Keith in Laguna Beach -- Saturday, 20Sept2014

Since summer is officially over, I decided to take a chance that nobody else would be there, so I wouldn't have to get there so early. So I had dinner at home (instead of in the car on the way down there) and got there at 6:30. Warren had something else going on but would come down as soon as he could.

As I was walking from my car down to the corner, a couple was walking the other way on the sidewalk, and the guy started clapping. I looked at him and he said, "We *love* your music! I have your CD, and I play it all the time!" Pretty cool, getting applause before I even set up...

When I got to the corner one of our homeless friends, who calls himself "Robo Mike" these days, was on the bench, just goofing around on his guitar. He's easy going, and had no problem letting me take over. Unfortunately, he was there with 3 or 4 of the other young homeless guys, who were occupying almost the entire bench.

And worse, they were making incredibly rude comments and offers to all the pretty girls who walked through. It was the kind of stuff you only expect to hear from cartoon construction workers on TV, not in real life. I figured the best I could do would be to start playing and hope to drive them away, or at least, drown them out. So I played all my most sappy songs, hoping they'd get bored and leave, but no luck. But at least the rude comments subsided somewhat.

I had some nice people come by and listen, but since they couldn't sit down, none of them lasted very long. Then at around 8:00, right in the middle of "Mrs. Robinson" (I had given up on boring the guys away by then), the amplification goes dead. There was no power getting to the wireless rigs and harmony box. I got out my pocket knife and rebuilt the connector at the battery, but after twenty minutes of messing with it, decided that it wasn't really the connector -- there just wasn't any charge in the battery.

So just as I was starting to pack up, and was going to text Warren to tell him not to bother, he rolled up. Oh, well. We did get a chance to have a nice long chat.

So I was thwarted by equipment failure just as it was starting to be "prime time". And while I was trying to fix the, the homeless guys had finally gotten bored enough to leave, making it even more frustrating to not be able to play. But maybe it was, at least, a lesson on how to get rid of them...