Success! WOOT!

Tale Of A Good Gig

It is 3:24 AM Sunday morning. I have just returned from the Gearjammers 1st gig. Woot! The results were good. We arrived early and set up. We were ready to play an hour before show time. When the hell does THAT ever happen? It was DEAD at first and I had my usual freakout. Will anyone show? Will we play to an empty room? Nothing sucks worse. I can't wait until we're playing festivals where I KNOW there will be a shitload of people. THEN I can relax! How funny is that?

People were trickling in steadily and we started at 10 for about 20 people. Thank God. They dug it. We had the volume, speed and pacing down completely under control. The mix was awesome onstage. The drums were a little loud at first but I came up and we hit a balance. I can tell we're quiet enough when I can hear people talking at the bar while we play. If not; too loud. Every single person there went out of their way to praise us effusively during the three short breaks. We played a solid three hours. I'm psyched. Boz, the owner, was more than happy to offer us another gig and two people hired us on the spot for private parties. O stinkin' K!

Highlights of the show: Tin Pan Alley, Leave Your Hat On/Voodoo Chile, You Got Lucky and Breakdown. TPA is a REALLY slow blues that's very hard to pull off. We hit that fucker hard. People were SCREAMING. During a slow blues! Amazing! Props to drummer Mudcat for having that right. LYHO spontaneously developed into a ROCKIN version of Voodoo Chile. I love it when I feel I am outside of myself watching this happen. I'm watching the band and we're fucking killing it. Every woman in the bar was dancing. This is a VERY good sign.

You Got Lucky (Tom Petty) we do as a reggae tune with long solos. I was hitting it and the sing-along section went well. When we ran short of tunes G-Spot pulled a BUNCH out of the hat that were pretty slammin. It's nice to play and not have to think about singing although I prefer lead the band. Buddy Holly's 'Not Fade Away' came out strong. We repeated the lyrics too many times. I'd like to take that groove for a new tune. Ha! New. Ya Right. He did a sing along song that the whole bar liked and I hated. Ooga booga badda badda I dunno what the fuck. However it reminded me in a way of John Lee Hooker's Boom Boom Boom. Funny sentence. We should do THAT tune instead. Whatever.

We had a nice jam on Breakdown (also TP) we sped up through several different feels ending with a realy fast ska thing. I got people to pogo! Woot! I'd say there were 40 or 50 people throughout the night. Not a bad crowd. I've seen lots worse.

A drunken hippie girl named Miracle (no, not kidding) was all up in my grille onstage. Talking to me while I'm trying to remeber 8000 words in the right order. She was really pissing me off. 1st gig and already I need fuckin security. OK I forgive her. I was just mad when she slammed the micstand and mic into my mouth. Nice 'dancing' sugaree.

So all in all a complete success. Woot!

OK. Now 4:45 AM. Time 4 sleep.