NED Fest

We had a throwdown Friday night in Athens, and I've just about recovered enough to write about it. A few months ago Lynda

Lynda shows KO how it all works

said she was thinking about getting Oh OK together to play a benefit for Ingrid, and wanted to know where I thought would be a good place to hold it. She said she was looking into getting some more bands together and maybe have an art auction too. I said to contact Little Kings, which she did, and voila! NED Fest!

Beautiful artwork from Michael Oliveri, Sam Seawright and Andy Cherewick

First of all, Ingrid is our lovely sweet talented FUN friend who is beating breast cancer's ass for the second time.

The Lovely Ingrid

She had it once before in 1995 (is that right, Ing?) and had been cancer-free until this year, when they found something under her arm. She has undergone six rounds of chemo and is facing it all like a total trooper (not moany groney at all!) and since she's way up in Boston, we wanted to do something to help her out, long-distance wise. NED stands for "No Evidence of Disease", Ingrid's goal which she will reach, I have no doubt. So NED Fest seemed appropriate as the title of the party!

Volunteers extraordinaire Rebecca, Amy and Asia

I enlisted KO, planning superstar,

The Lovely KO

and we got Kim too, since she has gallery experience, and we took over the auction/art side of the night, while Lynda focused on bands and t-shirts. We ended up with fourteen artists, 23 works of art, one vacation package, three yoga packages, a book package, two REM collectors' items and two sets of jewelry sent in by two different jewelers. We raised $5000 on the art, door donations and t-shirt sales, plus another $5000 someone donated in an anonymous check.

Sunny, KO, Marianne, Lynda and John, with birdhouse he won

Here are some action shots of the evening:

After the wonderful event at Little Kings, after we finished up the bands and closed the auction and distributed the goods, we went to KO's room at the hotel for an after-party. Of course, things soon devolved into old school craziness which lasted till 5:00 am:

All in all a great success! And only a teeny hangover on Saturday!