Saturday, Nov. 08, 2003 - 11:42 p.m.
Quite an interesting night...
We were originally supposed to do a pseudo-band reunion tonite: myself, Ihor (bass) and the drum machine. About 2 weeks ago we noticed that all our music was gone (especially the Ukrainian stuff we were doing for this gig). Well, today we figure we'll DJ the gig. I get there to set up and the opening act has a copy of some of our tunes from last year. Soooooooo....
Decision....
Do we play or do we keep with Dj-ing since we couldn't practice? We decide to wing it.
The opener was my niece Catherine who played a couple tunes on piano excellently! Then Nadia and Natalie (more on Nadia in a second) performed a few other tunes. Where were we?
We practiced in the meantime for about 20 minutes and then went on. With the exception of a few technical glitches including a bad monitor connection at the beginning we finally settled down and played for the next couple of hours: myself, Ihor and Nadia, a classically trained keyboardist who had a drum machine in her keyboard. So, I shouted out chord progressions to her until she figured it out and we jammed. For someone who doesn't play by ear, she was getting the hang of winging it on stage and by the end of the night was cranking out some great solos.
All in all, it went pretty well considering the circumstances. People danced and had a great time. Our renditions of Sweet Home Chicago (One plus one does not equal four, Mike!), What I like About You, and Johnny be Good, came out wonderfully. My older bro, Andy, came up on stage and harmonized for the Romantics tune and for Johnny be Good. It was fun having him on stage for the first time and great to have his voice rounding out the songs!! When we do the Valentines gig we'll bring him back up on stage!!
Finished off the night with a hot chocolate with some Godiva White Chocolate Liquour and listening to a little Celtic music.
Got a chance to see a little bit of the eclipse when the clouds broke, it was about 80% covered past totality. Saw it again after we finished and there was only about 10% still covered. Pretty cool.
Time to hit the sack.
~peace and love~
