i5hawn
10-21-2007, 05:02 AM
I was debating all week whether to drive down to DC early to get some time with the game. I decided to wait and take my fiancee with me to the Saturday stop at College Park during tailgating hours of UMD vs. Va
I got there at 1, as the schedule stated by I found two things. One the bus awning had been decimated by the elements the previous night before and two, the tour crew wouldn't be arriving until 4 o clock. this was a UMD flub as they weren't allowing any vehicle access until 4, even though there were people with cars parked and grilling before that time. I decided to wait it out by going to get a 6 pack and by the time I got back the tour crew had arrived and they were assessing the damage. They told me it'd take them maybe 30 mins to setup and we could start jammin. No Harmonix employee's but the team on the bus was a ****ing stellar group of guys. and they were really good at the game too, ended up racking up like...almost 900K on Dani California. The tour build unfortunately suffers from all the problems everyone else has complained about, broken guitars, freezing consoles blah blah blah.
None of that mattered. I met a kid James and another kid Avi, I'm assuming both UMD students (James if you're reading this PM me your gamertag) and we were immediately jamming. We decided to take the stage and get some schwag and took on Wanted Dead or Alive. According to the crowd/crew I killed the vocals but I still failed out. One thing I haven't heard people discuss is the vocals and this was very difficult. They told me later in the day that the mic needed an adjustment. We then just killed the next 3 hours or so playing songs on the main stage (you can play whatever you want out there, but no recording and as long as noone was waiting to get on stage.)
I thought they had a good turnout, unfortunately not to many stage participants. People were intrigued and the fact that we had it up to 11 (the guys complained about some of the stops limiting thier volume...one broad apparently booked them NEXT TO A LIBRARY....whiskey tango foxtrot) def brought in some spectators. I had also forgot the recorded sessions are being examined for a contest, well I didn't really know until they told me. I did meet a nice foursome from NoVa who also hung out with us most of the day. There was an MTV camera crew also there. They were doing some filming about the game and about the event. Standard stuff.
I'm going to also tell another story and then I'll make another post about my thoughts on the songs/instruments. It turned out that one of the guys with the film crew was a guy attached to the local indie Baltimore music scene and we ended up knowing some of the same people. So we were chatting for a while and it turned out the MTV crew was going to hang out with Dan Deacon (local act, doing some national touring) and play the game and asked me and fiancee if we wanted to COME ALONG. They were going to be playing at a small venue, downtown. Then they were like "you don't happen to have a big screen do you?" and i'm not sure if that was just a joke or a serious question but I was like "actually I do, is 42" large enough for whatever you guys wanna do?" they were like..."why do you have a 42" teevee?" So numbers were exchanged and a few hours later we were hauling my set into the venue and we began setup. I brought my x-plorers, which was a good thing considering that the Strats the crew supplied were broken to crap. one didn't fret and the other didn't whammy right. So we jammed with the x-plorer's (I also brought GHII but in my drunkeness I didn't PUT IT IN TO TEST WITH THE STRATS :( ) We got to the venue around 10PM and playing till 2AM! It really made what would have been an already awesome Saturday EPIC. Big thanks to the crew for coming out and making my day.
I got there at 1, as the schedule stated by I found two things. One the bus awning had been decimated by the elements the previous night before and two, the tour crew wouldn't be arriving until 4 o clock. this was a UMD flub as they weren't allowing any vehicle access until 4, even though there were people with cars parked and grilling before that time. I decided to wait it out by going to get a 6 pack and by the time I got back the tour crew had arrived and they were assessing the damage. They told me it'd take them maybe 30 mins to setup and we could start jammin. No Harmonix employee's but the team on the bus was a ****ing stellar group of guys. and they were really good at the game too, ended up racking up like...almost 900K on Dani California. The tour build unfortunately suffers from all the problems everyone else has complained about, broken guitars, freezing consoles blah blah blah.
None of that mattered. I met a kid James and another kid Avi, I'm assuming both UMD students (James if you're reading this PM me your gamertag) and we were immediately jamming. We decided to take the stage and get some schwag and took on Wanted Dead or Alive. According to the crowd/crew I killed the vocals but I still failed out. One thing I haven't heard people discuss is the vocals and this was very difficult. They told me later in the day that the mic needed an adjustment. We then just killed the next 3 hours or so playing songs on the main stage (you can play whatever you want out there, but no recording and as long as noone was waiting to get on stage.)
I thought they had a good turnout, unfortunately not to many stage participants. People were intrigued and the fact that we had it up to 11 (the guys complained about some of the stops limiting thier volume...one broad apparently booked them NEXT TO A LIBRARY....whiskey tango foxtrot) def brought in some spectators. I had also forgot the recorded sessions are being examined for a contest, well I didn't really know until they told me. I did meet a nice foursome from NoVa who also hung out with us most of the day. There was an MTV camera crew also there. They were doing some filming about the game and about the event. Standard stuff.
I'm going to also tell another story and then I'll make another post about my thoughts on the songs/instruments. It turned out that one of the guys with the film crew was a guy attached to the local indie Baltimore music scene and we ended up knowing some of the same people. So we were chatting for a while and it turned out the MTV crew was going to hang out with Dan Deacon (local act, doing some national touring) and play the game and asked me and fiancee if we wanted to COME ALONG. They were going to be playing at a small venue, downtown. Then they were like "you don't happen to have a big screen do you?" and i'm not sure if that was just a joke or a serious question but I was like "actually I do, is 42" large enough for whatever you guys wanna do?" they were like..."why do you have a 42" teevee?" So numbers were exchanged and a few hours later we were hauling my set into the venue and we began setup. I brought my x-plorers, which was a good thing considering that the Strats the crew supplied were broken to crap. one didn't fret and the other didn't whammy right. So we jammed with the x-plorer's (I also brought GHII but in my drunkeness I didn't PUT IT IN TO TEST WITH THE STRATS :( ) We got to the venue around 10PM and playing till 2AM! It really made what would have been an already awesome Saturday EPIC. Big thanks to the crew for coming out and making my day.
