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| my view of Mark Cobb |
The room was as full as last week (which is to say, really crowded! I couldn't get across the room on break). I suppose all these people just started partying a day early. They were well behaved, and seemed to be paying attention to what we were doing (which is nice); not a lot of shouting out songs not on the set list. The women directly in front of me slowly progressed from having fun to black out drunk, but they made it all the way to the end (and didn't steal my pea coat, which I'd left on the speaker between us all night--oops!).
I think I played pretty well. Because of Cobb, everybody dug in pretty hard on their stuff, and my hands were hurting a little by the end of the night. Not playing for a few days has left me out of shape, I guess. My face is a little tired, too. New reeds don't help!
I'm still tinkering with my stuff--I tried a different synth sound on What a Fool Believes, but I'm still not satisfied. It must have some kind of a sweeping filter thing that makes some of the notes jump out. The basic sound was good, but the spiking notes were painful.
On Steal Away, I'm trying to add in the bass line in the chorus. It's kind of sparse, and I can do it when I don't consciously think about it. We were ripping through that song last night, and all of the sudden I could do it! I was congratulating myself (and mentally applauding my left hand), when it suddenly dawned on me that I was never changing the chord in my right. Duh…that was pretty stupid. I think I'll have it tonight. My right hand is playing eighth notes, and I just needed to figure out where to begin the little eighth note bass line thing. I'm real close.
Saxophone wise, I was ok. I didn't have much going on for Biggest Part of Me or Takin' it to the Streets. I wanted to play something great, but nothing came to me. Same thing with my alto stuff…nothing bad, but I didn't have anything new to say. I tried.
My man Mark Dannells was absent tonight due to a Greater Vavoom gig at Smith's. Shannon filled in and played well, though he has some sort of mental hangup on Hey Nineteen. He played some horrid crap in there. It's like he's playing the right stuff on the wrong string, or he's a couple of frets away, or something. It's all in his head--I've heard him play the entire intro to that song a whole step down before.
If Dannells had been there, the night might have been about as perfect as a 10 High gig could be.
Last gig of the year tonight! We're at the Park Tavern. Come see us.
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