Robots Will Be Our Superiors

Friday night the Champagne Supernovas played at Marchese’s Olive Pit.  As I mentioned, this is the third time that this particular group has played, which is only noteworthy because we had originally gotten together for one show.  Most years the bands involved in Spoof Fest practice and get their act together for one goofy night and that’s that.  We played as Oasis this year to much success, and were asked to play a second show at a separate event.  Then, just for the hell of it, we decided to play at the Olive Pit because we could.

The Olive Pit does not normally host bands, and as they did not have a dedicated stage area the setup was a little awkward.  We had to clear some tables but had a nice spot directly facing the bar.  It wasn’t terribly loud and personally I thought everything sounded very good.  I’ve definitely played in places that have sounded worse.  We were the first live band to play there and hopefully they’ll have more music there in the future.   There were fliers up about the show; I’m hoping I can get one from Pete still.

We performed two songs as “The Trophy Husbands”, which is our alter-ego when we’re not… our other alter ego.  We played one Badfinger tune as well as “Nicole Koglin”, a song that Dave and Rob wrote about Nicole Koglin, the Fox Six Wakeup News Traffic lady.  It’s a song of admiration and appreciation, and hopefully she wouldn’t think it to be too creepy if she were to hear it.  BJ said that he sent her an email about the show, but as far as I can tell she wasn’t there.  I’m not sure if she responded or not.

Overall, it was a fun evening.  There were a lot of our friends there, most of which said that they had some sort of improved opinion of Oasis overall.  I will have to admit that I was skeptical about covering Oasis, but they really do have a lot of well-written songs.  As an added bonus, I get to wear a shaggy-hair wig and talk with a terrible British accent.  It’s win-win-win!

Next up, Reaching Scarlet will be going into the studio to record a three-song demo with the new lineup.  Once that happens we’ll be able to pimp ourselves all over the Wisconsin area.  I’m sure I’ll have some pictures and stories from that; recording is always an interesting experience.  Ooh, speaking of pictures, we just had a photo shoot for Reaching Scarlet and all the pictures turned out really nice.  I will post some when I get the chance.

At this exact moment, however, I have to go make dinner and then pack for my trip to sunny Florida.  And by that, I mean rain-soaked Florida.  Hopefully it’s sunny and not all crappified while I’m down there.

I had to change a few settings, but I think that now anyone should be able to post comments.  It was previously set that all comments required admin approval before they’re displayed, but that’s way too much work for me and I can always delete the mean ones anyway.  Ha!

WordPress is pretty slick because you can do pretty much whatever you want, but there’s also so many features that it takes a while to get everything just so.

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.