Interesting night tonight. Powerful performance, slammin', very high energy. Place was packed by the time the band kicked off with the Earth, Wind, & Fire medley, which was particularly stompin' and energetic tonight. We had peeps in from Seattle, Julie Hill and her husband Andy Bryant, members of the Type A Band. They were dazzled.
Type A is the band that featured my long-time bro' Kurt Kolstad on tubs. Some of you may recall my posts about him (scroll down, 1st blog post, hear some mp3 cuts. Bad Boy). Kurt continues to battle his cancer, which has recurred. Send him some healing energy and prayers.Also in the house tonight were musical compadres Joe and Dennis from Kansas City. They'd made vacation travel reservations to come see the band on the 18th -- and then The Palms canceled the gig that night. But, they rescheduled to come hang. That's dedication. Jerry made 'em get up and sing at the end of the night on "We Are Nothing."
That was too cool.If that shot looks a little funky, it's cuz the par cans blew during the middle of the show, leaving much of the stage area pretty dark. Only two of the four were working to begin with (arghhh!), but then they quit outa the blue.
The light grid -- such as it is -- is controlled by an old laptop running "LightJockey" software, the programming from which goes out a USB port via a cable that hooks into a Martin USB-DMX II interface box, and the XLR cable output of that drives the lights (pic below of the actual unit backstage).
Well, someone mislaid/lost/pilfered the DMX junction box and they don't have a spare, so they had to rent one from the Wynn, who charged them 100 bucks to rent the itty-bitty (but indispensable) unit, and two hundred more for the cat that delivered it.Amazing. Look: give me the three hundred bucks, I'll bop over to Sam Ash or The Guitar Center, pick up six 500w pars, bring 'em back with the two I already own. Be back in an hour. So, that'll be roughly a 40 amp draw. We can just hang 'em and plug 'em into two std 20 amp AC circuits (rather than a skittish and frequently missing laptop).
Mission accomplished. Stage lit up nicely. This is not rocket science.
I tried to get good shots, with mixed, mostly disappointing results (low usable percentage tonight), given the chronic light system SNAFU. Some relative keepers from the evening:
Really nice crowd tonight.They dug it big-time. Thanks to all the girls from the "Hats" show (and to Steven Lee, who's featured on my current podcast) for comin' to hang.It's late, I'm gonna crash. Tired. More later. Mucho thanks to everyone who came tonight.
UPDATE: JOEL RICHMAN
Bad Boy drummer Joel Richman came to hang last night, and told me he's available and looking for gigs. This cat play so fine.
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