Black Wednesday

Every once in a while in American culture you hear of an event being held for the first time and being proclaimed as a new tradition. I'm not sure what it was that I heard that about recently. It may have been The Christmas Story play (based on the book and movie, the movie having been shot here in Cleveland). Obviously, the idea of a new tradition is absurd. As is trying to CREATE a new tradition. It has to just happen.

Black Wednesday, Thanksgiving Eve, is truly a new(er) American tradition. It is also called "the biggest bar day of the year" (like Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, and "the biggest shopping day of the year"). Neither of these days really are what we call them (the biggest), but the are TRADITIONS!

The crazy fun of shopping way too early in the morning for bargains is real. So too is that huge bar night. I partake in both, but more of the shopping than the bar night (I only do that some years). I woke up this morning with a great idea for this year - go see the Lords of the Highway (my favorite Cleveland local band) and do a big time amateur video shoot of the band.

I am no stranger to recording bands (especially the Lords) nor to doing videos. But this time I am going to coordinate a two camera shoot and multichannel audio recording. I previously did a video shoot of a little specialty band The Shrill on a black Wednesday, using my Canon mini DV and doing separate audio on my iRiver H120 (see the blog post about my recording rig). This time we will use two Canon mini DV cameras and two iRivers. I have better audio gear that I could use (an Edirol 10 channel 24 bit 192 kHz fire wire device) but the iRivers will do. We should be able to get one off the board and the other with a room mike. My friend Dale immediately agreed this was a good idea and he will run some of the gear.

It's really nice to have a lot of time off at the holidays and to have my kids coming home from college, and it's great to have a hobby goal for the biggest bar night of the year. I hope it goes well.