More on that later. Let's go chronological. First thing's first. I played at Okra's a few nights ago. It had been six weeks since my last time out there, instead of only three because I ended up with pinkeye when I had a gig scheduled there the time in between. Anyway, I had been thinking of telling them I didn't want to play Thursday nights anymore. Turns out they were thinking the same thing, so I didn't even have to ask. Thursday nights aren't good for business, so they were canning all musical acts on Thursdays effective after my gig. So now I'm done going to Manassas in the middle of the week for solo gigs. I still have a show there this coming Saturday with the Usual Suspects though.
But, once I knew this was going to be my last solo gig there, I decided I was going to play my heart out. The bartender actually told me to do that. So I did.
At first, I started out on my own. Same tune I began with there more often than not: "Cissy Strut" by the Meters. During it, I threw in the only part of George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" I can really stand. You know the part. And when the song was over, I knew it was going to be a good night because people were actually there and people were actually enjoying my playing! They were clapping and smiling and being friendly to me! And when I dropped some self-deprecating humor, saying it only goes down from here, they laughed. Oh boy, a good night's a-comin'! It had never been like that at Okra's on a Thursday night with me there before. Even that early on in the night, I was thinking what a shame it was this was going to be my last time.
Next up, I played Steely Dan's "Do It Again," for the first time ever, only because I had thought of the tune before the set, when I was coming up with some stuff to play. During the song, the chords over the part that goes "going back, Jack, to do it again" reminded me of the chords in the Ides of March song "Vehicle" when it goes "'cause I love you, need you, hope to got to have you, child." So I switched from "Do It Again" to "Vehicle," playing both instrumental. I wasn't prepared with lyrics to sing either and decided against faking it. There were other songs on my list for later that I could fake better.
After that, and after another nice round of appreciative applause from the folks gathered 'round, a guy at the bar who had been telling others about the great time he'd just spent at the Bonnaroo Festival last week asked me if I knew any Grateful Dead. His favorite act at Bonnaroo, he had said, was Phil Lesh and Friends. So I said yeah and started playing "Casey Jones," which wasn't on my list but may as well have been. I know 96 percent of the lyrics and had performed the tune before and often. So that was natural for me to do. Dude sat down in a chair next to me and sang along, and he encouraged me during the solo (as if I need any encouragement for a solo). Good time.
I had to tell him I really wasn't capable of playing any other Dead tunes. Still, he kept naming other songs of theirs and telling me I knew how to play them. And as if to prove his point, he started singing the chorus of each one he was naming. Oh god, so it's gonna be one of THOSE nights, I see.
Since I didn't feel like battling him any more, or giving in and tackling a few verses of "Truckin'," which I would have been able to do, I went instead with the song that was next on my list, "Wild Horses" by the Rolling Stones. People found my mumble-singing endearing (that's one of the typical things I do when I'm not sure of the words). The guy stayed up there and sang along with me, not knowing many words aside from the ones I was singing.
Next, he wanted to hear something by the Allman Brothers Band, so he started naming Allman Brothers songs much the same way he had just done with the Dead before I played something else. He settled on wanting me to play "Melissa." I never had before and wasn't sure I knew the whole song, but he told me he knew it in full and could lead me the whole way through it. Well, neither of his promises came to fruition. I did remember how to play two verses of it though, and I just went to the outro after that. I probably missed a bridge or something, because I couldn't remember how the rest of the song went, and he wasn't helping. But we got through the parts we tried.
Next on my list was "Born to Run" by Bruce Springsteen. The reason I had picked it was because there was a great instrumental version of it played at Tim Russert's memorial service earlier in the week, and I wanted to attempt something like it in Tim's honor. So, I made my way through the song instrumentally, but I couldn't remember how the bridge started when it came to it, so I filled with something that resembled it before I got to the next part I knew. I pulled off the really tricky part though, right before the third verse, so I was proud of myself.
Also during that song, the guy was growing impatient and wanted to hear another one of his requests/demands. While I was busy concentrating and trying for the life of me not to mess up the song I was still playing, he was already naming off Doors songs he wanted me to play. So when I was sufficiently done with my tribute to Tim Russert, which I wish I would have played better for the man I met once at a Washington Wizards playoff game, I reached into my back of tricks and pulled out my A harmonica. Perfect for the Doors song I was about to play. It was a request/demand from the same guy and a friend of his who also wanted to hear "Roadhouse Blues." I told them I hoped they knew the lyrics to sing along because I wasn't really going to try it by myself. They assured me they'd do fine. Three heads are better than one, I reasoned. Well, not so much. They started the song with verse three -- "Well, I woke up this morning and got myself a beer ..." -- and repeated it for the second verse. I knew that was wrong, but I wasn't coming up with the right lyrics at that moment, so I wasn't going to stop them. But when it came time for Jim Morrison's scat after the second song, the friend was right on it! Only thing was he was facing me instead of the whole bar, so nobody heard him except for the original dude and me. Verse three, as expected, was "woke up this morning and got myself a beer" for the third time. Oh well, I was playing harmonica like a madman. I honestly thought I was playing it better than ever before. It was inspiration drawing from nothing in particular!
Of course, they wanted another Doors tune as soon as "Roadhouse Blues" was over, and the friend kept on suggesting "Alabama Song (Whiskey Bar)." I remembered to switch the lyrics of verse two from "whiskey bar" to "little girl," and I was glad because the guys singing didn't make the switch themselves. At least I was on it and could save them from the embarrassment of repeating that verse of that song.
Back to my list. I wanted to play "We're Gonna Groove," the Ben E. King song that appears on Led Zeppelin's Coda album and the early part of their career-spanning DVD. It went well, even though I was attempting to sing a high-pitched Robert Plant vocal line from 1970, so I wasn't entirely on, but it worked fine enough! And people enjoyed the song and had to ask where they'd heard it before. I was overjoyed to tell them it was essentially a Led Zeppelin song written by the same guy who wrote the famous "Stand by Me."
By that point, the guys were begging me to play some Beatles tunes. I went with "Let It Be" because there was a piano player named Andy who asked if he could play my keyboard quietly for a few minutes before I started any of this. He played some stuff that wasn't too shabby at all. But Andy hadn't stuck around long enough to hear me play it. The song still went out to him anyway, at least emotionally or mentally.
Toward the end, "there will be an answer, let it be" became "there will be an answer, cripple creek." Why, I'm not sure. I told the guy I wanted to play "Up on Cripple Creek" next, but he countered and said "The Weight" would be so much better. Always willing to indulge, I played that one instead. There are five verses to remember in that song. Unfortunately, only the fourth and fifth came to me (better than the zero that were coming to the dude). So this was a very short version of "The Weight."
By this point, it was pretty clear to me that the guy who was still sitting next to me was getting pretty wasted. When he started naming off Doors tunes again at this point, I couldn't tell if he was aware I'd already done two Doors songs in a row a few songs back, all at his request/demand. At any rate, I did have one Doors song on my list, and it was "L.A. Woman," so that's what I did next. And Jimbo was out there, and he's the one who requested "Linus and Lucy" (the Peanuts theme song) on a few past occasions, and Ive found it fits quite well in "L.A. Woman," so I was gonna do that too. Well, as soon as I launched into "L.A. Woman" and it became recognizable enough, a blonde girl came down from her seat at a table near the bar and she joined the two guys who were keeping me company at my keyboard. She said she loves the Doors and they're one of her all-time favorite bands. It made me wonder why she'd stayed up in her chair during the two songs of theirs I played earlier. At any rate, she came down for this one, and it's a very good thing she did because she knew every word to the song and even corrected the rest of us when we were about to make mistakes. I got my little Peanuts theme in, and Jimbo swivled around in his seat at the bar and smiled at me when he caught on to what I was doing. Because the girl was there to make sure none of us screwed up, we all had a great time and did a pretty flawless and exciting rendition of this great Doors classic.
She wondered how we could follow that up, and she proceeded to name other Doors songs. In doing so, she became the first person to mention "Riders on the Storm" that night. It's one I'd done several other times at Okra's in the past, more often than not. And unlike many of the other tunes I play, it begins with some specialized sound effects. There's a sequenced track I recorded one day with synthesized thunder and lightning that I use to start it, replicating the studio track. And when I start playing the music, I use a bass sound for that left hand, split in the middle of the keyboard with an electric piano sound that's closer to Ray Manzarek's as any other sound available on my keyboard. We all sang along to this, nailing all of the lyrics. In this case, I knew how each verse began but wouldn't have been able to finish them correctly. It was the friend of the drunk guy who finished every verse I started, and I was impressed. So here, four heads were better than one. The drunk guy again encouraged me here when it was time for me to solo. I played a pretty emotion-wrenched solo there, but clearly I didn't need any encouragement. At the end of the song, the girl and I started quoting some of Jim Morrison's onstage tirades. Slipping into character at that point of the song is an old technique of Chris Kennedy's whenever we would play this in the World Peace Party basement, but he was always so creative to have a new rant each week about something in the news, usually a political scenario, whether it was about Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Harriet Miers, the Democratic majority in Congress that was unable to prevent Bush-administration policies from becoming law, etc. But here, I started quoting Morrison verbatim, which the girl recognized and fired some more back at me. It was either that or my Manzarek run at the song's conclusion that made her comment on my meticulous attention to detail. Now that's a compliment! Drunk guy was saying it too, emphasizing that few people were noticing it but those who did were very appreciative and impressed.
The girl went back to her seat, and the two guys went back to naming Allman Brothers tunes they were sure I could play. They seemed to converge on "Midnight Rider," but I told them that the only time in the past I had tried to play it, it wasn't that good. They said screw that and told me I should play it anyway. They wanted to sing it. Good enough reason, right? Let them sing one for a change? Heh heh. I went for it, and it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Again, enjoyable, and some of the lyrics were coming to them. Barely any were coming to me. But I was glad I had attempted it. When the lyrics stopped coming to anybody and I knew "Midnight Rider" might as well be over, I went seamlessly into a song by Beck that my keyboard-playing brother John once suggested to me goes perfectly with "Midnight Rider." It's "Loser," from Beck's first album. So when the guys caught up with me, they helped me sing that one too. I mumbled through a verse of the rap, and we all sang the chorus together. After that chorus, I started playing the piano part from the James Brown tune "Sex Machine." At first, all I wanted to do was throw in that lick, but then I decided why not make it a medley and segue into that song entirely. So that's what happened. And at the end of it all, I think I might have reprised a bit of "Midnight Rider," but I can't recall for sure. It would be so Led Zeppelin of me if I did.
Well, I needed a break, so that's what happened next. I took my break, but the drunk guy who was sitting in a chair next to my keyboard since the third song of my set didn't take a break. He stayed there in that seat, away from everybody else in the bar, the whole time while I was up and about, saying hi to Heather and Theresa, who'd both walked in at different points during my set and were now sitting on a staircase on the far side of the bar. When it was about time for me to return to work at the keyboard, we glanced over and saw the dude was still sitting there. We joked that my public awaits.
No sooner was I back in my seat at the keyboard than he started up again on songs I should play. He couldn't think of the title of this one song by Neil Young, but he was singing it. I picked up on what he was doing, and I figured I knew enough of it that I could play it. It wasn't that way for him and the lyrics. The song title, although neither of us could have told you at the time, was "After the Gold Rush." The first verse's reference to "the 1970s" was repeated in verses two and three out of his forgetfulness despite assuring me he knew the song.
Then we did the same for "Rockin' in the Free World." I don't know why I let myself be bamboozled again and again. He said he knew the lyrics perfectly. Well, apparently every verse starts out with "There's a thousand points of light" and then trails off until "Just one more kid that'll never go to school, never get to fall in love, never get to be cool." And then each chorus, I wanted to harmonize with the guy on the words "Keep on rockin' in the free world," but all he was capable of doing was adjusting his voice to sing the same part I was singing. If I went high, he would go high. If I went low, he would go low. If I would switch from low to high in the middle of the line, he would be with me again in another couple of beats. There was no harmonizing with this guy.
I went back to my list for the next one and played "Tainted Love" by Soft Cell. Earlier in the week, Paul Shaffer and the CBS Orchestra injected a few bars of the song into one of David Letterman's monologues on the "Late Show," and I instantly thought how jazzy and cool it sounded and made a mental note that I wanted to try it out myself at Okra's. So I did, and I sang along with it. It went pretty well. But when I was done, the guy told me I forgot to go into "Where Did Our Love Go." I knew the song did that (sometimes) but didn't know the song myself. Still, he made me do it anyway. Bummer.
To be continued...
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Now, here's a guy that knows what we live, 'cause he lives it.
ReplyDeleteYou're too nice. When they're drunk, as this guy clearly was, and if I don't know the tune, I play dumb, say "I don't know it" and move on. If that doesn't stop him, I take a break, until he splits. Unless I've been incentivised, of course.