when things go somewhere else

Madness descended on the band last night. It was the second gig of the tour and we were scheduled to perform in the university precinct, naturally this was a lot cooler than the jazz precinct we performed at the previous evening. We were doing a double act with local Korean Ska superstars Kingston Rudi Ska including a number together which would involve putting 20 musicians onstage hopefully overcoming cultural and language barriers (Musical language as well as the normal use of that word) to successfully belt out a cover originally composed by a patois speaking Jamaican.

The Korean band performed a version of Ska which could only be described as Asian including there well known love for all things kitch, colorful and bright, moving into areas that the Western mind can only find psychedelic. The crowd was full of young women screaming at every move of the lead singer as he ran his fingers through his hair and crooned the crowd with his falsesetto. But the group was lead by the trombonist who had all the makings of a trombonist the no mater what country your from or what patois you mumble. He was defiantly left of center, in fact center had become a foreign concept to him (as is the case for most trombone players). As all twenty members got onstage for our preshow rehearsal he grabbed the mike and with the only English words he knew he yelled WELCOME TO OZRALIA KOREA SKA YOUR VELY WELCOME….TONIGHT WE DIE

And we almost did.

Both Sets went to plan many encores were given (Koreans love calling for an encore) the gig finished and the bar emptied quickly, in very Korean style and we were left with Just the bands and a few hangers on.. And thats when things started to get interesting. Knowing how the struggle for successfully dialogue was going to pan out I took it upon myself to get our trombone playing friend back on stage and peforming. Little encouragement was needed and soon most musos were back up performing the regulatory trance like broken rhythms and jilted bass lines matched with wailing banchee like vocals that can only occur late at night when all musicians have been plied with alcohol and decide to perform on instruments that they aren’t familiar with. I’ve always wanted to be a drummer and nows the time. At some stage of the night a tatoo artist was summoned and mistakes were made. When a post gig session starts this way and is to proceed for many more hours you know death is immanent.

Here’s some video footage from the show last night.