Musicale (Getting Reacquainted With Stage Fright)

This was the usual dinner party at Melissa's except she had this idea that Foolkiller's first performance should be part of it.



Okay, she says the band will never be called Foolkiller. Seems really dead set against it. But if I pretend otherwise, maybe she'll come around. She hates all my other suggestions even more (such as Camel Toe, Split Wet Beaver, A Confederacy of Dunces, Three Rails of Blow & A Hooker, etc.) It seems I can't come up with an alternative so bad it makes Foolkiller look good enough by comparison.



Anyway, Rachel & Meghan were our merchandizing act, our opening band. They played Mozart, The Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola and Orchestra in E-flat major, K. 364 (320d). Well, not all of it, and they didn't have an orchestra, so humming and laughter tended to fill those roles.



Well, that and the occasional daughter wrapping herself around Mommy's leg.



I saw Rachel cringe every time she made a mistake, but dude, this is a piece neither had played in over twenty years. They were sight-reading it. I started to video them, and Rachel told me to knock it off. So I found this on YouTube: it was more or less like this but with Melissa's furnace where the orchestra should be:



So anyway, I realized listening to them that not only did they have balls to do this, but any slight mis-steps were perfectly understandable given they were reading it cold. Such things are unavoidable, even by the most accomplished musicians.

Suzuki Bow from Chixulub on Vimeo.

Whereas the band Melissa says can't possibly be called Foolkiller, we've been working for months on this handful of songs. And rehearsed as recently as yesterday. So all my self-critical interior voices were saying to me, Self, what's your excuse?



It's the interior voices that give me the nerves. Mostly, anyway. It crossed my mind that Meghan did go to Julliard, which is about as elite as it gets. But Melissa's done (if I recall) a Berklee summer program and graduated from Eastman, and I don't get nerves loading my gear into her basement to play with her.



Really my nerves weren't bad for Weenie with a Tragic Cramp and Vertigo. Well, there was an aborted run at Vertigo, where Em came running downstairs to get me (she was being paid a bit to keep an eye on her sister while I participated in the musicale, with the understanding that she come get me if I was needed. Needed as in a seizure, or really egregious behaviors. I almost dropped my guitar trying to get it off and get upstairs before finding out all it was, Mo had asked to go home. She was bored.



So anyway, those first two songs weren't total train wrecks. I've played better guitar solos, but we started and ended more or less together.



Then it came to Code Monkey, the number I sing. My knees went a bit wobbly and my mouth went dry. I realized in mid-phrase that I was running out of breath because I hadn't inhaled when I should. We started out fast (because I start us off and I was having a little anxiety attack) but by the first chorus we were slower. But at least we were together, so I guess that means we were listening to each other enough to speed up and slow down in unison.



There's a level of stage fright that actually improves my performances. This was about 16 levels above that, a fight or flight response that could have gotten someone killed, at least if pitchy singing were a gun. I was having fun, don't get me wrong, so much so I suggested we go ahead and inflict Modern Love on our audience. And as we started it, I noticed my middle, ring and pinky fingers on my right hand quivering. My thumb and index were holding the pick, which kept them steady, but the other three were having a full-blown nervous breakdown.



I know I need to practice a lot more, and we need, as a group, many more hours of rehearsal. The part I have trouble figuring out is why I want to go do it again, given that performing in front of even the smallest and friendliest audience possible made such a credible attempt at scaring me to death.