Surplus 1980-Eli's Mile High Club, Oakland CA; 5/26/17

It's my hope that the above picture can do justice to just how cool the light in the East Bay can be in the evening. Eli's Mile High Club, with its great back porch area, is a fine place at which to observe it. There's nothing quite like watching the Bay fog blend with the late day sunlight around here. I find it pretty magical.
Eli's is also a really fine place in which to play music, as Surplus 1980 found out on the evening of 5/26. We were part of a really cool bill that featured Shame Waves, Naked Lights, and XDS along with our sounds.
Surplus opened the show in the excitement of featuring new bass player HL Nelly. There were likely some nervous vibes being felt, but thankfully they did not equate any kind of train wreck action. On the contrary, it felt to me that everything ran pretty damn smoothly. More than that: it felt on. Our relatively brief five song set consisted of Moe!'s tunes worked out within the past year and a half or so, my favorite being the groovy Motivated Song About Procrastination, with its neat bridge figure of steeple-like time patterns and swooping double time ending. That one's a hoot. An older song, Morale Is High, always challenging, seemed to have been played almost flawlessly. It's one that you're glad if you've gotten through it without stumbling. Thankfully, we finished it on our feet. Additionally, I seem to have shaken off 2016's curse of clamming during Failure of Commitment. Seems as though that one's form is known to me again.
All told, Surplus 1980's set felt tight and inspired. For me, it was one of those sets wherein even the minor gaff of dropping a stick could not impede the force of the flow. Kind of a victory for Surplus 1980, I'd say. What a pleasure to see friends and acquaintances and play on a bill with a clutch of really fine, inspiring musicians and their bands.
An A+ night  in the cool late May air of the (b)East.

Below: Welcome to Surplus 1980, HL, hope that you'll stick around for a while
Moe! and Melne set up

Above: Surplus 1980's gear. My, what small amps you have!
Below: video!