The Living Rockumentary

Dec. 21 gig diary:

Christmas Wrapping (The Waitresses) feat. Lesa Bezo and Rob Myers on lead vocal and drums, respectively
Omnivore
Here Comes Subordinate Clause (Tony solo)
Ayla
Thug
The New You
1,000 Times
Day Job
Photobooth Curtain
I Can't Believe How Fast
Like To Be There
One Lady Dancing
Candy Cane
Everybody Loves Martha

I hope our audience doesn't mind the fact that we never repeat covers. We tend to learn them quickly, play them once and forget about them. Which is fine with me, actually. Otherwise, they may lose their novelty or become expected by our audience. That's not necessarily a bad thing (The Stematrain were half-cover band in essence and they pulled it off) but I believe that all of us in SFTD would rather focus almost exclusively on Ohlenbuschlieder, with occasional covers tossed in just for fun every few shows or so. We did play the Split Enz song twice, once at UConn, once at Harry's, but only soundman Bruce Tull would've heard it twice. Anyway, we didn't rehearse "Christmas Wrapping" much, though I suppose Lesa's old-fashioned teleprompter and Brian's Post-it with chords scribbled on it pasted to a microphone stand gave that away. No matter- it was fun to play and easy to tell that our audience ate it up. What Gen X-er doesn't love that song, right? You do, don't you? I thought so.

It was the first SFTD show with Henning playing electric guitar rather than his usual acoustic. I'm curious to hear the recording of the show that was made, to see if our two electric guitars (same brand guitar, no less) cancel each other out sonically at times. Back in the Humbert days, Ari and I were careful to arrange our guitar parts so that we were attacking different sonic ranges simultaneously. Like, if he were playing an open G, and I was playing a riff or doubling the chord (even if inverted), I'd try to do so higher up the neck or distort my tone or what-have-you. For this particular show, Henning and I just played what we usually play and hopefully our parts still made it to your ears balanced and fresh. Yes, they did? Good.

The debut of Photobooth Curtain- an instant hit. But it was sorta written that way. That is, it's a song that makes perfect sense first time you hear it. Like "Martha" or "Omnivore," it's one of those songs that's accessible and upfront- simply put, you like it the first time, you always gonna like it; you don't like it, it ain't growin' on ya. For me, personally, I don't write many of these kinds of songs. I'm not really sure how to. I like to/tend to write time bombs. There are numerous Humbert songs that my bandmates listened to for the first time with incredulous raised eyebrows and came to appreciate when the song structures clicked over a few plays. Same for the audience. Anyway, Henning tends to write the opposite- his songs make a solid impact from the get-go. That's good for a band. You need to have at least a few of these in your repertoire if you want to have any measure of success as a "pop" group. Henning writes plenty- Photobooth is one. The instant positive reponse at this show indicated that.

"I Can't Believe How Fast" is becoming one of my own personal fave Henning songs, up there with Candy Cane, Overs and Remind Yourself. It's not always going to sound perfect live- a rowdy room will mess with its museum-like stateliness, bad stage sound will mar its effect, as would a subpar lead vocal. Henning didn't sing it poorly this night but there was a scratchiness to his voice (resulting from singing Omnivore first) that flobbed up some of his notes and phrasing here and there. But what the hell, we're not The Dave Matthews Band right? We're not PERFECT to a T like Dave is.

I got all excited because we were playing Candy Cane on a night when Ed brought out his equipment to record us. Finally, after years of adoring this song, I'd have a full band version to listen to. I got so excited realizing this while were playing that I forgot to play the riff I wrote on guitar that ends the first chorus. D-oh!

Nice to see so many familiar faces in the audience (Miriam, Diana, Mary Jo & Seth K., Seth T., Philip & Debbie, Laurie, Adam...) Thank you for filling out your activity sheets. After processing, we'll know just what the average I.Q. is for a SFTD audience and can better prepare what kind of music to play to you, what kind of vocabulary we can use in our lyrics, whether we can make obscure John Cage jokes on our Rockumentary and get away with it, whether you'll still love us even if our lead guitarist insults you with ludicrous sarcasm such as this. Yes, you do? Good. I love you too. What's that you say? Yes, I agree- fuck Dave Matthews.