6/18/05, 67°F.
It was night back in the late winter that Ken Golden and I explored OIde City Philadelphia to witness this new great band called Fluttr Effect. Well, I got more than I bargained for. Within just a few minutes of seeing them perform at a club called The Fire, I knew this was the band I had to have play in the studio. An exciting and animated vocalist in Kara Trott, an amazing Marimba player in Vessela Stoyanova, a wild guitarist in Troy Kidwell, a powerful drummer in Joe Marchionna, and a stunning Electric Cellist in Valerie Thompson. As the weeks closed in on their in studio performance, I found myself getting more and more excited about bringing this to our international airwaves. There I go again...my rambling...anyway...First up, we had a great visit nearly 10 years to the day of Marillion performing in our studios. Steve Rothery, H, and Pete Trawavas played three tracks in our studios and peaked our listenership in the first hour. Unfortunately, Steve Rothery was unwell and remained silent through the performance. They did the tracks from the new Marbles album "You're Gone", "Don't Hurt Yourself", and the classic "Easter". It was such a friendly performance, and I really admired their patience. Then Fluttr Effect came up to perform. As they set up, I just had a weird feeling this wasn't going to work out well. Soundcheck was tough, but we nailed it down. Kara, the vocalist, was ill, and I could see it was going to be a tough segment. She could hardly stand, and I had this urge to just cancel the whole event. But when all was said and done, it was a great performance. The playback was great as well. Unfortunately, the band didn't feel the same way in later postings. They labeled the studio equipment inadequate and they didn't like being crammed into the studio. I was surprised to read it, but hey, what can ya say. I think the way they put it, it made them "rethink" their future outings like that. Oh well, you can't make everyone happy I guess. Jbird was a life saver and made shit happen again as usual. Always willing to do stuff to make the presentation rule. Jaffa was there as well and was a big help. Our program listenership online peaked in the first hour with Marillion's performance at 160 listeners. We had new listeners from Burlington, VT; Cambridge, MA; Providence, RI; Los Angeles, CA; Dale City, VA; and overseas in Tokyo, Japan. This program ran 3 hours and 58 minutes.