As the days zip on past...

[jducoeur]

... it's worth a quick review of What Has Been and What Is To Be.

Saturday: shopping (a trip to buy a base for the new GPS, which got somewhat out of hand), followed by dinner at Gargoyles with learnedax and cat9. Quite good, but it still tends slightly towards being just a tad more cute and experimental than my ideal. Not way out of line, but somewhere in the grey zone -- mostly great, but with occasional failures. (For instance, I got the liver appetizer. The seared stuff was fabulous; the raw was just a bit too *squishy*, and less interestingly flavored.)

After that, the latest Steeleye Span concert. On review, it appears that this is the sixth time we've seen them on stage -- probably far more than any other non-SCA performers. It was neither their best nor their worst concert. (The best was either the monumental reunion concert -- four hours long, including nearly everybody who's ever been in the band -- or their Nightstage show, which taught that they are, at heart, a great bar band. The worst was the legendarily awful Berklee triple-bill of Steeleye, Fairport and Renaissance.) As msmemory mentioned in her corresponding diary entry, we basically stood there at intermission as an astonishing array of random people we know swirled past us. (Along with the ones she mentioned, I also recall Nest and Craig, as well as Harald and Susan de Guardiola.)

The highlight of Sunday was apple-picking. This is always a delight, but this time the weather was as good as can be imagined. Big flavorful apples, good company: really quite a good time. Following that, I spent the afternoon scrabbling in the dirt, working on the mailbox.

Yesterday was one of msmemory's OES visitations; I played the Officiating Patron, a job I've never done before. I was amused to get a couple of compliments on doing a good job, considering that it involves exactly one paragraph of text. (Basically, I say, "Yes, the bylaws have been properly kept", in rather formal language.) The Middle Chamber Lecture it ain't. But it was a good opportunity to see one of her visitations -- IMO, it went quite well.

Coming up: tonight is the SCA demo at WPI. Hopefully we'll get at least as many students as demo-ers. Tomorrow is dance practice. Thursday is poker. Friday is probably Babydolls (we haven't figured out for sure which night we're going, but it'll probably be Friday). Saturday, collapse. (And probably work on reworking the storage in the garage -- it's an unholy mess, and I'd like to make things better before it gets too cold.)

Comments

Garage

[msmemory.livejournal.com]

If the weather isn't hosed, I'd like to spread out a bunch of stuff into the driveway, then repack more sensibly. This means at least dry, if not sunny, but it would give us sorting space. There is still a lot of stuff in the garage that is sitting exactly where it landed when we moved in.

[tashabear.livejournal.com]

Question: Why don't we do demos at local town fairs and such? Seems like we'd get as much out of inviting established families to play as we would impoverished college students -- perhaps more.

[etherial.livejournal.com]

BBM marches in the Groton 4th of July Parade. I think it's mostly a matter of knowing we're welcome.

[tashabear.livejournal.com]

By "we" I meant "Carolingia." Sorry for being unclear.

[jducoeur]

We've done so occasionally.

Really, it's mainly a matter of what people want to help work on. *Personally*, I'm extremely fond of the college crowd, for a variety of reasons: I like the energy and imagination they tend to impart, and they way they can challenge our assumptions. And frankly, I just plain like hanging out with the students. This gives *me* a particular reason to concentrate on the college demos.

(Also, the college demos are much more sink-or-swim -- unless they happen regularly, the boroughs will likely die, simply by the nature of the beast. This gives a certain impetus to making sure they happen regularly, which doesn't exist for general demos.)

But not everyone has the same priorities, and occasionally folks have organized more general-public-oriented demos. Most notably the Boston Common demo a few years back, which seemed to be broadly successful...

[hfcougar.livejournal.com]

Believe me, there are others asking that question too...

[shalmestere.livejournal.com]

...[Steeleye Span is], at heart, a great bar band,

I'm glad you had a good experience. S. and I went to see Steeleye Span once, at the Bottom Line [RIP], and it was massively disappointing, so we didn't even consider getting tickets for the latest show :-(

[jducoeur]

They are certainly capable of putting on a bad show -- like I said, the Berklee disaster demonstrated that you can take three world-class bands and still get a total failure of a concert. But at their best, Steeleye are electrifying: the Nightstage concert ran something like four hours, because the crowd demanded five encores.

Far as I can tell, Steeleye feeds on the audience energy more than most groups. So the nature of the audience and their proximity makes a major difference. It's probably not the only factor, but it seems to correlate significantly with the quality of the concert. Holding their 25th Anniversary Reunion Concert (1995 -- we were in London by sheer coincidence) in a dance club, with no chairs (just a mosh pit) was arguably a stroke of genius: it produced a rowdy, dancing, energized crowd that worked with them perfectly...

[shalmestere.livejournal.com]

We heard them in a cabaret setting, and our table was right next to the stage. Sadly, the performance we heard left us with the impression that Maddy Prior's voice was...umm...well past its prime. Gay and Terry Woods were on board for this show, and we noticed that on all the old songs from Hark! the Village Wait, where once Gay sang melody and Maddy sang descant harmonies, now Maddy was singing melody and Gay was singing descant. Maybe this was just a temporary condition, but it really sounded as if Maddy's upper range was gone :-(

[jducoeur]

Well, Maddy's never had the best upper range -- that's where Gay traditionally was stronger.

But I confess that I'm surprised. If it was both Gay and Maddy, that implies it was during the post-reunion phase, when they had just come out with Time, probably their best album in a decade, and before it all fell apart again. I didn't see any of that tour (except for the reunion concert that accidentally led to it), but had been under the impression it had been pretty good in general.

All that said, the band probably *is* past its prime in most respects: not really surprising, given that the headliners are around 60. Still quite good, but they're definitely messing around and experimenting more -- they don't quite have the fire they did 25 years ago. Frankly, I suspect that their days of four-hour concerts are probably behind them...