Saturday, February 20, 2010

Lots of Music Crammed into a Couple of Days!

The last few days have been stuffed to the gills with music!  It's fun, but it also feels like a roll out of bed, grab the gear I need for the next gig, and head out the door.

Wednesday night was the inaugural Please Pleaserock Me gig, which is a Beatles tribute put on by the same guys who do Yacht Rock.  We packed a whole bunch of people into Smith's Olde Bar and beat 'em over the head with good stuff.  Here are some pictures:

The next one is March 31.  I hate to say it, but you're stupid if you don't attend.

Before the Beatles gig, I had a terrific jazz gig downtown for some sort of weird doomsday convention.  Some of the vendor booths had things like new/improved body bags (where you can suck the air out so the bodies don't decompose as quickly!), and decontamination tents and showers.  Weird stuff, and I'm sure they were hoping to book a jazz trio like us.

As usual, I recorded it, so here's the evidence:  

Here's a picture of Louis Heriveaux (piano) and Kevin Smith (bass) at the gig.

Last night (Thursday) was Yacht Rock at the 10 High.  Very strange stuff.  My laptop was doing this weird thing where the screen looked like it was going to explode--there were horizontal lines across the screen that were fuzzy like they'd had too much coffee.  Then the whole screen got kind of crazy.  I shut the computer down and rebooted, and it seemed ok.
About halfway through the first set, I looked back and noticed it was doing it again.  All the sounds were coming out fine, but the screen was freaking out.  The display eventually went to sleep, but I couldn't get it to come back on.  I played the rest of the first set with no problems, and figured I'd deal with the computer on the break.
So...I thought I'd restart my computer and the screen would be ok.  I shut it down, but the screen didn't come back on...big problem since now I can't get back to Logic for my EWI sounds.  Hmmm.  This is bad.  I shut it down.  I wait.  I turn it back on.  Still nothing.  Just a dim line across the bottom.  Very bad.  I'm thinking that I can midi into the keyboard in front of me and limp through the rest of the gig.  I'm not panicking, but I might as well.
As a last resort, I unplugged all the crap from my computer and gave it a hug and asked it to work one more time for me.  Then I slowly opened it in my lap and pushed the start button.  It worked fine the rest of the gig.
Mark Cobb is taking a leave of absence from the 10 High until after the birth of his son.  I wish it wasn't going to be so long.  Cobb makes the gig for me.  He's so good!  A portait of the man, the myth, the legend (and some Pete):
Tonight's gig was with the Yacht Rock Schooner (the B band to the Yacht Rock Revue) at the Wild Wing Cafe in Alpharetta.  Not a bad little gig, and great for me because I only play sax and flute, so they stack all my songs in the first set.
That band is getting better.  It is very strange to play with them, though, because I'm very used to the parts that Bencuya and I play, and sometimes those parts are significantly different in the Schooner. Did y'all listen to the same song I did? Anyway, it's cool.

Here's a picture of their leader, Ganesh Giri Jaya, looking cool as hell:  

Here's a picture from the stage:  Hooray suburbia!