Arisia 2013... (part 1)

[usernamenumber]

This has been a pretty amazing weekend. I sometimes say that the fun I have at a con is directly proportional to the number of people I know there and the number of events I'm involved in, and by that measure, Arisia 2013 was absolutely spectacular.

Cumulative sleep Fri-Mon: approx 16 hrs. Not bad for a con! ;)

Particularly noteworthy events (off the top of my head) include...

People Most Excellent
For various reasons I haven't seen a lot of the people in my various circles much lately, and it was really great to get to talk to good friends with whom I hadn't spoken in a while, and with newer people I was glad to get to know better. The only problem with Arisia in this regard is that there were *so many* people that I wasn't always able to have the depth of conversation I'd hoped because someone new kept happening by and joining in. As problems go, though, that was a great problem to have, and there was much laughing, hugging, and general merriment, spread among a lot of really swell people. M spent the weekend at a party being thrown by a friend of hers, but came out for the Stranger Ways concert, which was a really nice gesture of support. Then on Sunday I reluctantly bid Arisia adieu and ducked out to join her and her friends and had still more lovely times with still more lovely people.


The Stranger Ways / Sassafrass Concert
Hooo boy. This event contained some of the best and worst of the con for me. Those who were at last year's show remember that it was plagued by technical difficulties, and sadly this one started off not much better. As best I can figure, what it came down to was us needing more time for sound check than we got. The fellow running the sound was very helpful, but apparently he was supposed to have assistants, who then didn't show. As a result, we had time to get the instruments plugged in and make sure they all made sound, but not to really test any of the levels. Worse, there was pretty much nothing on the monitors (the speakers pointed toward the band that let us hear ourselves). As a result, I think what ended up happening was the audience heard all of the instruments coming out of the PA (which was in front of an facing away from the band), but the band heard my drums, which are all electronic, bouncing off of the far wall, making them sound out of sync from their POV, and when they adjusted it became out of sync from the audience's POV.

So basically, nothing in our first set sounded right. Which sucked, especially after last year. I'm kind of afraid now that any friendly patience that folks might have had for putting up with our now worrisomely regular technical difficulties has been used up. I was stressing out pretty seriously between sets (big thanks to Nat for some much-needed support, and M for some much-needed chocolate), but the good news is that by the time we started our second set, we'd gotten the monitors and the PA mix right and everything was finally working!

For all the stress of the first set, I am so glad it happened then and was resolved by the next time we went on, since as far as Stranger Ways was concerned it was going to be the main feature of the gig. The second set was the debut of the first six-ish songs of our forthcoming album, on which we'd been working for about a year, and I really, really wanted those songs in particular to go well. We'd all been practicing our asses off for the last few months, but these songs were much more complicated than most of our older songs, and I was crazy enough to try singing while playing drums on more than one. There was a lot that could have gone wrong, but mercifully... it went pretty much perfectly!

We got a lot of great comments from people, and everyone seems to like the new material a lot, which is great to hear! I'm actually starting to believe that just because a large percentage of the attendees at our shows are friends of ours, that doesn't mean they're not there because they actually like our music, too. :) I even talked to someone later at the con who told me about how playing some of the tracks on our first album at top volume and yelling along helped get her through a nasty breakup. As I said to her, far be it from me to be glad for another's pain, but it's a deep, deep honor to know that someone was able to use what we do to achieve some kind of catharsis.

Huge thanks to everyone who came to the show. For those who couldn't make it but are interested, we'll hopefully have some video up soon, but we're not sure about the quality of what we ended up with, so we have to review everything first.

Finally, big props to Sassafrass for a great performance. I've been seeing them perform for many years now and the current incarnation, which has a few more members than it's had in the past, has been able to produce a fuller, nicer sound than anything I've heard from them before. I know faerieboots put a lot of work into music direction in preparation for this show, and it really paid off nicely. Also, I don't think I will ever not cry at some point during Somebody Will. :)


...you know, this is already getting really long, and there's still so much more to write about, so I think I'm going to tie this one off and (hopefully) make this a series of posts.

Comments

[hippie1025.livejournal.com]

Glad to hear the second set with the new stuff went well. I was sorry to miss the concert, but I had a storytelling performance in Fast Track scheduled at the same time. Hope some of the video came out decently. :)

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Sorry I almost entirely missed you. ;) Our schedules would seem to have been completely orthogonal. But I heard a decent buzz about the Stranger Ways concert, so perhaps it wasn't as visible to the audience as you might have imagined.

[usernamenumber.livejournal.com]

The band's getting together to review the video tonight, so here's hoping. In any case, It's nice to know that even people who aren't us have been hearing good things about it. :D

[zapf.livejournal.com]

Nothing said about the amazing, standing room only powerpoint karaoke? Or are you saving that for a later post? It was pretty awesome.

[usernamenumber.livejournal.com]

That's going to get its own post once the videos are up (soon!) :)

[rigel.livejournal.com]

Some of the songs on the second half of your set were my new favorites. (Now I just have to remember what they were called.)

I can keep form crying during Somebody Will, mostly, if I don't sing along. Once everyone starts singing, I'm done for.

[usernamenumber.livejournal.com]

Yup, that's when I lose it too. And I can't not sing along at the end.

So glad to hear you're digging the new stuff! Hopefully we'll have more out soon!