Happy Holidays from the whole Peaches family

One of my bandmates had some extra time on his hands :)

My new look....

This past Saturday, my band, Porn Spill, performed at a private party. Although, we didn't publicly advertise the party, word of mouth got out to enough people that the place was packed! It was a wonderful night of funk music, dancing, sweating and high energy. The music sounded great (I must admit) and the band played better than we've ever played. The other smash hit of the party was a photo booth in which people could be really silly. Here are some photos......

Boom Boom

Tasty Crumbles

Mashed Potato

Curtis E. Flush

Jimmy Large

My alter ego....Peaches Delite

Getting mauled by my biggest fan

Open Mic Night in Denver

I took a short trip to Denver for training before heading back down to Antarctica and as luck would have it, almost all of the Porn Spill band members were in town. The guys thought it would be fun to do an Open Mic night at a local wine bar called Vines. The bar is an upscale locale that features hundreds of premium wines and specialty cocktails, including an Antarctic Freeze (or something like that), which is a vodka drink named for one of our ice colleagues who frequents the bar.

Lacking a set of bongos or a conga drum, I pounded on a 5 gallon bucket. Our 4 song performance got rousing applause....maybe because we packed the place with our workmates. The other patrons were a little non-plussed to see a 5-person act (plus bucket) squeezed into the corner of their swanky establishment.

Here are a couple of mood-lit photos.....

Porn Spill

I mentioned in an earlier posting that I have been playing in 2 bands this season. The reggae band, Jah Chant, stopped playing in December at which time, I got very busy with the second band, Porn Spill. Porn Spill is a six-piece funk cover band - with keyboards, vocals, bass, guitar, drums, synchronized dancing and costumes. The name of the band comes from a famous true Antarctic story which goes something like this: a couple of years ago, the waste department collected all of the porn that they had been collecting from the paper recycling containers on station and shipped it all back to the US with the rest of the trash. When the giant carton of porn was being moved from the ship to the dock, it split open and all of the magazines spilled onto the dock. Apparently, everything was "cleaned" up within moments.

One of the lead singers in the band is the supervisor of the Waste Department and he came up with this band name last year. The band membership changed a bit this year with the addition of a fabulous female singer, excellent keyboardist and me on drums.

We played our first gig at Icestock and were a complete hit. Our repertoire included James Brown's "Sex Machine", "Play that Funky Music", "Lady Marmalade", and a funktage (seamless "montage" of songs) including "Superstition", "Love Rollercoaster", "Let it Whip", "You Dropped A Bomb" and "Get Down On It". The crowd loved our costumes, dances, energy and danceability.

We played a second acoustic show later in the month and just last weekend put on two hour performance - complete with video! The show was great fun and the video was a blast to make. Fortunately for us, our keyboardist is also the local videographer for science-related events. He did a tremendous job editing and directing the film.

Here are some photos of Icestock and of the band - starring:
Jimmy Large: Vocals and cow bell
Boom Boom: Vocals
Poopsie Starfish: Bass guitar
Mashed Potato: Guitar
Tasty Crumbles: Keyboard
Peaches Delite (me): Drums











Here's the publicity poster for the gig last week. Our fine videographer/keyboardist created the image from the photo above.

IceStock - Take 4!

Tomorrow is the big day - live music from 10:45 to 6:00 pm, a chili cook-off and the judging of the beard growing contest. This wonderful festival is called IceStock and is always my favorite day of the season. This will be the 4th IceStock I've performed in and it is forecasted to be the coldest one yet. With a high of 27 degrees F (-3 degrees C) and a potential wind chill of 9 degrees F (-13 degrees C), we are planning appropriate (full body coverage) costumes.

Playing in 2 bands this season has taken up a lot of spare time, but the big pay-off is when we get to perform for very appreciative crowds.

Today, a large part of the community is preparing for the event by erecting the stage, getting the containers (milvans) in place for each chili cook-off team and getting the dive shack prepared for its annual role as "Sawbucks", the coffee house run by the Carpenter Shop.

Here's a photo of Sawbucks:



Stay tuned for photos from the event!

Jah Chant Goes on TOUR!

The reggae band that I play drums in, Jah Chant, was invited to play our first international gig this past Saturday night. The New Zealand research station, Scott Base, had a big beach party and what better way to feel "irie" than to have live, original reggae music. Here are some photos from the event and of the band and our wonderful groupies. What about the tall dude with the dreadlocks - He looks familiar, mon!

Rock AND Roll

Performance at the Helo Hangar Party. A fan kissing the drummer.

It has been a couple of weeks of Saturday evening live music shows and I've been a part of several of them, including IceStock, our outdoor music festival, the helo hangar party and the Waste Barn party. Our band, called "A Girl, A Guy, Another Girl, Plus One More Guy" (not too easy to remember) does cover versions of rock songs (mostly) with female lead vocals (Pat Benatar, Joan Jett, Veruca Salt, Letters to Cleo). We've been extremely well received and our audiences have been filled with enthusiastic dancers.

Performance at IceStock Dancing crowd,and even the cacti are dancing.

Why January 1 is the best day of the season!

ICESTOCK!!! The six-hour outdoor music festival that occurs every year at McMurdo on the 1st of January or the first Sunday of January (this year, they coincided).

The dirt area next to the galley building is cleared and a stage, bleachers and lots of millvans are carted in. The millvans serve as serving and cooking areas for the chili cook-off contestants.

Every year, there is an eclectic group of musicians and styles represented in the eleven twenty-five minute acts. This year, there was also the final judging of the beard contest. Contestants had their beards shaven off by the station's barber earlier in the season and photos were taken after they had viewed a short film about Donegal beards (leprechaun style).

The Beard Contest Finalists



The woman in the finalist group won for the "Most Disgusting Beard". She had saved all of the hair from her hairbrush since the contest started and glued it onto her face on the day of Icestock.


Musical acts ranged from reggae (our band) to punk, from Ramones-covers to throat singing from the Tuva region of Mongolia and from straight ahead rock and roll to a marching band dressed in bunny boots.



Every good outdoor festival needs hula hoops - these were made from pvc pipe.



The highlight (NATURALLY) was our performance....we were very warmly received and our rasta outfits (I had borrowed a friend's Jamaican soccer team jersey and Michiel braided my hair) got us feeling irie.

The Album Cover....


With our biggest fans...


One more...from the bleachers...

Makin' Music

Being a rock (well....reggae, actually) star is loads of fun! The band is called Jah Chant (I have no idea how Sky came up with that name) and we've been performing every week since our first show at Open Mike night. The band is made up of Sky, who writes most of the songs, sings and plays guitar; Kish, our bassist, who is rock-star epitomized; Devin, who plays didgeridoo and congas and me on drums. The community seems to REALLY dig our music and we always have a group of enthusiastic dancers at each gig (and not just our partners and good friends).




Last night, we played our first-ever Saturday night gig, which is a real treat because Saturday night is the night that most people go out. We played at Gallagher's, the non-smoking bar and played third, just after a tremendous performance by Sean on guitar and vocals.





We're planning on playing IceStock, the big outdoor music festival on New Year's Day, and have been invited to perform at the big end-of-season party in the helicopter hangar. We'll certainly play some more events before then.

All I can say is .....WOO HOOO!