Valentine’s Island Style with Dinner & Dancing
Mango Bus is coming to shake up Bolinas with some funky dance tunes and Barbary Coast Bistro will be cooking up an Island Storm in the kitchen! Bring your Valentine and come boogie in style!This a sound & Light benefit for the BCC.
Listen to Mango Bus!
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”Afrojam@20140214-afrojam .mp3, Rivers of Gold@20140214-rivers-of-gold.mp3″]
To read more about our Sound & Light project, please keep reading:
Let There Be Sound and Light
For four years now, I’ve been studying the engineering literature and analyzing our Community Center’s hall to figure out how to improve its performance sound and, more recently, its theater lighting, so that we can properly showcase our bountiful local talent. (See project details at <BoCenter.org>.) I’d like to thank Jeffrey Commons, Charlie Docherty, Zoro Drux, Dirk Epperson (engaged through Don Read), Burton Eubank, Gabe Faure-Brac, Steve Heaslip, Clay Lilleston, Robin Livingston, Jerry Lunsford, Tony Smith, Paulie the soundman for Bonnie Raitt (through Soozie Mills), Derek Tracy, Duke the structural engineer (through Roger Peacock), Peter Turner, and Anthony Wright for donating valuable consultations to these efforts. The hall today displays a lot of progress.
Acoustic absorbent on the back wall and stage ceiling have eliminated echo, cut down on boomy bass, and helped musicians hear each other much better on stage. Thanks to Chris Besenty, David Kimball, Steve Wrenn, StuArt Chapman, and Matt Yerington for helping with that installation.
To make event setup easier, we’ve had cabinetmaker Nick Bogle build us a beautiful roll-around sound booth (at a tremendous discount), so that instead of two hours of schlepping and wiring for every gig, we just flip the cover and turn it on. Also, the front-hall tower of boxes and snake-pit of cables have been supplanted by an unobtrusive wall cubby for running activity sound and a locked under-stage rack for the big amplifiers. Thanks also to Ananda Brady, Ralph Camiccia, Jeffrey Manson, and Charles Weismuller for helping make that all happen.
Lighting got a big boost from the Dance Palace (thanks to Burton again) donating us their entire recently replaced lighting system and from Jeffrey Trotter giving us a bargain on his 24-fader console. New light-mounting pipes installed with the help of Matt again, plus Rick Sherman, will help us hang it all and aim it right.
But there’s more to do, including relocating the speakers, installing bass traps, adding microphones, rewiring the lighting power into new dimmers, refurbishing the spotlights, and upgrading the stage. Despite over $20,000 saved using donated labor and equipment, we’re still thousands short and really want to bring the project to a conclusion. Please come to our dinner/dance party project fundraiser this Friday, kick up your heels, and kick in some $ even if you can’t come on Friday. Thanks!
– Don Smith