[Brian Krashpad]

After going to band practice at church in the morning with my daughter, came home and mowed the back lawn. Then got cleaned up and took the kids downtown for Pride Fest, which is an annual event sponsored by the local lesbian/gay/bi/transgendered rights group. I warned the kids that sometimes at big events not everyone behaves themselves, so they should expect a little weirdness.

And by that I don't mean just being gay, or drag entertainers or whatever, my kids know about that. But when we got there, there were indeed a couple people there who were a little "out there," in particular one little Asian lady with long straight gray hair who basically danced around the whole time we were there, whether any music was playing or not. At one point, she came up to us and pointed at my mandolin, said "That's a mandolin! Play it!" and so I played a few chords, and she said "You're an artist!" and danced away. The kids thought she was hilarious. I wonder if she was just eccentric or on something, haha.

At any rate, some friends of mine were closing the show and had asked me and a bunch of their other musician friends to come up onstage and sing on their closer, which is why I brought the mandolin. They were going to be filming for a video of the song, and I thought it would look cool onstage and add to the peace/love vibe, which is part of their stage show (they bring flowers to every show and pass them out to the audience, etc.). I found their bassist, Tom, beforehand, and cleared it with him, because I didn't want to do anything to upstage them or throw them off.

The show was running late, as most benefits seemingly do, and we had to sit through some pretty awful lip synch acts (ugh), then a different band, before my friends went on. On their penultimate song they pulled us all onstage even though there wasn't much to do but clap along, although I was familiar enough with to sing along, off-mic. Then they did the closer, and everybody tried to get at least within the vicinity of a mic, and we did the song, which is called "Let Freedom Ring." I positioned myself opposite the lead singer so the mandolin would be far away and wouldn't throw him off or anything, since none of this had been rehearsed. It was a lot of fun.

Here's some pics:











You may all comment on my poseritude, as such is expected.