Area 7 performance Saturday 11.22.08 - Diverse Society, Oblivious Signal, Empyrean, and yours truly.
THANK YOU to Cristina from Oblivious Signal for inviting us to perform and putting together a group of talented and diverse musicians. Thank you also to - the members of Diverse Society, Oblivious Signal & Empyrean that stuck around to watch us perform , the bartenders @ Area 7 for my Sam Adams, and of course the friends and fans that came out to support us.
This was an interesting one...
I arrived at the venue just in time to catch the 2nd band and took my place at the side of the stage (well, not so much a stage as an elevated platform with a short cat walk and a stripper pole off to opposite side) to watch all of the bands. A few minutes into Diverse Society's set I notice there are suspended TV screens circling the entire establishment playing really bad, circa 1969 porno. When I say bad I mean BAD. Barnyard fuck scenes, rape, snuff, and meatgrinders? Yeah. It was a little distracting to say the least. In spite of the images flickering above me of the farmer's daughter getting fingered in the pig pen while the chickens watch (I'm not even kidding) I was able to focus (kinda) on the remainder of their set.
Up next was Oblivious Signal...wow. The band is fronted by this diminuative ingénue with a ferocious and prodigious voice. She delivered. She has a very enigmatic stage presence and connected to each individual in the audience, utilized every inch of free space to perform to the crowd, and at one point jumped atop a pool table to make her way over to where I was watching and scream in my face. That, my friends, was a moment in time that caused me to breifly drop my firm veneer and say "fuck yeah".
Next up was Empyrean who after a long gig the night before, followed by an 8am shift at Subway (mmm...$5 footlongs) managed to travel down to the 954 hood to perform. Their Knight Rider-esque gear alone was entertaining but their performance was unique, talented, and energetic. The highlight of their presentation was two-fold: the singer hanging out in the cage during an instrumental break down, and the 2 high jumps the bass player (or as their singer advised "the black guy") pulled off in the 2nd to last song.
During our set...I dunno what came over us. We were acting very silly...perhaps a side effect of each of us coming down with whatever-the-fuck virus is going around and being high off DayQuil but I personally was feeling very much "Kid Offensive". The fo' sho' HANDS DOWN highlight of our performance...James doing his sexy dance at the stripper pole during Torn Inside. Yep, that was hilarious...so much so I forgot the fucking lyrics of the song. He does that shit at rehearsal all the time and it messes me up every time. But he redeems himself by making cookies so for that reason we keep him in the band (that and who else could POSSIBLY deal with assholes like myself and Armando? Hmm?)
The night came to a wrap around 2am and we headed home. My lungs full of 2nd hand smoke, my belly full of Sam Adams and laughter, and my head filled with images of James doing his sexy dance on stage, during a performance, in public.
Good times.
~Phoenix~
(((Happy Birthday Rob. You're a doosh bag.)))