The rock-and-roll lifestyle of Pale Nimbus - a band of Penn graduates and students - is too wild for print.
"We'd rather not have [our stories] published," said Pale Nimbus guitarist Bobby Frisch.
With the juicy parts left to the imagination, the band is all about the music.
Combining "classy classic rock" covers with original songs about medieval knights and love, the Pale Nimbus seems like the offspring of Penn's focus on interdisciplinary study and the Rolling Stones.
The band members - 2006 Penn graduates Frisch, Chase McGowan and Garrett Drinon and College junior Zack Moscow - say they created the band two years ago to fill the live music void on campus.
"Considering how big the school is, its surprising" how few rock bands are on campus, McGowan said.
So far, the response from students has been positive.
Free buckets of beer are often placed on the stage by fans, Frisch said, as a sign of their appreciation.
Heckling is rare, usually in the form of drunken shout-out requests for "Free Bird," a song by Lynyrd Skynyrd.
Although the current band make-up is new - Frisch joined just a few months ago - Pale Nimbus has a steady gig at MarBar on Wednesday nights, and has its first off-campus gig of the year in October.
McGowan said the band hopes to widen its fan-base beyond Penn into Philadelphia, and eventually aims to penetrate throughout the East Coast.
"We're actually going to try and do this full-time, and I think its going to work," Drinon said.
The other band members are also confident in the group's potential for success.
"If I was in another band, we'd want to see us play," McGowan said.
All the band members also serve as their own agents and roadies. They book their own shows and haul their equipment from Ambler, a town right outside of Philadelphia where Drinon and McGowan live. Their house also serves as practice and studio space for the band.
Pale Nimbus' typical two-and a-half hour set includes covers of songs by rock legends like Carlos Santana, Pink Floyd and the Rolling Stones.
The covers, combined with their original songs and occasional on-stage musical improvisation, mean the band's sound is "nothing you'd hear on MTV," Drinon said.
So what exactly does "Pale Nimbus" mean?
The members of the band aren't exactly sure, but they heard it in a movie and thought it sounded cool.
