the Bipolar event

I sure had a great time playing with old pals Debra Demilo and Terry McInturf last night. Greg, Jack and I joined them on stage for a Haiti relief thing-a-ma-flotchy which looked to create quite a few bucks at the Cat’s Cradle in Chapel Hill. Most of the stuff we did in our 5 song set was standard, throw and go, no practice kinda songs. We started off with “I Wish it Would Rain” and it immediately felt safe and easy to me. Debra hasn’t changed a bit and sounded great holding court with crowd.

 

(thanks for the pic, Carina!)
That was followed by my song (sung by Deb) “Please You No More” which was a Fabulous Knobs signature number. The OAKTeam pulled that one out 2 Christmas’ back so Greg was familiar with it and in fact was one of the reasons that he wanted to play last night. Next was our instrumental version of “Battleship Chains”. Oh! There was singing! I was singing my ass off and sounded great in my monitor. Too bad the out front sound guy was asleep at the wheel. I told him I was back there and was fiddin’ to sing, all while everyone else was backed off their mics, but of course since my mic wasn’t turned on he didn’t figger that out…for the whole song. So… no one is near their mics until the choruses, my monitor is blasting on stage during the verses and out front there’s…nothing. Just because I’m the only one with a mic in front of my face doesn’t mean you have to turn it on though, does it dumbass? Ninety Five percent of the soundmen I’ve worked with are awesome, highly trained professionals, there to serve and make everything sound like it’s supposed to. But every once in a while there’s one who’s absolutely clueless. This may seem a bit harsh, but imagine standing or sitting up there pouring your heart out and you’re looking like an idiot (or “looking like a fool with ya pants on the ground!”) because the soundman isn’t paying attention. What the hell is the mic even doing back there if you’re not going to bother bringing it up? Jack followed that mess up with George’s “All Too Much”, a full on Rock version that is just “A”, and then it goes to…”A”…what’s the next part? “A!”…and then someone hollers out “A!” Then Terry kicked into “Sweet Little Rock and Roller” at breakneck speed outta that and it was all we could do to jump in and hang on. Debra was Debra, again laying down the Rock and Roll law. I wasn’t used to those big drums (Vistalite, 24” kick,14” tom, 18” floor) on the backline and by the time the show was over I was completely wore out. It took SO much energy to get any kind of response out of them that I felt like I’d played an entire two hour OAKTeam show. It was all worth it though, both for the cause AND to get to rock with Debra again.