Tuesday, March 21, 2006
The Continental
25 Third Avenue
East Village, NYC

AWESOME GIG PICTURES COMING SOON!

Third band of a five-band night

I was a little more excited than usual because this was to be the first time we played in public with our new bassist - Reah Valente, and our new drummer - Jon Neal. They're both outstanding players, but we only had five full rehearsals with all of us, so there was the possibility of a major crash-and-burn. Luckily, that never came to pass.

We weren't sure about how large an audience we might get, because in a fluke of weird timing, we had been scheduled to play The Continental this night, and CBGB Lounge three days later on Friday. We hoped that the looming Friday show would not take away from Tuesday's audience and it did not. Better than that, The Continental was actually fairly crowded with other patrons, so we had a very solid week night audience.

Jon's not used to the very fast setups and breakdowns required for NYC showcase gigs, and Reah was using my bass amp, so I knew that setup was going to take longer than usual. It did.

I'm not sure if it's because we were trying to rush so much, or because it was first-night jitters, but we played like we were under the gun right from the get-go.

On the whole, I think we sounded quite good, and the recording of the show bears that out. I'm damn happy with the performance, and would be even if we had had more than a few rehearsals. The fact that we were able to play so well with such small preparation bodes very well for the future.

Sure, there were some tempo problems, especially near the beginning of the set, but our songs being punk songs don't loose much if we play 'em a little faster than usual. That, and some other mistakes on all of our parts caused the show to seem a little sloppy by TFL standards, but the combination of the energy, and musical ability of Reah and Jon won the crowd over early, and we were able to keep them with us the whole set.

The audience response was nothing short of great, and that helped ease our minds right from the start. We also got a huge amount of new folks on the e-mail list, so clearly we were being dug.

I can't wait to see what this band can do when we hit our stride. I suspect we will be unstoppable! Will know more on Friday.

Set List:
STAY UP AND TALK TO ME
SHE WAS JUST A GIRL
WE'RE ALRIGHT
SUPERSTAR
EVE OF DESTRUCTION
SAILOR
ACHIEVER
TAKE JANINE AWAY
WASTED
BAGHDAD
BURNING LOVE