I’m doing a benefit gig tonight. The beneficiary is this local kid who was injured when an illegal bomb his neighbor was building exploded. Nice.
I hope we can raise some bucks to help this kid with his medical bills.
I’m in Palm Springs in the press room covering a golf tournament. Next door the Charley Daniels band is doing their sound check. Kick drum, kick drum, fiddle, fiddle, bass, keys, and then it happened…
The guitar player started playing. The tone was perfect. The notes were perfect. He was playing “Circumstances” by Rush.
The apres ski gig went pretty well. It’s not a deal where anyone dances because all the people in the club are in ski boots.
It was a 3-piece setup: Drums, bass, guitar. The female singer plays a pretty decent bass guitar.
I finally figured out who the lesbian singer looks like. Linda Hamilton. Remember Sarah Conner from the Terminator movies? That’s her.
White Knuckle Drive Home
Apparently it had been snowing outside during the whole show. When I got to my car it was covered. I don’t have snow tires and my tires are fairly bald. So I put it in 1st gear and inched down the canyon, managing not to slide off the windy road to my death. I didn’t want to be yet another dead rock & roll musician who died a tragic death….
Got a call last night from a band I sub with now and then. They need a drummer for an “apres ski” (after ski) gig at Snowbird today. Sounds like there’s already a drum kit there too. All play and no load makes guru a happy boy.
Should be a fun gig, playing for a bunch of tired and drunk ski tourists. I wonder if the gay female singer is going to bring her amazingly beautiful girlfriend again. What does it matter anyway?
I had a gig scheduled for tonight. It was to be the biggest paying gig of the year and perhaps even the biggest paying gig I’ve ever had. I got a phone call from some lady I don’t know who said she’d been “calling the band leader for a month straight” trying to confirm the gig. She said she was getting someone else if I didn’t call the band leader and get back to her in 1/2 an hour.
I didn’t hear back from the band leader in time and she booked someone else. When the band leader did call me back, he said “fuck ‘em. I don’t feel like playing for them anyway.” Hmmm… Fuck them? Fuck me too. How about considering that this gig was going to pay a shit load of my bills?
I played drums for the largest crowd ever for me, about 16,000. No it wasn’t a rock & roll gig. I played drums in the pep band at my university’s big basketball game today…
But hey, if someone asks what the largest crowd I’ve played for I can now say 16K.
Note: I wasn’t nervous either..
My 2nd gig last weekend was at “Tattoos-R-Us” club. We had an opening band so I didn’t have to show up until about 10:45. When I got there I noticed that they screwed up again and didn’t have our band name on the marquee.
I got in the club and grabbed my usual cranberry juice. I checked out the opening band and they were pretty good. They were a surf band and the guitar player had a Theremin.
When I walked back stage to open the back door and load my gear, I noticed another drum kit. I started adding up things in my head and went to talk to the sound guy. I asked him how many bands were playing and he said two. I asked who the 2nd band was and he pointed at a table in the audience and said “them.”
My band wasn’t playing.
I called my singer outside and he confirmed that we were not playing and apologized for forgetting to call me. It appears our bass player’s father had a heart attack and she canceled. It’s nice to drive 189 city blocks just to go drink a f’n cranberry juice and breathe a bunch of 2nd hand smoke. How considerate.
The 2nd gig last week was canceled. I had enough fun on the first one though. The gig was a sub gig in Park City. It was the first time I worked with “the lesbian singer.” As it turned out, the singer was pretty amazing. She did a hell of a Janis Joplin. Her girlfriend was quite stunning and it was strange to see them both hanging all over each other. But on stage was great.
Later in the gig a drunk female tourist from Lake Tahoe got in an argument with the band leader about who has better snow, Park City or Tahoe. Then she proceeded to get on the microphone and tell the audience that her husband was better looking than Robert Redford.
A few minutes later a hard bodied chick appeared on the dance floor (see pic). She was strutting her stuff and flashing her abs. I called her “abmaster 5000.”… Then she flashed her twin DD’s to the band. They were disproportionately large compared to her body, just like her collagen lips. I was trying to play the drums and get my camera out of my pocket at the same time. I managed to snap the picture here, but missed the complete exposure of her implants… Honestly, they weren’t the best I’ve seen, not too natural looking. Regardless of the plastic surgeon’s lack of aesthetic skill, it was still entertaining and yet another “rock & roll moment” in my lengthy drumming career…
I’ve got a sub gig in Park City Friday night with sort of a new band. The guitar player is a guy I’ve played with before, but the (lesbian) female singer I haven’t gigged with as of yet. Should be interesting or at least I hope it will be.
Then I have a gig with my regular band Saturday at a bar I like to call “Tattoos-R-Us”… There’s more paint on the patrons flesh than on the walls of the club.
I don’t watch TV anymore. There’s too much entertaining stuff on YouTube.
Here’s a Van Halen concert gone bad. Seems that the “pre-recorded” keyboard parts have been accidentally transposed without the knowledge of Eddy or anyone else. Perhaps the sampling frequency on their DAT machine was set wrong.