dianec42

So we had a band meeting yesterday. There was a bit of playing, but mostly it was fighting over what to leave out of the set list. They (the evil powers that be) have cut our time to a single one-hour set before dinner; so a lot of proposed new material got chucked on the grounds that "people will mostly still be sober, so they may actually listen to the lyrics".

I later thanked Dan (whose name I keep typo-ing as "Damn" today for some reason) for NOT using the phrase "leveraging our core competencies" during the meeting. Because, you know, it's the kind of thing he normally says; and then I have to throw something at him, and then the meeting takes twice as long.

I will also just say, it is amazing how much faster these things go when the two most pig-headed people in the meeting agree on just about everything. Dan and I managed to railroad a *lot* of stuff through, including cutting "Brown-Eyed Girl" because we're lazy. (I kind of steered the conversation in the direction of, "Let's do Moondance instead" and let inertia take its course. Whew. I have enough to worry about as it is.)

Oh, and we're going to make Dan sing Stormy Monday. That's going to be a hoot, especially if we get a few drinks in him first.

It's that time of year...

I've just taped a post-it saying "It's going to be O.K." on my monitor. Again.

I learned a new song today (Cheap Trick's "I Want You to Want Me"). I was having trouble making myself heard (that big amp has too many knobs, sorry!), and Dan played a really dirty trick on me:

First he turned me WAY UP, then he handed me a pick and said, "Here, try this." The resulting sound, obviously, knocked everyone's socks off.

It wasn't until like 15 minutes later, when we started working on a much mellower tune (Clapton's "Change The World") that I realised just HOW MUCH he'd turned me up. No wonder we could all suddenly hear me.

Evil, but effective. Today, it's definitely HIS turn to be the evil twin...

Man! These songs are HARD! Whiiiiiine. (-:

I got the main riff from "Play That Funky Music White Boy". At speed. I think I hurt myself. I volunteered to take on the high backing vocals for "Drive My Car". I think someone ELSE is going to hurt me over that. And the last time we train-wrecked on "Tightrope" it was because the drummer was following ME. Whoops.

Homework time!

Damn you, Jack! Stop playing really cool songs that I will then have an insatiable desire to perform! My band-mates are going to KILL ME if I suggest any more new material!

(On the bright side, Jim can only kill me if he ever actually shows up for a practice. So I may be safe...)

((Cranberries, "Dreams", if you must know. Dammit!))

Edit: People who give songs generic names like "Dreams" should be cruelly forced to search for their own product as punishment. Oh well, I was looking for an excuse to make them get out the Big Book at the local music shop anyway...

Someone besides me has stirred the band pot, and it looks like there will be a jam session on Friday! Yay! Whee!

I can't see myself being well enough to sing, and I may not even be well enough to stand holding a bass for an hour, but that's what God gave us chairs for. Now if I can just remember how to play...

EDIT: Or maybe Thursday. (With a 1:30 meeting, I'm not entirely sure when I'll be able to eat lunch. Oh well, regular meals are overrated, right?)

More jamming today. I sort-of learned a new song (some moldy oldie about waiting for a bus? possibly ZZ Top) and failed to learn a couple of others. It turns out I learn better if some people in the room already know the song. (In other words, I learn better from Dan yelling at me than from listening to a recording. Go figure.) Once again I played through the PA and once again I was turned up as loud as I would go and could not particularly hear myself. I think this is all part of Dan's fiendish plot to force me to use proper techniques and actually stroke through. Some people are just mean.

A certain amount of off-the-cuff jamming also took place. Jim and Dan seem to have the guitarist mind-meld thing going on, and I'm finally learning to tap into that. (Of course the drummer just gets to do whatever the hell he wants because none of us will know any better... and as the bass player, I have a similar degree of freedom.) I have also learned that when in doubt, it's probably in the key of A. Or at least that's usually a harmless place to start.

Really must get over this damned cold so I can attempt the Pat Benatar stuff. I think I set myself back a couple of days by singing along in the car this morning.

We are also continuing our tradition of covering weird covers of otherwise reasonable songs. There is a 311 cover of the Cure's "Lovesong" that I am greatly looking forward to covering -- the main plot twist is that one of the guitar leads has been moved to the bass! Several people seem to think I can do this, so who am I to disagree with them? And I am suddenly looking forward to ordering the guitar tab version of it from the nice sheet music people online...

* Note to self, in future take the Sudafed thingies ONE AT A TIME. Otherwise they will clear out everything in my head including the brain.

* I would like to get just ONE THING done today without getting to say, "That's interesting".

* I am not alone in thinking the photographer at work's Christmas do was a bit lame.

* I have suggested a Pat Benatar song for next time, and no one has fled the building screaming. (To be fair, Dan doesn't seem to be in today.) $GIRL_SINGER thinks it would be awesome for me to sing. Yay, that part was easy!

* Actual Pat Benatar sheet music seems nigh impossible to come by. (Does anyone have any experience, good or otherwise, with either musicnotes.com or sheetmusicscore.com?)

* To asimovberlioz: Man, if you thought role-players were bad for rehashing every single detail of their adventures, be glad you don't work with poker players. I think my ears are actually bleeding.

Made it to Los Feliz and back in an hour and a half. Counting loading, unloading, an unintended excursion through the Wal-Mart parking lot on the way to lunch, and having to park in the next zip code once I got back to the office, the whole thing took less than 2 hours. Yay me.

Boy does Jim owe me for this. (Dammit, Jim, I'm a bass player, not a delivery driver!)

The reason I was using Google Maps? To find our where the heck Los Feliz is... for I have volunteered to heroically bail out the band's fearless but overcommitted leader and return the rented keyboard so we don't get charged for another month.

Luckily Torrance to Los Feliz is only 20 miles. Given typical lunchtime traffic, that should be what, about 2 hours?

Man, the universe is gonna owe me BIG TIME for this.

(BTW, Google Maps is now working fine for me. Of course, I'm at home now. Something has probably confused my work browser... big shock there, it *is* running on Windows after all...)