Celtic Punk at the Office 2.0 Con

This week I attended the Office 2.0 Conference in San Francisco, CA. I’ve already provided a few posts on my blog at OpenGarden.org: Intro, 900 lb Gorilla, Big Announcement, and Parade. What did I get out of it? Well, I think Wufoo is super cool and 3Tera is bad ass. Other than that…well, read my posts.

The event was held in the St. Regis hotel, which is super nice. It’s adjacent to the SFMOMA and the art in the hotel is, as you might suspect, modern and quite nice. After the festivities of the first day Pete and I retired to the hotel bar to mingle with the conference attendees. I was speaking with some fellow who asked me if I am a fan of The Pogues [w]. YES! I’m a big fan! I hadn’t seen them since Joe Strummer did the last tour with them. By the way, who would have ever thought MacGowan would outlive Strummer? Not me. After hearing my interest in the band, the fellow (Pat I think his name was) merrily handed me over the extra ticket he had to the concert that night at The Fillmore. The freakin’ Pogues at The freakin’ Fillmore! How could I pass that up? Apparently Pat (the fellow) had been the night before, had tickets for all three nights, and couldn’t find someone to use the extra ticket he had for that night. I was so damn exhausted, but I knew I would be kicking myself for years if I didn’t go. I got there about 8:00 PM and the crowd broke up at 11:15 PM or so. In general, I was rather displeased with how mellow the audience was. I’ve seen The Pogues do EIGHT encores and the crowd only stuck around long enough to get two out of them. The pit was pretty sedate too. Not like the last time I saw them with Strummer. I think part of this was MacGowan’s fault b/c he simply isn’t too energetic these days. However, I heard many concert-goers commenting on how wild the pit was. Wild? Bah! That was super mellow. MacGowan looks alright though having put on some weight (maybe he’s off the white horse). Anyhow, I had a blast.Thanks Pat (I hope that’s your name).

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that the opening band Murder by Death, which I only caught about thirty minutes of, was really great. Too bad the audience was pretty lame for them because these guys (and gal) were seriously heavy (and they had a Cello).