Man in Space

My friend Raphael "Raffi" Peterson is a bass guitarist. Back in late 2008, I went to watch his band, Dizzy Balloon, perform a Thanksgiving concert. As I wrote at the time, it was insanely awesome.

A year later in 2009, I went to their concert Thanksgiving Extravaganza II: Second Helpings. It was less insane but still awesome. Looking back now, it's interesting to see how their interactions with the audience changed during that year. As I noted then, "the interactions were generally more subtle but were definitely still there. It was clear that folks in the audience enjoyed themselves."

Now, 9 more months have passed. A subset of Dizzy Balloon has now started a second band, Man in Space. Most recently, I went to their EP release concert, at Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco.

After the concert, I asked Raffi about the main differences between Man in Space and Dizzy Balloon. His response was pretty straightforward: Man in Space is about the instrumentation. There's no front-man; everyone sings and everyone plays.

They shuffled the instruments a bit as well. Louie Diller, the drummer for Dizzy Balloon, is now on keys. His brother Martin (pictured above) is on drums. Jules Leyhe joins Jonny Flannes on guitar, and Raffi remains on bass guitar.

They switched instruments a bit during the show as well. Peter Labberton (an extra player? I'm not sure) spent much of the night rocking on a synthesizer, and swapped with Raffi for a couple songs as well.

Raffi had mentioned that they played many more instruments for the recordings than they had hands for during the concert, so I presume Peter helped to transform their recorded sound into a live performance. Whatever strings they had to pull and compromises they had to make, though, it definitely worked. The concert was fantastic.

As I've watched and listened, it's become increasingly apparent just how much the band members simply enjoy music and dedicate themselves to music and to performing. About forty minutes after the concert ended, I found Jonny curled up in a back corner of the stage, playing quietly to himself.

By comparison, a couple months ago I saw a band playing while eating out with some friends. Ashton, rock guitarist and lover of all things metal, watched the band for a short while and lamented, "they're only in it for the money." And I could see what he meant — the players had no energy; they were playing their instruments but showed no signs of being invested in the experience.

Both Man in Space and Dizzy Balloon have been exactly the opposite. Every time I've seen them, the energy in the house has been nearly palpable, and I love it. Keep rockin', my friends. Keep rockin'.

You can find more photos here.

Second Helpings with Dizzy Balloon

This past Saturday brought the return of Dizzy Balloon's Thanksgiving Extravaganza to The Rickshaw Stop. It wasn't nearly as outlandish as last year, but it was still a great time.

One aspect of the concert that stood out for me was the spontaneous crowd interaction. Last year, what with the (amazing) sing-along and other antics, it was pretty obvious that the crowd was having a good time. On Saturday, the interactions were generally more subtle but were definitely still there. It was clear that the folks in the audience enjoyed themselves.

A concert-goer puts her hands in the air as (right to left) lead singer Petros A. P., lead guitarist Jonny Flannes, and keyboardist Joey Orton sing.

Dizzy Balloon played an acoustic version of their song "I'm Just Me" for their first encore. Here, a crowd-member waves his lighter as lead singer Petros A. P. gets the crowd to wave their hands.

For their second encore, the group played a cover of The Jackson 5's "I Want You Back," during which Petros A. P. invited audience members onstage en masse.

Guitarist Jonny Flannes autographs a fan's t-shirt after the concert.

Thanks for looking. You can find more photos in this gallery.

On Infrastructure and Chefs of Iron

I like infrastructure. I saw this awesome Gantry crane on the way to a Dizzy Balloon concert (which was extremely awesome, just like the one I wrote about). On the way back to my car, I decided to stop and take a photo.

In addition to admiring other people's infrastructure, though, I enjoy building my own. A few years back (early 2005, it seems), before there were other decent options, I started working on a photo gallery so I could share photos I shot with other people.

In 2006, I rewrote the gallery to be able to handle the volume of photos I sometimes shoot. I used it frequently until I graduated last year, and then it languished. But now it's back. I can finally make good on the promise of sharing photos which didn't make the cut for the blog post (even if they were just as good as those that did); yay! Without further ado, Iron Chef.

More months ago than I'd like to admit, Langton Labs held "bEATS: an Iron Chef and DJ remix challenge." There's already a great writeup on the Langton Labs blog, so I'll only add random commentary. The short of it, though, is that there was music, food, and a great deal of eating.

The three DJs had two hours to create their own remixes of the song "Old Fashioned Morphine", by Jolie Holland. You can download and listen to the remixes here. In the photo, benchun faces the camera and JSeigler (aka Shipwrek) works in the background. Dr. Toast, the third DJ, is in other photos (yay!)

There were four teams of chefs. One team worked in their own kitchen a couple blocks away, but were connected to Langton by webcam.

Here, Agil washes some eggplants, tomatoes, and asparagus for the Hairnet Banditos. There were more teams than kitchen sinks, so Agil didn't limit himself to the kitchen.

Nick slices up some beets for the Stand Mixapps, the team that worked in their own space. I really like the reflection. Also, Mixapp seems pretty cool, and here's an obligatory webcomic.

Two chefs from The Lemonettes get down to business. I like how the backlit steam came out in this one.

As a lover of wordplay, I greatly enjoyed this team's name. Here, the Braisin' Bitches take the final preparatory steps before getting their food on the fire.

Mike, one of the Langton Labrats, interviewed all of the teams a bit after halfway through the cooking time. Here, he perches on a ladder to interview The Lemonettes in the upstairs kitchen.

As the two-hour cooking period draws near to a close, a member (whose name I forget) of the Stand Mixapps hurriedly asks Nick for a taste test: "Bite this. How is it?" "Nom."

So, that's about it. If you want to see more photos, you can find them here. That's right, CLICK HERE to see 131 other photos from bEATS.

And to sum up, here's a quote from a friend:
"oh take me on an adventure, feed me yummy things to eat, and let's enjoy the sun" —Danbee Kim

Dizzy Balloon Rocks

I first discovered Dizzy Balloon when Raffi, a friend from school and also a member of the band, sent a message asking me and a bunch of other folks to vote in a Bay Area local band competition being held by the Live105 (KITS) radio station. Grand prize for the competition was the opening slot at Not So Silent Night, featuring Bloc Party, Franz Ferdinand, Jack's Mannequin, Death Cab for Cutie, and The Killers.

I'm a big fan of helping friends, so I stopped by the Live105 website and listened to Dizzy Balloon's competition song, "Raise a Glass." And you know, it wasn't that bad. After listening a few more times, I got to like it, and resolved to "vote for it sometime."

A couple more days of listening to the song essentially on repeat (or cursing Live105's Flash-based music player when using machines without Flash) provided enough activation energy for me to escape the potential well and actually go vote. Given the registration hoops I had to jump through, this was a big step. Afterward, I went back to hitting the "play" button each time the song had finished.

Finally, on November 29th, I went to Dizzy Balloon's Thanksgiving Extravaganza at The Rickshaw Stop, and it was fantastic. In addition to Dizzy Balloon, Picture Atlantic and The Frail also played, and all three bands made it into the top 25 of the Live105 competition. Beyond music, the concert had black lights, lasers (❤), a bubble machine, a smoke machine, and a sing-along.

With that said, here's how I became a Dizzy Balloon fan.

The concert started off with a set by Picture Atlantic, who made it to the top 5 of the local talent competition. I enjoyed their music, but I wasn't really into it; and now, a month later, I can hardly remember what they sounded like.

I believe the guitarist was doing some sort of feedback trick when I shot this, but I'm not really sure. Whatever it was, the blue LED contrasted nicely with the red stage lighting, and also complemented the undershirt's hint of blue fluorescence from the black lights.

The Frail played next and they rocked. This was my first time seeing electronica played live, and it sounded great. I imagine this was in no small part due to massive woofers that the club employed for the evening: standing in front of one of the stacks, it felt like the speakers were trying to blow my clothes off. Excellent.

The singer for The Frail asked for the lights to be turned off, so all that were left were the black lights. It was pretty cool in person, but sort of frustrating from a photographic point of view. I kept shooting, though, and came up with this frame. The silhouette is pretty surreal.

Later that night, I bought one (well, really three) of their CDs. Unfortunately, it was fairly lackluster compared to the live performance, and that may have been one reason they didn't make it to the top 5 in Live105's competition — they were pretty awesome in concert. So awesome that I started to wonder if I shouldn't have blindly voted for Dizzy Balloon in Live105's competition.

Dizzy Balloon finally got on stage, however, and put my fears firmly to rest. I sent an email to a mutual friend of Raffi and myself when I got home, and I think it conveys my reaction to the performance pretty well:

Holy moly. I mean, good grief. That is by far the best live concert I've ever been to. By far. And I've been to a lot of concerts that I really enjoyed. Every time I thought "wow, this is pretty sweet," they'd step it up another notch. They had a guy on cello, a guy on violin, a trombone, and two trumpets who accompanied sometimes. The main players were on electric piano, bass (Raffi), guitar, drums, and the singer also played guitar once in a while.

They played an awesome rendition of the Beatles' "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" When they got to the guitar solo, my face melted off. When they got to Raffi's bass solos, my face melted off _again_. I mean, you need to understand. I'm using a braille keyboard right now, because my face is long gone, and my ears are still rocking out so hard that I can't hear anything that's going on around me.

One aspect of Dizzy Balloon's set that resonated so well with me was the quirkiness. This shot was during a nice violin solo relatively early on in the set. As the violinist played, a helper set off a fire extinguisher, and the translucent, gaseous contents (CO₂?) turned the narrow, red beam from the laser into a glowing backdrop.

Another fun characteristic of the concert was the audience participation. A lot of concerts have sing-alongs, but they're usually impromptu, and they often only last for a verse or so. Dizzy Balloon's sing-along lasted for an entire song, and all of the lyrics were projected on a screen behind the band. Not only that, but the mechanism that animated the lyrics in time with the singing was… well… it was a giant PowerPoint presentation with one slide per word in the song. A helper advanced the presentation in time with the singing. This was clearly engineering at its finest.

And most concerts have parts where a band implores the audience to clap along. For Dizzy Balloon's first encore, though, singer Petros instead asked us all to be quiet. When the noise in the club had dwindled to a whisper, he grinned widely and the band members started snapping their fingers; and we snapped along. Then they beat their chests, and we beat ours in turn. Finally, guitarist Jonny started playing, and they segued into a song which also won a great deal of applause.

The first half of the second encore was a song, and the second half was mostly jamming with all hands on deck, and Petros doing introductions. By the end of the night, I was all rocked out. Awesome.

As for the competition, Dizzy Balloon also made it into the top 5 (alongside Picture Atlantic). A couple days before the main event, each of the 5 bands played a quick set before judges at the Cafe du Nord. Clearly, I wasn't the only one who loved their music, as Dizzy Balloon came away with top honors.

For the curious among you, Dizzy Balloon will be playing what they call the East Bay Extravaganza on January 3rd at The New Oakland Metro. Also playing will be Judgment Day, Maldroid, The Frail, and Wendy Darling. To quote, "You provide the bodies, we'll provide the fog, lasers, music and yes... even the astro jump!"

And for Dizzy Balloon, my message is simple: Keep Rockin'