with our next big gig coming up this week, I find myself basking in the warm glow of a plan gone right.

really did a great job putting this whole thing together...like, there's no way I could have done this by myself.

while it is demonstrably true that I contain The Funk at a molecular level, my instrumental proficiency is just not capable of broadcasting the sounds in my head at this time...at least, not without some serious signal boost.

...but to be fair, what worthwhile result has come and endured due to the efforts of a single individual? 

as a favorite book of mine (let's discuss "The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity" sometime) puts it: "did Alexander not take a single cook on his conquests; had he no army behind him?"

not that the petty game of empire is a worthy pursuit for anyone born in the days of divinity delayed that we inhabit...but the point stands sound: big projects are generally group efforts.

...and so, after a couple years of tinkering with the war machine, a cast up to the task has emerged.

great instrumentalists, yes...but more importantly, excellent people.

individuals suitable for a pleasant uprising.

to celebrate our 5th entry, let's get you closer to us by expanding on the band intro a bit...as always, they're listed in the Spanish-language alphabetical order of the instrument they play (except for #5, yours truly)...it's the only order that made sense to the writer. 

besides, we can talk about Warflower Jones more some other time...how could we possibly avoid that?

anyways, here's the band yall:

*****

Emma "EQ" (bajista)- our bassman, the roots to our blooming onstage presentation.

everybody knows that if you don't have a good bass player you don't have much of a damn thing as far as The Funk is concerned...if you missed that day in School of Rock, you should know that it's the bass that drives the song forward, "moves the ass," to risk overusing technical jargon.

luckily, EQ is a GREAT bass player, with his background in jazz constantly working to surprise and improvise within rock-solid rhythms. He is also qualified to set up the Thingy, the mysterious nexus of wires that is master control of all onstage sound during our demonstrations...obviously, this is not my area of expertise.

any band would be fortunate to find themselves with an Emma among them.

*****

Kool Kim (baterista)- oqueso maybe you've heard of "drummers" before but...it doesn't seem to be quite enough to describe Kim.

he plays a drum kit. he sits on a cajon, an additional rhythm instrument, to do it. he's even been known to bring along an electronic kit AS WELL for some special gigs.

a mf who shows up with a stack of instruments taller than him is to have his intentions respected. the man has percussion deep in his spirit.

Jazz, Latin, hell, EDM...he can do it all, and he can do it in style.

I have no idea how he does the things he does back there, his reflexes and coordination must be on another level...bet he'd shine in his weight class as a boxer.

like, I have "lunchroom table"-level percussion experience, so one of my favorite phenomena is when he takes some rudimentary drum pattern that I bonked out with my left hands and turn it into some wild freestyle rhythmatchamacallit that somehow loops into the intended vibe.

super interesting for an ex-non-musician such as myself to watch the rhythm section work together--that's the drum and bass category, in case you (like most people) just hear "a song" instead of individual instruments.

sure, Kim does a lot of just "whatever he wants to do," but it's pretty much always within reach of the framework that Emma lays down on bass...like coloring outside the lines, but to add a rainbow to the background.

I'm honestly never quite sure what's going to happen once the song is in full Creative Mode...and yaknow, that's the way I like it.

thanks for being you, lil bro.

*****

Mil Megawatts (guitarrista) - look real quick and you'll see a straight-up rock guitarist...power chords, chugging riffs, loud noises!

spend more than 5 minutes listening and you'll see it more clearly...sure, the man clearly grew up on metal and alternative, but somebody must have slipped some Donna Summer tracks into his Limewire or something because he also does disco and dance music with equal enthusiasm.

as lead guitar, he makes a lot of the most recognizable sounds in our music...the band's sound definitely gets a squeeze of lemon from his hard rock background, but his 80s new-wave sensibilities are also key to the recipe.

out of pretty much any of our number, he's displayed some of the most inclination toward composition in this project, making some key contributions to the structure of songs...which totally tracks, because over the year or so he's been in the band, he's started and remained a constantly positive influence on our direction.

no matter where this ride ends up going, we've always been lucky to have Mili aboard.

*****

¡ZiZi! (vocalista, tecladista) - we talked all about ZiZi and her voice in the last entry, but most people don't realize that she not only has our most immediately striking instrument, but she probably has the most difficult job in the band: not only does she have to keep up with the rhythm section, but also she's assigned plenty of melody as our female vocalist!

most people alive cannot sing beautifully or play an instrument competently...she does both simultaneously, while doing an absolutely adverbial job of it.

she's most of a band by herself, which is why she's the only performing soloist in our ranks at this time.

still, one of my favorite inside jokes about the band (well it was inside me, and now you're in on it so welcome) is that we play the same instrument, with both "electric piano" and "computer input device" called "keyboard" in the tongue of my most direct oppressors.

well I don't usually tell the keyboard joke with that much gasoline but hey, we're all friends here...after all, you did read this far.

*****

as a capable cook both on and offstage, I think this is a pretty tasty casserole of creativity. 

that being typed, the output of this delightful device is tricky to describe in a GIF-length speech--like, we're a punk rock jazz band who renders angry surf disco through a classically trained soul chanteuse and a bellowing lunatic with a purple pen.

still, that's not what people wanna hear when they ask "what kind of music do you guys play?"

 ...and so another one of my favorite jokeyjokes came out of trying to describe the band's sound in a single sentence.

genres are weird and nigh-impossible for anyone to meaningfully tease apart unless they have access to Every Noise at Once--but to describe the generally upbeat bounce sugarcoating a stylized reading of "Das Kapital" that is our signature style at this time, I came up with "Black Eyed Peas Against the Machine," which does unfortunately cast ZiZi as Fergie but I still feel it fits.

maybe I'll try to get the term "solarfunk" over.

...but until then, if the equivalent to "fusion cuisine" in music is "pop," then I guess that's what we make. 

maybe the content is a little more...let's say "substantive"...but as something of a soundtrack to the times we live in, it's basically pop reconsidered for the times: "pop pop pop." 

the sound of a joyful revolution...the label, verbatim, for this can of whoop-ass.

together we are The Pleasant Uprising and we'll see yall in these streets real soon.

all power to The People.

--Flor!