-N. Diamond
We've made it to September. I will now allow myself to start counting the time remaining in weeks. There is light at the end of this tunnel; literally.
The majority of the stations' population has a two-day weekend. To celebrate, there was an arts festival, mini-golf (unbelievable), and an open mic night. I slept through the first two events, but woke up in time to do sound for the open mic night. A similar evening was held about a month ago and while I was doing sound, several people asked me to play something. I had nothing prepared and therefore did not play. This time Kevin, one of the guys in my regular band, asked me to accompany him on David Bowie's "Space Oddity". Knowing I'd have to play on that song, I prepared a home-grown version of Led Zeppelin's "No Quarter" with my all-mighty Korg PX-4D on bass and drums. Also, I sang "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)" by Green Day. What made that tune happen was having multi-instrumentalist Chris play violin just like the record. We had only talked about this via email, so during the actual performance was the first time we ever tried it. It is such a joy to work with a competent musician. Chris also played accordian and piano this night. He has also played mandolin with other groups here. Kudos to him.
I have been trying to exploit the recording ability of my laptop computer with Steinberg's "Cubase LE" software. This has worked really well for recording band practices, so I thought I'd try to capture the whole evening. It worked perfectly for everything except the songs I played on; ridiculous. Fortunately, I also video'd the whole evening (we can also call this 'evidence' Mr. Smith) and I can transfer the audio from the camera into my laptop for editting and enhancement. As an aside, this place can get damn crazy sometimes. Being an 'unaltered' observer is both hilarious and frightening.
The evening seemed to be another success, but I must admit I'm really looking forward to our Sept 20 "Sunrise / Mother of All Polestocks" event. We're adding another 6-8 songs, and shuffling out some older ones. One of the funnest parts of the whole band thing has been being a willing accomplice to the transmutation of suspected replicant Ethan (see his blog linked at right). His ability to morph from mild-mannered rocket scientist to Carl Perkins to Prince to Kurt Cobain to.... well, you'll have to wait to see what we've got cooking for this next show. Trust me, this guy is off the hook.
The leading theory is that the Baslers (turboprop DC-3) are supposed to arrive Oct 23 and the C-130's November 5. We have tentatively planned a station opening concert for November 7. I don't know how we'll out-do our previous concerts (maybe fireworks or a live sacrifice), but I'm sure our local concert promoter Kevin will try.
After that, the 60 of us will be scurrying like rats to get out of here.
More later.
