Why do I even do this?

Sometimes after a gig, it's difficult to think of the good points. That's when there were enough bad points alone to generate a story for friends. I can't help but come from this gig, my second night in a row playing out, with a bad taste in my mouth.

This gig had its moments. I ought not forget that we did so well on so many parts of so many numbers, that we had a decent crowd there, that I feel like I personally played some of the best keyboard solos I have in maybe a year. I really had some good control in "Breakdown" and "L.A. Woman."

But the flip side of that is that other parts of the same songs did not go as well as perhaps they should, and that only one person -- my buddy Rob -- came as a result of my talking up the gig among friends beforehand. Sure didn't reel 'em in tonight.

Definitely the biggest disapointment of the night was the sound. It sucked for the first set. And all we played were two sets. So for half the show, we sounded horrible! My levels were inconsistent. Karlin said his bass tone sounded like crap to him in the monitor but was trusting it sounded better to the crowd. Tony said he couldn't hear himself on guitar all night. And Shortty, our drummer, said he couldn't hear anything because he didn't have a monitor. I don't know if Spills had any complaints, but more so than any individual complaints we had was what was obvious to the crowd there. The mics were going in and out, and there was awful feedback all throughout everything.

And that's what we got for booking a sound guy. We never had such problems when we went without booking a sound guy at the same place the last time we played there. We had hoped that by hiring a sound guy and by paying him half of our take, we would get an improvement in sound over when we did the sound ourselves there the last time. Well, that's not what we got, and so we told the sound guy we didn't feel it would be worth it to pay him in full. He didn't want to give us a discount and in fact told us to keep the money. He walked out on getting paid at all.

As a result, I went from making $25 to making double that. Twenty-five was also my bar tab, plus I tipped on that. So, I mean, if we had paid the sound guy, I would have ended up losing money on the gig (but yeah, because I "needed" a few drinks and some bar food). Heh. As it is, between the two gigs this weekend, I pocketed almost enough cash to pay the Usual Suspects the $40 each I owe them from our last gig in Manassas earlier this month. Well, no, scratch that. I need to pay them $160. I have $106 in cash. Guess I need another $60.

Oh, and I owe something like $50-60 to the bartender at Okra's in Manassas. Accidentally walked out on my bar tab there on July 4.

So, remind me why I'm in this business again?