Keith at Irvine Spectrum -- Saturday, 12Oct2013

Nice weather, nice crowd. Lots of teenagers, and lots of young families. My brother and his wife came by, but their expected group of friends failed to show up.

I'd bought some more of those glowing balls, and some glowing stars, too. I figured that if a few glowing toys across the front of the stage was cool, lots of them would be even better. And they were quite an attraction. It didn't take long before there were lots of kids, rearranging them along the stage, playing with them, and then inevitably running off with them.

I'd also brought the three toy tambourines, and pretty soon I had to try to keep track of 10 different toys as the kids ran around with 'em. I'm not sure I was even playing the songs right, I was so distracted. At least with the tambourines, it's easy to figure out where they went, 'cuz no little kid can possibly hold them still and quiet, song playing or not, but I have too much to worry about already just keeping the songs going -- I can't be trying to monitor all these toys, too.

And to make things worse, a little girl sitting on the front of the stage had the idea of shaking a tambourine with one hand, and adding a drum beat by slamming a glow ball on the stage with the other. Those things are not actually designed to be used as percussion instruments, and as other kids joined in, pretty quick I had three of them broken, with the electronics module broken away from the body, (not to mention the ball lost up under the stage).

So, I've learned my lesson: more toys means more kids, but too many and it just gets completely out of control.

Anyway, around ten o'clock, some high school girls came by and were dancing with each other and boys pulled from other passing clumps of kids, and generally having a great time. They asked me how long I keep playing, and I told them the actual answer: As long as somebody's listening. They were flabbergasted by this, and said, "So if we're still here at midnight, you'll keep playing?!?" Yup, pretty much...

Click 'Play' to hear the "podcast version" (it's really just me ramblin' on about this gig). (5 minutes)