Weekend Fun (and a final Coffee Table)

Good morning!

Well, it was a whale of a weekend. Friday, Sus and I hit a ton of estate sales and laughed our way all over West Nashville; Saturday, Matthew and I met up with my old coworker Jesse at Red Door East, we ate the Wild Cow for the first (and definitely not last) time, and generally had a nice day; Sunday, I bought a coffee table (the LAST COFFEE TABLE, I swear it!) and we went to see the Zombies (it was everything I wanted a Zombies concert to be, and more! I was actually giddy for ninety nine percent of the their set). Here I am Monday morning with a wistful feeling for the three days past! I am still completely terrible at remembering to photo document events as they happen, but here are a couple roundup photos from what all I did remember to take pictures of:

Item One: THE COFFEE TABLE.

While you know that I'm a hopeless romantic when it comes to estate sale fortunes, and always secretly believe that when I want something awesome, it could be THE NEXT sale I attend that offers up "just what I needed", I have nevertheless been in an absolute faithless tizzy about finding the coffee table of my dreams. In spite of vigilant Goodwill and estate sale picking over the last three months, I haven't found a single one to fill the oblong shaped hole in not only my heart but my furniture set up. Remember from the video blog and the post about my leopard print couches back in January that I've been working like a d-o-g DOG on the den? The place holder coffee table, a leftover from a former roommate and as passionless a connection as I have ever had with a piece of furniture, was driving me nuts. 

Well, when I was on Craigslist Saturday evening and saw this table come up in results for "retro coffee table, I was starstruck. The surfboard like sheen of the walnut! The diminutive size! The less than $100 price tag! The ad was posted February 19th, so while I had no hopes that the Murfreesboro antique mall that had offered the piece in the first place still had it, I shook Matthew out of bed Sunday morning and we drove down across the county line to check it out. After a frazzled search of the booths, we asked at the front desk if they'd seen a Danish modern coffee table lying around anywhere, or if it had been sold, and one of the employees unearthed it from under a pile of new arrivals in a booth in one corner. Love at second sight! It looks even better in person than it does in its pictures (don't we all). As soon as we address the carpet situation in the den, that room is going to be the very jewel in the crown of my interior decorating life. In the immortal words of Iggy Pop, HUR-RAY, SUCCESS!

Item Two: The Clothes We Wear to East Nashville:

Granted, I do live in Inglewood, but there's something about saying "Why don't we meet up in Five Points?" that puts me on ultra-red-alert style guard. Which is why, on a Saturday night around 9 o'clock, you could see me huddled up the bar railing of a crowded, smoky Red Door East in a full on fifties' frock, beret, neckerchief, and four inch wedges. Go hard or go home!

This dress is one of the two dollar finds from that sale in Bethpage I was telling you about a few weeks ago (and from whence came the equally two dollars Persian lamb coat...WONDERS NEVER CEASE). It has a pattern of beautiful white poinsettia like flowers spidering out in embroidery all over the material, and a velvet collar with rhinestone and seed pearl embellishments. Problem? The bust and waist are two or three sizes too big. Solution? Super-tight black blazer from an estate sale, with belt, with neckerchief, and black skirt worn under the whole thing for added volume and length, annnnnnd... voilá. Re-sizing without doing a thing to the original garment. The beret was all about covering up a bad hair day, additionally. Do you see how many troubleshooting issues come about in wearing vintage clothes? I do like a challenge, but you should have seen me about ten minutes before I left the house, hollering "Have you seen that belt that's supposed to be in this drawer that I had on my body less than twenty minutes ago and now it's disappeared?" It re-materialized in the bathroom closet (?!), and we were on our way.

The top of the dress still buckles a little bit due to being drawn in so tightly by the blazer and the belt, but hence the neckerchief to draw attention from it. Layer, layer, layer! 

Item Three: The Zombies Live in Concert

source

Boy, was I glad to the Zombies in concert! The opening acts were a) younger and b) disappointing (sorry! I hate to sit through bands I don't like to see a band I like, it's just the truth!), but I was over the moon from the first song of the headlining set. All blacked out stage, lights up, the opening of one of the band's 1965 releases, "I Love You", and suddenly Colin Blunstone's soaring, soaring voice on the "And I don't know, what to say" line. I almost couldn't bear how happy I was. While the breathy, ethereal nature of Blunstone's delivery on Chris White and Rod Argent's at turns eerie and at turns jubilant songs is a huge part of the Zombies' appeal to me, it's easy to forget what an industrial-grade freaking voice the singer has. Every prolonged note like that, even fifty some odd years after the first time CB sang it, rang out like a bell. Incredible! It's so funny how you don't think of people as being particularly this or that as singers until you are in the same room with them, watching them perform death-defying leaps of vocal performance, and landing note after note flawlessly. No auto-tune, no re-takes, just on the spot and killing it. It reminded me of when I saw David Byrne at the Ryman in 2008...those kinds of voices just fill the room. 

And watching Rod Argent play the keyboard was something ELSE. He did a ten minute version of "Hold Your Head Up" from his post-Zombies band, Argent, complete with a pro-tip of "Most people think the song is 'hold your head up...unnngh...'.or just 'hold your head up....'. It's actually 'Hold your head up, woman', so I thought if you wanted to sing along, there's a little known fact for you..." He then proceeded to melt faces. Stunning. They were as professional and well-put together as you could have hoped for. And played a ton of stuff off Odessey and Oracle, which just about made me cry thinking of how much that album meant to me as a wide eyed teen in 2002 and still does in 2013. So yes! Wonderful. So pleased they stopped in Nashville.

Here's a photo we took just before Matthew's phone died and the Zombies took the stage. I have some kind of obsession with looking off to one side in photos, but in this case, I think both of us thought the camera lens was in a different place than in reality it was. Anyway, don't we look perfectly unimpressed. Not the case after the last set, I assure you! Not the case at all!

Anyway, that's about it and all for today. What did you do this weekend? Find any killer finds at the estate sales or the thrift store? See any crazy shows? Solve any puzzling sartorial conundrums? Let a girl know!

We'll get through this rainy Monday and I'll see you back here with bells on tomorrow! Til then.