On friday, Feb. 19th, we played a gig in Santa Fe at Corazon, a great upcoming bar on the corner of Guadalupe and Montezuma Ave owned by Mikey Baker (a phenomenal guitarist whom I’ve always admired for his work in The Gluey Brothers, amongst other projects). The event was a fundraiser for Current Mayor David Coss; we’re not a band to take political stances on things, besides “politics suck”, but we decided to do this event because, we rarely get to play Santa Fe, and a number of people we respect were involved.

So, let it be said that we don’t really support any politician; but, we do support rocking out.  And that we did.

As DJ Featherricci dropped some tracks, we loaded in (dressed to the nines, as we often are), set up shop, and after an intro by MC Max Friedenburg, we were rolling with our first song, “Everybody Down”.  People were a bit put off, but by the time we were dropping our cover of “She bop”, they were grooving.  Some folks were obviously confused; let’s face it, Santa Fe isn’t our scene.  We don’t play there much, and it usually caters to a much different crowd.  Jeff worked them over with his usual dry and razor sharp wit, Jesi blew their faces off with her keys, Chris and Kenny held it down, and I did my best to continue to beat the hell out of my drumkit.  As people loosened up (likely thanks to liquor), things got better.  By the time we closed with “Punk rock cheerleader”, they were electrified enough to even sing along!  We destroyed things as we usually do with our closer; cymbals flying about, lots of noise from Chris and Ken.

We were called back for an encore, which is not something we’re used to getting to do, and so we dropped our cover of “Dancing by myself” by Billy Idol, got people dancing, and hopefully wanting more.

As we  packed up our gear, MC Max stood on the stage and asked the Mayor to say a few words, the first of which was, “I love Vertigo Venus!”.  You don’t get to hear that too much about a riotous synhpunk act playing to a crowd that’s used to blues or latin jazz on a friday night.

A good night in general, and well-attended; Corazon can definitely pack in the heads.  We look forward to making our way up to Santa Fe more often, so look out Sfe-ans.  We’re coming for you.

/brian