Intelliware Christmas 2008

While were catching up on events already past, on December 6th, our band played at the Intelliware Christmas party for the fourth year (I think it was the fourth time?) running. Intelliware is the company my brother (along with the rest of the band members) works for, and I just join them every year in exchange for a free meal and open bar (my drink of choice every year is St. Ambroise Oatmeal Stout).

The past three years have been at Hugh's Room, which has, to be quite honest, spoiled us musically. Hugh's Room is a great venue with a dedicated sound person and permanent (and great-sounding) setup. We literally would show up, plug in (and sound check) and enjoy ourselves. This year the venue was the Argonaut Rowing Club in Toronto. It is a great place, but there is no sound setup to speak of. As a result, we had to rent all of our own gear and set things up ourselves. We spent most of the day lugging gear and setting up, and by dinner time I was wasted and my voice was already screwed.

From Intelliware Christmas 2008

I wasn't particularly proud of our performance, but I am always hard on myself. What can you do; the bottom line is we had fun. The second set was particularly enjoyable as it was very late and everyone was mostly drunk as we banged out tunes until we were shut down by management at about 2:30am. ;) We still didn't get any of our Rush covers recorded (I think our rendition of Limelight was one of our best tunes this year), but we managed to pull off Money without too many hiccups.



If you look close, you can see Coco in the background (the one with the super-bright, blue LED) in all her tubetastic glory. She worked and sounded great all night. My thanks to Intelliware for hosting a great party, yet again. They really are a great bunch of people. The food (and the Oatmeal Stout) was awesome, and I had a great time despite my self-deprecating tendencies.