Keith at Irvine Spectrum -- Saturday, 25May2013

Nice summer weather, and the Saturday of a long weekend -- pretty much perfect conditions. After I had only played a few songs, as guy came over and bought one of each CD. I don't think that's ever happened before...

I got several kids' parties started. For the first one (always "Mister Postman"), I did my usual "Mashed Potato" lesson, and then the kids stood in a perfectly straight line and dutifully tried to do the dance like I'd showed them. I felt bad that they seemed to take it as a requirement, not a fun suggestion, so for the next Dance Song I made sure to tell them to do whatever they wanted. In Soviet Russia, dance does you!

Other than that, it was pretty normal. I did have a lady decide that I sounded like I could do Gordon Lightfoot songs well, so I confirmed her suspicions by singing "If I Could Read Your Mind".

And then, very late, a lady came by and sat down, and then in the middle of the next song, she got up and stood in front of me and made huge scooping/pulling arm gestures at me.

Since I wasn't in the throes of a baby delivery, I decided that she was trying to tell me to put more oomph into it, which I accordingly tried to do. She seemed somewhat satisfied by this, and looked at the list and chose "Love Hurts". She was thinking of the Anthrax version, but I do it in the original Everly Brothers style, and told her so. She wanted to hear it anyway, "as long as it's done with *passion*", so I fired it up -- with passion, or something like it.

Now, I'll fully cop to my normal performance style being more on the mechanical side than the passionate one. I'm quite concerned with getting the notes right, and delivering an accurate portrayal of the song. My sense of perfectionism requires that much, as a minimum. But it's definitely more fun when I can tell that someone is listening, and that's when I start to "work it", and put something more into it. This lady made that even more concrete -- specifically and vocally asking for "more", and it was great to try to deliver it.

Anyway, it was a great night. I pulled in $178, almost a record, and sold 11 CDs in all, totally selling out of the 8 "Favorites" CDs I'd brought. I had people listening continuously all the way until 11:30, when we'd "shut the place down". It's amazing how, as soon as I stop playing, I suddenly notice how much my feet, knees, lower back, and fingers hurt...