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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