Happy New Year!

Dear Friends,

Thanks to you for making 2006 an exciting year for Recent Photo. We played our first headlining slots at Viaduct (thanks to Matt) and at Beat Kitchen (thanks to Neptali). Another "first" for us was to play some charity events: June '06 was the Darkroom benefit for devoted singer/songwriter Anthony Salazar, a friendly soul taken from his wife and child – and the rest of us - all too quickly. Also in June ‘06, we played a gig at DePaul University's McGaw Hall for the month-long Music With Meaning benefit for Rape Victim Advocates and America’s Second Harvest, organized by the Atlas-like Brandon Wetherbee and his fellow superheroes at The Machine Media. Speaking of superheroes, we played at the the Sept. 16-17 Heroes Helping Legends benefit for impoverished veterans of the comic book industry, held at Mercury Café and put on by The Hero Initiative. Thanks to you if you made it out to a show or helped us in any way in 2006.

A post below points to new Recent Photo recordings in 2007. ‘Nuff said on that score – listen for new developments right here, or find some rough cuts of new tracks at our MySpace Page.

Finally, thanks if you'd made it to one or both of our final 2006 gigs. If you'd like a recap of these gigs, and interesting related links, read on!

The Note - December 26, 2006

We thought folks would be either out of town or too gloggy from Christmas festivities to come out the very next day for our Boxing Day gig. Thanks for proving us wrong, folks! We greatly enjoyed sharing the stage with Chicken and the Chick Flicks, Baby and Hide, and our pleasant-surprise new billmates Belmondos, Harlan Pepper (Scott Solo), and Swimmer Missing. We’d be remiss not to personally thank Thax, MPShows and the great folks at The Note as well. Thax’ new poem “Recent Photo #4” will appear momentarily in our “press” section. If you'd like to download the whole evening's concert (except the very first opening slot which was unfortunately not captured), please visit Rich Experience's site.

Empty Bottle December 28, 2006

The Alex Chilton Bash at Empty Bottle (the 28th) was also a blast -- a good show review appears at Mike Bennett's MySpace Blog. Mr. Bennett was quite correct to call us on the looseness – we like to think it was at least a bit intentional in Kanga Roo. As of this writing, our version of "Roo" (recorded live at the Bottle) is now streaming at the Alex Chilton Birthday Bash Website, so check it out! We also give thanks to the always-fabulous folks at Empty Bottle for hosting and to Larry O. Dean of the Injured Parties for architecting the whole thing.

Until we meet again.. Have a happy and healthy new year!