Last night's show at Winters Tavern in Pacifica was great. DJ Sid had the cool sounds coming out the speakers. Drifting Sand warmed up the crowd with such hits as "Surfin with Brittany" and "Rockaway Beach". When the TomorrowMen took the stage in their Silver suits the crowd was jumpin. They were awesome and Danny was on fire! At one point, Ivan came out and was bowing down to, and encouraging him. What a set!! Next up: The Blair Pongracic Band. With those two on guitar and the rock solid rhythm section of Jeremy and Dane what can you expect? It was some Hard Rockin Surf!! They even played a Space Cossack song with another Cossack on guitar. By then I was wore out and did not stay to hear Vicky and the Vengents.

FYI - The interview on Friday at KFJC starts at 38:00 in http://archive.kfjc.org/archives/1606241253h_cousin_mary.mp3

Last night's show at Winter's Tavern was off the hook, I am still processing it!

coz

Thanks for the interview Mary!

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Come on out for the last show on the Blair-Pongracic West Coast Tour! The show is now at the Tower Bar in San Diego and not the Til Two Club!

Jeremy

Last edited: Jun 26, 2016 21:17:20

Pic from Tower Bar show:

Jeff(bigtikidude)

Hey all!

As expected, the four of us had an AMAZING time - the only complaint being that it was too brief! Jeremy did SUCH an amazing job! He made Jonpaul very proud, indeed!

After the Felton show last Thursday, we spent the night in San Jose and the next day headed to KFJC for a great live interview with Cousin Mary - it's archived here (go to the 38 minute mark): http://archive.kfjc.org/archives/1606241253h_cousin_mary.mp3 Funny enough, in all these years I never have made it to KFJC, so this was a real thrill and an honor. The next time a live in-studio performance!

There's no doubt that the show at Winters Tavern in Pacifica (just south of San Francisco) exactly a week ago was the best one, not only in terms of the attendance but also the enthusiasm of the audience and just the overall level of sheer 'coolness'. (BIG thanks to David Greenfield who organized and promoted the show! You rule!) The club owner CJ clearly LOVES rock music and the bands that play it, and is a bit crazy - in a good way! He was very funny an treated us great - there's even a small apartment right above the club where we could relax before the show. Pacifica was truly beautiful, too, and we walked down to the waterfront to watch a whole bunch of whales in the distance before we had dinner at a phenomenal Peruvian/Mexican restaurant next door to Winters. (I got a paella, just like we had in Valencia a year ago - and it was almost as good - a minor miracle!).

There were four bands that night, starting with Drifting Sand, followed by the TomorrowMen, then us and finishing up the evening the mighty Vicky & the Vengeants. Drifting Sand played a fun set that really set a great tone for the evening, a very cool band playing a bunch of classic surf covers and some originals. Then the TomorrowMen blew the doors off. I've never hidden my deep love for this band or for Danny and Ferenc, and man, WHAT A SET THEY PLAYED! My favorite time seeing them, hands down! They sounded powerful! And pulled off a heck of a surprise by playing the song Sirena, co-written by Danny and me for the Madeira's Ancient Winds album - WOW!!! I did not see that coming! Apparently this was the first time they've done it, too, and they did great! For me, their whole set was really one of the very highlights of our mini-tour. Thank you VERY MUCH, guys!! You DA BEST!!

We played next, and had a truly wonderful time! The club was near full, the audience very enthusiastic, just an amazing vibe overall, bunch of people came out front and started dancing about half way through, etc. One of those shows where you wish that every show would be like it! Mark English of the Space Cossacks was there, too (with his wife Kathy), so John generously gave him his Strat and allowed Mark to play The Apes of Wrath with us, which Mark nailed! (You can see the video below, as well as us doing "Force of Gravity" from this show, too.) It's gonna be a lot of fun in four weeks! We ended on time but the audience wanted an encore, so we gave them Intruder and ended it amidst a lot of shouting and whooping! Yes!

This is what happened next, according to my post on Facebook the next day: "So, this happened last night: while loading out the gear after our set, I was intercepted by a man that looked familiar - it took a moment to realize it was Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys, the legendary Bay Area hard core punk band! He tells me: "That was the greatest set of pure surf music I've ever seen!" Mind... blown! We chatted for a while about surf music, and he was super nice and very knowledgeable. He went on to have similar conversations with John and Jeremy, talking for quite a while. It was a true pleasure to meet him and we're honored by his compliments - thank you, Jello!"

Wow! And we failed to get a photo with him - doh!!! But there were many friends around and many people to chat (including Doug Snyder - so good to see him again!), and it all got to be a bit overwhelming. Vicky & the Vengeants closed the night with a RAWKING set of garage/hard-rock music that was really impressive! We finally went back to our hotel in San Jose (an hour drive away) around 1:30-2 am, to be on the road the next morning by 9:30 am. (Ouch.) We had to drive all the way down to John's house in Orange County, and the traffic wasn't looking promising. Actually had quite a bit of fun in the car, including playing obscure first wave tracks to John (who was driving a rented van) and seeing if he'd get them right - I think he was batting about .500 - not bad, considering how truly obscure some of these were - I didn't make it easy on him! ) After a few stops, we arrived to his beautiful house around 5 pm, and got to relax for a few hours before heading back north to El Segundo for that night's show at Purple Orchid.

Jetpack had already been playing when we got there and there were again many old (and a few new) friends that wanted to chat so we stayed outside until it was our turn to play. Jetpack was doing a great job inside, with a fantastic female sax player, really nailing that gritty '50/'60s rock'r'roll sax sound (turns out she's a semi-pro player in a big band as well as a music teacher at an elementary school - very talented, indeed!). Once they were finished we scrambled to get all our gear on stage, only to hit hard the wall of realization that the stage is really too small for all our gear! (Yes, we had two Dual Showmans in addition to Marty Tippens' drum set and a fairly large bass amp - thanks so much for letting us borrow those, Marty!) I ended up putting my Showman cab right behind Dane, which probably permanently rearranged some of his internal organs while at the same time blocking much of the sound coming out of the cab and making it pretty hard to hear myself. It was a challenging set for me due to that. It seemed also like the crowd was mostly mellow, there to drink and watch the bands rather than engage with the music much, but the show was still good and enjoyable. There's a rockin' video on Facebook (unable to link here) of us playing Tsar Wars at that show, and it was fantastic!)

Another late night by the time we got back to John's, but we were finally able to sleep in a bit. The next morning John kindly showed us the most recent edit of the "Sound of the Surf" doc, which got the day off to a FANTASTIC start! We were highly inspired and ready to go after that! Dane got together with his mom and spent the day with her until the show, but the three of us ended up going to Ran's gorgeous house in Escondido where he made us some of his patented "Reverb Crash" drinks (damn! The name is apropos!) and fed us, before we headed to the show in San Diego. Thanks for your generosity, Ran, we REALLY enjoyed that!

The Tower in San Diego is a WILD building! So cool! Reverbarati, led by Claudio, a recent transplant from Italy (where Reverbarati originated) played their first real show with this lineup, which was pretty incredible since they were GREAT! Very trad surf music, lots of reverb, lot of energy. I greatly enjoyed them, as well as meeting them, very nice guys all - and big thanks again for letting us use your drum set and bass amp! We played next, and it was a FUN set! Both John and I had a bit of trouble getting our amps under control (I was using Ran's raging Gomez Surfer) and due to the stage being very shallow Dane still had a lot of trouble hearing us. As a result, it was definitely the sloppiest of the four shows with quite a few mistakes, but it RAWKED hard and the people were into it! We got them all against the stage for the encore, even some girls which is always nice (and unexpected!). A very fun show, and I sure hope to be back there sometime! Jason Lee & the Riptides closed the night with a high-intensity show, even sporting a honest-to-goodness SMOKE MACHINE (wow!) as well as go-go dancers and a wild show! They were CRANKIN'! Rockabilly/garage influenced instros galore! It was very nice to finally meet Jason - turns out he works in the TV industry, recording music for a slew of TV shows on several cable channels (Discovery is the only one I can remember right now). Nice guy, great player! We had to leave before they were finished since we had a nearly 2-hr drive back and Jeremy and I had to leave by 9 am the next morning, but we caught a big chunk of their set. Nice also chatting there with the omnipresent John O!

Thanks to Jeff BTD for making both the Purple Orchid and The Tower shows (AND helping us out with a bunch of stuff connected to both shows!), as well as Ran and Hans Kohls (of the Sand Devils) and Ryan of the Secret Samurai - so great to see all of them!

Dane stayed in San Diego at his mom's place, while the rest of us drove back to John's, and then in the morning Jeremy and I took the Uber to LAX where we were able to hang out for several more hours, having a blast! I missed Jonpaul but Jeremy did so great on bass and was equally awesome company (and just as big of a surf nerd - sorry, John! ;) ) The camaraderie was again off the charts, just had a wonderful time.

Big thanks to my surf compadres, it really was a pleasure and an honor to be able to do this with you again! Thank you for all your hard work and your dedication - and your sheer RAWK!

I'm going to post a bunch of photos next. Enjoy the videos below! (There are three more on Facebook: us playing Tsar Wars at Purple Orchid, Banzai Washout in Felton and Moving Target at Winters.)

Ivan
Lords of Atlantis on Facebook
The Madeira Official Website
The Madeira on Facebook
The Blair-Pongracic Band on Facebook
The Space Cossacks on Facebook
The Madeira Channel on YouTube

Last edited: Jul 01, 2016 22:50:03

Way cool!

Excellent story, photos, and videos!!! Man I so wish I could have been there. Sounds like an amazing time was had by all!

Site dude - S3 Agent #202
Need help with the site? SG101 FAQ - Send me a private message - Email me

"It starts... when it begins" -- Ralf Kilauea

Thanks very much, fellas!!

I'm going to post the URLs to the three Facebook videos here - even if you don't have a FB account, you may still be able to watch them:

Banzai Washout in Felton:
https://www.facebook.com/kathleen.d.english/videos/10207959712724464/

Moving Target in Pacifica:
https://www.facebook.com/kathleen.d.english/videos/10207964551765437/

Tsar Wars in El Segundo (Purple Orchid):
https://www.facebook.com/kirk.wentzell/videos/1372161162811646/

Ivan
Lords of Atlantis on Facebook
The Madeira Official Website
The Madeira on Facebook
The Blair-Pongracic Band on Facebook
The Space Cossacks on Facebook
The Madeira Channel on YouTube

Hope you feel better soon Marty!

Site dude - S3 Agent #202
Need help with the site? SG101 FAQ - Send me a private message - Email me

"It starts... when it begins" -- Ralf Kilauea