Memorial Day Rockin' Eve-Eve-Eve

Yesterday was the Friday that led off Memorial Day weekend here in Charlottesville (and I guess throughout the rest of the country as well). We played the Tea Bazaar with Paper Fleet and Borrowed Beams of Light and a good time was had by all. All three bands were different from one another, but similar enough that people who liked one probably liked all three. I know I did!

The Posters played first, and we were a lot sloppier than usual, but it was fun and I think the general outline of each song still pretty much translated to people. I broke a bass string, which I've never done before, even just in practice!

Next up was Paper Fleet. Their singer / guitar player guy looked much like Jordan Catalano.


They should consider changing their band's name to Frozen Embryos. Or, you know, Residue. Also, they should get Rayanne to sing "I Wanna Be Sedated" with them. (Actually, no, they shouldn't.)


I'm sorry these pictures are so bad. I forgot my camera (which takes pretty terrible pictures anyway) and I was stuck with my phone. Renee took a lot of pictures with her new camera (which she claims is "almost as good as Josh's") and she'll probably post them on fbook.

The Beams were on next. Here they are tuning up.


I was pretty impressed with how many people in town know all the words to their songs. Admittedly about half their lyrics are just "ahh" or "ohh," but still, people knew all the other words too.

As you can see in the picture below, the whole band is saying "ahhhh." I think this was the beginning of "Thousand Year Powernap," the song with the bass line so infectious that Dave cannot refrain from playing it in practice whenever we're not practicing one of our actual songs.


Local photographer and video rental impresario Andy is taking a picture of the Beams here.


I went to the back of the room to get a shot of how huge the crowd was. I'm not sure if as many people were there for our set, but even if it was half of what you see here it was a pretty big crowd for us, and it was really fun to share the stage with the Beams. Adam is a pop songsmith of the highest order!


Anyway, that was a badass show. Other than breaking a string it was a totally positive experience. I still have "Kids Are Great" stuck in my head! At the moment we don't have anything lined up until mid July, so it's going to be nose-to-the-grind-stone recording for a while.