Friday, February 25, 2011

WEGO: February Birthday Glow

BS Box (1 meg)
Sound Check (4 megs)
Set 1 (71 megs)
Set 2 (55 megs)
Set 3 (16 megs)

Here are more than enough recordings from the strange and powerful "February birthdays" house-party we played on the 19th. The whole thing went down at the same house as the Halloween party. The most notable setting differences this time were the new acoustic format and the party's strict glowstick-and-candle-only lighting scheme. By the second set, our eyes had grown so comfortable in the dark that the headlamps that we were wearing to light up the signal boards felt like searing spotlights.

Speaking of birthdays, has it been a year now since we started this project? If not, it's definitely getting close. And it still feels like it's evolving quite quickly. Yes!

So much went down at this party that I'll let the recordings speak for themselves. It's pretty easy to hear the ebb and flow of energy. Most of both the highs *and* the lows come in sets 2 and 3 (really just a brief water-break between them). …from oddball inspirations like "Holy Shit, This is It!", "Jesse's Sweet Sweet Groove" (my personal high-point of the night) and my weirdly entertaining duet with Woody on Justin Timberlake's "Sexy Back" to the occasional vocal breakdown that may have overstayed its welcome. (There's sooooo much I'm not mentioning though! By all means, call yours out in the comments below.)

I played this show with a new EQ pedal for the bass-box that gives me a significantly increased amount of tonal/volume control, but there are still a couple of things that I want to try to tweak with the overall group sound. Hopefully at our next rehearsal. It was a rowdy enough party (with huuuuuuuuge electronic music playing during our breaks) that it's a little hard to guage our sonic effectiveness for the event, but I did get plenty of sincere compliments in addition to the undeniable compliment of frequent dancing listeners. I feel like we might've supported them a little better, but I'm grateful for their commitment nonetheless!

Again, I was the only one with a real vocal mic, so you'll hear our recently customary group shout-singing throughout. It actually works surprisingly well! But I'm beginning to think we've outgrown it and could really improve our range with a full set of mics. (The rest of the singers are just too versatile to reduce to the top 1/4 of their dynamic range!)

This is mostly "as it happened", though I *have* edited some of the crowd banter out here and there to protect the guilty. Whether you were there or not, let us know what you think!

2 comments:

F R E E L A B said...

Just noticed Woody playing the tambourine with his foot during Iron Man ... a nice tight percussion addition :))

F R E E L A B said...

...am also really liking our first 5-chord change at about 23:00 in the first set. I say we up the limit to 5! (odd numbers of chords have always served us well anyway)