Live Bands

I totally, completely, and utterly recommend seeing bands live.

Last weekend I spent a couple of days at the Jazz Jubilee in Sac. One I went alone and ended up hanging out with some fellow swing dancers all day. We danced up a storm. I swear I have never received so many compliments - random people stopping to say they saw me dancing and thought I was really good. One person even asked if what I did was choreographed, at which I had to laugh because the lead and I had our first dance just ten minutes before she saw us. I even did my first real aerial (actually, I don't know if you can call it a real aerial since I didn't know what I was doing, I was just being thrown around. but it was awfully fun). On the second day, a good friend and I hit the bands and did the common jubilee thing - watched one set for 10-15 minutes, and then moved on. We must have seen a good 11-12 bands in the final, half day, of the jubilee.

But what I like the most is seeing these bands live and feeling their energy. There was one band, GatorBeat, that I loved. I would just move to the music and have a great time. I think most people thought I was weird because I was dancing like crazy, but I thought they were weird for being able to hold still while such good, high energy music was playing!

That's the thing about live bands...their energy. I bought Gatorbeat's CD and, while it's good, it just doesn't capture the feeling of the band I saw on stage and I am disappointed with it. The same thing with Steve Lucky and the Rhumba Bums (and any artist that has energy on stage), that feeling can't come through on a canned, perfectly recorded, CD, it can only come from seeing the band live.

Maybe it's just me. I am big into energy. That's why I am not a good ballet person... not that you don't need energy for ballet, but it's a different energy then say, swing dancing. There a forms and lines in ballet, and it's usually choreographed, but in swing I can twist, turn, and make something up on the spot and have it work (and obviously fool a lot of people into thinking I'm good ;-) )!!

Still, I think there is an energy, a strength, and a quality that live music has that can't be found anywhere else. So go see bands live and in person!

On a similar note, to those wonderful people in the dance show this weekend, let's give the audience some energetic dancing. So I've bitched and moaned for the past 2 months about timing. No more bitching and moaning, let's go and dance like no one is watching! (oh, and ms. trokanski did not notice me come in late today, thank goodness for both Cara and I.)