Journal tags: concert

So Frostapalooza happened on Saturday.

It was joyous!

It all started back in July of last year when I got an email from Brad:

Next summer I’m turning 40, and I’m going to use that milestone as an excuse to play a big concert with and for all of my friends and family. It’ll sorta be like The Last Waltz, but with way more web nerds involved.

Originally it was slated for July of 2024, which was kind of awkward for me because it would clash with Belfast Trad Fest but I said to mark me down as interested. Then when the date got moved to August of 2024, it became more doable. I knew that Jessica and I would be making a transatlantic trip at some point anyway to see her parents, so we could try to combine the two.

In fact, the tentative plans we had to travel to the States in April of 2024 for the total solar eclipse ended up getting scrapped in favour of Brad’s shindig. That’s right—we chose rock’n’roll over the cosmic ballet.

Over the course of the last year, things began to shape up. There were playlists. There were spreadsheets. Dot voting was involved.

Anyone with any experience of playing live music was getting nervous. It’s hard enough to rehearse and soundcheck for a four piece, but Brad was planning to have over 40 musicians taking part!

We did what we could from afar, choosing which songs to play on, recording our parts and sending them onto Brad. Meanwhile Brad was practicing like hell with the core band. With Brad on bass and his brother Ian on drums for the whole night, we knew that the rhythm section would be tight.

A few months ago we booked our flights. We’d fly into to Boston first to hang out with Ethan and Liz (it had been too long!), then head down to Pittsburgh for Frostapalooza before heading on to Florida to meet up with Jessica’s parents.

When we got to Pittsburgh, we immediately met up with Chris and together we headed over to Brad’s for a rehearsal. We’d end up spending a lot of time playing music with Chris over the next couple of days. I loved every minute of it.

The evening before Frostapalooza, Brad threw a party at his place. It was great to meet so many of the other musicians he’d roped into this.

Then it was time for the big day. We had a whole afternoon to soundcheck, but we needed it. Drums, a percussion station, a horn section …not to mention all the people coming and going on different songs. Fortunately the tech folks at the venue were fantastic and handled it all with aplomb.

We finished soundchecking around 5:30pm. Doors were at 7pm. Time to change into our rock’n’roll outfits and hang out backstage getting nervous and excited.

Right before showtime, Brad gave a heartfelt little speech.

Then the fun really began.

I wasn’t playing on the first few songs so I got to watch the audience’s reaction as they realised what was in store. Maybe they thought this would be a cute gathering of Brad and his buddies jamming through some stuff. What they got was an incredibly tight powerhouse of energy from a seriously awesome collection of musicians.

I had the honour of playing on five songs over the course of the night. I had an absolute blast! But to be honest, I had just as much fun being in the audience dancing my ass off.

Oh, I was playing mandolin. I probably should’ve mentioned that.

The first song I played on was The Weight by The Band. There was a real Last Waltz vibe as Brad’s extended family joined him on stage, along with me and and Chris.

Later I hopped on stage as one excellent song segued into another—Maps by Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

I’ve loved this song since the first time I heard it. In the dot-voting rounds to figure out the set list, this was my super vote.

You know the way it starts with that single note tremelo on the guitar? I figured that would work on the mandolin. And I know how to tremelo.

Jessica was on bass. Jessi Hall was on vocals. It. Rocked.

I stayed on stage for Radiohead’s The National Anthem complete with horns, musical saw, and two basses played by Brad and Jessica absolutely killing it. I added a little texture over the singing with some picked notes on the mandolin.

Then it got truly epic. We played Wake Up by Arcade Fire. So. Much. Fun! Again, I laid down some tremelo over the rousing chorus. I’m sure no one could hear it but it didn’t matter. Everyone was just lifted along by the sheer scale of the thing.

That was supposed to be it for me. But during the rehearsal the day before, I played a little bit on Fleetwood Mac’s The Chain and Brad said, “You should do that!”

So I did. I think it worked. I certainly enjoyed it!

With that, my musical duties were done and I just danced and danced, singing along to everything.

At the end of the night, everyone got back on stage. It was a tight fit. We then attempted to sing Bohemian Rhapsody together. It was a recipe for disaster …but amazingly, it worked!

That could describe the whole evening. It shouldn’t have worked. It was far too ambitious. But not only did it work, it absolutely rocked!

What really stood out for me was how nice and kind everyone was. There was nary an ego to be found. I had never met most of these people before but we all came together and bonded over this shared creation. It was genuinely special.

Days later I’m still buzzing from it all. I’m so, so grateful to Brad and Melissa for pulling off this incredible feat, and for allowing me to be a part of it.

They’ve had a shitty few years. I know we all had a shitty time over the past few years, but the shit kept on coming for them:

And then in the middle of this traumatic medical emergency, our mentally-unstable neighbor across the street began accosting my family, flipping off our toddler and nanny, racially harassing my wife, and making violent threats. We fled our home for fear of our safety because he was out in the street exposing himself, shouting belligerence, and threatening violence.

After that, Brad started working with Project Healthy Minds. In fact, all the proceeds from Frostapalooza go to that organisation along with NextStep Pittsburgh.

Just think about that. Confronted with intimidation and racism, Brad and Melissa still managed to see the underlying systemic inequality, and work towards making things better for the person who drove them out of their home.

Good people, man. Good people.

I sincererly hope they got some catharsis from Frostapalooza. I can tell you that I felt frickin’ great after being part of an incredible event filled with joy and love and some of the best music I’ve ever heard.

There’s a write-up of Frostapalooza on CSS Tricks and Will Browar has posted his incredible photographs from the night—some seriously superb photography!

It’s been another busy week of evening activities that ended up covering a range of musical styles.

Monday

On Monday night I went to the session at The Fiddler’s Elbow. It’s on every fortnight. The musicians are always great but the crowd can be more variable. Sometimes it’s too rowdy for comfort. But this week was perfect, probably because not many people are going out in late (dry) January.

The session, led by fiddler Ben Paley was exceptionally enjoyable. Nice and laid back, with a good groove.

Tuesday

On Tuesday night I stayed in and watched a film. Killers Of The Flower Moon. Two thumbs up from me.

Wednesday

On Wednesday evening it was the regular session at The Jolly Brewer. Jolly good it was too.

Thursday

On Thursday night I was back in The Jolly Brewer. My friend Rob roped me into doing a Burns Night thing. “It’s not a session, but it’s not a gig” was how he described it. I wasn’t sure what to expect.

We had been brushing up on our Scottish tunes, but we were mostly faking it. In the end it didn’t matter. I don’t think there was a single Scottish person there. But there was a good crowd enjoying their tatties and neeps with suitably-addressed haggis while we played our tunes in the background.

Some more musicians showed up: a fiddler and two banjo players. “Isn’t there old-time music here tonight?” they asked. We told them that no, it was Burns Night, but why not play some old-time tunes anyway?

So I passed the night jamming along to lots of tunes I didn’t know. I hope I wasn’t too offputting for them. It was good fun.

Friday

Finally on Friday evening it was my turn to leave my mandolin at home and listen to some music instead. The brilliant DakhaBrakha were playing out at Sussex Uni in the Attenborough Centre.

Imagine if Tom Waits and Cocteau Twins came from Eastern Europe and joined forces. Well, DakhaBrakha are even better than that.

I think I first heard them years ago on YouTube when I came across a video of them playing at KEXP. The first song caught my attention, then proceeded to mercilessly hold my attention captive until I was completely at their mercy—the way it builds and builds is just astonishing! I’ve been a fan ever since.

The gig was brilliant. I was absolutely blown away. I highly recommend seeing them if you can. Not only will you hear some brilliant music, you’ll be supporting Ukraine.

Слава Україні!

I had an extra long weekend recently. It was four days of being a culture vulture. It was also four days of ever-increasing risk assessment.

It began on Thursday morning with the first Salter Cane band practice in eighteen months. That was pretty safe—three of us in a room, reminding ourselves of how the songs go. I honestly thought it could’ve been a disaster and that I wouldn’t remember anything, but thanks to a little bit of last-minute revision the evening before, it actually went really well. And boy, did it feel good to plug in and play those songs again.

Later that day, Jessica went up to London. We spent that evening in the Royal Opera House, watching a ballet, The Dante Project. We wore masks. Not everyone else did.

The next day, the indoor gatherings continued. We went to the IMAX to see Dune. The opportunity was too good to pass up. It was wonderful! But again, while we wore masks for the duration, not everyone else did.

Still, I reckon the ventilation was reasonably good in both the Royal Opera House and the BFI’s IMAX cinema. But that evening we checked into the Clayton Crown Hotel in Cricklewood, venue for the Return To London Town festival of Irish traditional music.

That’s where we spent two days going to concerts, sessions, and workshops, all of them indoors. The music was great, and we had a lovely time, but I couldn’t help but feel a sense of nervousness throughout.

When we got back to Brighton, we both took lateral flow tests—thank goodness that these are freely available! We were both negative. We had dodged a viral bullet.

That was the last trip out of town we’ll be making for a while. But even for Brighton-based activities, this is the routine now: weigh up the risks, decide whether an activity is worth it, and if so, testing afterwards.

For example, the week after our trip to London, the Wednesday evening Irish music session at The Jolly Brewer pub started up again here in Brighton. It was one of the things I missed most during The Situation.

I wrote about this at the very start of the first lockdown:

I’m quite certain that one positive outcome of The Situation will be a new-found appreciation for activities we don’t have to do. I’m looking forward to sitting in a pub with a friend or two, or going to see a band, or a play or a film, and just thinking “this is nice.”

I certainly did find myself thinking “this is nice” during the session, which was as wonderful as I had remembered. But I was also thinking about ventilation, and distancing, and airflow. Like I said:

Risks. Benefits. Running the numbers. Making decisions. Trying to do the right thing. Trying to stay safe but also trying to live life.

I’m about to have a crazy few days that will see me bouncing between Brighton and Amsterdam.

It starts tomorrow. I’m flying to Amsterdam in the morning and speaking at this Icons event in the afternoon about digital preservation and long-term thinking.

Then, the next morning, I’ll be opening up the inaugural HTML Special which is a new addition the CSS Day conference. Each talk on Thursday will cover one HTML element. I am honoured to speaking about the A element. Here’s the talk description:

The world exploded into a whirling network of kinships, where everything pointed to everything else, everything explained everything else…

Enquire within upon everything.

I’ve been working all out to get this talk done and I finally wrapped it up today. Right now, I feel pretty happy with it, but I bet I’ll change that opinion in the next 48 hours. I’m pretty sure that this will be one of those talks that people will either love or hate, kind of like my 2008 dConstruct talk, The System Of The World.

After CSS Day, I’ll be heading back to Brighton on Saturday, June 18th to play a Salter Cane gig in The Greys pub. If you’re around, you should definitely come along—not only is it free, but there will be some excellent support courtesy of Jon London, and Lucas and King.

Then, the next morning, I’ll be speaking at DrupalCamp Brighton, opening up day two of the event. I won’t be able to stick around long afterwards though, because I need to skidaddle to the airport to go back to Amsterdam!

Google are having their Progressive Web App Dev Summit there on Monday on Tuesday. I’ll be moderating a panel on the second day, so I’ll need to pay close attention to all the talks. I’ll be grilling representatives from Google, Samsung, Opera, Microsoft, and Mozilla. Considering my recent rants about some very bad decisions on the part of Google’s Chrome team, it’s very brave of them to ask me to be there, much less moderate a panel in public.

You can still register for the event, by the way. Like the Salter Cane gig, it’s free. But if you can’t make it along, I’d still like to know what you think I should be asking the panelists about.

Got a burning question for browser/device makers? Write it down, post it somewhere on the web with a link back to this post, and then send me a web mention (there’s a form for you to paste in the URL at the bottom of this post).

Given how much I travelled last year, you’d be forgiven for thinking that I’m leading some sort of transient lifestyle. But Brighton is where I spend most of my time and quite often it’s as eventful here as anywhere else on the globe.

There’s the renowned Brighton music scene, for example. I’ll be contributing to its vibrant ecosystem next month. Salter Cane will be playing a concert at The Joogleberry Playhouse on February 25th, which is, incidentally, my birthday. If you’re in town, come along and celebrate. You can add your name on Upcoming or Last FM.

On March 2nd, I’ll be giving an Ajax workshop. I’ve given workshops before in London, Manchester and Sydney. This time I’ll be doing it on home territory. Not only will it be in Brighton, it will be in the Clearleft office building, right in the middle of the trendy North Laine. If you’re interested in coming along (and helping me celebrate the release of Bulletproof Ajax), sign up before February 12 to get the early bird discount—£100 off the full price!