We joined the staff at WXXI for a last minute pizza party celebrating the airing of the final show of the second season of “Sound Stage”, their locally produced, Elliot Spitzer’s payola refund funded series of local band performances. The Chesterfield Kings were barely audible on the wall mounted flat panels but they looked great in front of their Marshall stacks even when they were playing acoustic guitars. This was a preview of Sunday’s seven o’clock airing, a glimpse of tomorrow with a band that sounds like yesterday.
While we were there we managed to talk Jan Marshall, Scott Reagan and Sue into following us over to the Mez for a live Valentine’s Day podcast from SOT. The Sound of Tomorrow’s theme song sounds suspiciously and appropriately close to the Mystery Science Theater theme song. Scott Bradley, the guy with the trumpet, played keyboards and anchor, Chris Zajkowski of the Squires of the Subterrain played drums. The two of these guys sound like a whole orchestra. They were joined by a surprisingly funny Miché Fambro on a few songs. Miché came into town in the eighties and left town in the nineties. In between he lived in Ithaca, the Berkeley of the East, “long enough to want slap an NRA sticker on my car”.
Hosts Ross Johnson and Heather Zajkowski, the Babe with the Power, sat in chairs on stage reading from notes but mostly creating and going with the flow. Del Rivers and his buddy did some stand up comedy and Heather belly danced with her posse. Phil Marshall, who wrote some of the music on the brand new, Who Sell Out styled, “Squires of the Subterrain – Adventures in Radio Land, TV Land and the Blogospere” cd, was no show due to illness but the evening was perfectly delightful like an old fashioned radio broadcast.
I visited the SOT site and got sucked in to a hilarious review of David Bowie’s Glass Spider tour. The show we heard last night must still be in production because it is not up on their site yet. That’s probably why they call it “The Sound of Tomorrow”.
James, the owner of the alcohol free club with the best sounding room in the city, gave up trying to sell the Mez on Craigslist and has decided to stick out.
3 Comments