November 24, 2004 - 11:26 AM

Music Mixups and Matches

In addition to a mix CD that, according to her, needs to be listened to with the windows rolled down and the lyrics sung at the top of ones lungs, my cousin Ros sent me a cd by a group called Moonraker, a band that is Boston and Brooklyn based. She thought they might be right up my alley with their jazzy trip-hop and strong female vocals. What she couldn't know, and I didn't realize, was that I had heard their music before, when I was at Berklee. I don't remember which class it was in now, but I do know that Moonraker's song "Shalom" was originally produced and recorded by some of my fellow classmates as a class project. I recall listening to it in Studio L3, and people offering comments and critiques to help the producing student make a better product out of it.

This is the second Berklee coincidence that Ros has been involved in for me. The other was her seeing Kyler's profile in my friendster buddies list and making the connection that she had worked with Kyler in New York City at some investment firm. World? You are eerily too small sometimes.

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This past Monday I took a few of my newfound Amherst friends to a show at Room 5 to see Adrianne and Gabriel Mann. It turned out to be real horrorshow as there was no official sound man for the first hour. A guy who was performing a few songs with them tried to man the soundboard, but he did it half-assedly. The piano ended up distorted, the vocals were excruciatingly loud and piercing, and one of the vocal microphones was not being fed into the main speakers. It was so exasperating that the performers on stage half-jokingly asked if there was anyone in the audience who could work the soundboard. A girl next to me offered her assistance, but she couldn't fully suss out the way things were running, so I went back there to help her out. I ended up doing what I could for the next 15 minutes until one of the guys who usually does sound there finally showed up. I explained to him the various problems and what I did to alleviate them; he finally worked out most of the kinks by the end of the show.

It certainly was one of the most trying shows I've been to, and I felt terrible about exposing my friends to such an unprofessional experience. I was hoping to make them fans of Adri and Gabriel. They assured me that it wasn't as bad a night as I feared, and they thanked me for inviting them out. We'll see if they want to go out to shows with me anymore after this. Bleh.

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For those of you with Cable TV or Direct TV, if you have the Music Choice channels you can catch separate live concerts by Keane and Cake through the end of November. Click HERE for more info, including airdates and times.

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Finally, check out the Music for Kids compilations, put out by Nettwerk Records and benefiting various kid-centric organizations. I got the first volume last year which includes Cake doing the Sesame Street staple "Mahna Mahna", Sarah McLachlan waltzing through "Rainbow Connection", Ivy covering "Sing", and contributions from many others such as Guster, Billy Bragg and Wilco, Remy Zero, and BNL. The second album, recently released, has songs from Matthew Sweet, Sarah Harmer, Nada Surf, Butterfly Boucher, and Ron Sexsmith.

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