Monday, October 4, 2010

I Love The Unexpected

Back on Friday August 27th, I attended a concert by Chasing Arrows put on at City Center at Oyster Point in Newport News, Virginia.  I was really looking forward to the concert as I was late in discovering a local band that seems to be doing pretty well for themselves.  What I didn't expect was what I ran into after their concert.  It wasn't anything scheduled or promoted.  It was totally by chance, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.  It was the unexpected ending to a good evening of music.

I hate to be so honest, but I would have totally missed 'the unexpected' had I listened to my bladder.  When I left the Chasing Arrows performance, I had a good walk ahead of me to get me back to the parking garage that I chose earlier that afternoon.  Having an urgent need to relieve myself made me regret the very last adult beverage I imbibed during the concert.  Of course, the ones prior to that had nothing at all to do with my painful dilemma.  It could only be the fault of that last single drink!  Needless to say, as soon as I exited that gate, I was almost single minded in finding a restroom.  There are a few things that could possibly distract me from what was now an urgent priority...very few.  I didn't see a lady I could scare away with Jerry-jabber so that only leaves one other likely scenario.  There was some impromptu live music on the patio at Aromas in City Center.  If you could have done without the reading of this paragraph, I encourage you to expose yourself to the Neuralizer as seen on Men In Black so as to wipe this paragraph from your memory.



Although I was speed walking for obvious reasons, I distinctly heard the guitar and singing on the Aromas patio.  I was also lucky to have plenty of battery and free space left on the camcorder.  I made it past the patio to a brick column for cover (not for what you'd think) and pulled out the camcorder to attempt a stealthy approach.  It became apparent the stealth maneuver would be ineffective so I had to opt for the direct approach.  I just set up the tripod on the fly and sat down at the patio table with them to interact as if the camera wasn't even there.  At the time, I had no ideal who they were.  I just liked the acoustic sound and noticed they seemed to be having a good time.  It momentarily took my mind off the urgent.  Here is my favorite song of the brief session.  More about the artist after the video.  Speaking of "the unexpected", I set up the camcorder away from where I actually sat so the annotations will draw attention to what I'd relinquished control over...the field of view and background.  Ha!  Now that means you need to watch the video twice so you can follow the story inside the story.



Paul Norfleet is the musician.  In addition to his myspace and facebook pages, I found this article by Sam McDonald to be rather enlightening.  It is also noteworthy that he has a couple of upcoming gigs on the Aromas events calendar.  What drew me over to this particular little session was Paul's interaction with fellow local musician Charles Darden.  I'm not really sure how well they know each other but they sure seemed to have fun just messing around as evidenced by the following two videos.  This first one was just something they came up with on the spot.



The second video was actually the very first full song I caught them doing and my feeble attempt at the failed stealthy approach.



I love the unexpected!  You can however expect that I'll be getting the Chasing Arrows videos from earlier that same night uploaded for the next post.