Capricon - The Mini Series

[ericcoleman]

So ... we headed out east to my favorite little convention

Ok, I won’t claim a favorite, but I had to refer to one of my songs.

We got going at a pretty reasonable time, myself and the Moose. The trip was uneventful except ... I finally broke down and bought an IPass. About time. The tolls have been doubled and I got tired of stopping. So I can drive on through the left hand lane now, and I figger I should have enough on the IPass to last me most of the year of tolls.

So, as you may have read (at least I think I mentioned it) there was some doubt as to whether there would be an antenna for the radio station. There was.

I got things set up, went to opening ceremonies, and then headed off to the Internet Café for my 9pm set (thought in some circles to be an 8pm set).

That show went well.

I think at this point, since I didn’t make set lists for either show, that I should try to remember what I played

Ok

The songs over the two shows the two nights

How Can I Miss You?
Hides
Pine City Motel Blues
Almost Beautiful
Things You Never Know
Trophy Wife
Color Of Your Eyes
Hey Dad !!!
I Want To Kill Everybody (Ed Haynes)
Bang My Bald Spot
Oh Shannon (it bombed Thursday night)
WYSIWYG

And I’m sure I played other songs as well. But I don’t remember at the moment. If you think of some song I played that I didn’t mention, let me know.

Circles

Marie Provost (Nick Lowe)
The Woman I Want
905 (Entwistle)
Roman Wall Blues (Auden/Harvey)

And I think that was all I did in the circles, a combination of exhaustion and a desire to watch that made me a little shy about stepping in.

Ok, back to the regular schedule

I took off out of the hotel Friday morning to get the last of the cords I needed. Oddly enough I went to the right place the first time, got what I needed and got back to the hotel in less than an hour. Weird, I am just not used to dealing with things going right.

I finished setting up the station, set up the antenna and powered the puppy up.

Nothing happened.

Ok, now things were going the way I thought they should. Former LJ’er e_v_o was helping me out and went off to find someone who might know what was the matter.

He did, and we were up and running just about 20 minutes late. I have no idea who the folks were who helped except that the woman was the person who built the first transmitter (the one that I killed)

The rest of the day went well,

Angelica Dawn had offered to spin music late nights and also said she would do the change over when I was performing in the Internet Café Friday night.

The show went amazingly well. By the end the room was packed and it was probably the best response I had all year. The audience was very interactive, asked for songs and was just generally WAY more fun that I was (and I was a lot of fun, IMNSHO)

I finished my show and ran back to the station to get things going for the next hour. In the meantime Angel had started some music for me to fill. Thanks so much. And MUCH more about Angel in a little down the page.

I went back down to the Internet Café for a few minutes to get gear and chatter at some folks. Then I went back up to the station for my 9pm show.

I actually got some phone calls through the weekend, one asking me if I was going to play music (I had only played OTR at that point), one to tell me that my signal was a little light, one to ask if I was going to play any cheerful music and one Saturday night to ask what frequency I was at. More about that phone call later.

I was finishing my Friday show and Angel came in to start her set.

Angel has always been quiet around me. More her nature I think. She and I had talked (and actually Deirdre and I had talked more) about her past as a DJ and her desire to be on the air. As the day went along Friday she became positively giddy. It was wonderful to see.

Her show was wonderful. Trance, Pagan, New Age, Electronica and more. Great late night cool down music. I think she finally went off the air Friday (or should I say Saturday?) at around 3am and 2:30 Saturday. She is now an official part of the Radio Capricon staff.

I went to the music circles for a little while, but I was too tired to stay up too late. That and I had too busy of a day on Saturday.

Got the station up bright and early at 10am and headed down to the con suite to get a bagel.

The station ran well all day. The highlights for me was the show in which I played a lot of music of folks I have met over the last year or so. Bill Roper, Erica Neely, Lojo Russo, Susan Urban, Sandy Andina, Tom Smith and another half dozen or so who I can’t think of at the moment.

Did I tell you that I came back exhausted ... I’m still kinda out of it.

I did catch a little of Tom’s show Saturday night in the filk room. What I saw was brilliant.

I did have a bunch of calls Saturday night. They were all from the same room though.

It started with a call to find out our frequency. They couldn’t find the station so I asked where they were. I was informed that they were in such a place that they could jump on my head. They proved this by ... well ... jumping up and down and cracking me and everyone else in the room up. (more on the visitors in a moment)

I ran up and found the station on their radio, it was the gopher’s pizza party and the person who had called was the chair of the convention. Things got even sillier after that.

One of the best things about the weekend was that I made a bunch of new friends.

I knew that exapno and I would get along, but to add to that she and barbarakitten_t brought some friends to my Friday night show and out of that I met tesseline and gundo . Tess wants to work on the station next year, and if you have been watching has been commenting on practically everything I have said this weekend. Hi there !!!

They hung out at the station for several hours and finally took off to attend some parties.

I hit the filk room for a couple of hours and played a couple of songs. I also got to see beige_alert, catalana, billroper and daisy_knotwise, filkertom, tigertoy and others who are not on LJ (heretics) play. I crashed fairly early (2ish I think) and had a good night’s sleep. Got the station up and running. The pizza from the night before was sitting badly so I didn’t eat much all day. This was a bit of a mistake, but necessary.

Took the station off the air and got everything packed up by around 2:30 and hit the road by 3:00.

I do see something we need to do next year. The antenna just doesn’t work so I am going to try to construct something of wood that can fold flat. We determined when the plastic mast fell down that we didn’t need the height all that much, so I figger that 3-4 feet would work just fine. I also want to buy a garden hose winder for the antenna cable. It’s a pain to deal with and that would solve that problem nicely.

The station ran as well as it could. I did have a problem with some discs. The burner on the Frankenstein laptop got wonky toward the end of the several nights of burning and the last 6-10 minutes of several discs were bad. I had to improvise a lot but managed well (with the help of my audience who were hanging out chatting, they drove me to MUCH silliness) and showed myself that I can find my way through those problems.

I’m trying to think who I saw over the weekend, a great deal of my friends list.

greensmangrove brought me food from Pita Inn !!!

bectod gave me lots of hugs

I got to hang out with geekymary and the very cute Eddie.

I got to hang out with polyfrog just a little, but I intend to come up for a weekend at some point and just hang out.

I got a lot of baby fixes through the weekend.

The Moose and I had a lot of time together. He was bored most of the time so he hung out in the station a lot of the time. It was very nice even if he did vanish when it was time to load out (I made fun of him about it)

It was a pleasant drive home, and very good to be home.

Over and all one of the best weekends I have had in a long time, even with being so busy. The shows were great. I made some new friends. Had some time with old friends. And had time with the Moose.



So .. how are you ???

Comments

[born-to-me.livejournal.com]

This is what happens when you give a talkative woman unlimited internet access, strew computers in her path while she does her daily work *and* leave her home with a 6 month old who is the center of her universe, but not exactly able to converse in an adult fashion... *deep breath* You get an LJ addicted commentin' fool!

gundo and I really enjoyed listening to you play, and hanging out with you. I was honored by being part of the live audience for Radio Capricon, and I can't *wait* till next year when I get to spin a little.

[ericcoleman]

and I can't *wait* till next year when I get to spin a little.

A little ???

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA ... you have no idea what you have let yourself in for ...

[daisy-knotwise.livejournal.com]

Thanks for making the Music Programming at Cap a success!

GHR

[catalana.livejournal.com]

It was great to see and hear you! Wish I'd gotten more of a chance to chat, but both our schedules were pretty busy. I know I asked you this at Cap, but my mind is a sieve: what was that song you played about the clones? It was really cool.

[ericcoleman]

That is called 905. It's a Who song written by John Entwistle. It's on Who Are You. Needless to say I do it completely different then they do.

[starstraf.livejournal.com]

photo
http://www.flickr.com/photos/beigephotos/4822697/in/set-121417/