"Blatz Reunion" performance evaluation

I couldn't really tell how anything went, with the lights so bright in my eyes and all. I really thought I was singing unusually badly, because of the cold, and extra nervousness. The bass player was also throwing me off on the songs he played on, since he blew it pretty badly, especially on "South of the Border", which sounds easy, but the changes aren't as obvious as you'd think (and he thought).

Anyway, it was darn fun. I don't know how we missed doing "Let it Be", and I was hoping to get to "Hey, Mister", re-worked up just for the nostalgia value, especially for my Aunt Sharon. But I reckon she went away pretty happy with what we did manage to get done.

My old roommate Kendall is (still) a mechanical monster on the guitar. His fingering is so precise, and he insists on getting every note exactly right. It's funny (and amazing) to me that he still dissects every James Taylor album, decrypting every new trick that James picks up. But having Kendall as a roommate definitely brought me up from being a three-chord-strummer to being able to play with some class. And every James song I do came directly from Kendall, or from the James-sensing-capability I developed from Kendall's tutoring. I'd sure like to sit with him for 6 or 8 hours sometime and learn some more tricks...

Christmas Tunes

A lot of the Xmas songs are trivial, especially the kids' ones: Frosty, Rudolph, Housetop. But the old-time jazz standard types are a lot more interesting than most current (and by that, I mean "20 year old") pop tunes. Working those out is what got me to the level that I can do things like "You Don't Know Me", "Someone to Watch..." etc. (whether or not that's a good thing).

I'd be tempted to do only the jazz classics at Moxie Java: "Have Yourself...", "I'll be Home...", and maybe (if I can pull it off), that Eagles "Please Come Home for Christmas" blues tune. Seems like I learned two Elvis tunes: " Santa Claus is Back in Town" and "I'll Have a Blue Christmas" last year, as a joke, but they both worked pretty good. I'd expected to be embarrassed to do them, but they sound good, so I wasn't.

I guess I'd want to have the lamer songs handy, just for the kids, if any, by request -- that always bumps up the tipping.

I've had a spurt of new song learning this week (already) -- "Homeward Bound", "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" (in D, I think), "Mister Postman" (haven't settled on a key yet -- maybe C (i.e., C, Am, F, G, all the way through)), and "All I Have To Do Is Dream" (in C (hey, it's C, Am, F, G, too!)).

The latter three are all trivial, but I thought they might be fun, in the vein of "Standing There". But "Homeward" is deceptively tough. Maybe I'm trying to play two guitars (and the bass) at the same time, but the chorus is hard (and fast). The verses are easy, at least half of the way through. But that intro/outro riff has to be right on the first try, which will take some practice, and luck. The original is too high, of course -- it's in G, capoed three, but if I just leave the capo off, I think I'll be OK.

Borders -- It's Working Out!

Last night I went by Borders RSM to drop off some posters, which I augmented by taping a copy of the "Round the Rancho" newspaper article to the bottom, with the "You could find a treat at Borders tonight" modified by "X-ing" out the "to" in "tonight" and writing "Saturday" above it, in red Sharpie. I don't know if anyone will read the whole article, but it might help to have the endorsement of an authority, an Actual Newspaper.

Cidne wasn't there, but I handed them over to Tom (the "event manager"), who very gladly put them both up immediately -- one taped to the window by the front door, and the other installed in a pre-made poster-frame that's up on a pillar in the middle of the store, pre-empting a "Something Percent Off Sale" poster (!). He said something like, "It's nice to finally get some *good* music in here", which was pretty nice of him. He also wanted me to bring posters in for the next one (Nov 26) when we come in on Saturday, and he'll put them up, too.

He showed me the November Borders Official Newsletter, which has, as he put it, "a pretty nice write up". I had to admit that it's "pretty nice" because we wrote it ourselves, but it prominently occupies the whole middle column of the three column page -- they used our "release" in its entirety. I suppose it helped that, because of the holiday, there are few events, so they needed to fill some space...