The end of the session left me just enough time to go home, eat lunch, and pick up my gear for the night's gig.
Yacht Rock played a private gig last night at the Dunwoody Ravinia, which now eclipses the Buckhead Ritz as the most foul smelling loading dock on the planet. Thanks also for the numerous puddles of god-knows-what, especially the one at the bottom of the ramp.
This was a run of the mill corporate function…bad load in/out, bad PA, taped together non rectangular stage, tentative crowd, all in one very sterile hotel ballroom. Ahh, the glamor! Things got better as we went along, but the beginning was really tough. The guys running the sound system had big problems with shrieking feedback and strange reverbs coming and going, and really horrible EQs on everything. Wow…it sounded really, really bad in that first set. Imagine what it sounds like when you turn the radio up in your car as loud as it will go, and then let a two year old mess with the treble and bass controls. Later on, they got things kind of leveled out and it was tolerable.
The hotel had some sort of issue with their elevators. It took us more than fifteen minutes to go from the third floor to the lobby. There were no easily accessible stairs to get us there. Time to bulldoze the Ravinia and start over.
In case you haven't heard, we have a huge show tonight at the Variety Playhouse, performing the Anchorman soundtrack and Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. The best part of tonight's gig was that it gave us one more pass through the Anchorman songs. That, and we got paid, and we finished at 10:20 PM. In bed by midnight. A couple of more days, and things get back to normal.
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