2007 Top 10 Lists: Ivan Howard

Ivan Howard of The Rosebuds chimes in with his personal Top 10 List Of Musical Events of 2007:


Here is my Top 10 List Of Musical Events for me in 2007. It is impossible for me to pick a "top 10 albums" list since I have not heard a lot of new records this year, and every time I try make a top 10 list I always forget something either way!

10.) Selling out the Bowery Ballroom in NYC on our US Tour in May. You have to understand that our first ever show as The Rosebuds in NY was at a place called the Sidewalk Cafe on Avenue A, that held about 15 people all of whom were friends of the band we were playing with. Well, I should not say it was a real show because it really was an "Open Mic" night where everyone in the audience got in for free. The only catch was they had a two drink minimum!

9.) Watching the Red Sox clinch the division title from the center-field bleacher seats at Fenway park, with 9 of my best friends and watching the whole crowd sing the "ba ba bas" during Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline."

8.) The Quincy Jones Autobiography. Probably the best biography I have read. You can't imagine the things that he has actually done, and the bluntness with which he tells his life story. He spares no one including himself.

7.) I had a random email from a band out in the San Francisco bay area called the Morning Benders one morning asking if they could send me the new e.p. that they just finished (called "Boarded Doors"). I told them I would love to hear it and when it arrived at our house, I put it on in the kitchen when I was doing the dishes and was blown away. We asked them to open up our show at the Great American Music hall in SF a few months later.

6.) Kelly went up to NYC this summer to check out a few standup comedy shows and saw Micheal Showalter's comedy CD taping show at Union Hall (which we love by the way) and told me about a sketch he did about a poem he wrote in his high school literary journal. Well I finally heard that story on the CD and it is hilarious! Up there with "the Gorch" from Jon Wurster. What does it have to do with music you ask? Not really sure, but it isn't bothering me either way.

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5.) I recently had reconstructive ACL surgery, and while I was laying around the house for a couple of weeks Kelly and I watched the Bourne Identity Triology on DVD. Man, I might trade a few songs to be able to speak 80 languages and fight like Jason Bourne. I guess I can already drive like he does though. Did you see Kelly and I
test drive that Volvo on the Rosebuds Blog?

4.) The first 3 hours of the new Tom Petty documentary Running Down a Dream. Full Moon Fever was the first cassette tape I ever bought.

3.) After we played the Parish in Austin, TX on our last US tour, we met up with Jim Eno from Spoon and he showed Kelly, Matt, Giorgio and I his new Public Hi-Fi Recording Studio. It's a palace. He put me in the captain's chair of the control room, and played two of my favorite songs in the world back to back and I almost died from how good they sounded over those speakers there... and the fact that I did not even suggest what songs to play, they were already cued up. "Another One Bites the Dust" and "Ain't Know Sunshine When She's Gone."


2.) Watching Bon Iver's" first show ever at our Rosebuds' show at the House of Rock in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. We drove all night from Chicago to get to the afternoon show on time, and Justin (aka Bon Iver) who was our guitarist on tour kept telling us about how awesome his hometown was and about this place called The Joynt down from the venue where his parents met. Well what was awesome was the Bon Iver set. That was the first time any of us ever saw Justin play those songs. When he played "For Emma, For Ever Ago" and dedicated it to Kelly and me, it was all I could do to even watch the song it was so good. If I would have been more of a man I would have just balled my eyes out like I wanted to right there in front of everyone. But I kept it together that time.

1.) Eating breakfast with Ian Brown from The Stone Roses in Moscow, Russia. He is Kelly's "Elvis." It would actually be tied with hearing the bass line to "I Want to be Adored" with 3000 screaming Russians come over the PA speakers of the club we were playing together. I never thought that would be a possibility, but you never know what a random email could bring about.


(photo courtesy of Stranded In Stereo)