Well, actually...more of a North American thing, but then the reference to the song would have been lost.
Okay, start over.
I had two gigs yesterday, one after another and it was great.
Not the gigs, they were the run of the mill stuff - a birthday and a supper club mood thing at a posh sports bar.
Not the players...the same old Pomona people.
The best players make the rest of the band look good.
A drummer that no one notices but they feel a perfect beat under their feet.
The worst players make us all look stupid. The guitar player that does not turn the volume down. Maybe he is going deaf? Could be.
But when the singer is pushing it and still can't be heard...
But I was playing. Out and playing is better than most anything else. Watching a good band is close, but being in the spotlight is the best.
At one point a person seated yelled out, "Play some Hendrix..."
Someone hooks his iPod to the PA and there is SRV doing Voodoo Chile. It's not a bad cover at all.
Fine...I pick up my guitar and join in.
Twenty five minutes later the pianist announces the food is ready, time for a break. Um, you guys were on break. I've been jamming my ass off and grinning like a fool the entire time.
At the sports bar the crowd wants quiet and yet upbeat mood music.
Stevie Wonder works. So does Herbie Hancock or Booker T and the MGs.
The keyboard player in this band is unknown to me; I am an acquaintance of the drummer, but he and I pick up a riff in Watermelon Man and go with it.
Same thing with Green Onions - which is a guitar & keyboard jam as it was written. So this is real fun.
The people at the club were ignoring us. The way it should be. We were not the attraction. Basketball was.
But I was rocking - the way it should be.
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