stepay

Botch, Man that's hilarious. Sounds like this guy deserved it.

At the aforementioned party we were hired to play blues rock for $1500, in the middle of the first set, a woman walks up to the stage and violently makes the "cut" signal (slashing across her neck). We thought something was wrong (like an emergency) so we quit mid-song. She yells, "No more blues!" Our drummer says, "That's what we were hired to play ma'am." Then back to it. That's a good-paying gig for my band -- we usually make $300-$600 (and at one place that we've been at since the beginning, $250), but we decided we'd never again play for this group (it's an annual party they have). I walked out of there with a decent amount of money, and most of the people did appreciate the music, but they don't pay me enough to have some rich socialite b*tch yell at me to play something different. The guy making announcements couldn't get his microphone to work and then yelled at me about it -- it was a venue-supplied microphone and sound system -- it wasn't our stuff; and then he accused us of smoking dope! -- as in "why can't you guys fix this mocrophone -- what, are you so fried from smoking pot?! This was definitely a group of people who thought of us as lowly service people to walk on (not that service people are lowly -- just that they think they are). They all definitely made us feel like second-class citizens. Oh, and the bitchy socialite? She was dancing to the music the rest of the night just a few songs later. Oh, regarding the pot smoking comment, our bass player is a lawyer and wouldn't do that, I've never smoked pot in my life, our drummer is as clean as they come and doesn't even drink alcohol, and our lead guitarist is a college professor (not that college professors don't smoke dope, but that's not what we're all about). Ironically (and very funny to me) is that one of the buddies of this guy was caught smoking pot by university police (was a campus alumni gig) that night. Never again playing for that group.

Trust a drummer to call a classic organ tune in the wrong key. Ha!

All, Got some live recordings (6) of the band up at www.putfile.com/stepay Just recorded on August 25. Not too bad considering they are live. A few clams from me, but that's ok. Hope you like them. Here are the songs: White Room (tightest of the ones up there) Riders On The Storm Fool For Your Stockings Confidence Man Cold Shot House Is A Rockin' You're Blue is a song I wrote and did a rough recording of so the guys in the band could hear it. I'm no singer, but that's me singing.

Seems like for me if the law of averages catches up to me, I should be seeing lots more bare breasts soon. My motto there is once you've seen one, you want to see more.

You gotta be kidding. You haven't been gigging long enough if you haven't been flashed. That happened at a lot of gigs I played, my first flash was when I was 19, scarred me for life Definitely NOT kidding. I gigged a lot as a 20-something on the blues circuit in the SF Bay Area -- never a flasher. I've been back at it since February 2005 2-5 gigs a month since then (with a month off here and there) and this was the first time I've been flashed. Maybe it's because we mainly play blues. I am 40 now after all and our crowds aren't usually youngish except for a couple of college bars we play in. This was a first for me. I've been asked to go home with women, saw a hooker pull her pants down to show a guy and then they left together, but I've never before been flashed.

Had to bring this thread back to life due to something at our Friday gig. A mid 20s something woman was in the bar dancing with her 50ish boyfriend. She was very flirtatious with the band but REALLY loved the blues we were playing. Our guitar player keeps his set list on the floor in front of him, and she came over and read the last couple of songs for that first set and noticed they were classic rock songs and gave us the thumbs down yelling "more blues, more blues!" Well, she then gave the band a quick flash (pulled shirt up). I saw this out of the corner of my eye and wasn't sure if she were wearing a bra or not. Between the break between our second and third set, the guitar player and I were discussing which songs and in which order to do in third set (had a couple extra songs to do because we cut the second set short due to the drummer breaking a drum head), and she comes up and puts an arm around each of us and says, "I can only be here for the first three songs or so of the last set. I'll bring the girls out again if you let me pick the songs." So the guitar player says "sure". She picked three blues songs and true to her word brought "the girls" out again...this time for much longer, and I was prepared this time...no bra. Never had an audience member do that before.

Jez Davies, Very NICE! That's the kind of stuff (A Walk in Rio and El Gordo) I play in my spare time (away from the band). I could hear that Rhodes sound all day. Very very nice! Decent recording quality also.

StillFightingIt, I like the music! Very good for a live recording. My only suggestion is if you can, maybe change from JUST a piano sound to something else. For me, if I were to listen to a band for 4 hours, and I ONLY heard a piano sound coming from the keyboard player, it would be too much of the same thing; a little boring. A couple of those songs would be great with some killer organ in there instead of just piano. Anyway, decent energy with nice stops, tempo changes and chord changes. Nice piano playing too.

Got a new song up at http://www.putfile.com/stepay Listen to You're Blue. I wrote it, and that's me singing and playing. I'm no singer. Recorded it so the band could hear it so we could play it. Not structured exactly like I want it to be, but it's close. Need to get rid of the buzz and pre-singing noise, but for its purpose it's ok. Need to turn it up loud to hear it well.

Thanks Jazzwee, It's nice to be around.

Just realized I never officially did the introduction thing, so here goes: 39 (until August) year old married with two kids keyboard player in a blues rock\classic rock band (http://mlcprojectblues.tripod.com). I play guitar too, but not in the band. I'm much better on keyboards. I've been with this band since Feb 2005. Prior to that I was in a mostly non-gigging classic rock band MIX, and before that I had a long hiatus after playing in The Circuit Breakers in SF Bay area in early 90s. Was traditionally trained from age 8 to about age 14 but a couple of not very good teachers. My parents didn't like to hear me practice much, so more than 15 minutes at a time was about all they could take. Seems weird, and I guess it is a little bit, especially since they were paying for the lessons. Anyway, I learned enough classical stuff to start to buy sheet music of the music I really liked (pop and rock at the time) and learn that. I never became a good classical player, and I never became a good site reader. Fortunately I still loved playing piano. In college I started hanging out with a piano performance major, and we'd play dualing grand pianos for fun on the weekends. He was WAY better than me though, and he has performed with the Columbus Symphony Orchestra and other such orchestras. He's an outstanding player. Anyway, that fueled my desire to get back into it a bit, and after college I hooked up with a co-worker who had his own blues band (Circuit Breakers). He and the other members taught me to get away from sheet music, taught me pentatonic and blues scales, and I had found my niche; started to get really interested in blues and classic rock. In 1993 moved to Michigan and took some blues piano lessons from a Detroit bluesman keyboard player, and suddenly things started to make sense to me. Honed the chops with my own practice, and finally in 1998 in Columbus, OH, joined a band made up of pretty talented co-workers. They really had no idea how little of an idea I had about what we were playing, and I learned a lot with each jam session and gig. Finally in early 2005 I decided my skills had gotten to the point where I could actually join a gigging band and be a productive member (unlike the Circuit Breaker days when I was just low-level background noise), so I answered an online ad on a Wednesday, practiced with my current band on Saturday and was hired. I've gotten better every day since joining them, and actually got a little bit lucky in the audition because we played High Heel Sneakers, a song I had recently been playing by myself, so I nailed the solos and everything in that song. That one song was really not indicative of my ability then. I'm MUCH better now even then I was in February 2005. Mostly it's because the musicians I play with are all top-notch musicians -- even the drummer! We play 2-5 times a month (mostly 2-3 though which is what we prefer), and it's been a blast. Gear - Roland Juno-D (no laughing); Roland KC-150 for monitor and Alesis Sumo 300 as my amp. Look to upgrade the keyboard down the line somewhere, but I'm happy with it so far even with it's obvious limitations. That's the introduction. Steve

Lucas, I was thinking Ben Folds too and then there it was in black and white as one of your influences. Good stuff (referring to YOUR music; although I do love Ben Folds too).

Just found out about www.putfile.com from a poster in another thread, so I put 3 of my old songs up there. Three audio clips. I made the audio clips 9 years ago using an old Yamaha YPR-30 and Cakewalk for multiple tracks (I only used 2 tracks max). The songs were written off the top of my head as I was playing them...pretty much just an exercise in improvisation. Two of them deal with a typical blues progression, so no big deal. I was decently happy with how they turned out at the time. I'm a bit better of a player now though after playing with a band for a while -- makes one better. Try them here if you dare - http://www.putfile.com/stepay My band has a 25-second video clip of us playing Statesboro Blues here - http://mlcprojectblues.tripod.com (then go to the photos and audio page).

Hey, I know the song he wanted! Low Rider! It's G the whole way without ever changing (well G7 anyway). Low Rider!

I sure always thought Queen was huge here in the US. Guess I can't compare it to their popularity in the rest of the world because I live in the US, but kind of hard to imagine they could have beenmuch bigger than they were. Certainly not like a David Hasselhoff in Germany kind of thing. Dave Pierce -- I used to live in the Bay Area (Mountain View and Stanford) and went to graduate school at San Jose State. Miss that area a ton.

I think it is some of the women who are obsessed with musicians rather than the other way around. The guitarists and drummers of course get the most attention which is fine by me. I'm a married guy. We had a gig once with a former lead guitarist who while a decent guy and good player and all that, but he was 52 years old with a decent sized belly, and at one gig he had this woman all over him, and staring right at his crotch, really up close to the stage and saying "yeah baby" repeatedly. In my first post in this thread, I mentioned the woman who wanted me to come "tune her piano". Well, she had already told all of us that she had "been with" many local musicians, and she was obviously looking to add to that list. Seems odd to me.

Got another one: My current band (MLC Project at http://mlcprojectblues.tripod.com) is a foursome. Our drummer sings lead on most songs with our lead guitarist singing just a few. Back in October 2005, we were still a 5-piece band with a rhythym guitarist\lead singer too (who has since left the band). So, we're on a break and this very hot woman comes up to our rhythym guitarist and says, "Your drummer sings much better than you do. At least you play guitar so you're not a total waste."

On the actor with the famous sister: Eric Roberts? Brother of Julia Roberts.

I've got two to start this off: 1) Mid-40s barfly type said this to me -- "I live just a couple miles from here. Want to come over and tune my piano?" It was after midnight at the time. 2) At a gig this past Friday, we got finished playing Riders On The Storm, and this woman came up to us and told us that The Doors were the best band in the world ever but that we were #2! WOW! I don't think she gets out much.