Current mood:
accomplished
it all began with an email from the wonderful darrel stables about wanting me to play the commodore ball room. gulp. only the biggest best venue on the whole west coast.
dj set or live i asked him? well live of course.......and so it began.
the best show i could possibly imagine with the folks of the collective for my team.
kris ledrew amazing percussionist and mbira player. melissa meretsky,. only the best perucssionist and performer i know... gemma luna for making sure the goddess can sing to us thru her, marty carter the brilliant and most happy flute player. well thats a core now who for the icing. well prashant to bring the bansuri vibes and jen miller to bring the indian vocals to smooth things out and orion cleasby my good friend and psychedelic mouth harp player...then for the sacred prayers for water the most talented jeff holden, world cup skier and didj player to drop a lyrically charged prayer for water. and of course the newest discovery and blew me away jacob russel playing mandolin...
then of course to make the whole show look good and bring the edge of the frame outside the picture suez * la belle* and to bring the dance vibes front and center gemma luna and jennifyre to present some tantalizing bellydance performances. well this was the plan and as we began to get nearer the date i began to wonder if this was possible . had i bitten off more than i could chew...then came rehearsals and it was all sounding good but i was worried that it was taiking two days to run thru a 2 hr set...how on earth was this going to work.
then the email two weeks before the show"
so what have you done for promotion cos they have only sold 39 tix.
ohhhhhhh man i was not feeling so good. its one thing to dream a great show another experience entirely if there is no one there. dont worry darrel said i know that lots of people are going to come....i tried not to think about it and just decided to surrender.
my wife anita was full of confidence and support i wasnt sure.
i guess in a way a show is like this mini popularity contest every time.
does anyone care about these sounds we are making ..do people know the difference between adham shaikh the global fusion dj and adham shaikh the live aritist.
well to make a long story show they obvously doo and came out in full force to support the event...the love * and this sounds cheesy * but the love that we felt from the crowd on the stage was amazing and made us feel so calm and part of the party that it all went really well.
of course we had the amazing gaudi warming up the room and making people jump and freak and float and groove....i actually wished i wasnt playing after and would have had more time to get lost in gaudi's amazing wall of dub , vocals ,. theremin scratching and delay tweaks....
so so so good.
so by the time we started the room was good and warmed up. it let us go into a whole section of slower sexy beats and ambient drones for a good 40 mins.
this only opened it all up even more and the flow that happend for me had me lost in the moment and only after listening to recordings of the show after did i get to really hear what happened.
so fun and so full i am going to be working on some edits and putting some of it up on myspace in the coming days.;
on top of it all. we had the amazing ricardo of recordo media shooting the whole thing in hd so we will have some video and stuff soon.
see ya soon.
adham
u know if i was up there id be there!!!!!