I’m not used to going to see someone else’s band. It’s a sad tragedy of the job that I almost never go see music on a night off. I see musicians that I’m playing with, bands that I’m opening for or that are opening for me. I get introduced to new acts through open mics and showcases and multiband nights, generally in such a frenzy of motion and sound that only the highest of them stand out.
Tonight I’m seeing Kristen’s band, 50 Man Machine, perform in Arlington, VA. It’s the first time I’ve seen her play pan and I’m amazed at the deftness, swinging from tone to tone – there’s a fluidity and focus that leaps into her that I’ve never gotten to see before.
Steel pan is truly an alien instrument to me. I’ve certainly heard it before – you know – the thing that they invite as a novelty for some spring celebration in college? It’s what you hear in the background of every Girls Gone Wild commercial! It equals surf and fun and probably an excess of alcohol.
Tonight I’m getting to see Kristen turn the steel pan into something emotive and delicate. It’s such a unique tone, very surreal to hear it drawn so effortlessly from something which is really not much more than a finely tuned barrel.
Like so many people of my generation, I was introduced to steel pans through a short skit on Sesame Street where you follow the creation of one of the drums from a young kid finding a discarded oil drum in a scrap yard, rolling it to a workshop, heating it and beating it and eventually playing it. I’d frankly forgotten about the instrument until it came to light that Kristen played one, and even then they were pretty much just something she got up to on Friday nights in a mysterious warehouse somewhere on route 1.
And the Catonsville Fourth of July parade brings that most patriotic of animals, the hedgehog, into the spotlight where it was always meant to be. Unfortunately, an apparent high point of the parade (judging from audience reaction) was when the Lone Ranger’s horse, “Hi Yo Silver” decided it was full and needed to become less so and pooped in front of the next part of the parade. The audience went WILD!!! Though not as wild as they went for the woman who came out and shoveled. Then it took a while to get Silver pointed the right direction. Good times had… yes… we’re high brow. the troops are apparently being thanked by some sort of featherless turkey, or perhaps the pterodactyl of America Sleepy child. His future will not be long if that giant owl gets peckish. the endless stream of humans out and about to see the Catonsville parade.
