Showtime people! We party before the show at Mike’s with some Little Caesar’s Hot and Ready Pizzas. I ate too much, for the record. So we load up our vehicles and head over to the show.
We talk to the girl that invited me to play the show and who put on the whole breast cancer fundraiser. We find out when we are up, and get our equipment set up as much as possible at the side of the stage. We talk to some of the other bands, almost all of them known by our band through previous shows, school, or childhood memories. We get all dressed up ready to play, then find our own little table at the back to watch the show and sell our invisible merch to our hundreds of gorgeous and single lady friends.
To see a review of the bands and how our performance went, check out the lead guitarist Mike’s blog here.
The band who won the battle (Corporate Saturday) did an amazing show, even though they did an acoustic set of their usual full band music. They actually have a CD out in music stores, and be sure to check them out as they are a great group of guys with some awesome music.
Well, I’ll tell you who else to go. We tried out one kid name Pat who Mike used to jam with, but unfortunately he was not dedicated and didn’t leave us with a good impression. So we’ve gone through 3 drummers so far. At the beginning of the summer, we had a friend Christian who we wanted to play drums for us when we started up a band. Since then, he has been living 3 hours or so away working for the summer. So that’s a no-go. Or is it?
Luck would have it that Christian has exactly one week off before our show, leaving the day after even. So 4 drummers later Christian comes down and we practice our butts off to get our set down before the show. Our set list is as follows:
Last Friday, (4th of July), our band played a battle of the bands against some great local talent in support of breast cancer. While we didn’t take home the trophy, what a great learning experience it was for us.
I blogged previously about my acoustic show with my good friends Crystal and Mike, and since then, our band has expanded. When we took what we learned from that show, we decided that we needed to change our musical direction somewhat. We decided that Crystal was such an amazing singer that she should lead, and leave me and Mike up to the guitar work. That was fine with us, and we also decided we wanted a fuller sound, including a drummer and bass. We turned from a small acoustic show to a full band when we had another opportunity to play live.
We looked at our previous setlist, took our favourite songs out, and incorporated them into a new set. Half of the songs we chose to cover had a female lead vocalist; bands like Flyleaf and Paramore. Now it just came down to learning and practicing the new songs as a band. We luckily found a bass player - Andrew - who Mike used to play with in a previous band. So now we were up to a four man band, and looking for a drummer. This is where it gets interesting. We decide on a band name and take some promo shots for some flyers for our show next Friday, July 19th.
However, we are still stuck for a drummer. We literally ask everyone we know for a drummer, and come across a few prospects. We started with my friend David who I jammed with previously, who picked up the songs quick and it looked like we were ready to go. Then after a few practices, he informed us he could not make the July 4th show. Now we look for another drummer. We get a recommendation from David for this amazing drummer named Justin. Unfortunately, we did not have enough time to practice with him before our first show, as he left the week before the show for a few days. 2 drummers down, who else to go?
…about Guitar Hero and the ‘Air Guitar’, someone decided to combine them. Licensed by Activision, the Air Guitar ‘phenomenon’ has met Guitar Hero, cleverly called the ‘Guitar Hero Air Guitar Rocker’. Revealed earlier this year at CES and available in many major retailers for only $30, now everyone can have a backing track to their air guitar skills.
