One Of Those Days
Well Friday turned out to be one of those days. I broke a light in the gym of a school I was supply teaching at. Fluorescent bulb shards raining down on children below. I was trying a full court buzzer beater. Luckily no one was hurt. (Obviously I didn't make the basket.) On the positive side the kids loved it.
On to the gig at the Canadian - I wanted to use my Garnet Rebel Reverb (early 70's vintage amp) so I put the head on the hood of my car as I was loading up. (Stupid, I know.) It slid off and smashed one of the 6L6 tubes in it. I had it replaced yesterday with a new one but it just doesn't sound as awesome as the vintage one did. It might just be my imagination though - I'll have to listen to some old recordings to compare.
The turn out was pretty good. The place was by no means full but it was far from empty. There were probably about 50 people there (which would look full in say, the Downbeat but the Canadian is much bigger.) So thanks to all of them for coming - and sorry for what they would be subjected to at the end of the night.
The Road Rockets opened the night with a roaring set despite the less-than-stellar mix (sorry Sound Guy - the master was too loud as were the drums. The guitars were inaudible and when I went up to play banjo with them you didn't even turn my mic on. WTF?)
Rob got to play his brand new kit:
T got to play his brand new drumstick:
Carl belting it out with Jake in the background:
I forgot to give my camera to someone for pics so there were none of GDH's set. I had a great time during this set and we sounded pretty good despite having only jammed once since our last gig in January.
After that Anthony BEGGED me to let his friends come up and play a Tool song with him. I resisted but finally consented and sat in on bass. I had no idea what I was doing but it ended up pretty good (if you like that sort of music).
And then "The Train Wreck" occurred.
We decided to cobble together a bunch of cover songs the Canadian regulars would enjoy - "Dancing in the Dark" by Bruce Springsteen, "The Hockey Song" by Stompin' Tom, the theme to "The Golden Girls" tv show, "The Weight" by The Band, "Purple Haze" by Hendrix, you know, killer stuff!!!
If you take a look at the following pics it looks like we're rockers. Well, looks can be deceiving. We got all the rock poses down but we failed to learn the songs.
We played 7 or 8 songs and managed to seriously f*&% up all but two of them. I'm not talking about those flubbed notes that people don't notice. We had major breakdowns in almost every song. It was the worst musical presentation I have ever had the misfortune of being involved in. I was seriously embarrassed and pissed off. On the positive side, we were pretty entertaining in the "must look at this car crash" sort of way.
Ah well, "live and learn" or some other such trite cliche.
Saturday night had the Road Rockets playing the first and third set while the Woody Simms Trio was sandwiched in between. The crowd turnout, the sound mix and the musical performances were a bit better than Friday night.
Woody Simms sounded excellent (as usual) and I had more than a few people tell me "I really like these guys". The new tunes came together nicely.
Oh and I forgot my camera so no pics. And the weather prevented Professor Matt B. from making it all the way from Wisconsin.
Labels: gig reviews
John wears surgical gloves and a paint splattered suit while painting, running on a treadmill and fielding calls from Los Angeles gang bangers who hate his guts. He usually adds another dimension to his show - playing chess, eating pie, frying pickles, building a sushi gingerbread house, all while being plagued by technical difficulties. He mixes his metaphors, rambles on and sweats buckets. And throughout it all his unbridled enthusiasm and positive attitude shine through.
