Look Who was ‘Up All Night to Get Lucky’

The gardens of the Chelten Way house of Therese and Mario Molina came alive Saturday night with the electric guitar and trumpet sounds of the Grateful Dads, a South Pasadena band led by David Plenn, owner of the Dinosaur Farm, the iconic toy store on Mission Avenue that’s known for not playing kids music.

The occasion was the South Pasadena High School Booster Club’s second annual Booster Bash, widely acknowledged as the best party in town. As was the case last year, some 300 people attended the fundraising event, according to organizers, which was expected to raise another $20,000 or so for a wide variety of school programs ranging from science and virtual business to instrumental music, theater and journalism.

Many of the partygoers danced for hours to the hypnotic music of the seven-piece Grateful Dads band, which was part of the evening’s silent auction. Bidding on a performance by the band, some of whose members have played with Linda Ronstadt, Booker T, Ray Charles, Chaka Khan, and Van Dyke Parks, started at $1,000 and ended at $4,750—just $250 shy of the 5K figure that auctioneer and host Mario Molina said he had in mind.

In the attached video, the Grateful Dads play one of their new numbers, “We’re up all Night to Get Lucky,” a memorable song that asks and then suitably answers a question that behooves everyone to ponder once in a while: What keeps the planet spinning?