Linkage

From Christopher Musgrave, whom I remember seeing moving around with his camera on the night, via Jennifer of the Bold Italic, and David Z, our programming boss, here is some video * of the event here a few weeks ago. I was delighted to get to see it, and noticed that I had different reactions to each piece. For the Date Palms song, the delight of hearing the familiar, as this was a tune they sound-checked with in the afternoon, and then played on the night, so it had stuck in my head nicely. For the Barn Owl piece, it was as if I was hearing it for the first time, as I had been more absorbed in the overall effect and less in the structure of the music, such as it is.
The video is very nicely put together as well, my only regrets being that he kept the shots pretty tight, so you don't get to see the surroundings or the crowd, which would have been nice, and of course that there is no way that the sound can match up to the reality of being there. Don't get me started on the inadequacies of mp3 data compression (or data reduction as we used to call it, seeing as it strips away 90% of all the information, albeit very cleverly), it's just that Jeremy's bass playing for Date Palms was powerfully loud on the night, not to mention, since I have already, with Keith backing me up, the unbelievable physicality of Barn Owl's sound. Enjoy them though, if you didn't get to be there when it happened.

* I would have liked to try and embed these, but Blogger only seems to let you do this for YouTube stuff, which strikes me as being a bit of a closed shop... so instead, a few more photos from the day itself:

Date Palms sound-check in the courtyard

Barn Owl's Evan and his pedals at the sound-check

The crowd at Barn Owl's performance - Blanche is still there, but she didn't say for the whole set...