Sunday, August 30, 2009

Double Dippin'


Last night I double dipped.

First off was the Platnumb gig. I'm already a bit foggy on the details. We played a wedding at the St. Regis Hotel, a room in which I'd never played before. It was pretty. The whole place looked and smelled like a Restoration Hardware Hotel. Lots of Bentleys, Ferraris, and a Lamborghini out front. As far as the band went, our bassist John bought a new pedal and it sounded awesome! Lots of crazy, funky noises coming from over there. I loved it.
At one point, the stage was flooded with people from the crowd, and some idiot lady came up between me and my music stand, squeezed through, took the neck of my tenor in her left hand and the music stand in her right, and pushed them apart so she could pass through. Not cool. Not cool at all. That was about the spot where I almost lost it.
Once I finished that one, I jumped in the car and raced down to East Atlanta to The Earl or the CD release of Attractive Eighties Women. I walked in, pulled out my horn, and went to work. It's funny (to me) that I began the night playing Chicago Song , trying to play really precisely, and then I ended the night playing random shrieks and squeals on a song I'd never heard before. After I finished with the AEW, I stayed to watch their final couple of songs. Lots of weird stuff went down. The lead singer poured a beer over himself. He took swallows of another beer and spit them straight up so it went everywhere. Some guy in the front had a watermelon, and he threw it on stage (and it broke). The band threw the watermelon pieces into the crowd. It was returned. The lead singer rubbed watermelon all over his face. The whole time, the rest of the band was playing twice as loud as anything else on the planet. It was nuts. Then encore included a bunch more people singing on stage, and that gradually morphed into the fast part of Free Bird. It was totally bizarre. Not my thing, but the place loved it. At one point, everyone was singing "She broke my heart/WALK THE PLANK/ARR ARR ARR!!!!"
I got home around 2:30 this morning.

I've got another gig tonight. Me and a DJ and a percussionist.