John Hendow

Black Celebration performed last Saturday evening at Neumo’s on Capital Hill in Seattle. We were part of a three-band bill that included Love Vigilantes (New Order tribute) and Erasuresque (Erasure tribute). It was a hot day in Seattle and the club was very hot all night. They did have some fans operating to move the air a bit, but it was still mighty toasty! One of the nice things about doing these kinds of multi-band bills is that we always find ways to share equipment to minimize down time between bands. This also keeps the stage logistics to a reasonable minimum. I brought my trusty black strat and decided to bring the Telecaster as my backup guitar. Ricky (guitarist for Love Vigilantes) parked 2 of his ES335s in my guitar rack, and along with our 2 amps and couple of pedalboards it looked like we had an on-stage pawnshop going. 

  Neumo’s has a lot of rules. Probably as many rules as Dungeons and Dragons. Except there isn’t a saving throw. The venue is a lot of fun to play and I do enjoy it. They are quite organized and actually very cool to work with. Since I’m a PM by trade, documentation is always a positive thing.

I took advantage of the big stage by going wireless. It gave me the mobility to trot over to Zach’s side of the stage and wander back to visit Shane in drum world. Neumo’s has a very good sound system and our mix always winds up exercising their subs to great effect. Even the stage monitors and side fills are top notch, so it’s easy to get a good representative mix onstage. I thought we played an excellent show. All three bands were in good form, with strong audience reception. It’s always fun to have people in the audience singing along with their favorite Depeche Mode songs, and we even fielded a few requests (which, fortunately, were in our set list!). Overall, a fine evening of music and comraderie. I believe we’ll be scheduling more shows for the Fall, so stay tuned.