Chrome Oxide Music Collectors Pages - logo and link to site map

../guestbook logo

--- chrome oxide colored line ---

Saturday, October 18, 2008
Purple Orchid, El Segundo, CA

Another night, another show.

This show took place at the Purple Orchid Tiki Bar. As the name implies, the club interior is decorated with tikis, bamboo, ... This is a very nice club to hang out in and listen to music. The owners of the club like surf music, and bring in surf bands on a regular basis. I have also seen the owners of the club at other surf music shows. While this is a small local club, there is usually a reasonable sized audience for the music.

I do have a slight problem recording at this club. The stage is small, so I am unable to put my microphones on it. Therefore I place my microphones in front of and slightly to the side of the stage. The stage is near the front door, so there is a lot of traffic. This means that I need to be concerned with people bumping into my microphones. In addition, there is free space in front of the stage where people like to dance. Again, I need to watch for people accidentally bumping into my microphones. Even so, most of the time I am able to get good recordings.

http://www.myspace.com/bboandthesurfrockets Billy Blastoff and the Surf Rockets lineup for this night was 2 guitars, 1 bass, 1 drums and some vocals (both guitarists). The number of songs they sing is dependent on their audience. When they are performing for a more general audience, they do more vocal tunes and less instrumental tunes. Since tonight was for the more dedicated surf instrumental crowd, they performed mostly instrumentals. They do mostly cover tunes, including a few that normally have words as well as a few that you might not think of as surf instrumentals.

Both of the guitarists in this band, are also in the Detonators. The bass player, is also the guitarist / keyboardist for the Sound Waves (the next band up). The drummer was previously the guitarist for the Fabulous Planktones (no longer active). All members of this band have played in a number of other surf as well as non-surf bands. Neither the Detonators or Billy Blastoff and the Surf Rockets have CDs available. Which may explain why even though they rarely ask me in advance to record them, they usually pay for recording when I am there. They are in the process of listening back my recordings to try to figure out if they can find a single show that works, or if they will need to pick and choose the best performance of individual songs to create a live CD. I have seen / heard / recorded most of these musicians for a number of years, in a number of other surf instrumental bands that they have played in.

http://www.3ballsoffire.com/ 3 Balls Of Fire lineup for tonight was 1 guitar, 1 bass, 1 drum and no vocals. 3 Balls of Fire is normally a band from Texas. The leader of the band (guitarist) is now starting to commute between Texas and California. So he is starting to work with a number of musicians from California. For tonights performance, his bass player was the drummer from Billy Blastoff and the Surf Rockets, and his drummer was the drummer from the Insect Surfers. Since they didn't have a lot of time to rehearse together, the set for this evening included a few more cover tunes then they normally perform. I did not have to ask for permission to record, as I have recorded the leader of this band a few times, and we are having discussions about using some of my recordings on a CD project he is currently thinking about.

Chrome Oxide
have audio recorder will travel

--- chrome oxide colored line ---

If there is no menu on the left side of the screen, you need to click here to activate the menu.

Last updated by Chrome Oxide on 10/18/2008

Copyright © 2008 by Chrome Oxide

COPYRIGHT NOTICE Materials may be freely copied and distributed subject to the inclusion of the copyright notice and our Web site address.

LEGAL DISCLAIMER This site contains links to other Internet sites. These links are not endorsements of any products or services in such sites, and no information in such site has been endorsed or approved by this site.

chromeoxide.com   hosted by:   1and1.com