February 10, 2003 9:28 AM
Wow. We did 33 songs last night. I was afraid my ragged voice would give out, but I actually felt stronger as the night went on, though I did hear myself missing notes here and there. It was odd -- usually I just sing, and think about the song, and the words, and the phrasing, and the chords -- and the singing itself just takes care of itself. It's not like you have to think about how to talk -- you just do it. But with the sore throat, I have to actually *try* to hit the notes -- it's like my voice is slightly out of control and I have to concentrate on it to keep it in line.
Hopefully, it'll clear up soon -- though today it's worse than last night, so I'm not in the upswing yet...
Anyway, there weren't many songs on the list that we *didn't* do last night -- mostly the "second stringers". I guess I'd better go on a more active hunt for more material.
I'm pretty stoked that we get to play 'til 10. It'll be a challenge to have that much really good material, and to be able to play that long, and sing that long, but it reinvigorates that whole thing.
Warren seems to think that I sounded "fine". Seemed to me like I heard me miss plenty of notes -- sharp here, flat there. "Wicked Game" is certainly the most challenging -- that descending line off the falsetto flip is the worst. I don't know how he does it so smooth -- I always feel like my flip from falsetto "don't" to regular-voice "want" is horrible. I end up landing on "want" so hard it sounds like a yelp. And my falsetto sounds so much different than full-voice that it embarrasses me. Maybe it's not so bad from the outside? In my head, it's gnarly. If I didn't like that song so much, I'd certainly skip it.
I lately heard "I Will" on the Musak somewhere, in a version that sounded a lot like James Taylor. I've never seen it on an album, but a deep check of the 'net showed it on something (bootleg?) called "Rarebits", so he may do it in concert, though how it would get it on a Musak tape remains a mystery. Anyway, it gave me the idea to go ahead and transpose it to a sing-able key (duh! Why don't I think of that *without* the cattle prod?), which I did yesterday. It's originally in F (!), but moved down to D, it's (as far as I can tell with my trashed voice) in a sing-able space, and easy to play, not to mention very James-like in chords.
In fact, once moved to D, the first phrase is identical to the first and last lines of "The Way You Look Tonight", so I'm thinking of melding (medly-ing) the two. It'll, at least, save me having to decide on a "next tune" once per night.
I'll have to see if some other Beatles songs can be beaten into submission by the same treatment. I might look at "Mother Nature's Son", as requested by my brother a couple of weeks ago -- seems like a distinctive (and non transposable) guitar part, though.
Anyway, I played through some of the "Working On 'Em" songs to see if I can move 'em into the "Good Enough" section. "Play Me" (Neil Diamond) seems a likely candidate, and "Four Strong Winds", I guess. Also, we probably ought to dust off some of the ones that we were playing, but that I've come to avoid because I didn't think I did 'em well enough -- "Free Man", "Crazy Little Thing", "Still Crazy", and such like. Even "That Thing You Do" maybe...
