Gig report: Carousel Lounge, 11/21/07

Terrific show at the Carousel Lounge last night opening up for Blue Squeezbox.

It was fun and inspiring, lots of our friends showed up, and the guys in Blue Squeezebox were enthusiastic and very cool. 

Both Reed's folks and my Mom showed up, which was nice!  Reed's folks came to his Halloween party but my Mom hadn't seen us play, she had only heard a few recordings.  The crowd that had showed up by the time we started filled the Carousel Lounge on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, so we consider that to be decidedly awesome.  Lots of our personal friends showed up, and people we haven't seen in a while, who heard about it through other friends or through our mailing list.  Blue Squeezebox had a decent contingent, but we'd been promoting the show like mad since we found out, so I think that helped our turnout.

As for the show itself, our strong points are our energy and our sense of fun.  We're doing stuff that nobody else seems to do on stage, a variety of styles and attitudes that combines to create a pretty unique and entertaining show. 

Musically, we have a ways to go.  My main bugbear right now is playing too fast.  We're looking for a rhythm section, but right now it's just my electric guitar and Reed's voice.  Watching the video, pretty much every one of the songs we played was too fast, and in some cases it really hurt the song musically.  I get so amped up with energy that I rush through the songs like it's a race.  I've been working on it, but it's really a huge priority for me right now, I just cannot continue playing like that.  Must be smoother, tighter, and combine being more relaxed on stage with projecting an infectious energy.

After the show, Reed took our mailing list around to find that one of our fans had already sent it around the room and we had a page and a half of new entries!  Reed picked up some stragglers that came in late, and we got a sizeable addition to the list out of it.  He also travelled the tip jar, which returned considerably fuller than it started, marking the first time we've ever made money from playing music!   

Blue Squeezebox played two terrific sets afterward, we hung out and enjoyed the evening.   After the show we posted a short videoblog about it and some of the videos of the songs.  The rest will be up soon.

We'll be at Conan's Pizza and Trophy's this coming Monday and Tuesday, and back at the Green Muse on Thursday.  Things are going great!

Isaac