Another Busy Weekend

I couldn't possibly have done more things and slept less this last Labor Day weekend. My activities included, but were not limited to, the following:

Friday night, 'Mr. Jones' aka 'The Bassclown' was our guest DJ over at the club. He spun a great set, the place was packed and people were moving. All the usual suspects were out and about.

Family, friends ('M' and 'the Jones') and I spent Saturday afternoon at the La Casa Narcisi Winery up in Gibsonia PA attending their yearly wine festival. It was a beautiful afternoon to enjoy the bands, eat food, drink wine, watch the grape stomping, etc. Most importantly though was their 2008 Amateur Wine Maker's competition that my family and I entered our wine in. There were 25 competitors and our Chardonnay came in first place! Unbelievable! I mean our wine is good but I didn't think it was that good.

Saturday evening after the wine festival, 'M' and I met 'Too Much Pink' and her boyfriend over at Moondogs in Blawnox to catch the swing band The Metropolitans.

Sunday Afternoon, 'M' and I decided to go to the Pittsburgh Zoo. Bold choice for Labor Day activities since we knew it would be packed but 'M' had 6 free passes for the zoo that expired that weekend. We went (and made 4 other random people very happy with the free passes we handed out in the parking lot) and it was extremely packed. No problem though ... we did a speed run through the place concentrating on catching the new polar bear exhibit and newer baby elephants. I ran into some old friends, 'Alaska' and 'She1be, and took time to sit and experience some over priced Dippin Dots ice cream for the first time.

Sunday evening 'M', 'Mr. Jones', 'Clover', 'Schaf', 'Litl' and I were all invited to a surprise 50th birthday party for one of our close friends. The party was held at the Alto Lounge in Shadyside from 5pm to 9pm with open bar and free food plus 'Brotha Mike' providing the tunes. The party was fun and relaxing and the guest of honor was extremely surprised. I gave her a bottle of my ... ahem ... Award Winning Chardonnay Wine as a present. :)

After the party, we all convened over to 'Clover' and 'Schaf's' place where we were joined by 'Mrs Jones', 'JimmyAndrewForest' and a few others. 'M' and I hit a wall shortly after that and decided to head home while everyone else made plans to go out for the remainder of the night.

Jazz is in the house

Last night my friend Jwan brought his mixing skills to the club. He played an awesome set of house and techno music as usual. This time around, however, we tried something new. We had two guys play live trumpet and saxophone along with him, at times, to see how it sounded. Jwan would break his set down and play some minimal tracks that the guys could riff over. The result was really freeform and jazzy and the crowd loved it. When the horns were finished, Jwan would ramp up the music back into something more complex and full bodied. Below is about a minute of last night that I caught on my camera ...



*I realize the video is very dark but at least you can hear the horns to get an idea of what it was like.

** we usually have a live bongo player who comes every week and plays along with the DJ but this week he was a no show.

We're going to try it all again next week anyway ... trumpet, horns, DJ, etc.