Citations and Bach
Saturday, 02 July 2005
Independence Day weekend was a nice, slow one for me this year. No gig on Friday night, and Saturday was BenWahBob at Baha Rock Club on Main Street in St. Charles, MO. As I rolled in with my equipment, everyone else was already there and set up. I hadn’t realized that I was running a bit late. This is not a problem, though, since my set-up takes about 5 minutes. I only play bass and sing with this band, so no keyboards to set up, too. John wasn’t there, and in his place was another guy to run sound for us. We’ve used him before, but I can never recall his name. Carlos was in the process of warming up both his fingers and his amp tubes when the soundman, who was micing the drum set, turned around quickly and asked him to please hold off for just a moment. Now tipped off that he was in a crabby mood, I proceeded to take my time with my set-up and tuning my bass…just to tick him off even more. Sometimes, I’m just a jerk like that.
Shortly after we finished the sound check, Jim, the manager, walked by and mimicked playing keyboards with raised eyebrows. He then dismissed it with, “Oh, wait…that’s the other band.” He always picks on me about that, suggesting that I should play keys with BWB as well. Too much hassle, I always explain to him, for what amounts to just a couple of songs that would benefit from them. Not likely to happen.
As we plowed through the fairly standard set list, I started to notice that we had a persistent problem with feedback from the stage monitors. It was a high-pitched squeal somewhere in the 6.3KHz range, I was guessing. Of course, my guessing was for naught. Apparently this went unnoticed by our crabby soundman throughout the evening. I eventually had to turn the side-shot monitor on my side of the stage away from me…I just couldn’t tolerate it anymore. Carlos told me later that he was a guitar player who’s hearing had been shot for many years now, so he mixes with a lot more high end to compensate for the fact that he can’t hear it. He probably didn’t even hear the feedback that was curdling our milk on stage.
Other than that, the night went pretty well. I had mentioned in a previous blog that I would prefer that Dale put Cat Scratch Fever later in the set list because it kind of hurts my throat to sing it early in the evening. I guess he reads my blogs, because it was near the beginning of the fourth set this night. Thanks, Dale. I don’t recall any really awful gaffs in the music that night, other than the miscommunication over skipping a song. Carlos and I started into a Rush song and Bobby started into an Aerosmith song. Woops! It all worked out, and we ended up doing both songs anyway.
A friend of Carlos’ named Scott Lyle came out to see us. Apparently his band was off for a change. I had met him initially at Carlos’ wedding a couple of years ago and found him quite fascinating. We discovered that we both share a passion for baroque-era music, especially J. S. Bach. During the course of our several conversations, we had both expressed an interest in doing something in pursuit of that interest. I had heard awhile back that he was trying something with the bass player from Mr. Yuk, but apparently that didn’t pan out. He told me that guy didn’t have the same passion for the music as he did. We talked awhile longer at the end of the night about it, and discussed the idea of a duo with classical guitar and either an acoustic bass or cello playing transcriptions of the Bach Two Part Inventions. Now he had my full attention. I have wanted to do something with those pieces for some time now. This seemed like an appropriate idea. I am looking for the music this week. I’ll let you know if/when anything comes of it.
At the end of the night, I went to the parking garage to pull my van around to the front of the club for load-out. After this was accomplished and a few of us were standing around in the street talking – as we often seem want to do – Carlos motioned to the front of my van and said, “Huh, looks like you got a ticket, Paul.” Sure enough, there was a yellow ticket under the windshield wiper. He pulled it off and handed it to me. A parking ticket from the St. Charles Police. I had parked in a space in the garage that was marked for vehicles taller than 6’7”. This was not the first time I had parked in that spot, but it was certainly the first time I had been cited for it. I guessed that they were doing extra patrols for the holiday weekend. Either that, or they took offense to my teasing them earlier in the night about actually coming inside of the club for a change. The ticket was written shortly after said incident. Hmmm… Now I have never, in my adult life, had to pay a ticket. I have always gone to court and successfully argued in favor of my case. Even as recently as a year-and-a-half ago when I got a parking ticket outside of the Broadway Bistro, I was able to convince a judge that I was in the right and not guilty (there are pictures on the Knucklehead website concerning this). Unfortunately for me this time, I was clearly in the wrong, as my van is not the requisite 6’7” tall. So, I paid the $10 fine rather than take another day off from my job to go to court only to get another court date for which I must take off yet another day to go again to court to argue against something which I know I did wrong and probably end up paying considerably more in the end.
Speaking of the end…
See you next weekend at Club 501 in Wood River, IL with Knucklehead. If not, check back here sometime next week for all the gory details.
Independence Day weekend was a nice, slow one for me this year. No gig on Friday night, and Saturday was BenWahBob at Baha Rock Club on Main Street in St. Charles, MO. As I rolled in with my equipment, everyone else was already there and set up. I hadn’t realized that I was running a bit late. This is not a problem, though, since my set-up takes about 5 minutes. I only play bass and sing with this band, so no keyboards to set up, too. John wasn’t there, and in his place was another guy to run sound for us. We’ve used him before, but I can never recall his name. Carlos was in the process of warming up both his fingers and his amp tubes when the soundman, who was micing the drum set, turned around quickly and asked him to please hold off for just a moment. Now tipped off that he was in a crabby mood, I proceeded to take my time with my set-up and tuning my bass…just to tick him off even more. Sometimes, I’m just a jerk like that.
Shortly after we finished the sound check, Jim, the manager, walked by and mimicked playing keyboards with raised eyebrows. He then dismissed it with, “Oh, wait…that’s the other band.” He always picks on me about that, suggesting that I should play keys with BWB as well. Too much hassle, I always explain to him, for what amounts to just a couple of songs that would benefit from them. Not likely to happen.
As we plowed through the fairly standard set list, I started to notice that we had a persistent problem with feedback from the stage monitors. It was a high-pitched squeal somewhere in the 6.3KHz range, I was guessing. Of course, my guessing was for naught. Apparently this went unnoticed by our crabby soundman throughout the evening. I eventually had to turn the side-shot monitor on my side of the stage away from me…I just couldn’t tolerate it anymore. Carlos told me later that he was a guitar player who’s hearing had been shot for many years now, so he mixes with a lot more high end to compensate for the fact that he can’t hear it. He probably didn’t even hear the feedback that was curdling our milk on stage.
Other than that, the night went pretty well. I had mentioned in a previous blog that I would prefer that Dale put Cat Scratch Fever later in the set list because it kind of hurts my throat to sing it early in the evening. I guess he reads my blogs, because it was near the beginning of the fourth set this night. Thanks, Dale. I don’t recall any really awful gaffs in the music that night, other than the miscommunication over skipping a song. Carlos and I started into a Rush song and Bobby started into an Aerosmith song. Woops! It all worked out, and we ended up doing both songs anyway.
A friend of Carlos’ named Scott Lyle came out to see us. Apparently his band was off for a change. I had met him initially at Carlos’ wedding a couple of years ago and found him quite fascinating. We discovered that we both share a passion for baroque-era music, especially J. S. Bach. During the course of our several conversations, we had both expressed an interest in doing something in pursuit of that interest. I had heard awhile back that he was trying something with the bass player from Mr. Yuk, but apparently that didn’t pan out. He told me that guy didn’t have the same passion for the music as he did. We talked awhile longer at the end of the night about it, and discussed the idea of a duo with classical guitar and either an acoustic bass or cello playing transcriptions of the Bach Two Part Inventions. Now he had my full attention. I have wanted to do something with those pieces for some time now. This seemed like an appropriate idea. I am looking for the music this week. I’ll let you know if/when anything comes of it.
At the end of the night, I went to the parking garage to pull my van around to the front of the club for load-out. After this was accomplished and a few of us were standing around in the street talking – as we often seem want to do – Carlos motioned to the front of my van and said, “Huh, looks like you got a ticket, Paul.” Sure enough, there was a yellow ticket under the windshield wiper. He pulled it off and handed it to me. A parking ticket from the St. Charles Police. I had parked in a space in the garage that was marked for vehicles taller than 6’7”. This was not the first time I had parked in that spot, but it was certainly the first time I had been cited for it. I guessed that they were doing extra patrols for the holiday weekend. Either that, or they took offense to my teasing them earlier in the night about actually coming inside of the club for a change. The ticket was written shortly after said incident. Hmmm… Now I have never, in my adult life, had to pay a ticket. I have always gone to court and successfully argued in favor of my case. Even as recently as a year-and-a-half ago when I got a parking ticket outside of the Broadway Bistro, I was able to convince a judge that I was in the right and not guilty (there are pictures on the Knucklehead website concerning this). Unfortunately for me this time, I was clearly in the wrong, as my van is not the requisite 6’7” tall. So, I paid the $10 fine rather than take another day off from my job to go to court only to get another court date for which I must take off yet another day to go again to court to argue against something which I know I did wrong and probably end up paying considerably more in the end.
Speaking of the end…
See you next weekend at Club 501 in Wood River, IL with Knucklehead. If not, check back here sometime next week for all the gory details.
posted by Paul J. Smith | 10:24
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