{"id":272,"date":"2009-06-19T13:58:08","date_gmt":"2009-06-19T18:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/soupgreens.com\/?p=272"},"modified":"2009-06-19T13:58:08","modified_gmt":"2009-06-19T18:58:08","slug":"thoughts-on-redcat-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thejoydrops.com\/blog\/?p=272","title":{"rendered":"thoughts on REDCAT show"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/soupgreens.com\/2009\/06\/12\/playing-redcat-lounge-thurs-618\/\">The night of music at the downstairs lounge at Disney last night<\/a> was an improbable success.  <\/p>\n<p>Factors against it &#8212; weird architecture; no walk-in traffic; venue that people aren&#8217;t used to going to; time slot right after work in a part of the city that few people work in.<\/p>\n<p>So how come it worked ok anyway?  <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The people were a good mix who gelled socially.  If it was a party folks would have been gabbing away.<\/li>\n<li>The musicians (Dick &amp; Jane, mini-Sausage Grinder, Triple Chicken Foot) were all excellent.  As much as it&#8217;s a pleasure to be so close to players when they&#8217;re good, it&#8217;s painful when they&#8217;re bad and you can&#8217;t escape.<\/li>\n<li>The acoustics were round, warm and clear. I could hear every detail of the sound, and the sound was beautiful.  It was a great listening experience.\n<\/li>\n<li>I tried to get musicians to start and end sets flush next to each other, with no break in between to fuss with the setup, like songs in a playlist.  To do that I had two different playing areas, aka &#8220;stages&#8221;, so that one band would set up in one while the other was playing.  In a couple spots this way of doing things was really magical, for example when Triple Chicken Foot&#8217;s first song started and the sound just opened up.  (I don&#8217;t think this idea specifically made the good vibe, I think it helped establish a feeling of energy).<\/li>\n<li>The quality of <a href=\"http:\/\/soupgreens.com\/img\/redcat-flier.gif\">the artwork for the flier<\/a> (by Angelina Elise) created a sense that this was a worthy event. <\/p>\n<li>Because the space isn&#8217;t a bar and because it wasn&#8217;t late, there were kids around.  They did a lot to make the atmosphere feel open and direct in way that a rock club never is.  <\/li>\n<li>The main room is on the small side, so it doesn&#8217;t take a lot of people to make it feel full.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Thanks to Aaron Drake at REDCAT for making it all happen.  <\/p>\n<p>In the future I&#8217;m going to try to incorporate kid musicians into the show, doing one song at a time.  I think that will create a friendly and homey feeling towards all the musicians and the event as a whole. Not sure how I&#8217;ll find em, though.  If you&#8217;re an LA parent with a kid who plays guitar, give me a ping.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The night of music at the downstairs lounge at Disney last night was an improbable success. Factors against it &#8212; weird architecture; no walk-in traffic; venue that people aren&#8217;t used to going to; time slot right after work in a part of the city that few people work in. So how come it worked ok [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thejoydrops.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thejoydrops.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thejoydrops.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thejoydrops.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thejoydrops.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/thejoydrops.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thejoydrops.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thejoydrops.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thejoydrops.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}