Chris Murray @ Characters, NYC – 11.16.13

The stellar acoustic ska musician Chris Murray headlined the late Electric Avenue show last night in Manhattan (or well this morning technically). Chris hasn’t been in NYC in awhile so I didn’t want to miss this show.

I wanted to film something with Chris for Before The Concert but we couldn’t find a time to do it, especially when Chris joined the Streetlight Manifesto tour and came from NJ that night. When I originally thought of doing that video series, Chris was one of the bands/musicians I thought of immediately. Hopefully he will return to NY soon so we can film an episode. The show itself was already late, and then got off to a late start so Chris was supposed to start around 12:15am but didn’t go on until closer to 1am. There was some awkwardness in the beginning since the sound kept messing up. It got fixed out and the rest of the set was quite fun!

Around the third song, Chris was interrupted by a girl celebrating her birthday and wanted attention for it pretty much. I saw them sneak in and and was just wondering what the hell was going on. Chris, the true showman, played along with her and got everybody dancing while he played “Rocksteady.” It was a bit of a “what the fuck” moment but ended up being a highlight. The people that stayed around for Chris’ set got to hear songs like “Maga Dog,” a brilliant Toasters cover of “Thrill Me Up,” “Real Ska,” “Bring Your Love to Me,” and “Cooper Station Blues.”

Chris was taking a lot of requests and just playing what people wanted to hear. I wanted to hear “Ex-Darling” and Steve Shafer stole my answer, so when Chris asked me what I wanted to hear, I said Steve stole it. I ended up filming him play that song, and I think it was the song of the night. It got everybody dancing that’s for sure! I ended up leaving at 2am(!!) which is highly rare for me to be out that late. I don’t remember the last time I was out that late, and ended up getting home 3:15, thanks to the shitty mass transit. Maybe I’ll just drive next time?

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Tags: acoustic ska, Characters, Chris Murray, Concert Photography, Electric Avenue, Nikon D800, nyc, ska