Tracks to Take You Way Back

Last year at this time, rehearsals for the Fringe Production of Shotgun Wedding were getting underway.

Missed it last year?  Tell us why we should REMOUNT this baby!  Meantime, if you DID see the show — relive it by streaming these tracks…

Written and Composed by Kierscey Rand.

#5 Follow Me – Aly-Us (Shotgun Wedding’s 1993 TOP TEN Countdown)

(SCROLL DOWN for Showtimes and Ticket Info!)

I’m hoping… to see a day.

Don’t lie. You KNOW the moves to this one. Even if you want to act like you don’t, your feet give you away. This is part of your heritage and this blood is coarsing through your veins. Try as you may — you end up doing THE ELECTRIC SLIDE when the DJ plays ‘Follow Me’ by Aly-Us.

You could be at a 18th birthday Debut, a semi-formal, a prom or a (shotgun) wedding but regardless the venue, the moves are the same. Four steps to the right, four steps to the left, four steps back and then rock back two times and dip two times… aaaaand repeat. Throw in some spins and a few floor kicks and you’re looking MINT. In 1993, if you didn’t know The Electric Slide you probably didn’t get invited to the party.

Director’s Blog #1: Why Len Chose Me

Hi folks!

If you didn’t know, the Director of Shotgun Wedding: The Musical is Catherine Hernandez.  I’m still finding the special words to tell you about Catherine from *MY* point of view but in the meantime, she’s taken a few moments out of her super-busy schedule to write *YOU* a note.  

– Len

Director Catherine is the pretty lady wearing violet down in the far right!

by Catherine Hernandez – Director, Shotgun Wedding

There are reasons why Len chose me to be the director for Shotgun Wedding: The Musical.  The main reason is because I am old.

Meet the Cast

Director Catherine Hernandez is multi-tah-LENT-ed!

Don’t even get me started on the ways — but she also cuts good video! You may be wondering “who’s in this play”? You’ll meet everyone in-depth soon enough but for now, check out this video Catherine put together on “The Making of Shotgun Wedding”.

On Being an Actor Once Upon a Time

(or… why you should think about auditioning for Shotgun Wedding)

(l-r) Jon De Leon, Nicco Lorenzo, Byron Abalos, some dude, Dean Vargas

That’s a picture of one of the best times of my life.

Every time I see it, it reminds of a moment frozen in time when I was flying above the world on a cloud. 

Where Are They Now?: All-4-One

You know the song. You’ve made fun of it probably in the past year. You laugh at that scene in the Ryan Reynolds movie ‘Just Friends’ when he sings it in while wearing a fat suit. And still, when it comes on the radio (on CHFI) — YOU KNOW EVERY WORD. And when someone at the office catches you, you deny it: No, I hate that song…

… I SWEAR.

You know you secretly love it.

‘Where Are They Now?’ is going to be a new installment of this blog, where I catch you up with an artist, group or personality that mattered to the world of 1993. In a lot of cases, these people are still around, doing their thing. Who knows, you might just find that they haven’t changed all that much… which in this day and age, can be a good thing. Any suggestions? Please feel free to post them here and I’ll use my super Google powers to hunt them down. Just like I did these guys:

... they swear.

#8 – Hip Hop Hooray – Naughty By Nature (Shotgun Wedding’s 1993 TOP TEN Countdown)

You didn’t think this Top Ten list was only going to be slow jams and r&b, did you?

In 1993, things were changing. At least at my high school. Up to that point, if you were Filipino — you were a houser.

Houser: hair shaved on the sides, long and slicked back or spiked on the top, possibly dyed blonde with sun-in. Hoop earrings – both ears. Cigarette in the ear. BIG-ass belt buckle. “Bellbottom” pants and no, not in a hippie way — but in a houser way, big enough to cover the shoes and the more cuffs, the better. A strut. A smirk. A Dayrunner. (Yes, intimidating AND well-organized!)

But like I say, things were changing.

Nas on the Art of the Mixtape (and I mean mix-TAPE)

Remember when it was all about the MIXTAPE? I mean mix TAPE. Not mixtape MP3 download or mix-CD. I mean cassette!

Rolling the tape back with a pencil in one of the holes, putting tape or paper over the tab so you could tape over it again and taping songs from the radio when you couldn’t afford to buy it, then the damn DJ talks over it! GRRRR!

Do you remember the brands? Memorex, Maxell and if you were lucky you got Sony. But the real king of cassettes were TDKs (not to mention the corporate sponsor of Ben Johnson, still fastest man on earth – according the Maestro anyway). Mixtapes were our way of showing that we “liked” someone else — but that was just a sub-genre of what we used these mix cassettes for.

Nas was around in 1993 and this short film for TDK is his ode to the cassette: