Videos: The Muslims @ San Diego House Party, 12/1/2007

I didn't take my SLR camera to the house party last night, for two reasons:

1. It cost enough that I'm too cautious to take it out with me when I plan on drinking a decent amount, and
2. It's freaking heavy, especially considering that I'd need the flash (which takes four AA batteries) and my 20mm lens, in an environment where I'm not comfortable stowing it somewhere while I go dance/have fun without 10 pounds hanging from my shoulder.

So last night, as a compromise, I brought my Holga with a roll of ISO 800 color negative film loaded in it (because that camera weighs about half a pound - oh the joy of an all plastic camera), and my SD1000 point and shoot, mostly for taking videos. I'm still not keen on the direct flash in any situation, but especially not with taking photos of people. I took about two just to try it out, and I wasn't happy with the results. But I was pretty impressed with the video I took with that camera - check them out for yourself:

The Muslims - "Call It a Day"



The Muslims - some new song whose name I didn't catch



Sorry about the bit of shakiness in the second video - I had to sneeze. Twice. It's kind of like how whenever I put on gloves to do work in lab, the bridge of my nose itches. Totally psychosomatic, but there's nothing I can do about it.

The audio is decent, as far as I can tell, although Matt's vocals are a little overwhelmed by the lead guitar, due to where I was standing. The Muslims sounded fantastic last night, and the crowd definitely got into it, especially during their last song, a cover of Jonathan Richman's "Roadrunner." A bit of a mosh pit even broke out, and Matt was great on vocals - even going out into the thick of the crowd at different times. It sucks that they moved to LA, but hopefully they'll get the recognition they deserve and something good will come of it.