Category: Music

Loads o’ Open Mic Night photos

UMM Open Mic Night, 25 Jan 2007 - 001

Thursday was another excellent Open Mic Night at UMM as part of the series of Open Mic Nights hosted by UMM’s Campus Activities Council Concerts Committee. (For those who are interested, these typically happen on the last Thursday of every month during the school year. Their web presence, sadly, is in shambles and out of date, so don’t count on finding anything useful there…)

This continues to be a truly wonderful series of events here at UMM, and this was a highlight even in that great set. This is the first time I’ve taken a lot of pictures at one of our Open Mic Nights, and it was quite fun. I took over 300 photos, with multiples of every performer (except me for obvious reasons). I’ve posted the better half of the 300 over on Flickr and will include a few highlights below. Unfortunately I’m crap with names on a good day with a tail wind, so there are several of these kind and talented people’s who’s names have, for whatever reason, leapt from my brain to make a new home in some deep forest loam. Sigh. Various kind folks are sending in corrections and additions, and I’ll include those here as they arrive. Please get in touch if you can fill a gap or correct an error of fact — errors of judgement are usually my problem to deal with.

Read on for more info and some highlight photos…

Continue reading “Loads o’ Open Mic Night photos”

Tags: Photography

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Taco Man takes 3rd!

Taco Man

OK, this is ancient news, but I only just learned that there is both a video documentation and audio documentation of this crazy moment, and posting this is more fun than finalizing grades :-).

Back at the end of October, Sub-Evil Boy and I took part in the annual ASA (Asian Student Association) Talent Show, performing an original (and highly strange) gem of Sub-Evil’s entitled “Taco man”. He has been a contestant in several of these in the past, including placing twice. His first go was back when he was 5 or 6 and he took 3rd (if memory serves) , all thanks to KK for dreaming up the crazy idea and signing him up! He later took first with a wonderful sing-along performance of Gershwin’s “It ain’t necessarily so” acapella and wearing a kilt!

In this, he was the veteran, for I had never actually performed in one of these things. He’d come up with this wacky “Taco man” song, though, and it was crying out for a horn section. So, lacking a horn section, we worked up an accordion accompaniment and I became part of the act. We came in third (all credit to Sub-Evil’s excellent song writing and delivery) – woot!

The video is unfortunately only of the last 1/2 of the piece, and was probably shot with a cell phone, but it’s still cool to have even this much. If you’d like to hear the whole thing, check out this recording. The quality’s quite good (it was taken straight off the sound board), although the volume’s really low for reasons I don’t fully understand and haven’t had time to try to fix. Props to Ellery Fisher for sharing the cool photo on Facebook, and to Huck Brock for telling me about both the photo and the video!

I should point out that I’m wearing the morning jacket that both my grandfather and I got married in (although it fits me a wee bit tighter than it did in 1989!), and the gaucho hat I bought when I was an exchange student in Montevideo, Uruguay, back in high school. I might also note that the guy standing next to me looks suspiciously like he might turn into an adult on us if we’re not careful…

Tags: Video

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