Are You Local?

Tonight was Vita.mn's Are You Local event. It's a concert we throw as a SXSW sendoff to the local bands in town. We also do a "best new bands" type contest and three finalists play live to the crowd. They're judged on that performance, and the winner gets a bunch of prizes, but the big one being a slot at the vita.mn showcase down in Texas for the festival. This photo is of the winner, 4onthefloor. I am pretty sure I've blogged about them before (because I LOVE seeing them live), but seriously they are so much fun. If you're heading down to Texas, you must go and catch their show.After 4onthefloor played (Yes, their name is stupidly spelled, I agree) we jumped in the car and sped over to the student union to catch Menomena. It was so weird to see them play in that venue, but it brought back a lot of memories of working similar shows at Kansas when I was in school. Anyway, the band was fantastic. They played: guitars, bass, drums, sax, tambourines, keyboards, xylophones, rattles, a RECORDER (yes, like the one you learned in elementary school), multiple effect pedals and looping and on top of all that there was various whistling and mouth noises (like the POP in that 1950s song "Lollipop." Forgive me, but I don't know how else to describe it). Overall, just an amazing night out in Minneapolis. Damn, I love this town.Also? I shot way more photos tonight. I'll put 'em up tomorrow though.... crawling off to bed now...UPDATE: You can see more shots from the Are You Local finalists over here. And you can see some photos from Menomena over here.