The Radiators

The Radiators are a band from New Orleans. I first heard a song of theirs on KQ about 17 years ago, and have been following them ever since. They usually are in town Halloween weekend and Easter weekend, occasionally once during the summer. Diane and I have seen them play at many places over the years, but we had not seen them recently. The last couple times they've been here they've played at Trocadero's in the warehouse district. We'd never been there before, and decided to make a night of it by staying at a hotel downtown. We stayed at a new place called Aloft, located on Washington Ave and 9th St. It's about a mile from Trocadero's. We walked over there from the hotel and took a cab back. Staying at Aloft was a spur of the moment thing and was nice not to have to worry about driving. Trocadero's is set up with mostly standing on the main floor, but a open 2nd level has seating overlooking the floor. We tried to go up there, but were told it was for diners only. We wanted to eat something anyway so we became diners. It was a smart move and we got great seats overlooking the stage. What we hadn't realized what was going on before the show started, was they were having a DFL rally! Mpls Mayor Rybak came on stage and talked politics for a while. There was a woman and a very familiar man next to her standing behind Rybak. The young woman turned out to be Al Franken's daughter. She was energetic and outgoing, but she has one of those high pitched voices that wear after about 2 minutes. I finally figured out who the smiling guy in the bad suit was: Howard Dean!! The former DFL candidate for president who John Kerry beat out for the nomination. I wanted to ask Howard to scream for me, but I didn't. He walked right by me so I had the opportunity!

Anyway, after all the political stuff was over, the Radiators took the stage. I tried taking several photo shots, but because of movement was afraid they would be blurry. Something I've never done is take a movie with my camera, but I gave it a shot. The video turned out quite well, considering. I just wish I had taken video of them when they were jamming a little bit more! It's about 40 seconds long. It took over 1/2 hour to upload it onto the blog.