K&W in Laguna Beach -- Saturday, 18Jan2014

It was an unseasonably hot January day, so a lot of people had come down to the beach. We had lots of nice people right off the bat at 5:00 when we started. I started with "Hotel California", as always, followed by "I'm Yours". In the middle of it, some Indian ladies appeared and afterwards asked for "Hotel California". Well, OK.

When it was over they came over and thanked us profusely -- the older lady was bound back to Bombay the next day, and this appeared to have capped off her trip. Her daughter-in-law, amazingly, told us that she remembered seeing us play at the Borders in South Coast Plaza, which, at best, was three years ago. And then she bought two CDs, one for herself and one for her mom. And the son/grandson was pretty thrilled with the fingerlight.

A nice bunch of teens came by and I got them to get up and dance to a few, and then a baby showed up so then everybody was dancing and shaking the tambourines to encourage the baby to dance -- it turned into a real party for a while there.

A nice lady listened for a while and then came up and asked if I knew Paul Simon's "American Tune". A very obscure request, but I do know it, and it's even in the book so I can play it. It's based on a Bach tune, so it's very cool, but also very complicated, and I don't play it very often, but I did OK. She came up afterwards and said that it was "better than the original", which was a pretty sweet white lie...

She may have been put in mind of it because of another guy requesting "America", a different Paul Simon song, which *is* on the list. He seemed to enjoy it, and also mentioned that he remembered seeing us play at Borders. Amazing -- nobody ever says that, and then two in one night.

Later on, another lady just assumed I'd know "Bridge Over Troubled Water", which, OK, yes, I do. And despite my cold all week, I was able to sing it and its way-too-high notes without launching into a coughing fit, so that was good.

According to my new theory, the best traffic-stopping songs are Disney tunes, so that, plus the huge popularity of "Frozen", led me to spend the afternoon learning "Let It Go". But we didn't really have any consistent teen traffic, so I didn't find a spot to fire it up. Finally it got really empty, so I decided to give it a try anyway, just to see how it went. Unfortunately, having only heard it a few times to figure out the chords, I'd completely forgotten the melody for everything except the chorus, so I was just making it up on the fly. Weirdly though, two teenage girls appeared out of nowhere and said "Play some more 'Frozen' songs!". I couldn't do that, but I did play a string of other Disney tunes, that kept them and their late-arrival friends dancing for quite a while.

Greeter Mikey came by and wanted to re-try his Laguna-centric improvised version of "Like a Rolling Stone", with just about the same level of success. He's the guy they make the "bouncing ball" for -- without it, he has no sense of musical timing. But he makes up for it in enthusiasm...

Unfortunately, the hot day had give way to a *freezing* night -- so much so that I broke out for the first time the chemical packet hand warmers that I'd bought back in August. Despite the warning on the label to not put them directly against your skin, compared to our frozen fingers, it was hard to tell that they were actually doing anything at all. Warren even enlisted the two Disney fans to help shake his up, but they never seemingly really got much warmer than the ambient temperature of the air. Can't tell if they can't compete with how cold we were, or if they just don't really work.

Around 10:00, some more teens came by -- out for a birthday. The Birthday Girl liked James Taylor songs, despite being no more than 20, so I sang her some. And when they left, we packed up and went in search of some heat.