I got there early, around 6 and help/watched Stu set up the stage and packed in my gear. We were initially expecting the night to start at 8 but the doors didn't open until 8:45 which was a little irritating as it meant we couldn't get on until almost midnight.
The first band, Darling Buds, were a last minute thing. The first band were initially supposed to be someone else but for some reason they were changed at the last minute. We found out on the night. Turned out they were quite good and put on a nice acoustic show. Their five or so fans were pretty happy. The 20 or so Walken + Meebar fans there that early felt nicely warmed up.
The Suns rocked out in their extreme style and put on a great show, sparklers and all. I love watching these guys. I've seen too many bands that want to do the rock moves The Suns do but don't because they know they'll look stupid. The Suns show everyone how it should be done. ROCK!
I love Meebar but I was a bit disappointed in their set. It wasn't their fault as such, they were just mixed so darn loud. I think they're just a little more subtle than they were portrayed by the mix and lot of that was lost. Sounded great back stage with the wall to insulate a little. And have to give them huge thanks for bringing their fans and for shortening their set for us. No Bomb The Bass though :(
Finally around midnight we set the video playing. The crowd seemed to like it, laughing in the right places while we changed back stage. When the video finished we walked out on staging in full video constume and played the full EP live. Never had as much fun at a gig and we all played really well (sounded good on stage anyway and the crowd seemed happy).
Back off stage briefly to change out of costume, a bit too darn hot under the lights to play the rest of the set. Not sure we'll be making a habit of playing the whole EP first when we have to play a long set because it kind of blows our load of rock songs. Found ourselves struggling to keep up the rock vibe toward the end, resorting to finishing on our not-that-great cover of "Digging The Grave".
And maybe, just maybe we should have ignored the demands of the crowd for an encore of one of our oldest songs, if only because we hadn't played it for two years and were bound to screw it up. Which of course we did, but all they really wanted was the stupid long rock ending which we happily gave 'em.
Would have liked a few more people there (got around 100 I think) but I suppose the cold raining night after such a nice warm night on Wednesday wouldn't have helped the crowds, nor us playing so late on a Thursday.
Next gig is early (around 9:30, 10) on a Saturday @ Meebar's CD Launch @ The Espy Gershwin room, definitely looking forward to that. Should be massive.
More interesting to me are the many links to these photos wondering if it's real of if it's CGI. The question only comes about because us mere mortals have only ever seen such massive infrastructure in computer games and movies. Recent versions of Quake, Half Life and Doom all have massive columns, weird machinery. Usually the walls are dirty and wet. Ditto movies like The Matrix.
We're so closely faking reality, that when we finally see it, our first reaction is to doubt what we're seeing.
I find that vaguely frightening.
Watching Video Hits on the weekend and every video includes a message informing the viewer they can receive the song they're watching in ringtone form for $4 by dialing the number on the screen.
All the numbers seem to indicate this sort of purchase is doing well, with ringtones outselling CD singles.
We already have multimedia phones capable of playing MP3s. I'm not sure if we have the technology to transfer a music file over the network but I'm sure 3G could do it easily.
How hard is it to change the tech used in this ringtone rip-off to send the actual song they're watching to their phone in MP3 format, instead of a 10th of the song in tryhard ring-tone midi format? All by-passing the evil evil internet.
And if the stupid kids are happy to pay $4 for a crap cover version of a 10th of a song, how much would they pay for the actual song? Or is the real song worth less than the ringtone? Is the music video now just an advert for the ringtone?
So close...