This weekend marked the debut of darling brown boy’s 90’s cover band, My So-Called Band. Niiice name. The first show was a Memorial Day pool-side BBQ at the drummer’s apartment complex. Here is my attempt to chronicle the event. Keep in mind I have piss-poor photography skills.
Check out the setlist (which I got autographed). Lots of rockin’ oldies but goodies. Strangely, “Bombtrack” turned out to be the biggest crowd pleaser, especially among the 40+ demographic. Interesting. My take on it is that it was obvious that the band loved playing that song the most. And lil Amy, the singer, managed to scream “Burn Burn!” with admirable gusto.
I gotta say, I did not know all of these songs by heart. During the 90’s I was sort of really poor and couldn’t afford cds, thus managed to miss out on the bulk of the grunge movement. My friend Lauren and I would check out 60’s and 70’s cds from the library and make tapes of them (ah, tapes). I think this explains my love of classic pop, my bubbly demeanor, and my obsessions with David Bowie and The Beatles. Ha. At any rate, if I was in a cover band I would either choose 60’s all-girl or 70’s glam rock. Comment below on your cover band of choice. But this isn’t really about me, is it?
Moving on, here is a pic of Sommer, the hot chick bassist. She is not intimidated to play bass in a band with Aneil, so you gotta give her props for that. Plus she’s real nice to me so we must love her.
Sommer is married to Jim, who is a much much better significant other than yours truly. He had a fancy camera (a la Bo) and ran about getting artsy camera angles. Here is a shot of him taking what is likely a far superior photo than I could take. Think of this as a photo within a photo. Like Hamlet’s play within a play, but more grunge. Although, if you think about it, Hamlet is pretty freaking grunge. Oh, the angst!
To reiterate Jim’s superior husband skills (I almost typed husbandry and it made me think of A&M’s excellent ag dept), here is a link to the website (!) he made to put all his superior photos. There are some really charming shots of Aneil, so it is worth a click if only for that. Well, I guess the whole band is attractive, but like how we all have a favorite New Kid on the Block (mine? Jonathan. I know, lame in retrospect, right?), Aneil is obviously my favorite My So-Called Band-er.
Click here for much better photos.
Here is my completely non-artsy photo of Aneil, in which he smiles at me. It reminds me of the time me and the brown gals went to New York and Maria, fresh out of a photography class, kept getting annoyed with Neha for making us smile and wave in front of landmarks rather than taking candids. This photo does not necessarily represent the essence of the band, but I like to think it expresses Aneil’s undying devotion and constant willingness to amuse me and/or humor me.
Here is the only decent photo of John that I took. He has one of those slick yet disconcerting electric drum kits. I’m not sure if Fro approves of those, but will ask him next time I see him. At any rate, John is Aneil’s BFF and he is real cutie and funny and managed to survive a Spinal Tap moment during setup when a pillar fell from the apartment staircase and almost crushed him. Scary.
Kenneth plays lead and he is also one of Aneil’s close friends. He actually showed up to the show wearing a cropped sleeveless Megadeath tshirt, so I dunno why he changed. Didn’t get a photo of the original outfit (sorry ladies). Kenneth is lovely and likes to hug and makes me laugh a lot, so he gets a thumbs up from this critic.
Amy is the hot singer girrrl. She has one of those husky slightly affected voices that I really wish I had rather than my limp Jewel-like instrument. She held her own on the mostly boy music that was played (apparently the Lillith Fair did not occur according to this 90’s band…good/bad? Discuss.) Plus she is wearing shorts with roses and skulls on them and that’s pretty rock n’ roll.
Here is a pic of a dude who came out on his balcony to check out the band. At first he seemed confused, but he sort of got into it. A fan!
Here’s some of the crowd around the pool.
Also, I kept making fun of a couple of dudes who kept eating kielbasas, like the entire afternoon. Seriously every time I saw them they were getting more food. I thought this was freakish until I was later told that they had competed in a triathalon earlier in the day. Ha. I’m such an asshole sometimes.
Sadly/awesomely, some cranky neighbor called the cops and the show got shut down with only 2 songs to go. Doh. I think the band felt validated in a way, so that was good. Plus the cops were very nice about the whole thing.
Most of the rest of my photos are blurry, so that's it from me. If I wouldn’t have been so delirious from the heat, I would have thought to get everyone together for a band photo, but alas, we will have to wait until next time.
XOXO, Groupie Girl
