We cruised through Yacht Rock last night. I would say it sounded pretty good, but I'm biased.
I think I played the piano part to for I'd Really Love to See You Tonight about three and a half hours Thursday afternoon. My fingers were sore, but I got it right at the gig. That and All Out of Love were my two biggies that I needed to spend some time on. All Out of Love got cut, so you can assume I would have nailed it.
We played Thriller as a sneak peak of the Halloween show. It never fails to impress me how many people know all the words to every song. I'm getting to the point where I feels like I don't remember anything, but the people in front of me did everything but the frikin' dance!
The soundcheck for last night consisted of Human Nature and P.Y.T. I think we're in good shape. I don't have much on either one. The last song we need to work on is Lady in my Life. There's talk about tucking a saxophone solo in that one. Sweet! All play and no work for me on that!
We had an excellent night. The crowd was better than it's been in weeks, and we cashed in on the fact that we were a 7 piece (Bielenberg was on assignment). Strangely enough, there was an abundance of parking spaces, which made me think we'd be doomed. It was not true.
The sound man added his pitch shifter (and probably some other effects) to Mark Dannell's solo on Peg (might have been about the fourth song!), and really messed him up mentally. I think he thinks Hans (the sound man) is looking for an opportunity to destroy him. Dannell's was doing well up til then, and it seemed like after that he just wanted to get through it.
What else? We finally played I Keep Forgettin' again, and Nick and Pete (probably Nick) decided to insert Regulate into it. Boo. I hate it when we do that. I get to play the rhodes part (Bencuya on clav), and so I practiced it alot, and then I had to give it up half way through. I will point out that, once again, the crowd knew the words. These people are well rounded.
Oh yeah...did I mention that Dannells wrote a bridge for Happy Birthday? We played it TWICE for our buddy Jim Stapley, celebrating his twenty-fourth birthday last night. Keep up the good work, Jim.
The encore last night was Whole Lotta Love by Led Zeppelin. It got PAINFULLY loud. I could feel myself going deaf.
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