Another nice but quiet night at South Coast Plaza. The highlight was the arrival of a family with a 9-year-old boy who had a wild variety of requests: Al Di Meola, "House of the Rising Sun", and the Who's "Behind Blue Eyes". He's been learning guitar himself, and these reflect what he's heard and is learning. (That's him in the bottom right corner of Warren's picture, playing "air chords".) I've played through that last one before, and half-remembered some of the chords, but even with the kid's help, couldn't get through much of it. He settled for "Puff the Magic Dragon" and "You've Got a Friend in Me", though, and his dad asked for more usual (and on-the-list) stuff, like "Old Man" and "Bus Stop".
The sound was, as always, clear and clean, helped by my trying out (at Warren's suggestion) a different (and far less obtrusive) "effect" setting on the Harmony Box. I thought the harmonies themselves were working pretty well -- partly because I've abandoned using it at all on some songs. I killed some of them because the box can't track my fancy guitar work and sings "mistakes", and others because the original recording's harmonies run *below* the melody, which was fine when the melody was up pretty high (like in Beatles songs), but since I've had to transpose them down, those lower-harmonies are more like bass lines and sound terrible. But all of these songs were do-able before I had the harmony box, so I can go back, no problem. I haven't yet started working up the harmony-required songs that I couldn't touch pre-box. Except "Cinnamon Girl", which I've been dying to play, but sounded weak without the harmony. It may not work *with* it either, but...
Later on, a nice older lady that we've seen several times before (she calls us "Sweetie") came in, and asked if I knew any songs from the 40's. Oddly, I have more from the 30's, but I played all I had of both.
Anyway, it was pleasant, and we made ten bucks each, which is quite a lot for this place.
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