January 30, 2004 - Living Room Concert - Northampton
Ken Says: i was sitting on tony and shelly's red-sheet futon, tequila queasy. thinking how it'd be really nice to sweep the little fallen bits of crushed almonds onto the floor and lie down and sack out. shelly had retired to a different room with the ladies, and tony and i hung out listening to a copy of a '70s mix i'd made a friend, talking tunes. (like "timothy," which was the second song on the mix; tony smiled that sunny flabbergasted smile he has sometimes, because he had just been talking to rick's wife about that song an hour previous, how she had been searching for YEARS for that song, and here it was suddenly playing in his apartment) that's how the house concert trailed off. tony munched on the amazing but now lonely spread, i tried to wake up and shake off the margarita by sweeping the floor. everywhere i stepped was gritty with sand and i love to sweep so i grabbed a broom but within a few shooshes of the strawplastic against the floor, tony informing shelly at the other doorway about what i was doing, she yelled out comically (mostly) from the other room, "stop sweeping! eat!" but i was enjoying myself! i swept up two nice piles of sand, it felt great, would have kept going but tony in the doorway looked a little uncomfortable so i stopped. i did not eat anymore, though. the house concert was really nice, but our performance was not really the highlight for me. people said the levels were great, we sounded good, but i kept feeling i was playing too loud or too soft, the keyboard felt unforgiving last night. plus i think most of the people there had seen us before, multiple times, some of them just saw us play last week! so though it was cool to play the new songs again, my favorite moments were playing "1000 times" (never thought i'd ever hear myself say that...but it was good to play an unplanned request from the dusted-off old batch of songs) and "roger o'malley." plus the tight stops of "superhero" were clean and abrupt in t&s's acoustically pleasing Performing Nook. (i think we should do fun things during some of those "superhero" stops, since there are SO MANY of them. anyone have ideas?) so the best part of the house concert, for me, was hanging out! i got to meet some interesting new folks and talk to interesting old friends. a very fine social time. thanks again to tony and especially shelly, queen of all things cooked, prepared, presented and shared. sorry if i bugged you with my sweeping up, but if anyone out there needs sweeping, i'm your man! Cheap Sweepers, Inc. (TM) Brian Says: Tony/Shelly party: soft, melodic, quirky music meet five-star Mex-inspired hors d'oveurs, cocktails and desserts in an intimate setting. Guests are wooed by it all. Max Says: Wow, what a spread. It's hard to have a bad gig with a belly full of tasty food. I especially liked the empanata thingies, which I scarfed down many of. The audience was a mix of fans and unfamiliar faces - all friendly and smiling, though I felt very awkward during the show. Living room concerts are a great way to play for people who might not go out to rock shows in clubs, but there's always the risk that you are trapping people who haven't heard the music before. Kind of like showing off slides of your vacation to relatives. But I thought we played well, except for Roger O'Malley, which strangely fell apart.	The following photos are courtesy of Seth Kaye: