Extreme Music

This past weekend was filled with fuckin' amazing music and equally amazing friends.

Regarding music, I was all over the damn map.

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Saturday night, Caleb, Autumn and I headed out to The Chameleon Club in Lancaster to show some love for our friends Jordan, Conor, Mike, and Greg. Together, those four scruffy, mild-mannered twenty-somethings join to form Pandas, an unclassifiable and greatly entertaining band. They were one of many bands that opened for excellent local metal act Ventriloquist.

All of the bands that night were metal bands, so I got my fill of the growling lyrics, the meedlies and squeedlies, and (most definitely) the blast-beats.

Pandas have all of that, except for the growling, as they have no vocalist. I think that really makes them stand out as a band. It also breaks them out of the metal band mold. That and their comedic antics on stage, with Conor and Greg tossing out quazy quips between songs, and Jordan putting the sarcastic rimshot exclamation point on some of their over-the-top, yet completely self-aware jokes. All of this is only spurred on by the ridiculous track titles that they play like "Cowgirl Up", the Futurama-reffing "ThunderCougarFalconBird", and "Bonercycle". The entire Pandas package is entertaining; from tight musicianship to fun stage presence, they're the shit.

We met a few other friends there and we hung out with the band and spent most of our time chilling by the Pandas merch table. When our buds took the stage for a great set, all of us but one (huge props to Josh for manning the merch table during the show!!) gathered at the base of the stage along with the tweens that were there for a hard metal show on a Saturday in Lancaster.

I had Molyneaux's Flip Cam and I tried to grab some vids of the set, but I forgot that I really like to move to their tunes. Here's part of "The Predator's Barm is Arming". At around the :15 and :45 marks in the clip, note the bouncing in time that indicates that the camera person (yours truly) is having too much fun to disconnect himself from the experience in order to be just a 'camera person' instead of just a fan with a camera... Persons of note in the crowd include Annie and Steve, Caleb and Autumn, my new kickass friend Karen, and that really tall guy with the Phillies hat who I've never introduced myself to...we're all Fandas. (I just made that up and will get severely beaten for it.)



Luckily, though, they did a song that is not on Maximum Fucking Tenderness, their 4-song EP, so I don't have it memorized, which means I could stand still enough to get some decent footage of the boys in action. So here's a large chunk of "Bonercycle" by Pandas at The Chameleon Club on February 21, 2009.



I hope they get to perform there again, because the guys really deserve the kind of exposure they got Saturday night. Good times, gentlemen.

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So that was Saturday night. Flash-forward another 24 hours to Sunday evening.

I've traded the hoodie and sneakers for a sweater, argyle socks and dress kicks. I'm sitting in an auditorium on the campus of Shenandoah University Conservatory in Winchester, VA, where Whitney Hollis is on stage. She is blowing everyone away with her Undergrad Senior Voice Recital.

She was amazing. From the dress that her mom made to the massive earrings she was sporting, she looked great. And her voice is stronger than ever, and that's saying something. Singing in English, French, German, and Italian, she killed it all.

Most Memorable Moment: After one set of songs, nobody clapped for her.

We weren't being dicks, though. Actually, we were being inappropriately proper. Let me explain before you boo me.

For those of you unfamiliar with Classical Music Performance Protocol, concert etiquette dictates that you wait until the set of songs is over until you applaud the performers. And this set was listed as follows:

-----------------------------------------------------------------
WOLFGANG A. MOZART
(1756-1791)


Als Luise die Brief ihres ungetreuen
Liebhabers verbrannte, K.520 <--------(this line was indented)
Abendempfindung an Laura, K. 523
-----------------------------------------------------------------

To the untrained eye, it looks like there are three songs to be performed, when in reality, there are only two. The first one just has a deceivingly long title.

This fucked all of us in the audience up.

Even the students who knew that the set was only two songs long didn't want to cheer. They didn't want to be the only ones to break the silence. But finally, after what had to have been nearly ten awkward seconds, a professor in the corner of the audience started clapping, and everyone else followed suit.

Whitney laughed out of relief on stage before leaving the stage with her accompanist. Classic shit, man.

Anyways, the world had better fucking look out for this soprano. Seriously. She's got pipes, and she knows how to use 'em.

After her performance, a group of us hung out at her friend Autumn's swanky pad and had a few drinks and made fun of the hideous people on the Oscars (which was coincidentally on while we socialized). Good times, Miss Hollis.

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So I went from full-out metal one night to opera excerpts the next; thus pinning the music-meter on both ends of the scale in one weekend. And I enjoyed every moment of it.

Turns out I'm one diverse jerk.