November 08, 2005
street band show at as220
i'm in a brass-and-drums street band (modeled after brooklyn's hungry march band and india's shyam brass band) and after a summer of rehearsing, we finally had our first first show last sunday. thanks to guillaume, who took lovely pictures of us playing in the as220 upstairs gallery.
the show was super awesome! our job was to help the gallery opening earlier that afternoon segue into the rock show later that evening. horns blazing, we descended upon the sidewalk outside as220, drawing the pre-show cigarette showgoer crowd upstairs with us, where we performed all of the four songs we'd memorized. the gallery was filled to capacity, and on the walls surrounding us the artwork (depicting condoleeza rice, santa claus, and a donkey) slowly revolved.
right now our repertoire consists of eastern european, indian, and new orleans brass band music (as well as an M.I.A. cover). for the show we were billed as something like "the robot monkey providence all-city march band," but we still lack a name. current candidates include "jerk parade", "the roger williams thrill'em kill'ums", etc, but so far nothing good has been settled on (suggestions are encouraged). we also need a high-pitched reed player (i really want to buy this shanai but maybe it's really hard to learn to play a double reed?).
(this entry was written in december but shamelessly backdated to make it look like i updated my blog in november.)