Radio Free Upstate

As many people know, I am a huge fan of the Amazon.com wishlist feature. It allows me to remember the books, DVDs and other products I want to get some point in the future and greatly simplifies birthday and holiday gift giving. For a while now, my only gripe with the Amazon.com wishlist is that the product has to be available from Amazon in order to put it in my wishlist. This isn’t usually a huge issue, as a lot of the non-Amazon online retailers I like (such as Musician’s Friend and the Home Brewery) are Amazon affiliates. But sometimes there is one thing I REALLY want to get that isn’t available through Amazon, especially since I have pretty disparite interests (including firearms, homebrewing, playing a variety of musicial instruments and podcasting). I have looked for a web application to serve as a universal wishlist, but the one application I found that was somewhat passable (Wishlistr) was really lacking in some important ways. For instance, it is not only impossible to sort by price (if you are looking for a small gift) or type of item in a Wishlistr wishlist, but the price of an item isn’t even displayed on the list!

Thankfully, Amazon has come to the rescue by creating a bookmarklet that allows you to place items from any website into your Amazon wishlist. Now it is possible to have items from any site you want displayed in one place, thus eliminating the need to juggle more than one wishlist. Now obviously you can’t use Amazon’s payment system to pay for items for non-Amazon affiliated sites, but at least the prices are displayed and you can use the “sort by price” feature to find that special gift within your budget range. It’s a very clever solution and reminds me yet again why I love Amazon.

Ever since I first laid on eyes on it since I came to visit my sister in Albany in the early 1990’s, I’ve been utterly fascinated by the Egg Center for the Performing Arts. From its perch overlooking I-787 and the Hudson River from the Empire State Plaza, it’s a structure that’s hard to miss if you visit Downtown Albany (especially since it is near the State Museum, which is one of the required destinations of every school trip to Albany since the Plaza was built). Despite my desire to see a concert there, I was foiled by scheduling and/or poverty whenever an opportunity to attend a concert there arose.

I was finally able to end my streak of bad luck last Friday, when Jen and I went to see county-folk performer Nanci Griffith and her band, the Blue Moon Orchestra, in the Egg’s 450 seat Lewis A. Sawyer Theatre. The theatre (which was about 80% full) has very steep stadium style seating and has a excellent lines of sight from almost every seat. Despite the fact we were in the next to last row, we were probably no more than forty feet from the stage.

As cool as the venue was, it could not compare to the greatness of the performance. I’ve been listening to Nanci Griffith (and her songs as performed by Kathy Mattea and others) since I was pretty young and I have to say that she did not disappoint. While she limited herself to playing guitar on only about half the songs that she played due to a recent surgery (which look to be for carpal tunnel syndrome), her voice is as great as ever, her guitar playing on the songs where she allowed herself to play was polished and rhythmic, and her storyteling between songs was absolutely engaging. Her setlist incorporated songs spanning across her thirty-year-long career, and managed to include a lot of old favorites without coming across as if someone had put a greatest hits CD on a random setting. With the sole exception of one audience member “whispering” loudly during her acapella final number (”Road to Aberdeen”), the audience seemed to be completely engrossed in the performace and applauded long after the final encore.

All in all, it was a fantastic show in a fantastic venue, and I can’t wait to see Nanci Griffith at the Egg again!

Lifelong Binghamtonian Michael O’Connell Jr. weighs in on the ongoing controversy surrounding the beating of Bryan Steinhauer by Miladin Kovacevic.

Show Notes

• The legislative session has come to an end, giving us time to podcast again!
• The tragic beating of one Binghamton University student by another has created a minor international incident between the US and Serbia after officials at the Serbian consulate illegally provide an emergency passport to one of the suspects.
• On a much lighter note, we are well into the summer concert and festival season.  We’re headed off to see Nanci Griffith and Aimee Mann in Albany in the next few weeks.  Where are you going this summer?  Let us know by leaving a comment below!

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