Behind the scenes @ beatkitchen.de

Black Cat - Washington DC

The show tonight at the Black Cat was absolutely PACKED... was a weird one though... the crowd were sooooooo loud... didn't matter too much for us but I went out to see some of Juanas set and decided to watch it from the side of the stage because I could hardly hear her (decently) out front... each city has its own vibe when it comes to this I guess... I just find it unpleasant for the performer.... and to top it off the monitor guy couldn't have been less motivated... even though my monitors were alright I know some of the other members in Psapp had a hard time - especially Gwen.... and Juanas monitors were so bad that she had to cut some of her songs short because she couldn't hear the loops... I know the feeling all too well.... playing to loops you can barely hear whilst standing in front of an audience who are watching your every move is nothing less than awful.... Jose told me that is wasn't too bad for him but the crowd were still very loud.... we also had some weird vibes with a few of the people who worked there... maybe they were just having a bad day, who knows... but it just kinda took the magic out of the day....

posted by eshan @ 19:54 0 comments

Pancake Mountain - Washington DC

Once we had packed up all our gear at the XM Satellite Radio session we drove over to the Black Cat... It was cool to be back here... I had played at the old Black Cat with Bow Wow Wow in 1997 (if I recall correctly) - apparently it moved locations around four years ago so it was cool to check out the new spot... it was a really nice venue and still had a similar vibe... anyway we had to load in as soon as we were allowed in, set up and soundcheck as the crew from Pancake Mountain were coming down shortly after.... I had never even heard of Pancake Mountain up until Galia told me we were doing this performance a few weeks ago... I think a friend of hers told her about it and when she saw it she said we just HAD to do it... when you see the production it's pretty obvious why! When we were done soundchecking the crew were already setting up and shortly after all the kids were let in.... they all came up on stage and we played 'Hi' and 'The Words' with all the kids and a few parents dancing about... the whole thing was a little surreal to be honest but we all really enjoyed doing it and all the people involved were very nice...

posted by eshan @ 03:32 3 comments

Special XM Satellite Radio photo shoot

posted by eshan @ 02:04 0 comments

XM Satellite Radio - Washington DC

I was so wrecked this morning when Debs woke me up to do this session... I was still up at 4-am hanging upside down out of my bunk with Juana... thats how we stretch our backs on the bus.... anyway, couldn't get to sleep after that for ages... when it came to get up this morning I was pretty out of it... but alas I was not the only one.... Gal and especially Carim surpassed me by far I can safely say :) at first we were told it was going to be a full band radio session and then just before we left we were told that it was going to be an acoustic session for time reasons... then when we got in there it turns out that they wanted us to do a full set which we can only do with a full band... so looks like A LOT of people were out of it this morning lol! But we are all used to that by now I think lol... so instead of doing a set as they had hoped for we did 'Tricycle', 'Needle & Thread' and added 'Everybody Wants To Be A Cat'... ... ... the building that XM is in and all of its studios and facilities were unbelievable... I have never seen anything like it before! Once we were all miked up and ready to go it took us quite a few takes of each song before we had something we were happy with... it was just too early in the morning and no-ones brain was functioning properly... but everyone there seemed happy enough with what we delivered so I guess (or at least hope) that it wasn't too bad :o/ Gal and I made sure we got some good swag though.... as always! On the way we did a special photo-shoot which will be featured on here next! An interesting little bit of trivia we were told was that this building used to be a printing press and the first issue of National Geographic was printed there... nice....

posted by eshan @ 01:25 0 comments