The gig was pretty bad. We should have never set up, based on the first hour that we were there. The sound guy appeared to be on his first night in the room--I mean, we were set up and waiting, and he was just barely getting started putting out mics, and THE DOORS WERE OPEN! I mean, too late! Our soundcheck never happened--we did a really bad line check (where he attempted to get the monitors going, but ended up putting everybody in everybody else's wedges). I, for one, had at some point had a line for my electronics (keyboards, EWI), a line for the sax, and a vocal mic for the flute. I had a wedge in front of me. Eventually, all that got cut down to just a line for all my gear (with the sax running with the keyboards and the EWI). No flute mic. That didn't stop the guy from insisting on running me a monitor (and swapping out two bad speaker cabinets before settling on A PA SPEAKER!). What the hell? Then he ran my keyboards through it and nothing else--except that I have my own amplifier for that. When he wasn't looking, I reached down and unplugged it. No thank you.
This week I went back and relearned All Night Long. I'd played the song previously in other cover bands, so when it was added to our list, I didn't bother going back over it. I've always hated it, probably because of its association with the other bands. Since I have a little more ability now on keyboard, I decided to try and grab more stuff--there's strings going on under the brass on the second half of the chorus, for example, and the brass play chords a lot of the time. Now, it's kind of fun. At the very least, I enjoy the challenge! I tried it on Thursday night, and it was pretty good. In a few weeks, I'll have it down.
The Havana Club gig ended around 11:30. I boogied out of there and got to the 10 High around 12:15, and went straight to the stage, playing sax with the Schooner. It was a pretty slow night there--not much of a crowd there, and the band was pretty blah. Even Hans (the sound guy) was not paying attention. He was talking to some girl in the back and forgot to turn my mic on for Diamond Girl. The next song, Too Hot, still had no mic, so I started playing into Ganesh's vocal mic. When I mentioned it to Hans after the gig, he said, "I turned it on when I heard it through the vocal mic!" I don't think it even occurred to him that he'd missed me for an entire song. Oops!
Mark Cobb came by and sat in on drums.
They have a new lighted dance floor at the 10 High, approximately the size of a queen sized mattress. Can't fix the leaky pipe overhead, but the dance floor looks great! Typical 10 High.
We're off to Nashville to play the Reagan Rock prom for them. I feel strangely calm about it.
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