CDP-Make-Out Room, SF CA; 5/1/17

It seems to have become a personal ritual for me that whenever I play at the Make-Out Room, I take a stroll around the Mission to take stock of whatever changes have recently occurred there. Last night's walk showed me that, while the Latino culture which has held sway there for the past sixty plus years is still hanging touch, the relentless onslaught of this other, whatever it is, continues unabated. The place feels more and more alien to me. Granted, my real life memories of it are twenty years old now, and fading fast, but....damn. I know for certain that I'm just passin' through, anyway. Good luck to those families that continue to fight it out. Here's to hoping that they prevail.
OK, on the the music. CDP was supposed to have consisted of Amanda, Josh Marshall, Tom Djill, and myself last night, but on account of the raging cold that's currently plowing its way through the area, Tom had to recuse himself. This late development had us all a bit nervous, I think. Despite a collective bummed out feeling from the remaining three of CDP, we agreed to soldier on and do the best that we could.
For me, that turned out to be not bad at all. After cracking sets from Lucio M. Trio and Anton Hatwich Quartet, CDP overcame some scary last minute technical glitches and dove in to a four song, thirty minute set of Amanda Chaudhary's Avant Pop charts. These heads are really fun to play. I tell you, North Berkeley BART is a tune that just plays itself. Such good writing. I dream of releasing a 7" of that one. Our overall feel was somewhat amped up and maybe a bit on the frantic side. I figure it was stage nerves and the absence of Tom forcing us to push a bit harder. At least, that's what was driving me. Might have played a bit too loud, but, then again, I was able to follow Amanda's hand signaled conducting moves for dynamic cues within the improvised sections of our songs. I was stoked to make it pretty much blemish-free through a brand new one, Marlon Brando. 12/8 shuffles are tough to sustain! Josh got in some nice, ripped tenor honking and some sweet soprano moves, and Amanda took on the added pressure of trying to fill in for Djill's presence with aplomb. I managed to record the set on my phone, and it sounds pretty crackly and most definitely live.
All told, I'd say it was a pretty good hit, despite the fact that CDP was missing a key ingredient of our fledgling sound. Hopefully we'll have some more gigs in which we can continue to hone it.

Below: another long-gone piece of Mission history; drums

Above: one of Amanda's great charts