Friday, October 18, 2002

So we played our "big gig" Wednesday night. It was the annual "booze cruise" that is an event that occurs in tandem with a "Users Conference" that's held at a bayside hotel on Coronado Island.



We set up on the top deck of the boat with the idea that if we sucked then people could escape back down to the lower decks and no harm done.



We had the majority of the attendees on the deck with us and they stayed for the entire hour+ set, so I guess we didn't suck. My comedy MC skills were in full flower and I had the crowd laughing quite a bit. It was freezing and drizzly up there for a while, but we blasted through "Keep on Rockin' In the Free World" and "(What's So Funny) About Peace, Love and Understanding" and by then my fingers had thawed so I was able to play pretty well after that. Vinh played really well tonight. As Mark put it, "We peaked tonight, man! We timed it pefectly!"



We planned a end-of-set jam of a 12 bar blues thing-a-ma-bob with the idea that people in the audience who had expressed an interest in playing could do that with no need to "learn a song." Apparently we scored major points since one guy was a BIG customer of ours. Even though he sucked he jammed for 10 minutes or so. The drummer was a jazz drummer, so the concept of locking on a simple 4/4 groove was alien to him. It was pretty interesting in the way a trainwreck is interesting. I was happy to go down to the bar and get a beer while that while thing was going on. We left Bob in charge on stage.



The next day the marketing folks thanked us for playing and then today positive comments were made in the all-hands meeting, so we're heroes.



We had the experience of playing in front of 100 people and they were entertained to a reasonable level, so everyone won that night.

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