Well, not nearly as great as last week, but still better than sitting at home...
It was a bit colder at first, moving to way colder at the end, and there weren't as many people out, and far fewer children. We got some packs of teenagers, including a big group that had just come from their Homecoming Dance -- the girls in their tiny slinky dresses, and the boys in ties but with their shirt-tails out, as is the style.
I learned the 80's power-ballad "Don't Stop Believing" a while ago, thinking that since it was prominently featured in the pilot episode of "Glee", and a bunch of the kids on our cruise knew (and karaoke-ed) it, that it might go over. Suddenly it's my biggest hit! The teenage kids ask for it every time, and since we get various roving packs of kids, we did it at least 4, maybe 5, times.
One pair of 15-ish girls wanted to sing along with it, and one boldly asked if she sang the song with me, could she have one of the tip-dollars. I said, sure -- I'm willing to support anything out of the ordinary these days. She started out OK, but got distracted and they were both gone before the end of the song! Without her dollar! That's some short attention span! I guess she remembered later on, 'cuz after a while they did reappear so she could claim her "earnings". (I should have told her she could only have 50 cents, 'cuz she only sang half a song, but I didn't want to get into that. I'm guessing it's best not to get all "Papa Don't Preach" on your audience...)
Her friend started singing along this time, so I told her to get on up on the stage and sing, which she did, but she was too busy texting to keep up with the song. Dude, really?!? You can't put down the phone until the end of the song?!? Kids these days...
Anyway, the other unexpected Big Hit is "Hey Jude", which I would never have expected to even "work" with just me and a guitar (and, occasionally, Warren), but it does, and gets requested a lot. I think we did that one 4 times, too. It gets asked-for by people of all ages, not just the teens.
The new songs of the week were Heart's "Alone" and Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline", both taken from recent episodes of "Glee". "Alone" went pretty badly, but I'm just learning it, so it might be OK once I get "my arrangement" figured out. "Sweet Caroline" was a little better, but to make the low, low note singable, I had to make the high notes pretty darn high -- in fact, technically out of my range. But with a few hours of warm up, I hit 'em OK, so maybe that one will work better over time, too. I do get asked for Neil Diamond songs from time to time, so it'll be good to have that one on the list, if it works out.
The night started off pretty slow, with really terrible sound (especially with the second speaker accidentally not-plugged-in). It's quite a bit more confusing and difficult to get anything to sound right when Warren's there -- I don't know how they do it when there are even more guys and instruments. (I suppose to start with, they have Sound Men, and better equipment...) It's probably just me -- I learn those songs by myself, and by the time I drag 'em out "in concert", I've heard them a few zillion times with just my voice and guitar, so when Warren layers on his stuff, it sounds suddenly very complex to me, and the sounds I'm used to hearing are lost in the mix.
Anyway, I managed to defeat most of the feedback and get some acceptable tone dialed in eventually. For some reason, there's usually a big(ger) crowd that shows up at 8:30 or 9, so it gets better/funner then, but it was dead again by 10:00, so we quit on-time for once.
Only made $40 in tips this time (or 41 minus 1, I guess) -- quite a drop from the $110 last week. I hope the attendance isn't going to be this bad all the way through winter...
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