When I video tape and blog about the bands I see I usually friend the band and post links to the content on their wall. As a result I see interesting posts from my "friends" on occasion. Monday night, for example.
Both Brite Futures and Champagne Champagne posted about doing a free show that night at the Crocodile. I've never seen a show at the Crocodile and I love both bands and had no plans for the evening, so I wandered across Belltown, ate dinner, then staked out a nice table in the back room by the stage.
Brite Futures started setting up on the small stage and I wasn't sure they'd fit. It turned out to be a subset, with 3 members of Brite Futures - according to the Stranger's lineout blog we saw Claire England, Mark "Gajamagic" Gajadhar, and David Price. Pearl Dragon was there early, I saw news that he was in a house fire but didn't get the details.
Dana came and joined me at the table shortly after 8 and we had a nice vegetarian pizza and some drinks. Pearl Dragon checked in to tell us that they'd go on at 9. I got up to get Dana a drink and when I got back to the table Dana had invited a nice lady to sit at our table and introduced her to me, it turns out she's Pearl Dragon's mom. She was very nice and she and Dana bonded over kid gossip and parenting and had a great time. We learned many of the details around the show from her.
It's amusing, I got to literally hundreds of shows and I never meet any friends or relatives of the bands - I'm sure I've been right next to them, I'm just to quiet to ever introduce myself. Dana comes with me to one show and we're friends of Pearl Dragon's family. My wife has always been better at networking and making friends, I blame my weaknesses on my nerdiness: too much of my nervous system is wired around math and tech, not leaving enough for the social interaction. Either that or I'm just too bashful.
I only got a little video and a couple of pictures but the show was fun. It was about the best case for a talented group that had rehearsed once 3 hours earlier, raw and fascinating, surprisingly powerful short and fast pieces.
There was some amusing candid patter like "Don't worry about how we botched the song here, we'll redo it and edit it back together."
They also brought Tyler Wilman of Green Apple Quick Step up for an effective vocal, once again short, sweet and powerful. I didn't manage to get Tyler on video, I only got a couple of bits with Pearl Dragin singing and the drum/guitar/keys or drum/keys/keys played by Brite Futures.
I don't know if the pilot will ever see the light of day but I hope it does, and I'd enjoy the heck out of seeing more shows like this. I hope Pearl recovers completely and comfortably, I hope Brite Futures has a good show at the Crocodile on Thursday at their SXSW kick-off, and I'd love to see Pearl Dragon work with live bands and given a little more time to get additional parts and material mastered, but the raw immediate take with no time for polish and complexity made for an intense and urgent show. Cool idea, what bands would we mash up? We could continue the hip hop + rock/pop band trend, go to the singer songwriter + band mash-ups and so on.
Tom fr/Knowmads + the Globes, THEESatisfaction + Finn Riggins, SOL + Craft Spells, I have no idea which would work well, I'm just randomly picking bands and hip hop performers I like. Would it be compelling TV, or at least interesting? I don't know, but I enjoyed being in the back bar at the Crocodile while they filmed it so I hope they do more, I'd love to see them.
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