Robots Will Be Our Superiors

…or something like that.  Saturday was the evening of Reaching Scarlet playing with The Meeples at The Cactus Club in Bayview.  I would have to say (without hyperbole) that it was the best thing that’s ever happened ever.  Some of my best friends in the world (Jim, Greg, Sarah, Buck, & Shannon) drove from far and exotic places (Stevens Point, Oshkosh) to see both Reaching Scarlet and The Meeples kick all sorts of asses.

I was really proud of both bands.  Reaching Scarlet played an extremely tight set, especially considering this was the first show with the updated roster.  All of the work doing rehearsals and recordings finally came together in an explosion of awesomeness.

Similarly, The Meeples played what I would consider their best show ever.  I think we were all on top of our game.  We all made a few bucks, gave away and sold a ton of merch, and everyone made some new friends.  The turnout was very good, and we even got some cool pictures.  This is one of the few pictures I’ve seen from the show so far (others will make their way in over time), which was once again taken by our good friend Chad who managed to capture all of the The Meeples in their Meepley glory.  Everyone except Eric, though.  He’s playing the drums in the back.  It’s a very important job, but doesn’t always lend itself to good photo ops.

Many thanks to everyone that came out to the show!

The Reaching Scarlet 3-song CD is still getting worked on.  Hopefully we’ll be able to mix it in the next weeks or so, and then it just needs to get mastered and printed and copied.

In unrelated news, Carlos Zambrano pitched a no-hitter.  The Cubs won again today and Ted Lily had a no-hitter going into the 7th.  The Cubs should play displaced-hurricane games at Miller Park more often!

In other unrelated news, we closed on our house on Friday.  Manifest destiny!

This past Saturday The Meeples played a show at Mad Planet.   So far, we’ve played two shows there and both have been with French Horn Rebellion.  They have a fantastically energetic and entertaining stage show.  This week we were also joined by The Daredevil Christopher Wright, a band from Eau Claire that has three-part harmonies that blow away pretty much every local band I’ve ever heard in terms of vocals.

Mad Planet is a fantastic venue, so it’s unfortunate that it’s in a crappy part of town.  It’s not on the happy hippie east side of the river, it’s on the “can we go now?” west side of the river.  I enjoyed playing there but I always get nervous about loading and unloading gear.  I’ve heard a lot of stories about smash-and-grab theft happening from people’s cars.  Seriously, who steals from musicians?  Musicians are usually poor anyway, so that’s just bad juju.  Regardless, I love Mad Planet because it sounds great both out front and on stage, and their sound engineer, Alex, has always been nice to us.

The Meeples have a fantastic friend named Chad Wojtysiak (strong Polish name) who comes to all of our shows and takes pictures.  I’m not very photogenic on stage because I’m usually doing something funny with my mouth, but Chad still gets some good band shots despite me.  Here’s a picture from the last show in which we all look relatively normal.  Our new keyboard player, Kim, is standing just to my left.  Life is much better now that we have a keyboard player.  The keyboard is critical for getting that Meepley sound.

Here’s Kim and myself rocking on stage left.  I look best when I’m blurry, believe me.

^

Next up is a show with The Champagne Super Dupers, an Oasis tribute band that was only supposed to last for one show.  We’re now on show #3 because it’s just too much silly, silly fun.  That show will be Friday, August 22nd at Marchese’s Olive Pit.  It’s not really a place that typically has live music, but we’re going to do it anyway, dammit.  Most people don’t realize how much Oasis music rocks until they hear it live.