Happy St. Patrick’s Day

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I had forgotten it was St. Patrick’s day until I checked my personal email and discovered mail from Michael Mullen giving last-minute notice of a Tempest show in the City. Karl and I headed up around 7 pm on the train.

We ate at Cha Cha Cha, which was interesting fare for an Irish holiday (things got stranger later when the Swedish lead singer of an Irish band started playing Swedish folk songs). We went down the street to 12 Galaxies to hear Tempest.

One thing I’ve got to say about the band is that they really know how to do a finale. I was enjoying the show, clapping, shuffling my feet, etc. But I just hadn’t really felt like dancing much. Then came the finale. First, Leif called the audience to come up close. His command over us was powerful, we dutifully shuffled up closer. Then they went into the finale piece that ebbed and flooded, with peak after peak. When the end came, I was in an absolute frenzy, jumping and bouncing like a madman.

They came back for an encore, and I was grateful, if only to help drain the energy they left pent up in me from the finale. The encore was nice, but it lacked the same power over me. Just as well, since my head might have exploded otherwise.

One other thing I need to record for posterity is an emerging canonical ordering of instruments (ordered by decreasing coolness), as derived by Karl and I during the evening:

  1. Bass played by a hot chick
  2. Electric mandolin
  3. Electric violin
  4. Bass
  5. Electric accordion with a wah-wah pedal
  6. Acoustic accordion
  7. Kazzoo
  8. French Horn

Karl helped with the final ordering by pointing out ties could be broken by ranking the instrument you see less often as cooler.


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