First off, let me say a big SORRY for inviting you all to my Thursday night gig. It turns out that the restaurant was closed to the public that night because there were two dinner parties that had reserved the place. We didn’t find out until after we arrived and saw a sign posted. We frantically called Melody (who was on her way with Shantelle) to inform her of this bad news. Sorry if anyone else came and wasn’t allowed in!
Well–it was a great gig. The crowd was totally rambunctious, which is good for me because that means people are listening a lot less closely than if I were just giving a concert…
Not only were they loud and involved in great conversation with each other, but they were also singing along a lot of the time. A few times they dragged Uncle Steve up to the microphone and coaxed him into singing a couple of Neil Diamond songs with me (he did a strikingly spot-on impression), and the groom-to-be got up and sang some songs as well. It turns out he is a lead singer in this rock band, from LA. He sang Piano Man, and Unchained Melody (and nailed the super-dooper high note in that song, which was actually too high for me even though on other songs I was singing high Cs for extended periods of time). It was a really fun time. As you saw from my previous entry, they had some specific requests, and I had to learn most of the songs since I had never heard them before. It was difficult to learn 30 songs in a couple of weeks, but a great growing experience.
A few highlights from the evening:
1) Someone’s mom or grandma trying to convince me that Neil Diamond was the one that made “Piano Man” famous even though I had the book that showed Billy Joel wrote it…”Yes, but Neil Diamond is the one that made it a big hit. I have the album“. She exclaimed. No you don’t ma’am, because I just read the ENTIRE Neil Diamond discography and he never recorded Piano Man. (Not that I ever doubted it was made famous by Billy Joel. I mean, if you only knew one Billy Joel song–it would be Piano Man, right?) I only responded a couple of times in my defense of my Billy, because people that stubborn just can’t be reasoned with.
2) People requesting songs left and right! “Do you know Moondancer?”, “Do you know this song?” or “Do you know that song?”. Yikes! I really felt bad not knowing most of the songs the extended family members kept requesting…however, I did bring my two Billy Joel books that contain his entire collection of songs (up to River of Dreams). Which leads me into the next highlight…
3) Sight-reading “Only the Good Die Young” and “Uptown Girl” while several women sang along. It was only bad because on the first tune there was a really complex road map with double and triple D.S. al Codas and all kinds of weird stuff. I didn’t know what I was playing or singing…it was a mess…HA! Uptown Girl didn’t go too badly…
4) Christy never turning the page…
So I brought Christy along to turn pages and sing a few of the girl songs (At Last, Baby Love, You Can’t Hurry Love, etc…)–which she sounded marvelous on, btw–but she was also supposed to turn pages for the rest of the songs, but she just kept forgetting! She would get distracted people-watching, and I had to keep elbowing her to turn the page…I think she paid attention about 20% of the time…silly goose.
5) Our bet.
With the incredible diversity of song choice, with most of them from the 70′s, I was convinced that this bride was in her 40′s. Christy was convinced she was younger than that…so we made a bet.
I lost.
Christy won a dinner in Little Italy, and claimed her prize after our gig ended (since they didn’t give us any of that delicious-smelling food at the rehearsal dinner). We were hungry. It was late.
Thanks everyone for wanting to come! We’ll try to do it again…
In other news: I still haven’t seen this week’s episode of THE OFFICE! We have no DVR down here, and we were gigging it up Thursday night. If stupid NBC was still on iTunes I would have just downloaded it and watched it, but Noooooooo…no more NBC on iTunes…GEEZ!
I was able to watch 30 Rock online, but The Office was really, really quiet on my laptop, and I couldn’t hear it. Boo.
I haven’t had this much time off in a long time. I’ve really been relaxed this past couple of days. It feels great. I have really been lounging around. I even had Nathaniel teach me how to play Lego Star Wars on the PS2 that is in our little cafe in San Diego. It’s really fun! We only have one controller though, and no memory stick. I may have to take a trip to Game Stop…
We also took a little bit of time to spruce up this cafe and make it a little more home-y. It looks great and feels very cozy. Props to my sweet wife for her cleaning and decorating skills.
I think they’re about to start a worship service next door (we have adjoining walls)…I’m out!
