To LA Marathon; Love, The Traitors


For the third year in a row, Devin Tait & The Traitors woke up extra early to perform for the runners in the Los Angeles Marathon. To be honest, I didn't have all that much enthusiasm in the beginning and almost didn't even apply for it. We are down one member since Brandon has departed, and also the marathon is just a lot of work! Plus, they moved the date up by nearly a month to coincide with the US Olympic marathon time trials. However, they finally accommodated our request to perform in Hollywood rather than Echo Park, and were even able to locate us right in front of my job's office. This made it much easier, since we had a place where we could store our stuff the night before, and electricity and bathrooms at our disposal. Also, we were roughly nearer to mile 11 than mile 5 so it was a slightly later start time.



Since we don't have a regular bass player at the moment, I had to hire Steve, who performed with us at Fubar, and at Record Parlour and Couture during the Only in Hollywood festival. So I tried to use mainly the songs he had already performed with us, and only added in a few that he hadn't already done with us. The only truly new song to our set list this time was an 80's love medley, in honor of the fact that the marathon took place on Valentine's Day. It included "Modern Love" by David Bowie; "Addicted to Love" by Robert Palmer; and "The Power of Love" by Huey Lewis and the News. I chose these three songs because they're all fairly iconic 80's love songs and I felt they each had something quirky about them that would make them work well together.



Another bonus of performing on Valentine's Day, is that since our colors are red and white, we already looked the part! I went and got a bunch of red and white mylar helium balloons and some other valentine's stuff (I had a plush rose attached to my mic stand) and the runners really seemed to enjoy us! It felt like we got more runners coming up to us for selfies this year than ever before, and a lot of people, both runners and spectators, made a point to tell us how much they enjoyed us. Melrose Larry Green, famous for being part of Howard Stern's "Wack Pack," even hung around for most of our set and repeatedly showered us with compliments (including saying "you're better than Smash Mouth" and "I'm going to get you guys on Jimmy Kimmel).



We played our set three times, which took the better part of three hours, with fairly little complications. Two songs, "We Built This City" and the Love Medley, were performed totally live, which is rare for us since we usually have to pad our sound out with sequenced backing tracks. I was really proud of everyone and we all had a great time!



Here was the set list:

1. Just Can't Get Enough (Depeche Mode cover)
2. Alien Nation
3. Mindframe
4. Quickie
5. We Built This City (Starship cover)
6. To Be Young + On Downers
7. Quitters Never Win
8. Sunglasses at Night/Sweet Dreams (Corey Hart/Eurythmics mash-up)
9. Relax/Invisible Light/Light Years (Frankie Goes to Hollywood/Scissor Sisters/Kylie Minogue mash-up)
10. I Ran (A Flock of Seagulls cover)
11. Now I Know What I Want
12. Love Medley: Modern Love/Addicted to Love/Power of Love

Comments

Scarlet said…
Sad that I've never been to one of these performances, but so happy Brandon has brought me along for a few minutes, more than once! Maybe we will see you on Jimmy Kimmel Live!
7:44 AM
aes9999 said…
That would have been fun to see! Or even to be a runner and hear you guys!!
5:13 PM
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