Keith at Irvine Spectrum -- 16Feb2013

Nice weather again, so lots of people out and streaming past. The new comfy furniture arrangement isn't really conducive to watching me, but some people were brave enough to spin one of the chairs around. And lots of couples figured out that the chairs are big enough for lap-sitting.

I discovered a new trick -- if you scatter business cards around the table, a lot more of them will disappear than if they're only in a neat stack in the little holder. Now I gotta decide: why do I want to "get rid" of business cards? Presumably, people take them to get my phone number, webpage address, and Facebook page. But so far, two days later, nobody's called or "liked" my page, so...

But I guess you gotta play the odds -- the more people that have the info, the more likely that someone will up and use it. I suppose I'd better order some more cards.

I had this nice old lady come up and, between songs, ask me incredulously, "It says to put five dollars in the jar and just take a CD?!?" Um, yup, that's pretty much exactly what it says, so I said, "Sure!", and she said, "*Any* of them?!?". I'm not sure why she'd think that one would be more than the others, so I answered a different question and told her what the general contents of each of them is (i.e., "my best stuff", "kids music", and "classics"). She went back to her table and dug around in her purse for a bit, came back and took one (some?), pointed to the money she'd put in the jar, I smiled and nodded (since I was, by then, in a song), and she toddled off. I guess she thought it was the bargain of the century. Maybe it is. Or maybe she's just not used to self-serve shopping...

I gave a little blue fingerlight to a tiny boy, and his mom put it on his finger. He generally kept it pointed it at the ground, so his mom started stomping on the blue spot. He decided that looked like fun, and started to try to step on it, too, except since it was strapped to his finger, when he'd move toward it, it would move away. It was like that act where a clown kicks his hat every time he bends over to pick it up, only this was for real.

At one point, two couples were standing right out in front of me, and I was digging around the book for the next song and one of the ladies called out, "Play a love song -- they just got engaged!" I'm *totally* prepared for that (I even have a sub-table of contents of "Love Songs"), so I went for "Wonderful Tonight", which always has the ladies swooning. The engaged couple started slow dancing, and their friends joined in too. Sweet.

The last hour or so was really great, lots of people settled in and actually listening, requesting, and clapping. I like it when there's lots of people, but when there are fewer people, it gets quieter, and the remaining people tend to pay more attention. Or maybe the ones that care to pay attention *become* the ones who stay. Either way, I got to play some stuff with some finesse, and got some great response. Surprisingly, Lionel Richie's "Hello", which I've recently re-worked-out, got the biggest ovation. I was literally surprised by it. I guess my new guitar arrangement really *is* better than the old one.