ATF Rocks PDX!

Above The Fold (ATF), the greatest ’80’s pop rock cover band made up entirely of Babcock & Jenkins employees, kicked off their 2008 tour in front of an exuberant, if slightly inebriated, hometown crowd at the annual Portland Ad Federation (PAF) Battle of the Bands.

     

Tour Diary - Day 1: June 18th, 2008

We arrived at the venue with high hopes and a little trepidation. Will the audience like the new songs we spent three nights rehearsing? Will our new lead singer (Brent Matthew) make it to the gig on time (you know how singers are)? Will the Commodore 64 be able to handle the awesome power of our light show? Yes. Yes. No.

At around 8PM we took the stage and took no prisoners. The beginning of our first song, “Run To You,” was a little rusty, but we were able to shake off the cobwebs and by the end of the first verse had found our groove. Tommy “Gun” Russo nailed the solo and proved why he was voted top lead guitarist in a recent internal company poll.

Between songs, Brent Matthew let the audience know that, “Although we went on first, we are no opening act.” Then we launched into our obligatory ballad, the Paul Davis penned “Cool Night.” By the end of the song there was not a dry eye in the house.

After that we brought the thunder, courtesy of Sammy Hagar’s “Your Love Is Driving Me Crazy.” It’s so empowering to be playing a song live for the first time and having the audience know all the words. As I looked over at our bass player Jordan “Legs” Lev, a smile broke across my face. We left everything we had on the stage and walked away knowing we had set the bar pretty high for the rest of the bands.

Reality check: we didn’t actually end up winning the Battle of the Bands. But the music in our souls needed to get out. Our success metric was getting ladies to approach Brent and treat him like a rock star. Mission accomplished.

I mentioned the light show earlier. It seems the Commodore 64 (manufactured in 1982) was not fully compatible with the projection system at the nightclub. We ended up using an emulator on a MacBook to power our visuals, which was a seamless experience to the audience, but to us purists it just wasn’t the same. There has been a lot of interest in our graphics program so drummer/visual artistic director/vintage computing enthusiast Stephen “The Hammer” Kozik has been kind enough to offer up this slice of Assembly-coded genius to you, the fans. Play with it below or click here to download the source code.

 

-Mark “Iceman” Fries