I feel like we're all obliged to go back now, and meet the new pope.
I've been posting about too many sad things recently, so to emphasize the bright side I thought I would share a story about a major fun moment to kind of balance things out.
In the area of happy happy joy joy, the Moisture Festival starts next week, and my band is the pit band for the whole first week of shows. It will be four weeks of vaudeville and variety acts, a different show every night, and friends visiting from all over the world. I can't wait to dress up and play with my great band mates.
My band mates recently turned out to help me storm the stage during a show by my great friends Leftover Salmon at the fantastic Neptune Theater. Leftover Salmon describes their music as Polyethnic Cajun Slamgrass, and they have an enthusiastic following from my generation on down to the 20 somethings. Their sound arises from a marriage of rock and roll and bluegrass and the band and my best friends here in Seattle have an endless history of fabulous pranks played on one another, starting way back in 1993. No matter what happens it is always a completely magical moment.
My friend Rhonda engineered the logistics. We have arrived into the Salmon's shows in many ways. We've done the Cancan, stolen their mascot (a Major McCheese from a McDonald's playground), and donned animal costumes. This time we decided a little marching band (it was near Mardi Gras) would be the perfect thing. I got the band together based only on my enthusiastic promise of a really great moment in time. Rhonda contacted the owner of the theater to see if he would allow us to stage a little event during the show. It turned out he was a total fan of Moisture Festival, so he enthusiastically supported our moment. He comped us into the show and the stage manager went way out of her way to help us. She had a super busy job already, but let us look around and make a plan and then got her security people to assist us. They even did their best to give us a dressing room of sorts that was not in the backstage area where we might run into the band. It was a funky closet almost completely filled with a leaking ice machine and boxes and other stuff, but it totally fit the spirit of our secret endeavor. We wanted to be a surprise, so we were always on the lookout for anyone who might give us away.
The venue was a cool space, an old fancy movie theater converted to a theater/club. There was an aisle up the left side of the theater that had a rickety set of stairs up to the stage. We decided to start playing during the applause between the third or fourth song of the first set, march up the aisle and on to the stage. We'd finish playing our tune (Second Line), Rhonda would make an announcement, and then we would play off with another song. The band arrived little by little, our drummer first in a fine jacket and carrying a marching snare drum. By the time everyone had arrived and been checked in we also had two trombones, a clarinet, two saxes and two trumpets. We told everyone the plan, got their stuff put away, and congregated in the balcony of the theater to wait for the start of the show. One of our members almost gave us away, arriving with his trombone in hand, playing. We jumped him and took away his horn. Along the way we got the report that our friend Vince, the lead singer in the band, asked another friend if we were there, and looked really disappointed when she said she thought Rhonda was maybe out of town for the weekend.
We were a fantastic flat out surprise when we appeared from the audience. The Salmons started playing along, and I got to have five minutes of rock star fame, which as it turns out is just about right in the bucket list department. The crowd really did go crazy. It was massive blazing fun. It is why guerilla band is one of my favorite things. Vince did what he usually does and made up some verses on the spot about the moment. My fellow bandies left pretty quickly after the gig, but Rhonda and I stayed and danced and partied like we were 20 until 2 am. Video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2F8akt6kwI
