Didn't Suck That Hard

I was ambivalent as I drove an hour and fifteen minutes from Waldo to Independence for band practice tonight. The rain and traffic were demoralizing enough, but our last rehearsal was a month ago and it went about as well as a Chiefs game this season. It'd been a few weeks (maybe a month) before that one, we'd all kinda gotten busy and/or sick and whatnot and band practice just wasn't happening every week like it used to.

So I really wanted to get back into the groove, had even made a point of practicing along with the CD of our set several times this week, but I feared that this would be the execution style murder of rock & roll.



I don't know if my band mates also practiced extra in anticipation of this or not, but the whole thing wasn't the disaster I feared. Even on Code Monkey, where we have tempo issues, at least on our first run through we were speeding up and slowing down together. And the second time went reasonably well.

We even managed to resuscitate the God Song. And after last practice, I thought that was a goner. Last time, it seemed like even the song's author had forgotten the entire thing.

Don't get the wrong idea: we're still very half-assed in a lot of respects. Don't be looking to hear us in a bar somewhere, because we don't have that much material and even if we did, it's no longer fashionable to get smashed and drive home, and especially with my singing and guitar solos, you'd need quite a bit of alcohol to enjoy the show.

But it wasn't the train wreck I feared. It was actually as if we'd just rehearsed last Thursday.




And Jamie's son came down and played a song he's written. Honest, I thought it'd be lame, but this kid needs to find him a coffee house, he'll be beating the chicks off with a stick. It was really quite good. After, he played all modest like his singing was pitchy, and I'm thinking, 'You hear me belt out Code Monkey? I can't even make fun of Bob Dylan and Tom Waits after that.'

Still haven't gotten on to Crazy Train or Streetcar, two songs I'm dying to get into the rotation, and didn't get to a couple songs we've done in the set, but a good band practice. Great for a month off.