Weird. I thought nobody would turn up at the 10 High. I thought it'd be really dead and we'd play one set and go home, or we'd all trade instruments or something, but instead it was more packed than it has been in months! I guess the "nobody has to go to work tomorrow" argument won.
It was kind of a strange gig. Nick, Pete, and Cobb were out, so we had Ganesh on drums, Greg on lead vocals, Vanessa on Pete's vocals, and Danni on bass. The ol' switcheroo. That left me, my man Mark Dannells, and the Great Bencuya to hold it down.
It's an entirely different thing when Greg fronts the band. With a different line up (say Kevin Spencer and Ganesh), there's an effort to kind of stay in the same zone as the regular guys. Greg kind of takes it and says "I'm driving!", and away we go. It's fun because he puts his own stamp on it.
The set list had about a million songs on it. We burn through tunes a lot quicker with subs because there's less banter in between. We might normally play a dozen songs in a set--last night it was more like sixteen. It really became a grind about a halfway through.
Speaking of the set list…oops. I didn't do any preparation (such as reading the set list) ahead of time, and there were a couple of songs that REALLY bit me in the ass. For instance, Magic…no clue. I knew the first two chords of the string part were A/D resolving to D, and then…hmm (turns out it was a minor 2-5 to E minor). I really need to start over and learn that one. The other one that I sucked on was the beginning of You're So Vain. Remember how I died on it at Halloween? Same issue again. I choked real bad.
Other than that, it was pretty unmemorable. Mark Dannells and I rocked the hell out of the bridge to Brandy. Ganesh swamped the entire boat by turning the beat around on Escape (Pina Colada Song). I should mention that we played one verse reggae. Ja. I had something to do with that. I played Jingle Bells during the breakdown in Jive Talkin', evidently only loud enough for Dannells and myself to hear. Good enough.
That was it. Good crowd means good money, and good money is the best Christmas present of all.
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