I got in a couple of good sax solos last night. Both horns felt good and I was directly in front of my monitor, so I was really comfortable. We began the gig with Reminiscing, and right before we went on Bencuya dared me to quote Hava Nagila in my solo, which I did-twice! but he never acknowledged it.
After the gig Greg Lee gave me some unnecessary B.S. comments--something to the effect of me being exceptionally slow at packing up. Hopefully Greg can figure out a way to scale down my setup so I can finish sooner. Another option would be for him to shut the hell up.
Today I played a wedding with Yacht Rock Schooner at the Botanical Gardens. An early gig! Wonderful! A couple of us played the wedding ceremony (flute, guitar, piano), wilting (dressed in all black!) in direct sunlight. From there, I moved on to the cocktail hour where I played saxophone in a quartet (sax, piano, bass, and drums). Both of these were fairly easy. We then had a scheduled hour long break for lunch, which was bizarre--usually people have the "we're paying you too much money for you to ever take a break!" mentality. Affairs to Remember has new vendor meals, and though it was still the cold chicken breast, fruit, and a brownie, it was not bad. They had some beans with jalapenos which were really good. Also, the entire container is biodegradable. Much better than the all plastic containers they used to use.
I think we ended up playing about an hour and a half of Yacht Rock in the Day Room (which looks remarkably like a high school cafeteria). After that, it was a race--who could get out that fastest! I was home by 5.
That room is really horrible--hard surfaces everywhere. When we soundchecked, the guy running sound decided to only put vocals in the PA. Once we started playing, however, it was apparent that I would never be able to hear myself (or be heard) over the crowd and the band, so he put a microphone in front of me and ran it through the monitor (just a little bit--I really never got enough). It helped, but I get the feeling that only the few people directly in front of me heard any saxophone. I don't remember the sound man ever walking out in the room once the crowd arrived, so once the noise and the body count went up, things changed drastically. To confound my fears, I went across the room during a song in which I did not play, and could only hear vocals, drums, and bass.
Once again, I wish that I'd brought some sort of speaker as a monitor. Every time that happens, I curse myself because I can't hear. I need something to bounce my sound back towards myself. Otherwise, I end up overblowing and playing poorly. I guess when I eventually get around to it, Greg Lee will give me crap about bringing that, too.
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