Some of my best buddies in the industry: Clint Bajakian, Michael Land, and Pete McConnell. They were the audio team at LucasArts. The best. "The Stooges." My brother Dave Sanger was on drums and clicked the picture. The set was awesome, and made us look like the Monkees. So we called it Monkees Island.
It was the Hard Rock in Vegas. I think it was the second ever DICE show. We were the pit band. These guys went through hell to play the show, and absolutely ripped it up. It was recorded...but the audio didn't turn out. Our feature number was the Mario theme, and they almost cut it out, I think. It felt as though we had to fight the director a bit. At one point, Clint had said, "Know why we're doing this?" and we all said, "Why."
"We play our number...and if Miyamoto-San taps his foot one tiny bit, we will have accomplished Our Mission."
We received an unsolicited report that indeed it had happened -- He was reported as being backstage "bopping around." I will try to find the cel-phone video of the guy telling us that it happened, it's around here somewhere.
Thanks again, my friends, for a GLORIOUS couple of days, some long nights, and great times.