Playing a live show at Triana's Music Trivia is different than anywhere else in Second Life. First off, it's not a live music venue; it's the home turf of my best pal in SL, Triana Caldera, where she hosts a weekly music trivia game... the longest-running game of that nature in Second Life, having started in 2004. Second, it's full of the absolutely insane people who I call my closest friends in the virtual world. Having attended Triana's trivia event almost without fail on every Sunday night since late 2006, the folks who go there are fun and profane and irreverent, and therefore have much in common with Kat and me.
Every so often, Triana hosts a live music event there, often in June (when she commemorates the anniversary of TMT's founding and her own rezday), and around the holidays, which was the excuse for my show there last night. There are two things about last night's performance that I won't be showing you here, or anywhere else for that matter (at least for now). One is the graphic that I made for the event, which Triana put in a prominent place, and shows me completely naked with a strategically placed sign blocking the parts that probably shouldn't be waved around in public.
Second was a little less silly and more cool. Kat and I had spent a good portion of the weekend working on music for our new project along with Bunny Knutson, called They Stole My Crayon. Kat was particularly thrilled; it was a song for which she'd written lyrics, and then surprised me by coming up with a great backing vocal part on her own (not easy to do for someone who doesn't consider herself a musician). We recorded and mixed pretty much all day on Saturday and a good chunk of Sunday as well. When it was getting near time to perform, I had the idea that perhaps the TMT crowd would enjoy being the first public audience to hear the tune.
The TMT crowd boogies down while listening to the first-ever public playback of the most recent "Take the Ride" rough mix. Photo and top photo by Kat.
So, that's what we did. I started the show not by strumming my guitar, but by pressing 'play' on my iPad which was routed into my audio stream. The song -- which I promise you'll hear soon enough, but not just yet -- is an interesting dichotomy of sweet and sad, soft and hard, dream and nightmare, and goes on for eight minutes (including a punishing four-minute outro section that we came up with on Saturday morning). It's called "Take the Ride", and both Kat and I are proud of it so far. After we add some contributions by Bunny and some other refinements, it will be ready for prime time.
Our hostess, friend, and master of music trivia, Triana Caldera. She put that mistletoe to good use after the show ended. Photo by Kat.
I believe that the TMT crowd liked the song. I mean, they got to hear Kat singing, which is a rare treat for all of them, in and of itself. One thing about They Stole My Crayon is that we purposefully want the music to be challenging. Not for the musician, per se, but for the listener. Every time I feel I'm creating something sweet and poppy (like I often do for songs I write for my solo stuff), I make sure to take the tune in a more relentless direction for TSMC. Anyway, I think they all understood what we were going for, and I don't ask for more than that. After I played back the most recent mix of "Take the Ride", I did something I never do: had an "All Request" set of songs. I won't do that for the general public, but for my pals at TMT, it was great, as were their zany song selections.
Triana's Music Trivia Set List...
Take the Ride -- mix playback (They Stole My Crayon)
Afternoon Delight (Starland Vocal Band)
You're Like a Cloud (Zak Claxton)
Take Me With U (Prince)
Borderline (Madonna)
Sour Girl (Stone Temple Pilots)
Triana (Zak Claxton)
Sex & Candy (Marcy Playground)
The Rainbow Connection (Kermit the Frog)
Shine (Zak Claxton)
Thanks so much to everyone who makes our Sunday evenings special at Triana's Music Trivia, with special thanks to those who supported the show last night!
Alchemy Epstein, Jordan Hazlitt, Nakira Tennen, Diana Renoir, MrNoCal Honey, Xerxes Ninetails, Kat Claxton, Samantha Poindexter, TheaDee, and the amazing lady who makes it all happen week after week, Triana Caldera! There's nothing trivial about you!
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