Keith at Irvine Spectrum -- Saturday, 08Feb2014

While I was setting up, a family walked by and the little girl, maybe 7, shouted out, "Are you a clown?" I don't have the perm anymore, I wasn't wearing my top hat, and I hadn't dyed my new shoes red yet, either. Whatever gave her that idea?

It's apparently Winter Formal season, and like last Saturday in Laguna, there were lots of teenagers out in their version of formal wear. It's fun to see, but not good for a gig night because they all have somewhere they're getting to, so they can't/don't stop. One dressed-up girl laid some flowers in my guitar case with a big smile, though I think she was really just tired of carrying them around...

A couple of girls stood there taking video of me for quite a few songs. They asked if it was OK to put them up on YouTube, and I said, "Sure, but email me where". Didn't happen, of course, and no amount of searching turns up anything. Oh well. Flattering that they *intended* to post 'em.

But apparently it was "Sing Along Night", and even though they couldn't stop, a lot of the packs of girls loudly sang along as they breezed by while I was playing a Disney song.

Which I now have even more of. Over the last week, I worked up "Beauty and the Beast", "Can You Feel the Love Tonight?" and "Under the Sea", though I somehow never quite got to that last one (never got a big-enough party started, I guess). I was afraid that the two love songs were going to come off as too cheesy, but they seemed to work OK.

The other new one that's working OK is "A Thousand Years", which is the love theme from the second and third "Twilight" movies. Which, just to be clear, I haven't seen -- but I've heard the song here and there, and my kids assured me that if I learned it, I'd have the ladies eating out of my hand. Which turned out to be pretty true -- whenever I played it, I could see lots of both teenaged girls and older ladies walking by with their lips moving as they sang silently along.

And I was playing "Imagine" when four teenaged boys stopped, three of them just standing around waiting while the tall Asian kid sang along, swaying, with his eyes closed. That was heartwarming...

Neither one of my little fans, Gabby and Hannah, showed up. I was rather looking forward to seeing them. I feel a little bit stood up.

A wise (or hip) man once said, "Friends don't let friends clap on 1 and 3", but when I'm playing guitar, my thumb is playing the bass line on 1 & 3, and it's almost impossible for me to stomp my foot on 2 & 4 like I should, contrary to my thumb. I feel like a doofus hitting 1 & 3, but I'm working on thinking of my foot as alternating with my thumb (while, of course, I'm also playing the chords with my fingers, and reading the words, and singing, and remembering the 75% of the "song" that's not written on the page (patterns, bass runs/fills, anomalies, breathing, etc.)). I did have a bit of success on "Hey, Soul Sister" though, so that's encouraging, but this one-man-band stuff is harder than it looks.