Performing@Home In The Time of Coronavirus: Volume I

Sara Bareilles trouble-shooting
her Instagram Live broadcast

Professional performers such as actors, dancers, comedians and musicians spend a great deal of their life in auditoriums, bars, cafes, studios, theaters, and various venues on the road away from their home, family, and friends. As a fan, I miss seeing them all perform live on stage!

As you watch artists video themselves during this pandemic, they work hard to keep a brave face and carry on, but those faces are challenged, missing the audience's oxygen combined with their talent to spark magic and illuminate an amplified space.

So in our current world-wide pandemic that has us all @home more than we could have ever imagined; artists working before a large sitting audience will in fact be one of the last groups of professionals to get back to work in the world.

However, digital technology's ease of use has been a shining light during these times @home. In the past couple of years, the combination of consumer: smartphones, laptops, digital audio and video compression, conferencing apps and 5G Internet speed make this pandemic a bit more bearable... than just a bear.

Late Night with Seth Meyers, my favorite pandemic TV show shot from Seth's attic
with his 8G Band performing from their homes.

Here's a great article about Late Night with Seth Myers in Verge by Andrew Marino that shows all of us average bears how to create our very own homegrown production studio.

THE GADGETS LATE NIGHT WITH SETH MEYERS USES TO KEEP THE SHOW RUNNING FROM HOME: Consumer electronics have replaced studios during the pandemic

This past week, I searched across YouTube and found live performances of self-made videos by a wide group of performers all shot from home starting in the lockdown madness of March to now.

I start with a Sara Bareilles phone video on Instagram that was the spark for this blog (p.s. I love Sara Bareilles).

I also want to thank my friend Paul Hobbs for sending me a a video from his garage this week, a song, California written in high school (back in the Pleistocene Era) with our dear friend Paul Tognazzini.

On a side note- you'll also notice some of our famous artists have a little bit more home technology than the average bear.

Enjoy and stay well my friends!

New Releases @ the river of streams, April-May 2019

I kick off this mix of newly released albums with a terrific band that my daughter, Shawna and I loved in the 90's, The Cranberries. In 2017, the band began working on what was going to be their eighth album, In the End. On January 15, 2018, Dolores O' Riordan the band's iconic lead singer died of an accidental drowning in a London Hotel bathtub due to alcohol intoxication.

In the months following her tragic death, the band (guitarist Noel Hogan, bassist Mike Hogan, and drummer Fergal Lawler) embarked on finishing the album as Dolores had already laid down some impressive vocal demo tracks. This album is a testament to the band's love of Dolores and their tireless effort to make this last Cranberries album a classic. This album is simply fantastic and as a fan, I can't figure out why it's not getting more press here in the U.S. even if the band is unable to perform on TV and tour. My last video of this mix is a recent interview with Noel and Fergal.

This mix of 60 songs is mostly made up of the albums featured above in my collage with a little bit of everything across the genres. Enjoy my friends!