ateolf | Outer Space

So I had the massive privilege of seeing The Sun Ra Arkestra live last night! Man, it was an incredible show. I'll back up just a hair. Having had trouble finding stuff and not being able to get into stuff in the past at Rhodes, we made sure to arrive a little early. Well, it was very early and we were almost the first people there. We did get to watch the Arkestra sound check and that was pretty cool. And we got the closest seats we could possibly get (there were a few reserved rows but we got smack dab in the middle in the first row that wasn't reserved). A bunch of friends eventually showed up. The first thing we had to sit through was the Rhodes jazz band. It was pretty cheesy and lame and not very good, but they didn't play very long. Then we got to see The Sun Ra Arkestra! They were very good. Marshal Allen is fuckin' 94 and he can still play like fucking crazy. Then Knoel Scott (at 62) at one point was doing fucking cartwheels and flips and shit. It was insane. On a couple songs, Marshall Allen had a wind controller for a synth so he was bringing back some of those crazy Sun Ra synth sounds we love. Tara Middleton does justice to June Tyson's singing. The highlight was "We Travel the Spaceways" and half the Arkestra did the walk-around the entire room while they played thing. Also "Angels and Demons at Play" was really good with the screaming from Danny Ray Thompson (and this was also where Knoel Scott did his "space dance"). It was a really good performance and I'm happy I got to see it. Picked up a t-shirt afterwards. After that I went out to DKDC to see Optic Sink's first official show. Natalie now has Ben Bauermeister on drum machine and mixing duties. They were really good. Afterwards there was a touring band called Static Static and they were pretty good. Same kinda ballpark with some synth punk. It was a two piece and they both played Minilogues (one through a distortion pedal) and there was drum machine. They were a bit more straightforward rock than Optic Sink, but they got nice and noisy. It was pretty good, after that I headed home. Went and picked up my car this morning. Found out that I left the book I'm reading in the Lyft I took home yesterday (Wish Her Safe at Home by Stephen Benatar) and they have a $15 delivery charge for lost items so I'll probably have to just reorder another copy (since that'd be much cheaper), sadly.