CULTURE- FRIDAYS UPDATE- Don't skip it: Pastorfield and pals rock Fridays

Skip Castro Band

Since its October debut at the Paramount Theater as part of the Virginia Film Festival, Live from the Hook..., last year's documentary about older Charlottesville rock bands like Johnny Sportcoat and the Casuals, Captain Tunes, and the Skip Castro Band has spread to enthusiastic far-flung fans, some of whom subsequently decided to chip in. 

Skip Castro guitarist Charlie Pastorfield says that the film has evolved at each of its four screenings.

"They were really in a hurry to meet that Paramount deadline, but they haven't been in a hurry ever since," he says. "Each time they got new footage from people, so they've been trying to figure out how to incorporate it."

Digging through the archival footage for the documentary has even influenced the band's set at Fridays After Five this week. 

"This friend of mine just gave me a tape of us playing on the radio in Norfolk in 1979," says Pastorfield, "and there are all these songs on there that I had completely forgotten about. I think we're going to be working up a couple off that tape."

It's a little more complicated than setting the Flux Capacitor to '79, though. "We were rehearsing full time, so we were able to do some pretty ornate arrangements," he explains. "It can be hard to remember how the hell we did that stuff!"

And, Pastorfield admits, they're starting to show their age. "I can't sing anywhere near as high as I used to," he says. "A lot of the time we'll drop the key a full step or sometimes even more."

Higher registers can be strenuous for singers, and those sorts of slight changes have helped keep Skip Castro ticking. "It's the most physically demanding band I've ever played with, because there are all these moves you gotta do, and it's very uptempo music," says Pastorfield.

And even though he stays busy with the Believers and the Gladstones, that's starting to become an issue for him with Skip Castro.

"There's stuff we worked into our show when we were doing this originally," he continues, "like falling on our knees across the stage and doing a bowing tribute to the piano player. That's one thing when you're 30, but another when you're 55."

Acrobatics aside, however, Pastorfield says everything else is falling into place. "This band, it's like riding a big trail bike," he laughs. 

Thank god for muscle memory.

Charlie Pastorfield and pals perform in the Skip Castro Band Friday, August  17, as part of Fridays after Five at the Pavilion on the east end of the Downtown Mall. Time: take a guess. 

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