Sunday 27th February 2011 marked the one year anniversary of the passing of one of the best musicians in SecondLife, the wonderful UncleFunkyShoes, known to many simply as Randy.
Randy had a love of music and of life, and was an amazing performer. He was kind, funny and a very dear friend to myself and many others.
We held an impromptu tribute to the man and his music on Sunday evening, playing some of his music and sharing stories and memories. I think he would have enjoyed it, especially knowing that his music is still being shared among friends.
Thanks are due to the lovely DiJodi Dubratt, who took these photos:
Also, thanks to Bob Shemesh for sharing his recordings with us. It was a lovely way to remember our ‘OOFS’, and it always brings a smile to my face when I hear his voice.
On a final note,this is a special song that Randy recorded for his partner, Tammy (Lady Sera). I think it is a lovely and fitting way to remember him. I am sure she won’t mind me sharing it with those that missed our gathering yesterday.
A little late, but here is the Listen Again option for the lovely Saintess Larnia’s show at The Lost Contnent, on Valentine’s Day 2011.
Saintess is female singer from the UK, who has been performing in SL for a little over a year. Always a fun show, Saintess does a great mixture of covers as well as some of her own original material. She has a fabulous voice, which she puts to good use on the songs she chooses. You can catch her playing live every Monday at 1 pm slt/pst (that’s 9.00 pm in the UK) as well as other shows around the grid on other days – her performances are always good fun and very busy.
If you get a chance to check out his great SL performer, please do – she is a great musician and entertainer, having a great rapport with her audience and with a great sense of humour, fun and mischief. Perfect music to ease you into the start of another week!
Hi folks! Excellent news – by the wonders of the interwebs and an intelligence far greater than my own, we are now able to bring you a “Listen Again” option with the mighty Rich Desoto aka Rich Palmer.
Rich has been playing in Second Life for 5 or 6 years now, as well as performing RL gigs, and managing a busy career and home life. Due to work commitments, he isn’t able to play as often as he would like, (which is why we haven’t been able to secure him at TLC before now), but any opportunity to get to hear him, please do. It is truly a pleasure and a privilege to have him play for us – I hope you will take the time to listen to the show if you missed it yesterday.
A good friend, multi-talented musician and consumate entertainer, Rich’s shows always bring a smile to your face, and his sheer energy and joy at playing comes across in waves. He loves to mix things up, have fun is a great believer and promoter of independent musicians.
Rich Palmer Live at The Lost Continent in Second Life – 13 February 2011 by Rich Palmer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
The Lost Continent has been bringing music the SL masses since 2008. Showcasing musicians, promoting talent and generally having a great time!
Every Sunday, streaming live to a computer near you, Dann Russo aka Dann Numbers rocks out at The Lost Continent.
The times are:
1 pm – GMT
8 am – EST
5 am – PST (or if you are in Second Life, SLT) plus a whole variety of other countries and time zones I can’t quite get my head around.
So you missed the show this morning? No problem! We are trialling a ‘Listen Again’ service – this is our first attempt so please bear (or bare, if you prefer) with us while we iron out a few kinks…… to get hold of Dann Numbers aka Dann Russo’s Sunday Service of Rock & Soul, simply clicky to download the file, and away you go!
Also today, we had the AWESOME Mr Rich Desoto (aka Rich Palmer) playing for us. It was early morning for Rich, but he still sounded amazing and both shows were fantastic. Rich and Dann are both Old Skool SL performers, having been around since the early days. I have have the pleasure of knowing them both since 2006 and am honoured and delighted to be able to share their music with you.
There are LOT of excellent, independent musicians playing out there – take the time to check them out, support them and share them with your friends. Its’s a lot of fun!
I hoped to be able to bring you a downloadable file of Rich’s show today, but due to a technical glitch, the recording didn’t work. DOH.
We are hoping to book another show soon though, so watch this space for details on that.
Finally, to round off the musical wonderousness of The Sunday Service, the uber cool JueL Resistance (aka Suzen JueL) will be playing at The Lost Continent today at 1 pm slt (that’s 9 pm in the UK folks). Drop in for a listen if you have a free hour. You won’t regret it.
Halloween is a holiday derived from the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (End-Of-Summer) which was quietly stolen by the early Christians as the day before All Saints Day and ending up as the fun, mostly secular Halloween we know today.
The Lost Continent has a gig on a Sunday so we added a few pumpkins, a cauldron and a couple of skeletons to give it an air of scariness and also a really neat gadget that rezzed a walking skeleton that followed you when you came through the main entrance.
DiJodi came as a one-eyed gothic elf and others went into the spirit of the thing and came as much scarier stuff.
One of my dreams is to be able to pop over the Atlantic and go and join in the Burningman Festival which takes place in Nevada, some distance from the UK.
Until that time I am happy to be involved in Burn2.0 or BurningLife, which takes place in our happy little Secondlife.
Initially I was going to rent a plot for the two weeks and put something I built up for exhibition, but I didn’t get my act together in time and honestly I thought the plots were a tad expensive. I still think it’s a shame that Linden Labs seems to wipe their hands of the whole thing and didn’t seem to want to be involved or invest any of their resources into it. But I like the idea of the community of Burn2.0 and therefore I put my name down as a gate greeter.
I was interviewed by Brigit Ranger and passed with flying colours and had a ball on the gate.
I got so rolled up in the whole greeter think that I almost forgot to actually go and look around. DiJodi eventually kicked me in the pants and we had a look around.
We even got goodies, the last photo is us Piezo’d up in our blue skins and bulbs on our heads. Please note Linden Labs, V2.0 doesn’t do photos very well….
My favourite build was Detrius by MadCow Cosmos, a builder simply in a league above all others.
The end of the Burn was as laggy as hell with the main burn area full so I missed the Man being burnt but somehow I managed to get close to the Temple Burn and was blown away by not only the temple burning and crashing to the ground but possibly the most awesome fireworks display EVER
If you haven’t been to one of our Sunday Rock Services, you really should They are great fun! Every Sunday at 5 am slt, Dann Numbers (aka Dann Russo) plugs in his guitar, pours himself a coffee and a Guinness, and rocks out at TLC. This happens almost every week, barring RL interruptions, and despite the fact that it is only 8 am in Boston, where he lives. That’s what we call dedication to the cause.
Dann usually plays his own, original material at these shows, but Sunday 10/10/10, as well as being a very cool date, was a special show. It was an all-COVER show. An all-cover BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN show!! Woo hoo!!
Artwork by Clementina Mills
Dann has performed various all-cover shows in SL before, including U2, Radiohead, Bon Jovi and The Beatles, but Bruce was new territory for TLC. (NB: Dann has also hinted at doing a Coldplay cover show, but due to my pathological hatred of Chris Martin, he has been banned from uttering the name, let alone singing the songs. He can take that one somewhere else tyvm).
Anyway. I digress. We had a slightly late start – he SAYS it was something to do with technical difficulties, but I think he just overslept – and we finally kicked off about 10 mins later than planned, but we were there. We were ROCKING. As well as the usual audio stream, Dann has recently started using UStream, which streams a live video feed of his shows. There are a few issues with SL and video streaming it seems, as I could NOT get it to work. I even downloaded and the dreaded V2 which frankly, was just plain mind boggling. We tried. We failed. But we were not beaten!
In the end we opted for having the audio in SL and the video link available to anyone who wanted to watch Dann rock out in the legendary Creepy Basement. There were a total of 8 viewers, and at least 25 avatars at the club for the duration of the show.
A Dann's Eye View from the stage
A Dann Numbers show is always a fantastic, high energy affair. I may even have described it as “demented fun” on a few occasions, due to the high level of giggling and general back chat. Dann has a great sense of humour and despite the audiences’ best attempts to distract him, he always comes through with a powerhouse of a set. Amid all the catcalls and heckling about the size of his rooster (don’t ask) he still manages to give his all at every performance. And the Bruce show was no different – I think he stopped after a mere 2 hours, and only then because his arm was about to fall off!
NB: Rooster is actual size
The set list comprised ALL the hits, from Born to Run, to Dancing in the Dark, Glory Days and The Streets of Philadelphia and one of my personal favourites, Radio Nowhere. Usually only playing guitar, Dann had a special surprise up his sleeve for this show – the aforementioned keyboard! There are very few performers in SL who use a keyboard or piano, so it was really exciting to hear. Although he was a little nervous about playing it, and kept apologising for his lack of skill, he sounded fantastic. It definitely added another dimension to the show, and allowed some of the quieter songs to shine through. I can’t wait to hear it used on some of his own songs in the future, and hope to persuade him to keep it around permanently.
Sunday Service at the Church of Rock & Soul
As well as juggling his RL job as a Teacher, being a busy dad to two small children, Dann also has his ‘other’ life, as RL and Virtual Rockstar. He has been a friend of The Lost Continent (and myself) for over 4 years, plays various other regular SL locations as well as a lot of RL shows in and around the Boston, MA area. If you get a chance, you seriously need to check out one of his shows.
And for those who missed the All Bruce Show, check out this video of Dann singing I’m on Fire:
You can catch Dann at The Lost Continent every Sunday. Times may vary for the next few weeks, because of the various Daylight Savings coming into effect (damn them), but look for him around 5 am slt.
Also, mark your diaries, because the next all covers show will be on 4th December, and this time Dann sings The Beatles. It’s going to be EPIC!
To give you and idea of how committed Saintess is to playing at our venue, I have just logged in as I always do, slightly before the start of a gig, to make sure everything is ok, no one has deleted The Lost Continent (yes, it happened) and things are hunky dory. Then I log out and futilely search the house for cider while making a cup of tea to sit and sip during a concert.
So half an hour before Saintess was due to start, I logged in…and she was already there (though afk at this point), her tipcard rezzed and ready to go, her poster on the wall above the stage. Now that’s commitment.
It also begs the question; why does she need so many assistants? I remember one concert we were at; the assistants out-numbered the actual audience.
But she has assured me that she has whittled it down to two, Ling and Sloopy. Ling couldn’t make it this time, so we were in the hands of the pocket rocket Sloopy Qork, girl of a thousand EEPS.
We could do a whole post on the fashions that walk through the door here, we get everyone from mermaids to mini-tiggers. Believe it or not, Dru is wearing a skirt.
Saintess is so talented and yet so down to earth, a great sense of humour – ask her about the crab dance – and seems able to sing almost anything. The thing that makes me like her most though is her complete lack of organisation. When someone asks for a song, which she can invariably do, you can hear mountains of paper being moved. I can imagine her sitting beneath teetering piles of books and reams of unsteady paper, playing carefully lest the whole lot bury her.
Also it was Michi Renoir’s birthday and she sung him a unique version of ‘Happy Birthday’
She rounded the hour off with my favourite tune; Jewel’s These Foolish Games, which made my evening.
She is here every Monday, and if we had our way, every other day too
We still haven’t quite worked out how to put dances into the danceballs. Okay, they are in and we have updated the notecard so the dance can be seen by the script. And we dance…BUT…we dance 90 degrees out.
Sundays are special as we have a great friend and huge contributor to the SecondLife Music scene; Juel Resistance.
Consistent, wonderful song writer and mad as a box of pink badgers. We are always entertained, mostly by her songs but also by her witty remarks, stories and peeks into the very unique life that is Suzanne Juel. She is the first time I came across a genuine force of nature in SecondLife, and she is always welcome at The Lost Continent.
How would you describe her singing. I think, though I bet I am blown out of the water for saying so, that she is the closest thing we have to Bob Dylan in SecondLife, and I mean that in a good way!
Next was the incomparable Idella Quandry, and unlike Juel, who is fiercely independent, Idella always brings along Zeena who ensures her piano is set up and her tip card rezzed before she begins.
We are so lucky with our gigs, Idella has the most fantastic smokey voice that brings out the emotion of the songs. You can tell sheh has captivated the crowd, even Dru and Merry shut up, Juel even stayed a while.
And a good night was had by all. SecondLife kept it’s head and did nothing stupid but after two hours of hosting, even I was tired and happy to log off and dream of smokey bars and smokey voices until dawn.
merrygynoid
theclapsaddle
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