Had a great music weekend these past few days, including a birthday party for a longtime friend, a Jubilee show, and a very fun afternoon show sitting in on some songs. Friday’s birthday party had lots of people in attendance that I hadn’t seen for years, and many others that I just don’t see frequently enough. A lot of these folks have been around one or more bands I’ve been involved with for years, and it’s great to share that kind of history with people! Very cool watching people sing along to songs that they may not have heard for a long time, but still remember!

The Rock & Roll Jubilee was a sell-out on Saturday; in fact, it’s the first time the show has sold out pre-show! The house was packed, the energy was high, and we saw lots of friends in attendance. Also got to meet lots of new folks, which is always fun (especially when they like it . It’s fun to watch an audience that has maybe just remembered why they’ve loved music all of these years, and just realized that all they loved about it doesn’t have to end when they reach 25 or 30!

I’ve written before about how rewarding it is to meet people who have seen us for the first time – the Taters, the Jubilee, whatever – and seem to have sort of an epiphany when they realize that it’s still fun to go out and hear live music! So many people have given it up over the years, especially as they get older, have families, earlier work mornings, etc. A lot of times they have an idea that “That was something we did when we were younger” and just sort of gave up on it. But then they wind up at one of our shows, and they remember that there’s nothing quite like spending an evening with friends, or meeting new people, listening to music they really enjoy. And there’s no better way to do that than in local clubs, concerts & festivals.

I think it’s fine people have so many options these days for seeing music and other entertainment on TV, DVD, cable, YouTube, etc. and I do plenty of that myself, but it doesn’t hold a candle to being part of the live experience. Even in the smallest shows there’s an energy there that just can’t be absorbed from a screen, an energy that audience members are involved in creating WITH the band. In the Taters, we often make a point of saying “No two shows the same”, and that’s true from the setlist to the solos, but it’s especially true because of the audience. Every night we play a song, even if we’ve played it 1,000 times before, it hits a person or group of people in different ways, and that response (hopefully good!) feeds back into the performance, making each show a one-of-a-kind event.

Watching music, movies, whatever on TV or the computer is similar to Facebooking in some ways; you can see and learn a lot, find things you enjoy, and increasingly share feedback on items and events. But it can never really replace face-to-face contact with the real world, and that goes for entertainment just as much as for personal relationships. If you know someone who regularly goes out to get involved in live music events – as a player OR as an audience member – just ask them what they like about it; most are happy to tell you!

Sorry for the various mystery pictures on the blog now! Been having some issues getting it up and running since the Taters’ site was switched over to a different platform on the Hostbaby servers. I’m not sure I’m keeping it the way it is (the site, that is) but for now it’s fairly easy to update using the tools that Hostbaby has, and at least for the time being I don’t need any more work to do!

I’m somewhat limited in what my options are with the new platform – I’m basically working with a site template at this point and changing/customizing what I can, but I don’t have the flexibility that I had with a standard FTP site. The folks at Hostbaby have been a huge help with things and have bent over backwards to let me make some changes that aren’t really supported thru their “wizard”, so a big thanks to them. I just really need something where I can get the site setup the way I want it, with a good content management system, but I don’t have the time or the know-how to build it from scratch right now.

Anyway, I wanted the mention the pics because I may go thru and try to correct the links that got broken for some of them, but for a lot I’ll probably just have to leave them and concentrate on moving forward!

There are several new tribute pages up on Facebook that the Taters are involved in. Go take a look, click the “Like” button – this was easier when it was just a “fan” button; then, when you clicked it, you became a fan. Now… what… are you a liker? That doesn’t sound right…

Rock & Roll Jubilee

This is the tribute show that Brad & I are in, along with Jim Wark, George Garrett, Brian Sulser and BJ Kocen. We pay tribute to Elvis, Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison, Ricky Nelson, and the Everly Brothers in a 2-hour show that’s a mix of songs & live comedy. So far we’ve had 5 shows over the last year & a half, with another scheduled for September. We’ll post updates about the shows here, as well as on the Tater calendar and the new Facebook page.

Sensory Lullabies – The Ultimate Tribute to Jellyfish

This tribute CD was released 2 years ago, and features 38 cover versions (?!) of Jellyfish songs. The Taters contributed our take on an unreleased tune, “Queen of the USA”. You can find the CD here, and it’s also on iTunes & Amazon (CD or MP3). As of this posting, you can get it on the Burning Sky site for $19.99 for the 2 CD set.

If I… If I… If I… The Songs of Squeeze Revisited

This is the latest project we’re involved in, another tribute CD from Burning Sky. This one features the songs of Squeeze, a big influence in Taterland, as any true Taterhead knows  We did a calypso version of Goodbye Girl on this one, which featured several guests along with the regular Tater plate – George Garrett added bongos, and Cole Evans put some percussion on. Can’t wait to hear the whole project when it’s done. No date announced at this point, but maybe sometime next year.

Got this message on Facebook and had to share it – it’s great!

Last Sunday, early afternoon. It’s warm and sunny. I’m sitting in the minivan with everyone buckled in. We’re pulling out of the driveway, on our way to saunter about Old Town Alexandria – there’s lots of grass and boats and such; great for kids (ooh, and they sell ice cream there too). We start moving through our ‘hood, headed toward the main road. From the back, Declan (he’s 2 1/2 now) says, “Aoh see Noah”. We recognize “Aoh” as “I want to”. But of course, the rest is pretty cryptic. We don’t know any Noahs.

Mami asks, “what do you want Declan?”

“Aoh see Noah”.

“Noah who?”

“Aoh see Noah, Mami”

“Ok, but where’s Noah? We don’t have Noah.”

“Aoh see Noah, Papi”

“Who is Noah, Declan? Is he a friend?”

“Noooo! Aoh see Noah plis. Plis?”

This goes on, back and forth for several minutes. Declan is getting frustrated and is starting to cry (due to lack of Noah).  Mami is getting exasperated and says “Declan, we can’t give you Noah unless you tell us what Noah is!”  After a pregnant pause, Declan says, “Sing Noah Mami”. I perk up at the clarification: “What? You sing it! Sing it to us!”

Immediately Declan sings, “Noah, Noah, Noah, Noah, don’t!”

The latin music is immediately ejected from the player and is replaced by Menagerie. We hastily press buttons until Track 2 is playing. Declan begins to giggle in the backseat and our trip to Alexandria continues as planned. Papi giggles too, but for different reasons.

Last thing – after the song is finished, he asks (and I’m not making this up) “Aont Such a Good Day Papi”

For the record, we do NOT discuss Taters or similar topics with either of the kids (not that Taters are taboo or anything, it just doesn’t come up). He’s just picked it up while listening.

Now, if we can just hang on until he’s old enough to go to shows or buy CDs…

OK, this is pretty cool. I read a posting over at Lifehacker about Tagxedo, a webapp for generating word clouds. These have been around for awhile – another popular one is Wordle. Basically, a word cloud creates a graphic representation of the words entered into it, either by typing, copying & pasting, or just pointing it to a URL on the web. In the Tags section of this blog you can see a similar idea, but no where near as fun to look at!

The idea is that the more a word shows up in the text, the larger its word cloud equivalent will be. So, for example, in this shot I simply input the address of this blog. Since most of the postings on the main page currently have to do with menagerie as well as several about our TWIRL radio shows, these terms stand out.

Over at Tugxedo, I put in the same address, and got slightly different results. Among other things, it looks like the Tugxedo one picks up the names of the post authors (most of which are me!), so that shows up larger. And every time you try, you get different results.

Anyway, it’s fun to play with. Tagxedo lets you save the results as a file. Wordle only appears to let you upload to their gallery, but either way it’s better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, innit?

The wonders of a Friday night with no show…

I made some updates to the Taters page this week, including adding pages for each of the albums along with lyrics, etc. Next will be complete liner notes – who played what on what tracks, dedications, etc – I’ve got these done for menagerie so far but I haven’t made it to the others yet.

I’ve been wanting to get some of this stuff on the site for some time, not only so it’s big enough to read – 6pt type isn’t easy for anyone! – but also so I could correct a few errors that made it thru the editing process, no matter how many times I looked at it, or showed it to others! F’rinstance, in this web version I’ve finally corrected a terrible omission from the printed booklet – special guest victim screamer – Rebekah Gribik! Don’t know how that got left out, but this goes a little way toward correcting it!

Also, for those who’ve asked for it – here is a large blow-up of the back cover of menagerie. Kind of hard to see things on the back of a 4.75″ CD cover, so here is a bigger graphic (your browser may resize it to fit on the screen, but it’s about 15″ wide so you might have to click to zoom in on it!)

By the way, if any of you are web designers, I’d love to know how to fix the CSS on this site so it displays better at any resolution. I’ve figured a lot of it out, but I can’t afford a “real” designer, so some things just ’sort of’ work! I’m always happy for any help!

OK, that’s it for now…

(But that trick never works!) Well, we’ll see. We were finally able to record the coast-to-coast CD release party for menagerie this past Saturday, and it should be broadcast this coming Saturday, Feb 27 on Mike Lidskin’s TWIRL radio in Sacramento, CA. We tried doing the broadcast live over a Skype connection, but had some drops on Mike’s end, so fortunately he recorded the whole show and will re-broadcast in its entirety this weekend. The Taters have basically the whole show, which will be Mike playing lots of cuts from the CD, interspersed with live performances and interviews with the band.  We all gathered around the mic in the Fabulous Zebra Room here in Richmond last weekend, with a full party going on in the next room, and Mike & Amber had guests on their end as well. You can tune in via the web at the TWIRL radio site this coming Saturday and find out!  The show broadcasts at 4pm Pacific, 7pm Eastern time.

In the meantime, there are several cuts from the live portion of the show over at our YouTuber site. Here’s one example:

We’ll call this a tribute to that other band that all played around the mic just a scant 45 years ago (yipes!). There’s also a pretty fun medley of Roger Miller songs, but I’ll have to hear the show this week to remember why that was happening!

menagerie won Best Album in the 2010 Twirlie Awards last night in Sacramento. Mike and Amber Lidkin, the hosts of the show were able to hook up a conference call with Brad & I during the show, and I think the whole thing will be on a podcast soon. Here’s a past Tater bit from Twirl Radio, and Mike also has another show on Recharged Radio, The Tuesday Night Dinner Show on… well… Tuesday nights! You can listen to both shows over the web thru the 21st century magic of streaming audio (those crazy kids and their computers!), and Mike has started posting podcasts of that show, too. He’s been a great supporter of the Taters over the years and a big fan of indie music.

TWIRL Radio also has, as you might expect, a Facebook Page and a Twitter feed so go out and become the fan you want to be.

And don’t forget to tune into TWIRL on Feb 20 for our coast-to-coast CD release for menagerie!

If all goes well, we’re planning to try again for the coast-to-coast hook-up on Sat, Feb 20. The show airs at 4pm Pacific time, and 7pm Eastern. For the rest of the world, I’m sure Google will help you figure it out. The show will stream over the TWIRL Radio site, so you can listen live, no matter where you be, and Mike may be planning on recording and podcasting it as well. The “plan” is to setup a Skype connection on both ends, and we’ll play some songs live during our party on our end, Mike will have the live feed, as well as the CD cuts he’ll play on his end. Who knows – maybe it’ll all work out?

Strange but true!

Also, a plug for Mike’s other show on Recharged Radio. He’s played Tater cuts there as well, so go check that out