Dahlin Family

Archive for August, 2007

This is mainly for my own reference since I find myself looking this up now and then.

Lets say I have a dropdownlist of enum items where the ddl value is equal to the enum value.  So, when when ddl item is selected now you want to get the actual enum represented by this.

I have found this to work where EnumItems is the name of the enum:

EnumItems enumItem = (EnumItems)Enum.Parse(typeof(EnumItems), ddl.SelectedValue);

Last night I went to the Shout It Out Loud Tour, couldn’t find a link to the tour to give you here.  Anyways, it is a tour of 4 great Punk-Ska bands. 

First of all, I was amazed at how many people I talked to about going to the show that night, didn’t even know what Ska music is.  No, I didn’t say Scottish music with bag pipes.  I said “SKA” as in high energy, you can’t keep from moving, horn blowing music.  I think Ska shows have more energy in the crowd over any other genre and I have been to a lot of shows.  You have country, where everyone is in a party good time mood (modern country that is), you’ve got Rock N Roll where that seems to be either just raw anger or more of a pump up mood, hip-hop is dancing, anyways, SKA = ENERGY I tell you.

A Ska band generally consists of your traditional band, a guitar player, bass player, drummer, keyboardist and lead singer.  But, take that and throw in a sax player, a trumpet player, and a trombone player and you’ve got yourself a ska band.

I guess I was first introduced into this genre back in college.  There was a band called 3 Minute Hero (3MH) that would come to the carpet once in a while.  Well my roommate at the time knew the drummer so we would always go to the shows.  If anyone was wondering what the shirt  I was wearing yesterday was, that is the band.  These guys always put on one heck of a show and because we know the drummer we got to know the rest of the band too.  Yeah, they would always play the after bar at our place.  The good old days.

Well 3MH broke up shortly after I finished college, but they did have a couple of reunion shows this summer.  They were fun, a little different since we were all older now, grown up and married, but fun.  Even the band members had settled down.  It was pretty comical how they would start telling stories then be like, what are we talking about, we’re all old now, past our bed time and yeah…. 

3MH was my intro to the Ska world.  Btw you can check out pretty much all of the reunion show at The Fine Line on You Tube if you want. My favorite song, Spider Monkey is below which is what my Fantasy Football team is named after.  Ok, back to my intro to the Ska world.  Yeah, after that I wanted more, it’s not really mainstream music so you’re not going to hear it on the radio, but at the time there was a band, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, that I got into for a while, but then really didn’t hear much else. Then Reel Big Fish (RBF) and Less Than Jake (LTJ) came along.  The rest is history for me.  I’ve been a fan of Reel Big Fish for quite some time now.  These are the guys I really went to the tour to see, though Less Than Jake is just as popular if not more than RBF.

The tour consisted of All Against Authority,  Streetlight Manifesto, RBF and LTJ.  The venue for the tour was the Myth Nightclub in Maplewood.  If you haven’t seen a show here, go, it is a great place, smaller more intimate and great sound.

I missed the first band A-A-A, but caught Streetlight Manifesto.  I was very impressed, these guys were awesome and apparently everyone there know them since just about everyone was singing along with them. 

RBF took the stage next.  I guess they flip-flop with LTJ every night which is pretty cool.  For me, I wished they had closed that night, but I know others were happy the way it was.  These guys put on a great show, man they’re fun.

Finally LTJ came on stage.  They made their show interactive with the audience.  It was a play on The Price I$ Right.  You could sign up earlier in the night to be a contestant on there.  In the end 3 people were chosen.  They would play games to see what album the band would play tunes from.  It was fun and a good way for them to decide what to play since they have so much.  Again, another great act.  The tour was a blast, so glad I went.  Aaron, sorry I missed you’re going away party, but I had planned this for quite some time.

Vids:

3MH – Reunion show at The Fine Line

Streetlight Manifesto – Shout It Loud Tour

RBF – Shout It Loud Tour.

LTJ – Shout It Loud Tour