I arrived with a cake at 9:05 pm and no one was at the venue. The fact that no band members had arrived yet stressed me a little, but not as much as it would have before. I sat down and doodled in my notebook waiting for people. Eloha and boyfriend arrived fifteen minutes later and people started trickling in. Allan and Charles were stuck at the Morayta Myx street party.
Finally, they arrived too. I presented the cake and the 30 candles with my homemade plus sign. Allan blew it out and told me not to make him blow it in front of everybody later.
Allan and his cake
Bands arrived at almost the same time so it was a little difficult to decide on a sequence. Roel was away in Canada for a PNE tour but thankfully Ezekiel of Tether was ready to help us out. Velvet (Ixan's band) started the night with their deep female vocals and new wave-ish (but not really), poppish tunes. Einstein Chakras played next. They made a strong impact on everybody. I liked their second song about workers in the Philippines. "PRED!!!" Allan says they'd be better if the vocalist goofed off a little. Ralph and I were so glad they played our favorite, "Johnny is the name of a dog IN THE PHILIPPINES!"
einstein chakras, semi-unanimously (hehe) voted "band of the night"
We followed with a great set. It was lovely and loud, although Kiel kind of extended the endings. But he was stupendous for a guy with no practice, and we were so grateful he enabled us to play.
Sunset Drive played fourth with a new song or two. Harsher guitars. Ekong was showbiz again hehe cuz he kept greeting Allan a happy birthday over the mic and thanking us for granting his request of "Flaming Walls". Haha!
Tether came next. While they were doing soundcheck, I brought out the cake again as Gilbert and Joey were singing the happy birthday song to Allan. We re-lit the candles, but Allan fanned them out and refused to blow on them again. So I took the candles away, but Gilbert folded up a Colt 45 label and put it on the cake as a joke. Tether started playing. They decided to lower the volume of their instruments and so their vocalist sounded very comfortable. It showed how great their songs were. Of course, Popular Days followed and they were amazing, as usual. I took a lot of pics of them. Too bad they didn't sing "Watch Out For Me" like I requested. Damn.
Dennis' band, My Science Project played next. Soaring keyboards good. Soft Pillow Kisses played after them with Eloha on vocals. Gilbert played the drums on one or two songs. Hale was a no-show. I tried to distribute the slices of cake but was too shy to approach some of the people I didn't know.
fooling around outside mayric's
Throughout the night, friends kept coming and going, wishing Allan a happy birthday. It was a carefree night that was a lot of fun. People were still hanging out in front of Mayric's when the gig ended. I made a fool of myself while I was slightly drunk. Too bad... that was one of the few times i was audacious enough to say what i really thought. We were reluctant to end it right away so some of us went to Mr. Kebab for more food and talk. I arrived home at 5 am.
More pictures are posted on the site of the candyaudioline yahoogroups. I took pics of the other bands as well, so you can check them out there...
No comments:
Post a Comment