Thursday, December 9, 2010

Preparation

I've spent the past few days preparing for the Second Annual Yacht Rock Holiday Special coming up this Friday at the Park Tavern (tickets still available for the early show, but the late show is sold out!).  We learned some holiday songs and some new Yacht Rock songs.  It's gonna be good.

We did a rehearsal Tuesday night.  What a difference a year makes!  Last year, I was struggling in my attempts to do anything useful on the keyboard--very much gritting my teeth and holding on for dear life.  This time, I am a much more comfortable.

I practiced the new stuff a ton--I pretty much had it all memorized going into the Tuesday rehearsal, so I had no problems.  Things went so well, in fact, that I impressed Bencuya with one of my synth parts!  I was showing Cobb two missing measures, and I ripped off the bridge for him, and Bencuya said something like, "Holy shit!  That sounded REALLY good!"  How 'bout that!  I feel like I never have to play it perfectly again since he heard me.  I almost called Brandon on the way home to tell him the good news.

Wednesday morning, we did a live performance on the Regular Guys show.  It went well, though in the back of my mind I was cognizant of the fact that I was playing keyboard on the radio, and if I crashed and burned, many many many people would hear it.  However, it went fine.  I had no mistakes that I can recall.  We did Wonderful Christmastime and Imagine a Jump (Dannells sang the hell out of it!).




Wednesday night I did a Schlock Rock performance--my first years.  Schlock Rock is Jewish musical parodies of popular songs.  So, there was La Bamba with Hebrew words (about something Jewish).  There was a song built on Lady Ga Ga's Pokerface.  There was a song by "The Kosher Police" about keeping kosher, sung to Every Breath You Take.  There were Beatles melodies with Hebrew lyrics.  It was bizarre.

Lenny Solomon played an old DX7!  I texted Bencuya "A working DX7!"  and then it cut out during the first song.  Oops.























Thursday morning was another Yacht Rock rehearsal.  Same kind of thing--I feel better about this gig than I have about any other Yacht Rock special event.  I'm ready to kick ass.

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