Punkoustica's First Two Shows

Wow! What a fun weekend. Teresa, Angie, Tracy and I played a couple of really unusual shows this weekend. Saturday we performed at the Shipyard in Berkeley - basically a big outdoor art space. The weather changed rapidly on us and we were unprepared for the cooler temperatures. I've never played guitar in cold weather, but I remember guitarists I've worked with complaining about their hands stiffening when they were cold. Well, you guessed it. My hands were so stiff and clumsy that I messed up almost every song. I was really mad at myself.



Brrrrrrr!

The good thing is that the audience was very nice. They clapped and danced and had fun and had me pretty much convinced that their entire evening hadn't been ruined due to my lousy playing.

After our set I met up with my Myspace friend Miss Oblivious and her friend Ally and we walked to the liquor store to get something to warm our insides while the next band was setting up. We sat in a little boat that was parked outside the shipyard, sipping our drinks and pretending we were on a pleasure cruise.

I'll fast forward through the rest of the evening: cool girl singer onstage, naked man suspended above the crowd by cellophane, opera singer on roof sings as an intoxicated forklift driver backs up carelessly, nearly killing about 20 audience members, snake dancers, flaming whips, dirty port-a-potties, someone gets trapped inside one of the port-a-potties, drizzle, cop cars arrive, music, drums, bass, Doritos, hotel, snoring...

The first thing we did on Sunday morning was shop for warmer clothes. Once that was taken care of we practiced our newer songs. I dipped my hands in an ice bucket before playing each song to toughen myself up. Not really, but it sounds good doesn't it?

Later we did some thrift store shopping, went to a local swap meet, ate Indian food and visited some of the cool funky shops in Berkeley.

The SF show was at Studio Z, a nice, toasty indoor venue. The sound man took an extra 5 minutes to give us a better sound than we'd had the night before. This helped alot. Our second show was much better than the first.

More cool performances by Binky, The Weegs, Savage Republic, and Skip Arnold.

Punkoustica survived it's first two shows, and now for L.A. Keep an eye on our MySpace profile for show dates.

We're not playing this weekend, but a bunch of cool bands are playing at the second annual Fuck Yeah Fest in Echo Park on Saturday, July 2. Toys That Kill, Mean Reds, Dillinger Four...if you're in town, come check out what the kids are up to!