The Song Fight Bulletin Board

bzl wrote:Everyone: Here is a message board for the songfight! live show. Everyone please check in and at least confirm if you're coming.

My account isn't activated yet... *SMILEY*

I will not be attending. Sorry to those who were counting on me for drums.

john m wrote:I will not be attending. Sorry to those who were counting on me for drums.

This is sad news indeed. As our first live drummer, we were very much looking forward to working with you again, John.

I suppose this means we are recruiting a drummer.
Applications taken right here.

SPUD

I wanna go. Might be in Puerto Rico during that time, but if I'm not I'm going. No ifs ands or buts.

the idiot kings will definitely be there.

tonetripper wrote:I wanna go. Might be in Puerto Rico during that time, <b>but</b> if I'm not I'm going. No ifs ands or <b>buts.</b>

.....<b>?</b>.....

Hey, er, the forumisn't working...

The Following PHPBB Forum was disabled for security reasons. If you are the webmaster of this forum please contact your web host for more detail.

Webmaster?

the party is here, the 13.

Bjam wrote:Hey, er, the forumisn't working...

The Following PHPBB Forum was disabled for security reasons.

Fixed (for now?). This is my hosting company's way of saying, "Hi, php bb released a new version while you were on vacation and we think that maybe you should consider upgrading. You know, whenever it's convenient."

More news tomorrow!

The previous version had Yet Another Stupidly Huge Security Hole in it. Them disabling your forum was the right thing for them to do. (I speak from experience from having had an open hole on my forum which some assholes exploited when I was on vacation.)

fluffy wrote:The previous version had Yet Another Stupidly Huge Security Hole in it. Them disabling your forum was the right thing for them to do.

Yeah, you're probably right; I just would have expected a slightly more clever solution than this. And you'd think the BB guys would have worked out all those stupidly huge holes by now.

Anyways, I've got some preliminary scheduling information, because today we hit my last drop-dead panic date. The folks at Jamspot are willing to let us use their showcase room for the show. It's not ideal (for us or them) but they are willing to keep the room reserved free of charge up until almost the last minute, so I can keep working on this with less of a panicky feeling.

I've also booked us a smaller practice room there for the entire day Thursday, and Friday afternoon. This part isn't gonna change, because it is an ideal "practice space" setup.

Here is some more detail about the place. They are basically an upscale rehearsal space; six rooms and they supply basic instruments and equipment so you don't have to carry your own crap around. It's popular with touring bands who want to do a quick tune-up or something, I guess, and they charge by the hour so you don't have to rent an exclusive space that you're only using for an hour a week. Five decent-sized practice rooms and a "showcase room" that is supposed to simulate a small club atmosphere. Each room comes with a nice drum kit, a couple of basic guitar rigs and a keyboard, which is a bonus for us. They also have some pretty sophisticated recording equipment, which is a super bonus for us. One of the owners is going to get me an equipment list, but the basic idea is that you can show up and say, "I need such-and-such a guitar" and they will take one out of a closet for you. They also have a small amount of storage space and it's a pretty safe spot, so people who bring their own equipment can probably just leave it there for the whole weekend.

There are a couple of pretty serious drawbacks, too, which is why this was kind of a last resort for me. It is kind of expensive, but at this point I don't even care any more. It is kind of small- fifty people in the room would mean we were all sitting in Hoblit's lap, which you may or may not consider to be a bad thing. We'd almost certainly have to limit the "crowd" to "us," and would probably have to re-arrange things a little bit to fit everyone, because right now the stage area is way too big and occupies almost half the room. Finally, they don't want alcohol, which is a drag. I will see about maybe a little bit of discrete byob but I didn't want to ask today because I was talking mostly with the "business" guy (of the two co-owners, one handles the business end of things and the other is the "rock-and-roll" guy). I don't expect much though.

The space is in a pretty convenient location; it's less than a mile from the gallery where the Saturday afternoon show will be. It's not all that close to a T stop but there are buses that stop nearby and it is walkable in a pinch, and there is a boatload of parking.

The specific times that they are holding for us:

Thursday, 12:00 noon to 12:00 midnight, small practice room.
Friday, 12:00 noon to 7:00 pm, small practice room.
Friday, 7:00 pm to midnight, large show room.
Saturday, 7:00 pm to midnight, large show room.

I don't expect to use the entire 7-12 on both nights. Probably most of it on Friday, and more like 8-11 on Saturday. This will depend partly on the number of people we get coming, and I suppose that won't be fixed until almost the last minute.

Again, I am still trying to find someplace a little better for us, but Jamspot is here for us if all else fails, and it will be available as a practice space no matter what. It seems like a pretty cool place to hang out, if nothing else, so I'll probably plan to be there most of Thursday and Friday before the big show.

The current (7/16) list of people who are coming is at close to twenty bands. If you want in, please have a quick peek at the sf live bulletin board and confirm that you are coming, and where you are coming from.

I think that's all for now, I'm going back to bed.

Thanks for all your hard work, man. I know it's stressful trying to organize all this stuff so a big A+ for you.

The place sounds cool, and I'm sure we can all make it work. If you need help with money I'm sure we could all chip in something.

AN ALBUM I HAVEN'T EVEN STARTED CREATING YET

Spud and Ken's involvement in the Notes of Hope concert and CD has convinced me of one important thing:

Rachael and I NEED to be in Boston for Songfight Live... That is all there is to it.

If you would like to see us in Boston? We honestly could use your assistance. Please send paypal donations to:

ollyfan@yahoo.com

Please mention Boston in the notes area, so we know what the payment is for (This is a seperate account from the Notes of Hope thing, btw). I would normally never dream of asking more than say $7 for a CD of my material... I am going to ask for like $10 this time... and I will do what I can to make it worth your money.

Discs will be hand-crafted.. it won't be anything fancy in the artwork department or CD case department... Think "TDK CD with a label sticker on it, and some front and back artwork that were probably cut with scissors". We're working with an obvious budget here.

I am up for a collab or two on the disc as well. We will see how it progresses.

Also: If you didn't hear... the Benefit CDs for the Notes of hope concert did not show up in time for the show. If you would like to buy one, please go to http://glenncase.songhole.org/notes

ROCK!

Glenn (DR FUNK)

Bjam wrote:Thanks for all your hard work, man. I know it's stressful trying to organize all this stuff so a big A+ for you.

The place sounds cool, and I'm sure we can all make it work. If you need help with money I'm sure we could all chip in something.

Ditto to the Bjam....happy to help out

I think that sounds just fine, bzl. Personally, I think it's better that it's just us. And I'm totally ok with pre-drinking. Maybe the over-agers can arrange some kind of happy-hour get-together on Fri and Sat.

How possible is it to shrink the stage? I think it's probably similar to the place in LA, and the stage was truly huge with a tiny little standing area for an audience-- obviously not really meant to hold a concert.

"Can I bring in my friends to watch? Only in the Showcase Room and only if arrangements are made in advance. Your friends will need to become JamSpot members. It's only five bucks, so it won't break the bank."

So are we all gonna have to pay $5 to get in? Or do we count as 'the band' that's playing?

Hey, still can't log into the forum...

Anyways, the more people in my lap the merrier.

However, we'll probably easily bust 50 people...doesn't that account for all who are playing?

Also, I'm seriously considering not performing...or if I do I'll do the descreet acoustic thing. I'm barely able to finance this let alone practice for a big production. Hopefully that'll ease up scheduling restrictions just a little.

Glenn, I'd donate but I'm barely able to scrape up plane tickets. As it is I'm probably going to have to phone in a favor from a cousin who lives in Linfield (sp?) north of Boston for residential accomodations. I'm frickn' broke. But I want that damn t-shirt.

Hoblit

Hoblit wrote:Hey, still can't log into the forum...

Try registering again? I just registered and then everything worked. Or you can just post as 'guest' and sign your post so we know who you are.

This is about how the room was set up when I was there:

I think that we could probably manage to make more efficient use of the space; I am thinking that we could remove the big guitar stacks, because it is a loud room and tiny practice amps would be plenty, and move the drum kit to the top left corner, with a keyboard and a few guitars in front and to the right of it. That leaves the whole upper right quarter of the room for more audience space. The stage is elevated but only by a few inches so that isn't really a problem either.

The room is 24x24 overall, for 576 square feet. Fifty people would be a tight crowd; I think that's about the max before it gets crazy.

It is hard to say how many people to expect, and how many people would fit comfortably. One thing I've tried is counting the noses in this picture:

That's almost the whole audience, and while it is not at a peak crowdedness time, it suggests to me that fifty is not an unreasonable guess. There were twenty bands in Austin and most contributed only one or two people to the total attendance.

I invited my mom to come see the show but she is probably going to be out of town that weekend, so that frees up space for someone else's mom to come instead.

Other stuff. Nobody will have to pay a membership fee or anything. I will work that out with them myself, probably by the "I am paying enough already, please do not nickel and dime my friends" method. The impression I get is that this will be a major score for the place and they will do all that they can to make this work for us. The web forum is set up so that you don't have to register to post, and if you do want to register, it's set for automatic approval, so you ought to be able to just go there and type whatever you want and it will work. L-y-n-n-f-i-e-l-d. There are plenty of happy places nearby where we could spend a happy hour or two, including the saturday afternoon venue and the nice Irish pub next door to it.

<b>Octothorpe Entourage</b>

<i>The Band:</i>
Spud
Mad Dog
Bud
Fluffy
Spudnut
Stubs
Dita

<i>Our Boston Hosts:</i>
Jim McQueen
Trey Klien
Chris Arthur
Fluffy's Brother

We were going to bring a few more, bur I guess we should be cutting back, instead.

That picture is only half of the audience. And that was not peak attendance by far.