Tied For Last

Third band of a five-band night

It was a little sad because we're pretty sure that this was our last gig at The Continental before it closes its doors to live music for good. We've had some of our best shows there, and we were usually treated great (especially by Walt, the booker, and by Noel, the main sound man). We will miss this venue.

We didn't get an exceptionally large audience this time out, but the place was pretty crowded on its own, so that was cool. Before the set, Rev. Caroline was able to coral us downstairs in the "dressing room" for the first official photo session with the new lineup. I can't wait to see how the pix came out.

Jon and Reah have gotten much more used to the stupidly frenetic pace of NYC band setups, and Reah ended up using the bass amp of Dave from Stoley P.T. (the band that preceeded us). Hence, setup was relatively quick, and we were raring to go.

My allergies were hitting me pretty hard that day, so my head was kind of foggy from the medication. Luckily, it didn't seem to show in my voice or my playing, but I did fumble on some of the lyrics, and when I had to speak between songs, it felt like I was struggling to string comprehensible words together. Luckily, Tommy was there (as usual) to cover for me.

There was some feedback early on from Tom's guitar, but he fixed that quickly. After that, though, there was some static and feedback from the line that connects the bass to the room PA (the bass amp is not miked and can only be heard onstage). I don't know what overall impact this had on the audience, but they were very receptive and welcoming (and seeing how it was mostly people who were not ther to see us, that's a great thing).

That said, either I have raised my performance expectations a little too high, or my allergies were affecting me a lot more than I thought, because I wasn't too happy with how we sounded, but listening back to the recording, we were far better than I thought.

Despite a couple of tempo problems (Sailor became quite the supersonic song by the last chorus), we sounded damn good. Jon is nailing the drum parts (and creating some great ones of his own), and Reah just continues to blow me away with her musicianship on the bass.Tommy was up to his usual excelent standards, of course, and I wasn't half-bad my own self.

So while I'm happy, it's still sad to think that there will be no more shows here...

Set List:
SHE WAS JUST A GIRL
WE'RE ALRIGHT
BEAUTIFUL IN BLACK
SAILOR
BLOODY TUESDAY
SUPERSTAR
ACHIEVER
TAKE JANINE AWAY
EVE OF DESTRUCTION
BAGHDAD