Only two weeks after doing the Tonight Show with Miley, we were back with Billy Ray. Felt like we never left.
This time we were indoors, which was much warmer.
The night's guests:
I had a nice conversation with Kristin after the show. What a sweet gal.
Jaco IS Neil Young
This Friday, March 20, is my All-Covers show at Genghis. I'll be playing with my Small But Mighty Band (Jan Stolpe on guitar and Mark Stanley on percussion), and we're gonna put our own spin on Elvis Costello, Tom Petty, Billy Joel, The Beatles, Elton John and lots more fun stuff.
I'm really excited about this one. It's gonna be a great time. Come on out and sing/shout/laugh along.
Genghis Cohen
9pm
$7
740 N Fairfax Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90046
http://www.genghiscohen.com/
The night before the Inauguration, we flew to DC to play a Kids Inaugural concert presented by Michelle Obama. She was in the front row with her kids, enjoying Miley, The Jonas Brothers, Demi Lovado, Corbin Bleu (my favorite chicken dish) and Lil' Bow Wow, who I was notified is no longer lil'. He still looks lil', however, so it is quite confusing.
We began with soundcheck, as always. Here's a slice of how slow and uneventful those things are:
Despite the Big Nothing happening in that video, you can still hear how sweet Billy Ray is, as he makes small talk with a crew member.
Then Clay (our playback guy and my dear friend) and I decided to hit the streets and see the hoopla!
Mainly, the hoopla consisted of icy cold air, tons of people (half of whom were selling Barack-related merchandise to the other half), and many many cops.
Obama Obobbleheads
Obama Water
The Street-level Mosh PitPlaying on the roof in the middle of Rockefeller Center can be quite an exhilarating experience. New York City is a meat locker this time of year, as we learned when we played on the roof last year in NYC. So, know that when I say "exhilarating," I mean "frozen extremities and sore throat" exhilarating.
Me. Exhilarated.Many thanks to my reader Shannon, who pointed out that our episode of Stripped (read my original post here) is now live at iheartmusic.com. The whole band got some serious camera time, and it's quite an enjoyable, intimate show. Check it out, yo.
Well, the video for "7 Things" is finally out for all to see. So I suppose I can talk about the shoot now.
First of all, have a look:
We showed up bright and early at the set in Hollywood. None of us had any clue what we were supposed to wear, so we showed up with suitcases full of clothes. After talking to wardrobe and narrowing down the options, and being accessorized (I got away easy with just a belt), we grabbed some breakfast from the catering truck.
Then into hair and makeup. They basically just touched up our eyes, glanced at our hair and let us go - mostly they're just around for the girls' use.
We finally made it out to the set, which was just a giant white cyc, filled only with our instruments. Brett Ratner greeted us all, and we were off to work.
Miley came out and we performed the song several times with the camera fixed in one place so they could shoot wide, medium and tight shots of Miley. The song is very fast, with a chorus that's already basically double-time, so imagine our surprise when Brett announced he wanted to shoot a few takes at 48 frames per second.
Perhaps this requires a little explanation: film is normally shot at 24fps, and as this is a breakup song, they wanted slow-motion shots of Miley smashing/breaking/ripping up stuff. So in order for the shots to play in slow-motion, we have to shoot them twice as fast. Which means, in order for us to be synced to the music, we have to play the song twice as fast. So we were trying to play basically at quadruple-speed. Imagine how goofy that looked.
So, while a chipmunked version of the song played, Miley smashed a Guitar Hero guitar, a real acoustic guitar, as well as several items she brought in.
After a couple hours of performing the song full-out, Brett asked if we were tired. Stacy responded, "Our show is pretty long, so we're used to this." They let Miley go, and brought out a few other teenage girls to stand in for Miley. And by a few, I mean piles and piles of them. The concept of the video is that all these girls are going through the same kind of nasty breakup. "They're all in it together." Okay. Nice in concept. But in execution, it meant we had to shoot the whole video about 27 more times.
Several hours went by. Girl after girl would amble up to the stage, shift into "rage" mode, and sing through the song while having a "hormone moment." Brett kept saying to us, "only two more girls," and then they'd bring some more in from the street or the sky or something. They must have had a van on Hollywood Boulevard, kidnapping tourists.
By the time we finished all the girls, we had been rocking out at double- and quadruple-time for nearly nine hours. In the early takes, we looked energized and youthful, but by the end of the day, we were looking sluggish and haggard. For a little schizophrenic fun, watch the video again, and notice them cutting back and forth between these looks.
And once we were sweaty, tousled and near death, it was time for our closeups. Yes. They routinely save these for last, when you look disasterously bad.
We only had to "play the song five more times," one for each band member to get a closeup. At this point, Stacy's back was really hurting from leaning over a drumset since dinosaurs roamed the earth. And my back and neck were feeling some serious whiplash. So, "five more times" had a torturous ring to it.
So we thrashed and rocked and knocked about for another hour (in between every shot, gear gets moved and stuff gets reset, so everything takes longer than you'd want). By the end, I was forming blisters on my thumbs, my fingernails were seriously split/ragged/bleeding, and we were all ready to drop.
Voila! Music video magic.
New York City welcomed us with a bleak, cold rainstorm. A rainstorm with which we became very familiar as we waited soggily for our shuttle to come pick us up from the JFK airport. It didn't show. After over an hour, Stacy made a phone call to the shuttle service. The service replied, "He's been waiting for over an hour. He couldn't get in to the gate, so he's around the back."
No one called to tell us this?
The only thing worse than waiting in a chilling rainstorm for a shuttle is waiting in a chilling rainstorm for a shuttle that's parked around the corner.
We made our way to the bus marked "Krystal." Their slogan was "a 'gem' of a ride!"
Kill me now.
After boarding and finally leaving the airport, the driver swerved and tailgated his way into the city. Nearly a half-hour later, we pulled over near a basketball court in what was clearly the ghetto. This was not our hotel. The driver exited the bus. He slowly walked around the side and looked closely at the front tire. Then the back tire. Then he went around the other side and did the same.
And then, without a word, he got back on the bus and resumed driving.
Okay then.
He had a strong preference for the right lane on the freeway, adding at least 15 additional minutes to our ride. When we finally reached the hotel, he parked at the entrance that was clearly marked "closed after 7pm." It was nearly 9pm.
He started pulling all our bags out of the back of the bus, when he finally heard us all screaming, "We need to move!" and "Put the bags back!" and "Why are you so dumb!?"
So he drove the van around the block to the front entrance.
Not quite a "gem" after all.
My room at the Affinia Hotel was spacious, with a full kitchen and a high ceiling, but tempered by the customary miniscule New York bathroom: you can only take a shower if you suck in your gut.
The pillows were comfy, but in case they weren't, the Affinia had a pillow menu to put that other place to shame (click photo to enlarge):
What to do when you're in New York City? Well, same thing I always do: see my buddy Ben. The two of us slogged through the wet city to some country steak joint that oddly smelled like warm brownies, which is never a bad thing. I say "oddly," because brownies were not on the menu.
I had the burger.
Just like last time, it was garbage night in the city.
I'm convinced this is an everyday sight. Trash sprawled up almost every street. And trust me, there's nothing like the smell of wet garbage in the evening air to rid your brain of brownie thoughts.
The following day, we were slated to play Z100's Zootopia. Z100 is supposedly the most widely listened-to station in the world. I'm not sure how anyone can prove this.
The festival was being held at what was previously the Meadowlands Arena in Jersey, now annoyingly renamed the Izod Center. During the tour, I grew weary of arenas with names like the Dunkin Donuts Center, the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater and the FedEx Forum. Are there any venues that haven't been bought by The Man?
We had our soundcheck early in the morning and everything went very well. I can't say the same for Jessie McCartney, who spent his entire half-hour listening to Pro-Tools tracks while his playback guy tried to fix some completely inaudible problem. The band looked impatient, and Jessie looked like he was about ready to blow.
At noon, they commuted us back to the hotel for an entire day of freedom in the city. I went to the park.
The Krystal bus picked us up again at 8:30pm and drove us back out to Jersey for the big show. Also performing, the Jonas Brothers, OneRepublic, Danity Kane and Simple Plan. We got back just in time for me to check out Sara Bareilles. I really like "Love Song." Good thing too, cause they only let her play that one tune, even though everybody else was playing half-hour sets.
After her, all the girls swooned for New Kids On The Block. Yes. That's not a typo. New Kids. And how they did swoon. Some of our female dancers (and I won't name names to spare their dignity) knew all the lyrics and were very excited to see their childhood idols all growed up (read: old and depressing) and still dancing the same dance steps. It was like Bring Your Dad To Work Night at the Apollo. But I'm happy for them, I guess. They just grabbed themselves another 15 minutes.
We took the stage around 10:30 and Miley proceeded to melt some faces. Everything went well until the song, "Right Here," when my ears went out. I looked around and noticed that I wasn't the only one. Jamie was mouthing to Stacy, "No ears!" Jaco looked at me and mouthed, "Did you lose your ears?" We kept playing despite the fact that none of us could hear much of anything, as our ears block outside sound, so when they turn off, you can't hear very well. A while later in the song, the ears came back on, and of course we were off the click, so they had to stop the click track. Again, we kept playing.
Looking at the faces in the audience, nobody noticed the numerous heart attacks that just occured on stage. Those crazy kids just wanna have a good time. And a good time they had.
One show down, one to go. Tomorrow, the big NetJets show.
People have been asking, "approximately how many people do you think were at Wango Tango?" I've always been terrible at guessing how many candy corns are in the jar, so count for yourselves:
(What You Sick People Come Here For)After another luxurious day relaxing at the Hyatt, we jumped in the van to make our wonderfully late 4pm call time. We showed up to an empty stadium.
After a quick reunion with our buddies the Jonas Brothers and band, we popped up on stage for the most disastrous sound check we've ever had.
The setup went well. How hard can it be to plug stuff in?
But once we started getting levels, it was your basic 72-car freeway pileup. Nobody could hear anything. I, for example, was missing the left side of one of my keboards, my vocal, the click, and Miley's vocal. Not good.
And Vish, our regular dependable sound guy, was at the mercy of the Master of Incompentence - otherwise known as "the guy Disney supplied." The Master had confused the mixing console with Whack-A-Mole, as he randomly slapped buttons and knobs hoping for some sort of accidental miracle.
Halfway through this total catastrophe, in poured the Miley fans. Tons of 'em.
Perfect.
Full of enthusiasm, they didn't seem to notice our perplexed faces, as we struggled through one roughly-mixed song after another. Eventually we got our mixes to a place that wasn't awful, which seemed about the best we could hope for.
So it was off to dinner in the food tent. While we were eating, the weather did an about-face.
The sky began pelting the crowd with the largest raindrops I've seen in ages. Grape-like droplets. I could feel them explode as they hit me. I was fully soaked in ten seconds.
But the crowd was loyal. They weren't about to go home just because of some soggy clothes. Not when they were waiting to see Miley Cyrus, and the Jonas Brothers, and the Cheetah Girls, and...whoever else was playing.
In typical fashion for these sorts of things, we were then shepherded to a room far away, where we then filled out our paperwork and sat around for several hours.
Then we got the word. We were going on early. After all that waiting, now we had to rush. We threw on our costumes and jumped on golf carts, which whisked us over to the stage. We grabbed our gear and hurried up to the wings. One of the show runners saw us and said, "What are you guys doing here? You're not on for a while. The Cheetah Girls are on before you."
But we didn't have enough time to go back. So we just hung out in everybody's way, in the wings.
Miley sauntered up about fifteen minutes later, and we had an impromptu singing jam session on the side of the stage.
We all took our places. The dancers came out in their big long tailcoats. We rocked the place out with "See You Again," and two new songs: "Fly on the Wall" and "Breakout." The crowd totally ate up the new stuff. And of course, everybody loved "See You Again," which has become quite a huge crossover hit with Disney fans and on mainstream rock radio.
That was it. Funny how these things are 98% waiting and 2%playing.
After two days of rehearsals in L.A., we flew to Florida for two more days of rehearsal. That's just the way we roll.
We were booked to stay at Disney's Pop Century Resort. The band and dancers were all speculating as to what type of hotel it was. "What kind of theme could Pop Century" be? Pop music? Pop culture? Popcorn?" We couldn't figure it out.
Once we got there, it became a little clearer. The decor was a mishmash of eras, colors, and random pop culture. Each building represented a different decade.
Here's the 70's building:
Apparently the Rubik's Cube was the only important developement in that era.
Is "Totally Awesome" an 80's phrase? I still use it. But I'm no gauge of cool.
Exactly as described
Which she learned in, like, three seconds. Smarty.I'm back. I've been in the cave of The Samantha Murphy Show. I'm proud to say we all emerged with 7 days of awesome shows from South By Southwest. I hope you've all checked out the show (go to smtvmusic.com if you haven't yet seen me make a complete fool out of myself on camera).
Just before SXSW, the Miley/Hannah crew reunited in Houston for the livestock and rodeo show. It's was a much bigger deal than most of us expected. There were big music acts every night, and we were the only one that sold out. That was exciting, but on top of that Kay was super-psyched to see the cowboys do what they do.
We arrived all groggy around 10am at the venue, which was all dirt. Nobody wore the right shoes. A massive stage sat in the center.
We soundchecked for awhile, then decided to run the entire show. The stage was much smaller than we were used to, so the choreography needed to be adjusted.
We were told that the stage would be turning as we performed, so that everybody in the arena could see us. But we were assured that it would turn quite slowly.
This was not really so true. As we ran the show for two hours on empty stomachs, we noticed that the speed of the rotation was a bit undersold to us. It was actually kinda fast.
Also, the stage could only make three full rotations, because of cabling. Then with a lurch, it would spin in the opposite direction. Which of course meant that every minute or so, all the dancers would nearly get knocked to the ground. Fun! And I was kinda sick. A little nauseous.
To celebrate our quease, Candice, Jaco and I spent our couple hours off enjoying the carnival rides.
We also checked out the freaks and the farm animals:
The rodeo started at precisely 3:46pm. I don't know why. They run that thing like clockwork. We gathered out front to see all the calf-roping action up close. Kay quickly became disenfranchised by the violence of the act.
During soundcheck in New Orleans, Vashon shows a little creepy Mardi Gras spirit:
After the Circle of Power, we made the walk to the stage. Here is a first-person-view of what we experienced every day before the show. (I apologize for how dark the video is, but it was dark back there!)
Okay. We have an idea. If Miley wants to surprise us with Clear, we are gonna surprise her with our surfboard picture on the big screen! We're running it past the necessary parties right now.
On the way back from dinner, all the guys in the band got a group photo on a surfboard. Hilarious. I'll post it later.
We're having an awesome time ditching catering and eating by the water. The whole band is here and we're reminiscing. I'm gonna miss these guys.
Oh also, we just got a text. We ARE doing Clear tonight. Rock on!
We're soundchecking right this minute. I'm typing as I play.
Everybody's got their camera's out. It's like the last day of school. Except most of us are sad.
Miley wants to do some different songs tonight, so we just played through Clear and Bigger Than Us. Only problem is we have all the video and stuff locked in.
So, no changes here.
On the bus with the band, headed to the venue. Kay and Candice think we're gonna cry tonight. We'll see.
There's no water left and we're all thirsty. I might cry about that.
Posts
All Comments
