| Come Together [The Beatles] | Modern Day Fairy Tales | Vacation to Oblivion | Destiny, She Drives a Rolls | The Date | I'm a Bad Mamma Jamma (Who Works at Wendy's) | Refrigerator | Clone You | Sledgehammer [Peter Gabriel] |
For the third year in a row we were asked to perform on the main Loring Stage at the Twin Cities Pride Festival. This is always a good day for us. The festival is always so welcoming with such a strong sense of loving community. Additionally, people are in a festive mood and they dance and sway. A super cool thing is that there are always American Sign Language interpreters on stage. Plus you get a nifty lanyard when you perform. I love being at TC Pride.Brandon deserves kudos for this show. He's been staying in Aberdeen this month, dealing with some family issues, but he traveled out to the Cities specifically for this gig. It's a good thing, too. This festival is good for us. So click 'Like' on Brandon's decision to make the trip.
We continued the set as people danced. Others hula-hooped. Others still sat in the grass simply enjoying their summertime beverages. Though the gig may have started rough, it picked up and felt really good. The sound crew on this stage was top-notch. It's the same group we usually work with on this gig, and we always sound great because of them.
We had originally planned to open the set with "On the Sidewalk," but decided against it, since it's such a mellow tune. The emcee, the lovely Sweetpea from Lili's Burlesque Revue, had been introducing acts with much gusto. So if we had kicked into a super mellow tune right after that, some impact would have been lost. So we decided to open with "Come Together." Never mind the fact that we had neither practiced it nor played it for weeks. And was it evident. It probably wasn't a good choice. It was a bit of a disaster that I'm sure will go down in the annals of Junebug vernacular. "Let's make sure not to pull a Come Together."
We continued the set as people danced. Others hula-hooped. Others still sat in the grass simply enjoying their summertime beverages. Though the gig may have started rough, it picked up and felt really good. The sound crew on this stage was top-notch. It's the same group we usually work with on this gig, and we always sound great because of them.We ripped through "Bad Mamma Jamma" and people dug it. And then, just as we were going to move on, we heard a sweet voice shout out, "REFRIGERATOR!!" I looked a little more closely and it was our old friend, Briana, whom we met at American Burger Bar during the winter carnival. She and the man in the Angry Birds shirt ("you've got a lot of courage," said Dustin) were requesting that greatest of tunes about kitchen appliances. Though Anthony was hesitant at first, I reminded him of our policy about playing requests -- which is, if someone likes us enough to hear a particular song and shout it out, we had better play it. So, we did. When it was done, Anthony said next we were going to play our next appliance hit, "Garbage Disposal." Brandon and I kicked in, but it was not meant to be. Maybe another time.
We finished out the set with "Clone You" and a rockin' rendition of our rendition of Peter Gabriel's rendition of "Sledgehammer." Pride 2011 was a hit, and we're super glad we played again this year. We hope that this becomes an annual thing for us.We as a band promote love, acceptance, unity and good times. We do our best not to speak out about politics or anything like that, because all it seems to do is divide. This festival is all about inclusiveness, equal rights for all types of humans, unity and love. These are all things that we can get behind. We want all people rock equally.
Peace, love and pork rinds.
