We are releasing our CD on Friday at Iota, and you should be there. The concert is $10.00 and we go on first, I think. To whet your appetite a little more, here is a picture from our practice last night.
p.s. I can’t seem to make these pictures appear in the right places and it is really pissing me off.
Aaron was supposed to write this post on Monday, it’s now Wednesday and so being tired of waiting, here’s my recap of Sunday night.
On Saturday, we had an amazing practice. We came up with a great new setlist and blistered through it with a ton of energy and musical virtuosity. There was only 2 problems: 1) we were in our basement and no one was watching and 2) in this band, having a great practice is almost certainly a jinx for a live show. Every time we’ve had our best live shows, we’ve had awful practices before them. I think it’s because we get the “suck” out of our system. So needless to say, we felt Saturday might have been a bad omen.
The good news is that, from a performance standpoint, we played really well Sunday night. We were right in fearing the omen, however. With the exception of the microphone, almost every piece of our equipment broke in some way. For the first 3 songs, the guitar amp was alternately nowhere near loud enough or was screeched horrificly in obnoxious feedback. I’m not sure it was ever loud enough all night. At another point in the show, the bass cut out completely for about half a song. And not one to be outdone, my snare drum malfunctioned 2 songs in , leaving me to work around that the rest of the set.
As odd it sounds, it’s good to have nights like that once in a while. It both keeps you focused, and teaches you how to work around issues and still put on a good show. That being said, I look forward to a month of totally kick-ass shows now that the music gods have exacted their revenge on us for that practice.
Thanks to all who came out to Galaxy Hut on Sunday, we love and appreciate your support and we promise a whole lot less stuff will break next time.
Aaron, being the optimistic person that he is, seems convinced that I can learn how to sing. He is so sure of himself that he has declared that I am going to sing on every song. We started lessons on Saturday.
The lesson started with Aaron explaining how to sing properly, including:
1) How to breathe, my shoulders should not rise. The singing breath is actually a lot like a Yoga breath.
2) I should open my mouth as wide as possible. Apparently, I should over emphasize opening my mouth to the point that I can’t actually pronounce most words. Aaron claims that a lack of pronunciation is not a problem.
3) I need to sing more in my throat, and not in my nose or the top of my mouth. Opening my mouth will apparently take care of this.
4) I need to sing louder.
In summation, how I used to “sing” was all wrong. Granted what I use to do required quotation marks so as not to offend actual singers. Unfortunately this robbed me of what meager singing skills I had. I have been diligently practicing, running scales and rehearsing the parts Aaron wrote for me, and I am making some progress.
I must say that I have gained a new appreciation for Aaron. I have always known what a good singer he is, but after about 20 minutes of practicing my voice is really tired. I don’t know how he can do a whole concert.
Our practice last Tuesday was the first that I really sang at. I figured that I am going to have to learn how to sing and play at the same time, so I should start soon. Some of the songs were okay, but for the most part I was horrible. After we finished Toe the Line, Spencer diplomatically said, “I know you are trying, but that was awful.” I reassured him that I did in fact know that my singing was horrible, and we agreed that I need to a lot more practice before I share my voice with the world.
Photo by Flickr user rgdaniel.
Because we have some time before our next concert, which should hopefully be before February, our practices have become a little loose. For example, last night we played a 6-8 minute funky version of “Enter Sandman” by Metallica, and a weird Phish-like version of “Do Re Me” from The Sound of Music complete with me screaming “Where’s the Deer?”. And while these pieces will never make it out of Aaron and Spencer’s basement, they are extremely useful exercises. These songs are never planned, so they force us to really listen to each other, and play off of each other. We also learn each other’s tendencies during these absurd jam sessions.
It is good for every band to learn how to listen to each other, play off of each other, and what to expect from each band member. For us, it is very important. There are bands that take the time to script out there songs, and practice them to perfection, before they bring them out into the world. We are not that kind of band. We pretty much practice a song 3-4 times, get a general idea of how it works, and then see how things go live.
If you were at the Velvet Lounge show last Saturday, you may have noticed a song towards the end that, and I am being generous here, completely fell apart. It is a new song, and we are still figuring out how it goes. The ending was the real disaster, and it was because I came in late. That forced Aaron to continue to sing an outro thing while he was waiting for me to come in, but I was waiting for him to stop singing before I came in. This made the song go on too long, and just generally not work. The fact that my guitar went out of tune didn’t help things either.
We tell ourselves that because we leave things open, there is the possibility for great things to happen while we are on stage. It also means that things can, and will, go horribly wrong from time to time. I think this makes things more exciting, well for me at least.
Photo by Flickr user scfllaw
After our last few concerts the general consensus seems to be that we are having more fun on stage, or at least we look like we are having more fun on stage. While I think that we are having more fun on stage, that is not what people are necessarily seeing while we are performing. From the crowd’s perspective we are laughing more, but the dirty secret is that we are mostly laughing at each other, particularly when someone else in the band makes a mistake. I think that we know each other pretty well as musicians at this point, and we have practiced the hell out of the songs. The result is that we are each listening to the other person a lot more, and thus picking up on little mistakes each of us make. We are also comfortable enough around each other to call people on their mistakes. So the more we laugh, the worse the concert.
In a somewhat related note, Aaron and Spencer have decided that I play better when I am angry. This is actually not that unreasonable position to take, I probably do play better when I am angry. What is irritating is that Aaron and Spencer think that this gives them license to pester, annoy, irk, and bother me before concerts in an effort to make me mad. Their defense is that they, like me, want a really good performance. They don’t have a choice, or so they plead. So when you see Aaron or Spencer talking to me on stage, particularly when we are setting up, they are probably saying something profane to get me riled up.
Also, there are pictures in from our performance at WMUC. They were taken by Nestor Diaz. Spencer is particularly excited because he actually gets to appear in these photos. So go check them out.