Sunday: we flew to San Diego. No problems from Delta with our gear. By the way, I have seen that it's now a law that the airlines cannot charge you for checked musical gear if it's under 165 pounds. You can read about that HERE.
So anyway, we landed in beautiful San Diego (even the airport is beautiful), picked up rental cars (with the planes flying over us). We checked into our hotel (right next door to the venue), sound checked, ate…the usual stuff. The San Diego House of Blues is nice.
My Nord case was the victim of a random peeing by my dog earlier in the week. When I opened the case in San Diego, I was greeted by a plume of ammonia. Gross. I tried to clean it the night before we flew with pet carpet cleaner and Febreeze (and airing it out), but there's still some stink to it. Since I couldn't put my keyboard back in the case with an open box of baking soda, I bought a box of dryer sheets and laid them out. If nothing else, the fragrance will hopefully mask some of the pee. Bad dog.
This gig was fun--the House of Blues gigs pretty much always are (I guess Anaheim's not the greatest), but we had a good showing for a Sunday night (approximately 170 people, two thirds of whom had paid to enter). San Diego is nice, the House of Blues was groovy, the hotel was cool…I've got no complaints!
I played a pretty sloppy show. Sorry!
Monday: we got up late. Most of us woke up kind of early, since our body clocks were three hours ahead. I had four cups of coffee (even the hotel coffee was good). Once everybody was rounded up, we ate lunch and headed up to Los Angeles. We even let Monkey drive.
The drive north was beautiful. San Diego and the area north are incredibly scenic. As we got closer to LA, the landscape changed for the worse. Downtown LA has a trash problem.
We started the night at a foodie restaurant called Animal. Totally not my thing and really expensive.
From there, Elliot Lurie recommended we go see a band called Bern (led by drummer Bernie Dresel) at Cafe Cordiale. The band was three vocals, rhythm section, and a horn section. Very cool! They did some Tower of Power stuff, an Amy Winehouse tune, a Sting song, Fool in the Rain by Led Zeppelin, The End by the Beatles, etc. It was really neat--a kick ass band in a small room. I went and stood behind the horn section (Willie Murillo on trumpet, Brian Scanlon on tenor and alto sax, Brian Williams on bari sax, and Alan Kaplan on trombone). I really dug this. The horns were tight, and the charts were great.
After that, we closed out the night at the bar at Chateau Marmont. It's a pretty legendary place. The bar is hip and the Australian bartender was a babe. Later in the night, Bencuya was cornered by some creepy lady from Slovenia who not only asked him if he thought she was attractive, but also asked him if he thought she was too wrinkly. Honesty in a sixty year old hooker is commendable, I guess.
We got away from her and made our way out onto Sunset just in time to see a van come peeling around the corner with the driver's side door open. The guy stopped the van across the street, got out, and tried to beat up a parking meter. At that point, he fell backwards into the landscaping. As he was getting ready for round two, his friend came running up the street and their argument continued. They eventually got in the van and drove away just in time for the LAPD to swoop in on them.
Tuesday: we had lunch at the Grand Central Market in downtown LA. Pretty good. I had chicken tacos.
Our show that night was a private party on the roof of the Grammy Museum for a eighty people (mostly dudes). Nice, easy gig (two forty-five minute sets). The backdrop on the hotel behind me was a mural for Anchorman 2.
I was fighting some sort of illness that peaked in its intensity right around this gig, so I was very thankful that this show was short and sweet. That said, it was a cool party and the mostly-dudes crowd really liked us (though nobody danced because it was mostly dudes).
Wednesday: we flew all afternoon back to Atlanta. The flight left around 1 PM (local time), and we landed just after 7 PM. Once again, no problems getting our gear checked. Walter (who works the counter of Delta on the curbside check in) was fantastic--worth more than we could tip him.
I got home and my dog was so happy to see me that she peed on the floor. Welcome home!
Hopefully I can get my jet lag sorted out by Sunday, when the ol' AM church gig slams me back into Eastern time.
