On Friday evening, Cocktail Party Phenomenon was faced with quite the musical task- transitioning a crowd of STS9 and Umphrey’s McGee enthusiasts with freshly melted faces from the Mann Center to The Blockley, where the official after-party was taking place. The Blockley had also hosted another event immediately prior to the after-party, presenting the additional challenge of having to take complete ownership of the space and transform the vibe of the venue in a short amount of time. CPP succeeded, giving a performance that spoke to the energy of the crowd. Steve Catania on guitar, Dan Enden on bass, Mike Gardner on keyboard, and Max Young on drums were also joined by Evan Kilgore and Adam Jaskol on saxophone for the show’s entirety. CPP won the audience over as they entered to “Thriller/Another Brick in the Wall.” Adapting a combo that Umphrey’s plays right after the crowd had the seen the band was no easy task, but CCP’s dynamic and musical prowess allowed for their triumph and the song was well chosen. They then transitioned from originals “Last Stand for Planet Earth” into a 25-minute “Rumblestilskin” and everyone was dancing as hard to the original material as they were to the previous favorites. The crowd was pleasantly surprised by a cover of Bloodhound Gang’s “The Bad Touch,” which the band made their own by teasing Escort’s “Cocaine Blues.” The energy generated as people excitedly sang-along and moved about to the revamped but familiar tune was perfectly timed for their next original, a new song titled “Batterjeeznuts.” The high energy and performance quality were consistent throughout the show, as best evidenced by the non-stop grooving. Their performance was followed by Up Until Now, featuring Murph of STS9.
We caught up with bassist Dan Enden and asked his thoughts on how the night went:
It was a different approach then we normally end up taking. Usually, we aim to play flowing, upwards-momentum based sets that span every genre, culminating in a massive peak. We try to really express musical diversity–jazz, funk, Latin, progmetal—so all those things are usually more prevalent. For this show we really tried to combine those factors into one massive, nonstop dance party. From the opening notes onwards it was all dance vibe, even when it wasn’t necessarily music that would normally lend itself to that. We also chose to limit ourselves to four songs, because rather than show off all our compositional complexities, we decided to jam for the vast majority of the set. This would allow us to truly interact with the vibe of the crowd and foster a two-way relationship. With that kind of jamming you can always tell if what you’re doing is working, and if it’s not, you are forced to start building towards something else, or someone realizes that all it needs is one more layer or something like that. Also, the fact that our old sax player (Adam Jaskol) was there really allowed for us to keep that funky, Lettuce vibe going no matter how weird and, say, Biscuits-y we were getting. Umphrey’s is easily our biggest collective influence and that comes through with our music; for this show we had to act as the intermediary between them and Up Until Now, which is way less in our comfort zone, so we really had to just feel the crowd out and maintain our energy from the previous show all the way throughout our set, always keeping that funky backbone so as to not stray too far away from our usual sound. I think we succeeded.
The Music Vibes would have to agree!
Review by Mia Jester
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