good Will. (Which by the way, is a fun place to seek for lost treasures as well as donate clothing and house ware items.) There seriously was a big spotlight on this Dark Purple jacket. It was exactly what I was looking for. Go figure the one and only time in my life I find a piece of clothing that is EXACTLY what I was looking for I was at Goodwill. See! Lost treasures! It was lost and I found it! What are the odds? I know, I am not really a dead ringer for Tom Petty. I'm not nearly thin enough. But that did not trouble me one bit. This was BY far my favorite Halloween costume to date.

Soooo....Here it is...My Favorite Tom Petty Video! Love it!

Thank You Tom Petty for making me love Alice in Wonderland!

Pssst...You can purchase this video @ iTunes if you like! You want it?

Hello CD Listeners...Favorite Album Goes To....

As hard as it is to pick one favorite of ANYTHING by Tom Petty, I am going to try for a few seconds. Full Moon Fever gets credit for favorite Tom Petty album. This is really the album that started it all for me. This was Tom's first solo album. I know that I had heard a lot of Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers' tunes growing up, but this one is what made me the freak that I am about his music. I remember my art teacher playing this album over and over my Sophmore year of high school. Although my memories are less than pleasant of said art teacher, I do have to hand it to him for having great taste in tunes. This album has been played front to back and back to front over and over and over for years! Pop it in and you are sure to be instantly happy!

Here is the track listing...let's see what we have...

1. Free Fallin' - We are all familiar with this one from our Friday commute home from work. We know we all crank this one and scream at the top of our lungs like Tom Cruise in Jerry McGuire. Don't even try to deny it. It is impossible to not belt this one out. Especially when you don't have an audience.

2. I Won't Back Down - This is always a good "In your face" kind of song. Not in a bad way, but it always gives me strength when I hear it. Makes me proud of my "strong personality", as one may say.

3. Love Is a Long Road

4. A Face in the Crowd

5. Runnin' Down a Dream - This one totally brings back memories. It reminds me of Homecoming of 1989 in DeForest (because it was played a lot that year) as well as the first time Troy and I were lucky enough to see Tom Petty in Madison, WI. We had just gotten word that we would be transferring for Troy's new job at 3M. We had floor seats on the end in the middle. Great view and a great show! They opened with this song, so now when it comes on I am instantly transported back to that concert. The opening guitar gives me the chills. I can still feel the huge smile on my face as he walked out on stage.

6. I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better - This one is a cover of the song by The Byrds. You know...I have to say I did not know this for a long time! I love learning new things, and this is one of them. I never knew credit was to be given to someone other than TP on this one. Thank You Internet!

7. Yer So Bad - A really fun song that I really wish I could play on the guitar. Still one of my goals in life. Probably waaay far off, but still on the list nonetheless!

8. Depending on You - An "open up your moon roof on your lunch hour and drive around" kind of song.

9. The Apartment Song

10. Alright for Now

11. A Mind with a Heart of Its Own

12. Zombie Zoo - Probably one of my all time faves. Sooo fun and definitely worthy of the repeat button!

Mid way through the album, on the CD version there is a fun spoken track of Tom Petty explaining that we need to give the people with cassette and record players a break since they have to turn it over before hearing Side B.

"Hello, CD listeners. We've come to the point in this album where those listening on cassette, or records, will have to stand up, or sit down, and turn over the record, or tape. In fairness to those listeners, we'll now take a few seconds before we begin side two...Thank you. Here's side two."

I know you already have this album in your collection. I mean, you are friends with me...so that is a given, right? If you don't, pretend you do, but go get it now! I will make it easy for you...HERE!

Oh My My!

In honor of this Thursday's full moon @ Autumn Equinox, I decided that I am going to take the next few days to write about none other than Tom Petty! Well, it turns out, we are heading down to the BOK Center on Thursday to see Tom himself as he stops by Tulsa to share his Mojo tour with us! As you may know, we were supposed to see Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers earlier this Spring in Dallas. After the front half of his tour got redirected to the end of the tour, he announced he would be adding Tulsa to his list of cities! SCORE! Believe me...I lost a lot of sleep in the weeks that led up to the announcement. It is incredibly hard to sleep with all of your fingers AND toes crossed. But in the end, they signed on to perform at the one year anniversary for the BOK Center. Since our Dallas tickets got changed to a Wednesday instead of a Saturday, it was going to mean more time off of work. We were eligible for a full refund due to the postponement. As much as it pained me to not attend both dates, we could save us some dough and make our Tulsa concert experience even better with that savings. We are going with a group of our great friends. Even renting a limo and taking the next day off of work so we can truly party like rock stars that night! We have sixth row...YES...6TH ROW seats. This will be the closest seats we have had for one of his shows. (BIG, HUGE grin....SMILE)

I don't even know how to express my pure excitement for this event. I am sure to be posting all of our Petty Pics on Facebook that night. Stay tuned for the one of Tom and I backstage after the show! Until then, I will be celebrating like no other fanatic by dedicating my blog to them for the days leading up to what will be FULL MOON FEVER!

The Waiting...

I received some devastating news today. Tom Petty is postponing the first part of his tour due to the delay in his most recent album Mojo. What was going to be an awesome May Saturday in Dallas has been changed to a Tuesday in September. WhaaaaWhaaaa! There was one ray of light...and that is the fact that they backed up there previous statement about additional tour dates to be added...and they claim it is coming shortly! I am really crossing my fingers for Tulsa to be added so I can then get a refund on our Dallas tix. As much as I would TOTALLY go to both shows, being on a Tuesday in September isn't really going to work for me. We shall see what happens! Until then...we still get to go to Chelsea Handler next Saturday! The show is at 8pm so it should probably be about 2 hours long? (I'm guessing.) Then after that we are going to go downtown Dallas...probably go back to the House of Blues. There is going to be a band there that night called Green River Ordinance. They look pretty good. I checked them out on iTunes, YouTube and Playlist.com and it is totally a possibility for a good show. Here! You can check out one of their songs on YouTube. I could not resist picking the one that someone set to some Twilight clips. We don't know for sure what the night will bring after Chelsea Handler...we are certainly keeping our options open. I just hope we don't poop out and decide to call it an early night.

I am calling it an early night tonight since the Princess Strikers have an 8am game tomorrow! What!? Who's bringing the coffee?!!?

G'night Y'all!

WoooooWhooooooo!! Free Music!

I love music!! And I REALLY love FREE music. If you share this common interest, read on! I am gonna share some sweet news with you. I listen to 105.5 Triple M out of Madison, WI each day. It is by far my favorite radio station. I listen to them online and when I am in my car, I use the iPhone app FlyCast Radio. LOVE IT! The iPhone app is especially fun because you can “tweet” about songs that you are listening to. I find this extremely useful when I find a song I really want to get, but don’t have a way to write it down. All I have to do is “tweet” my critique of the song so I can go back to my Twitter account later to see all the songs I liked or maybe even disliked! I really urge you to listen to them sometime. I bet you will agree that they ROCK! Wish I still lived in Madison, but this really, really helps me feel that much less far away. That and Facebook! What on Earth would I do without that connection!?

Soooo…you are probably wondering why I titled this entry like I did and waiting on the sweet news. I am sharing a link below with you with a TON of free music links from the Triple M website!

LOVE IT! Don’t thank me…Thank THEM!

ENJOY!

Here is the link:

http://blogs.1055triplem.com/category/free-mp3s/

DALLAS! MY KIND OF TOWN!

This Spring is starting to take shape for us! Well, I should say for Troy and I. I am starting to feel guilty. We have two things planned for ourselves this spring that involve weekends in Dallas.

First, April 24^th we are going to see Chelsea Handler (our favorite female comedian) at the Nokia Theatre in Grand Prairie. Last Fall we made our very first trip to Dallas for a night to see Mat Kearney at the Dallas House of Blues. We had a BLAST! We were supposed to see Chelsea Handler in Vegas last fall, but the dates didn’t work out, so you can imagine my excitement when she announced her Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang Tour promoting her new book due out this Spring. I jumped all over that and got us two tickets. Troy and I don’t get to do a whole lot on our own, which is fine, but it will be nice to have a night to do something less Disney. J

Sooooo….. we are excited, watching the calendar pages fly by…when all of the sudden…Tom Petty hits me up on Facebook! Well, his Facebook page hit me up on Facebook announcing his 2010 tour AND the fact that he is releasing a new CD this Spring! Now, I like the rest of you thought that the two times that I got to see Tom were the only two in my life. I thought the next time I got to see him, he would be waiting at those pearly gates for me someday in Heaven. But NO! To my surprise…I will get to partake in (at least) one more concert given by this FREAKIN’ AWESOME PERFORMER. Troy and I have gotten to see him twice now, as I mentioned before. But I have a feeling this will be the BEST! The last time we saw him was in Vegas, at the Hard Rock. It was so awesome. Very small venue. But unfortunately, I had the Shingles and was on pain pills. Boooooo! So, yes, it was soooo great, but could have been soooo much better.

I will keep you all posted! I go online tomorrow morning at 10am with my little presale code in hand. I’m scoping out some GOOD seats…Fingers Crossed!

Dallas Bound!

Well...I guess I knew that our trip to Vegas this year would probably not be happening. So I snagged us two tickets to The Fabulous Mat Kearney show at the House of Blues Dallas. I am sick with excitement. For some reason when I REALLY like a singer, I get overly excited when an opportunity arises to see them live. My Tulsa friends can back me on this from when I jump up and down with excitement to see William Joseph Band. They are local and fabulous. But enough about that...we are talking Dallas right now.
So Troy and I recruited Don and Juney to stay with Mia and all the mutts. :). We are on our own for the day. It is exciting, but seems strange because we always have the whiner, I mean Mia with us. That is a joke. But true. Love ya Mia! :)
We are staying a mile away from the House of Blues at a boutique hotel called Hotel Indigo. I have no idea if it is a decent place since this will be our first time in Dallas. At this point, it could be a dive and I would not care. I am just that excited. I am really hopeful that they will have autographs after the concert. We were in such a hurry to get on the road that I forgot my camera. I doubt my trusty iPhone camera will take good pix inside the House of Blues, so I'm scoping out anywhere on the way that might carry a disposable camera. Leave it to me to forget something that important. I mean, seriously, how do I expect to have my picture taken with Mat if I don't have a camera!? Doiation MINUS. Mom, you and Uncle Bobby will appreciate that one.
More to come as the day goes on...Stay Tuned!

William Joesph Band

A little over a year ago, we were at The Riverwalk in Jenks on a Sunday afternoon. We were enjoying a margarita and were pleasantly surprised to find this awesome singer performing. Just one guy and a guitar and microphone. We were instantly fans of his mellow voice and chill music.
We downloaded both of his CDs from his website and from there he quickly rose in the ranks on our playlists.
Recently, William Joseph added a guitar, bass and drums and formed The William Joseph Band. They are currently touring small bars, coffee shops and bookstore type establishments. We were thrilled to find out that he was playing just down the street in Jenks on Friday. So we grabbed a few friends and went to watch them. They were everything I remembered and we were not disappointed one bit! We sat and watched him in awe of his talent.

It was a wonderful night hanging with our friends and listening to one of our favorite singers. All weekend I keep thinking that this could have been the best night we have had in over a year!
Thanks to our friends for going with us! It means a lot. Hopefully you are fans now as well!

Calling All Camp Rock Fans...

...Let me introduce you to Mia. She is lover of all things Camp Rock and High School Musical!

Mia made a :stage: out of her two little table chairs. This is the second night in a row we have been blessed with the gift of music (karaoke) in our house. Last night she gave 4-5 performances. Tonight I asked her if she would mind if I took a little video since it was soooo cute. It was hard to keep the camera straight since I was laughing inside and trying not to do it outloud! I just wanted to post the video so you all could see her live and on stage! I have also posted this to my You Tube account, all you need to do is enter the search word missambita when on You Tube's website. It should bring up all of the little video clips that I have loaded over the past few years. Enjoy!

Vegas Bound...

I came home from work yesterday and Troy gave me my Valentine's Day card. We didn't really celebrate, and I suck at getting cards. But he gave me the one he got for me. I opened the card and 10 one hundred dollar bills dropped out! I was at a loss for words!! He is very lucky at the slot machines. He stopped by the casino on his way home from work yesterday with 40 bucks in hand and won 1600! He paid taxes on it right away, so only came home with 1000. How exciting! Now we can plan our annual trip to Vegas baby!!! Last year we did not get to go, so I am seriously excited. I want to see Cher more than I want to breathe! I hope to schedule our trip around a time that she is 'On' and not 'Dark'. But I also want to try to go when Kevin James will be out there. I love him and would love to see him again. But if we can't work that, I would love to see Howie Mandel again. Troy has not seen him. My Mom and I saw him at the Mirage a few years ago. And even though I had the FLU so bad, I was peeing my pants with laughter! That is such a great memory that Mom and I shared. I wish I wouldn't have been so horribly sick on that trip. To be honest, most of my Vegas trips have consisted of a 'Sick Amber'. The year before my FLU trip, Troy and I went out there and I had the Shingles! Even still, the memories have been great! That was the trip we took to see my all time fave Tom Petty at The Joint inside The Hard Rock Hotel. I sure wish he would play that venue again! What a GREAT place to see a concert. Even though you have to stand the whole time. It is such a small room, you feel like you are right there next to the stage, even from the last row! I am posting a picture from that concert. We stayed in the back so we were close to the bar! And we loved it! Shingles and all!

Vegas here we come!!!

*Free* Straight No Chaser

In case you read my post a few days ago regarding Sraight No Chaser...There is a FREE iTunes download. It is the song "Auld Lang
Syne". I am not sure how long it is on the "free" list, so go get it fast if you want it! Cheers!

Straight No Chaser

My friend Hetta emailed me a You Tube video of these guys! Check them out! They are very entertaining. Check them out on this website below or click the title of this post to go direct! They are on iTunes and You Tube as well.

Merry Christmas!

http://www.sncmusic.com/