Gigs & Setlists

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12/9/04

Our next gig:

TBA...

Venue : The Fire - Philly, PA
Gig : 3-song open mic set (JOKE NIGHT)
Setlist : More (For You), Waterline [Dog's Eye View], Whiskey & Women
In Attendance : My better half and perhaps 20 variously courteous fellow performers
Proof : digital photos, digital video/audio
Notes : Much better crowd this time around, and I signed up for an early slot (4th, I think - not 1st!) and actually got to keep it. Nick came in shortly afterwards and signed up right after me and said "I get to follow you this time" and I said "yeah, that's RIGHT! you're following ME tonight! Hah!" We laughed. Hung out at the bar with my baby and talked to Jonas for a bit about his prior days playing with The Teeth - I mentioned that I only recently realized he played with them and that I was at one of their shows about 4-5 years ago when they opened for Townhall. I only barely started saying "at the TLA" when he beat me to it, and I was a little surprised he remembered that show that specifically. Right on. It was Joke Night and I was glad he was back in the host's seat. Someone up before me actually told a joke, but I had one in mind when I got on. Then I remembered something that happened a while back so I told that as a true joke - when I saw John Mayer play an opening set at North Star and he said "I'm John Mayer and this is what I do", ultra-seriously. I smiled a huge smile and said "I thought that was really funny" after I quoted him, and got some good laughter. I also said "it's my pleasure to be here opening for Physical Illusion, who's up next... give it up for Physical Illusion!" and got tons o' applause, as Nick is universally loved by all. Unfortunately, however, my ploy for him to return the favor by thanking me for opening for him did not work. heh. Asked for some extra guitar in the monitor, Jonas obliged, and we were on our way. More (For You) was first, for two reasons - so I could try to actually play it correctly (which means, remember all the words) and so Steph could hear it, since it's about her and she's never heard it. Kinda stumbled right out of the gate with a pause between the intro and the first verse. Not all that confident. By the time I was hitting the chorus, I was obviously out of tune and that annoyed the shit out of me, since the chords during that part of the song are hit pretty hard and loud. The 2nd half of the song was better and I even remembered most of the words. :-) Then I told the joke about the old guy who asks his doctor how much stronger he's gonna get because he can bend his penis way more than he used to be able to. I got nothing! I didn't tell it very well, but I love that stupid joke. Tough crowd! Then I tried to tune my guitar and semi-succeeded. Then I introduced my new cover as "a cheap rendition of a song I did not write", and it's beyond cheap - I literally play three power chords (a, b, d) over and over for the whole song. The actual song is also very repetitive musically, but it's all finger picked with lots of little filler notes and accents and stuff. But I get to wail a bit with the lyrics, and it's a great song. First time performed in public. Got through it fairly strongly, minus some tonal flubs, and even got some nice applause. President Bush was still in office, so I finished with Whiskey & Women for at least one last time, introduced as "this is original... I know, it's awesome", to which Steph giggled. I played it a bit too fast and had a very minor lyric drop in the first verse, but otherwise it was decent. Still haven't decided if I'll ever play it again, though I've thought about changing all the verbs to past tense so it still makes some sense. We'll see. Steph thought it was funny that after all those times I've played that last song, I still managed to forget some of the words - though she'd never heard me play either of the first two songs, and one was written about her, and she didn't mention anything about those. Ah well. Hey, this week I felt so much better than last, I might even go back again. I was contemplating going all-Beatles on the live performance part of my "career" and sticking to studio work only. I still need to practice a hell of a lot more, and I've got a couple new songs in the works that might sound good live if I can ever finish them. I'm done for a couple months, at least. I think I've had enough of playing guitar in the middle of winter in a cold-ass bar with frozen fingers. Happy new year!

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