Cam Mu Flage
Yesterday I dragged Chad to see Camouflage, a synthpop band from Germany, live at some dingy nightclub in Northern Moscow. We bought the tickets in advance thanks to one of my co-workers. At the last minute, our head of sales, Tim, orgazined a last min dinner to welcome back Martin Dingle. I guess I'll talk about the dinner first.
Chad was a bit nervous, but overall really cool with having dinner with all my co-workers. I'm really glad he came cause now someone I know very well got to share the experience with me. People do say that sometimes experiences seem more real when you have someone there to share them with. He came up to my office and got to see "the Lair" where I'll probably be spending most of my days. The first person Chad met was Paul Collison, our chief oil guy. Paul can be a bit skatter brained, but overall he's a really cool guy. Paul was cool with giving us a lift to the dinner. The problem in Moscow is that everyone has drivers and without a driver or a friend to give you a lift, you have the chance of being left out. Paul chatted to me and Chad about his little kids and how suprising huge the Ex-Pat community is in Moscow. Paul's wife is columbian, and suprisingly their is a huge spanish speaking community here.
We all ate at Justo, this trendy typical Moscow Sushi place. For some reason, the place was dead. Everyone eventually trickled in and Chad was happy to spend time chatting with our blonde talented female office staff. It was a very typical BUBS evening, light jokes, a lot of talk of the old times, and from what I hear this morning, the end has the typical BUBS conclusion with the guys all ending up at Rasputin's at 2am. I'll leave you Moscovite grinning with that comment.
Chad and I left the dinner early to make it to our concert. Sonya called us a taxi to take us from Justo to Club Infiniti. It reminds me how I've noticed that every where you go in Moscow there is a coat check. You enter any resturant, you have a guy who more or less forces you to hand over your coat. I guess you don't have to do it, but everyone does. I digress.....so yeah we go take our cab to some random part of town to see Camouflage.....the concert I've been preparing myself and Chad for, for at least the last month.
The tickets said the show would start at 9pm and we showed up at 9:45 thinking we were super late, but alas we were not. It wasn't like the typical Moscow Night clubs I've been to priviously (Leta, Shambala, First...some of the typical places BUBS takes their clients). This place seemed more local......or more for younger people. There was this whole synthpop community there. All these people with "a differnt drum" t-shirts on and guys selling synthpop cds as if they were rare jewels. We pushed out way into the venue and were lucky to only have to wait 10 min before camouflage started. I've noticed how much the NYC smoking ban has made life great, now that i'm NOT in NYC, I miss no longer smelling like smoke when I go out.
Before they came out, the whole croud kept welling CAM MU FLAGE, really loud and really...russian. These girls kept asking me some really dodgy questions about where I was from and what I was doing at the show....I've been warned about Moscow women....so I stayed away. The show began and I was amazing, in fact blown away by their talent. Not only did they make an effort to play almost everything live, they had a live drummer and had most of their samples probably being triggered by software synths. Its the Synthpop setup of this millenium, An apple Laptop, a few controler synths, a nord lead 2, and a drummer. The band was a 4 piece, the orginal camouflage 3 (2 played synths, 1 sang) and their bald drummer friend.
Now I've seen my share of synthpop shows. Anythingbox on one side of the spectrum where the synth is NOT EVEN PLUGGED IN!, to Cause and effect where the majority is seqenced, by the effort and guitars are there....to Mesh where the guy sings on target and you got the two keyboard guys, but...it all sounds...to perfect....to Depeche where it just seems....tired. These guys had a lot of heart and they did the show they way edge to life could or would have done it at one point. You can tell that they winced when their drummer was a little off time
I made chad a cd of my favorite songs by them, and they played almost all of them. A lot of new album stuff (which is great) and some oldies. Close, that smiling face, Suspicious love, Xray, theif, Me and You, You Turn, Love is a Shield, Heaven I want you (they even had the guy play the little repeat riff live), and of course they were really excited to play the Great commandment. They are German of course, and said many German things which was funny. In all it was a great experience.
http://www.camouflage-music.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=706
We came back from the show, all charged up. We decided that we couldn't go to sleep. We wanted to have one last night cap before we called it a day. We went to the "petite cafe" inside the hotel tatiana. On the 2nd floor of the hotel is this little room where this girl (katya) sits there all night and is willing to make you coffee, serve you cake, provide for you in this little quiet room. She told us that normally no one show up, so she sits there bored. I of course ordered 3 differnt types of drinks (my typical order) and got her working....we talked but like usual on this trip, didn't have much to say. I did not need to get emotional, but I always made it a point to tell Chad every day how lucky I am to have him as a friend and how thankful I was that he came out of his way to help me. He is always there for me and my family, even when I'm in an another place, he's always there for my parents and helping them out. I had a great week, if you read his blog, sounds like he did too. I hope to take the momentum that he has left here and use it to propel me forward for the next few years....
nite nite
posted by RU ETL @ 12:29 PM
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