Saturday Smith's, Sunday Shizz

Saturday night, Please PleaseRock Me had our monthly (really probably more like six weeks) show at Smith's Olde Bar.  Not much of a show for me;  most of my work comes in the week or so prior to the gig, writing charts and thinking about arrangement things that didn't work at the previous show.  Fortunately, we'd just played a Beatles show the week before, so there wasn't much prep work for this one.

I have to get this out of the way:  I hate the sound man.  OK, hate's not the right word, but Saturday night's FoH sound guy is a frikin' douchebag.  As soon as I walked in the backdoor of Smith's and saw him, I was crushed…I knew right then that there would be an entire night of him being a pain in the ass and solving my problems that didn't need solving and offering suggestions when I wasn't asking for one, and eventually NOT HAVING MY CLARINET BE AUDIBLE FOR ANY OF WHEN I'M SIXTY-FOUR.  I won't even bother with the other particulars that made me want to strangle him.  I will just say that he was far too interested in doing things that I don't need/want him to do, and not interested enough in making us sound good (a first step would be to STAY AWAY FROM ME AT ALL COSTS).  Get behind the FoH mixer and stay there and SHUT UP.

In spite of the FoH guy,  in spite of the fact that the monitor for the horn section was never on for the duration of the gig (about three quarters of the way through, the monitor guy finally checked it out, agreed that it was not working, and put us in the side fill), in spite of the load in,  and in spite of the FoH guy once again, the band was really good.  We had one major disaster (Everybody's Got Something to Hide) where Nick couldn't find a way in.  Sorry to enjoy someone else's mistake, but it was really funny (a couple of times!).  The whole gig was good, though.  I used my Thursday night tenor reed--still dead.  It played its final gig that night.  We had a great time, and the crowd was really into it.  We had a Kinks tribute band open for us, and they might have been better than we were.

Bencuya and a Kink

Paul Garret on trumpet

my favorite Monkey

Sunday was too much of this:

I  V/7, vi7  V, IV  IV/5, I  IV/5

I also got an update on the money situation at gig number one.  The band member seeking more money spoke to the band leader about said money, told him his wife lost her job (then told me "She's still working part time"), and the band leader told him that because of the situation, "he'd see what he could do."  Evidently, we're now being paid based on hardship?

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