¡Muy Divertido!

It's finally over! The Dorothy Heralds' release party for our new CD 100 Unnamed Things was last night. We pulled out all the stops for this one. Lights, sound, VIP party and free admission for the first 100 people. Aside from a longer than planned setup time, everything went off without a hitch. Attendance was high as were spirits. We took a lot of chances with this show and I think they paid off well.

We started the night with retooled versions of "Inverno Rosa" and "Now" from our last album Projections. "Inverno Rosa" was made moodier by reducing the instrumentation to piano, guitar and voice. Kevin's keyboard line didn't change much, but the addition of some Frisell-ian swells really ornamented the beauty of the melody. Gary actually sang the high harmony which is still amazing. "Now" was rescued from the noise/improv excesses of the past. Gary and Tim wrote a Medeski, Martin and Wood sounding groove. Kevin and I chose a more minamalistic, Massive Attack style ambience. Then we performed "Angel" by Massive Attack which we combined with our song "I Don't Care" from Projections.

Next came the album in its entirety. Everything was played pretty much the way it is on the CD, with the notable exception of "Play" which we've combined with Björk's "Hyper Ballad". It's one of my favorite pieces to perform. We superimpose "Hyper Ballad" over the bridge of "Play" and then end with the chorus of "Play" being sung over the chorus of "Hyper Ballad". It's an emotionally powerful piece for me, and I think that comes across to the audience.

After performing the songs on the new album, we performed "Interiatic ESP" by The Mars Volta, "Synchronicity II" by the Police and "Sunless Saturday" by Fishbone. Those have to be some of the more challenging and enjoyable covers we've done. It's been a dream of mine for quite a while to perform "Synchronicity II" on stage. We were actually asked to do an encore which was a pleasant surprise. We did "Beautiful" from Projections but improved around it a lot. Thanks to Tim, we've actually gotten to a place where we can improvise as a group. It's so very refreshing!

DJ Anonymous spun some great stuff to close the night. And for those of you that couldn't stick around a spontaneous jam with Anonymous and the band occurred at the end of the night. I really hope that we'll get to work with him more in the future. His remixes of our album sound incredible.

Thanks to everyone who made last night possible and to all the people involved in the production!