I made a post sometime in early 2009, around the time of the initial talks of this basement BBQ in the works, suggesting that we should include live karaoke. I didn’t expect anyone to care enough to respond, but within a few hours had been contacted by MF Nightmen (guitar), Ruy Lopez (drums), hench (keys, though more on that), and kerble as the MC. I offered to fill the open bass role, though MF thought we’d be better served by 2 guitars and asked the other bassist in his band (-o-), Erik, to join. Wow, we had a karaoke band!

Colonel Panic at The Hype perform Live at PRFBBQ2010

Months later, we’d kind of forgotten about it and realized we needed to get our shit together. The show was about a month away and people we’re actually anticipating my half-assed karaoke concept. Oh boy. Around that time, hench told me he was too busy to do it, then got seriously ill, then moved to LA, so we we’re SOL in the keys dept. Uh oh, no one on EA plays fuckin’ keys (as far as I knew at the time). I even contacted a professional keyboardist through craigslist to fill in as over half of the requests had pianos or synths. Luckily, the dude didn’t write me back (he seemed a little too into Ben Folds anyway) and Noise&Light contacted me 3 weeks before showtime. Saved! We had our first practice about 2 weeks before the BBQ and after some shaky run throughs, we managed to get 19 songs down in 4 or 5 practices @ MF’s Ravenswood Manor bungalow (which is like playing in a 1960s basement, in the best way imaginable).

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