Gig Diary - February 25 - The Basement - Northampton, MA

It took me three trips down the three flights of stairs and across the snowy driveway to load the car. My arms were burdened with equipment and ecoutremonts and I couldn't help thinking how nice it was that I wasn't going to have as far to carry things to the car in the near future. My ostrich will do it for me. (I don't really have an ostrich.) (..or do I?)

As I was driving to the Basement, I was getting a bit bummed out by the snow and wind. The streets were white with it. "Nobody's gonna come out to the show," I thought to myself. I pulled into the parking spot and entered the seemingly dark pub.

Inside, I was relieved and delighted to see Naight and Jay and friends setting up microphones for taping and ordering beers. Yee. Somebody IS gonna be here.

I set about setting up our stuff in the teeny corner of the room and as I did, band members and patrons wandered in one by one. Max, Brian, Tony. We set up and squoze in as best we could and took a slight breather before starting our show.

At 10:07 we began. I apologized for our tardiness and we played a lovely smooth version of 1,000 Times. Tony had made a nice large list of 39 songs for us to pick from and Brian kept it at his side and called out the songs all night long.

It was a real pleasure to play. The audience was cozy and nice and seemed to be intently listening. I could hear everyone in the band very well since we were playing at a nice respectable volume - well-done Brian. It ain't easy to drum quite, you know. We're lucky we got one of the ones who can...and will.

We played a lot of golden oldies. Songs like "Sitcom Theme" and "Overs" felt to me almost like they were someone else's songs and we were covering them.

We played two songs by Brian ("Familiar Old Sugar" and "Vegas Youth") and three by Tony ("How To Swim", "I Wouldn't Know", and "Something European" - during that last one, Max handed the bass over to me and set about dancing all over the room and outside around the building while shaking his maracas.) These "covers" all came out wonderfully. They are great songs to start with so it wasn't hard...but I was glad we could do them justice.

Welcome To Jeopardy
Answer: George Harrison composition that pop-rock band School for the Dead should never again attempt to play.
Question: What is "What Is Life?

Yes, we didn't do that song justice, but we did do it with good spirits. Happy Birthday anyway, George.

The rest of our set went very well. One stand out was "Map" which just sounded excellent to me. Well done, boys.

We ended up playing only 34 songs, even though we had hoped for 40. It was probably a good thing that Brian called a break for us, at least for Max, who was having some problems with his hands. Mostly, in that one of them was refusing to move.

This was an excellent gig. It felt very musical to me, like we were there for a reason. I was so utterly flattered by all the people who came and sat and listened to us for such an extended amount of time. Thank you so much.