Last weekend, New York was, er, deluged with rain, putting Brady Rymer's Jamboree with his band, Elizabeth Mitchell, and Hayes Greenfield at risk. Luckily, it sounds like it was one fabulous time.
Meanwhile, Charity and the JAMband played at the Getty Center in front of about 800 people, Charity reports. Apparently it was sunny, though that's par for the course in L.A....
I'm Not Talking To You, Jamarama Live
Go ahead, Jamarama Live. Tour the East Coast. See if I care. Tour with Buck Howdy, Ralph's World, Milkshake. (Oh, and LazyTown and a whole of bunch weird characters that I'm sure I would recognize if we had cable.) Ignore us fine folks in Phoenix. Fifth Largest City in America. Hmph.
Major Population Centers Have All The Luck...
This weekend...
New York? Brady Rymer's Family Jamboree on Sunday, with Brady Rymer, Elizabeth Mitchell, and Hayes Greenfield, on Long Island.
Los Angeles? Getty Concerts for Kids on Saturday and Sunday, with Charity and the JAMband, at the incredibly lovely Getty Center.
Chicago? Jammin' at the Zoo tonight, with Tally Hall, the Bad Examples, and They Might Be Giants at the very nice Lincoln Park Zoo. (Thanks, Clea, for the reminder!)
As for me, I'm doing our family's workday for the coop preschool. Wheelbarrows and shovels, whee!
And I Know That It Might Sound Outrageous...
... but today was our daughter's first full day of kindergarten. And it was raining. At 8 AM. This never happens in Phoenix, and as a result traffic was all a-kerfuffle, and I missed Justin Roberts' Today show appearance.
Luckily, the magic of this here interweb thingy steps in: Justin Roberts and the Not Ready for Naptime Players perform "Meltdown!"
(And, yeah, maybe some other day I'll talk about the kindergarten thing.)
When ScribbleMonster Played Kidzapalooza
When the cold, hard truth that I wouldn't be attending Kidzapalooza/Lollapalooza sunk in, I thought about who could write an interesting summary of their experiences there. And the first person that came to mind was Jim Dague aka ScribbleJim, whose newsletters (and few e-mails to me) have been generous and amusing. Jim's summary below -- covering both Friday and Saturday -- does not disappoint. Many thanks to Jim for taking the time to put this together.
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The Bozo Show has been collecting dust or gone for about a dozen years now. Still, there are countless Chicago-area children’s performers who proudly and prominently list their appearances on “Bozo’s Circus” (and I think they stopped calling it “Bozo’s Circus” about 25 years back) in their bio. Heck, if I were on The Bozo Show, I’d do the same. In its heyday, there reportedly was a 10-year waiting list for tickets. You never knew anyone who actually got to attend the show. Except for ScribbleJayne. Her uncle did advertising for Channel 9, so she actually scored tickets and went as a kid. We’ve tried to figure out a way to somehow make that qualify as saying we appeared on the Bozo show. We can stop thinking about that now. Now we can say that ScribbleMonster played Lollapalooza.
At Kidzapalooza with... Jackie Schimmel (Justin Roberts' Band)
[Looking for Justin Roberts' Today show appearance? Go here for the link and check out the Justin Roberts links on the right for more Justin reviews.]
Since I couldn't actually attend Kidzapalooza/Lollapalooza, I thought I'd do the next best thing -- have somebody else file a report for me. The first of the two reports comes from Jackie Schimmel, who plays bass for Justin Roberts. Jackie's been reading Zooglobble for awhile now, and I thought she'd be a great person to give a "behind-the-scenes" perspective from Kidzaplooza. And she does, in spades. It's long, but it was a long day.
Many, many thanks to Jackie for taking the time to write this and for letting me publish it...
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Hi! My name is Jackie Schimmel, and I play bass in Justin Roberts’ band, The Not Ready for Naptime Players. I first met Justin through our mutual friend, Liam Davis, and I started playing with Justin in February 1998. I’m on all of Justin’s cds except for his very first one, Great Big Sun. The Not Ready for Naptime Players have played A LOT of shows together over the years, and we have a great line-up for today’s show: Justin, Liam, me, Dave Winer on trumpet, melodica, percussion (and the BIG SHOES), and Gerald Dowd (who also plays with Liam in his “grown-up” band, Frisbie) on drums.
Lollapalooza is unlike any show we've ever played before. For one thing, at most of our shows, we're the only band on the bill. When we've played at other festivals, they've been specifically for kids (so the other performers have been folks like Hi-5 and They Might Be Giants). Appearing at a festival which is primarily for adults is definitely a first for us. Lollapalooza is an incredibly well organized event -- every single person we encounter over the course of the day is friendly, knowledgeable and thoroughly professional – and the Kidz Stage performers were treated like royalty. I really can't say enough about what a great experience it was!
Here's a timeline of my day:
7:00 AM: Time to get up!
When you play in a rock band for kids, you have the exact opposite schedule from a regular rock band: instead of getting to the venue at 8 pm, sound checking at 9 PM and going on at 11 PM, we do all of those things 12 hours earlier. One of the good things about this schedule is that we don't stagger home at 3 AM smelling like cigarettes. Another good thing is that we aren't exhausted this morning the way the rock stars playing on the other stages appear to be!
