Benefit for Haiti

After being postponed, the date had arrived on September 28 to hold a fundraiser for the building of St. Marc's school in Bois Blanc, Haiti.  Platinum performed at it, and many came out to support the cause.  Time has a way of shifting our collective focus to more recent events.  As we all know, Haiti fell victim to a terrible earthquake on January 12, 2010.  Now was the time to make a difference.  Will Rece was the emcee this evening, along with his lovely wife Virginia.  Together, they relayed the info and helped to award prizes for a significant gathering of generous souls who met to assist Haiti in funding this new school.  The room was rather plain.  The Decatur Courtyard is impressive on the front side.  The back conference/ballroom area needs a makeover.  Still, the load-in was easy and the sound was decent.  Also performing was former Platinum keyboardist Allen Cook on piano along with a wonderful singer.  They were so in tune with each other.  I felt very self-conscious performing in front of him, as we were playing many of the same songs he has played with the band in the past.  The crowd was fun and in a dancing mood, so it went very well.  The 3 fellows getting up on stage and shaking their collective groove things were indicative of the merriment that went down that evening.

Check this out - for you seriously faithful readers who relentlessly pore over every bit of prose I profess, I have an update.  Platinum played the following night in Johns Creek (as opposed to in John's creek - subtle yet important difference).  On this night, we had Che Marshall sitting in on drums.  The drum position, like the bass position, is a formidable part of the big picture.  The rhythm section is supposed to make it sound easy.  Che did an impressive job all around.  The guy brings a small kit, rather a steep contrast to Gus' rack o' toms, splashes and electronics.  Yet he distills it down to the essence of modern swing, covers, and pop.  Big ears, hard hitting, and an uncanny sense of the unexpected make this man a great mate on the stage.  The stage here, at Atlanta Athletic Club, yields an enormous decible level that unfortunately sucks all of the sounds at once out of our ears and back into them again.  Strange sensation.  We were way too loud for our own good.  However, we learned this by the 2nd set and brought it down.  How clever of us!  This was verified by our notable front of house (okay, side of stage) engineer David Junius.  He doesn't mince words, usually.  Pics to follow.

Che Marshall

Glen front and center for Shout!

These 2 are interesting in that they seem to be taken at the same time,
with Glen & Diana getting into it through a disconcerted face off of sorts.

A Week of Ill Health Brings Reflection on 2 Weeks Ago

I couldn't make the TAAG show this past Thursday.  Just too much going on, and I've had a nasty cough, most likely caught from Spencer, perhaps Sabina, even quite possibly from lack of sleep and all of the cruddy gear I'm touching at work.  At any rate, my schedule has preempted my formerly faithful blogging activities, not to mention practicing and all-around music consumption.  I just transferred many jpegs from the ol' new cameraphone (my word) and felt that it's more appropriate to post them to a new page.  The blog posting from last time at the since-renovated Java Monkey (haven't seen the new countertops and improvements yet) featured pics taken by my friend Phil;  here are some of mine.

A Pool Party to Commemorate the Last Day of Summer

It was worked around our schedules, and for that I am grateful.  It was a warm-up for the following night in Asheville.  The party had a very nice turnout, although it was dwarfed by the sheer size of the surrounding pool area.  The folks were digging our brand of classic rock and nifty twists.  Rare to get the five of us together lately: Chris, Walt, Brian, Mark, and myself.  I had noted that the last time we were together was for the recording session of the East Coast demo.  We more or less rose to the occasion.  I am siding with Walt that it would have been a good opportunity to play some of our lesser played tunes.  As such, we ended up giving them a representative sampling of our certified pleasers, after a credible opening with Remedy.  I found out halfway through the first chorus that I could hit the higher of the two harmonies as sung by the female singers.  It blended well, to my ears anyways.  I also learned that I did not know the key for Southbound, and that can be rather catastrophic (Chris held up his thumb and forefinger in the shape of a C - C is for CTUPID).  Ugly sounds when the bass ain't right.  We should have done more Dead, if nothing else!

Speaking of Chris, he has a secret weapon: the harmonica!  Sounds so good on Long Train Runnin'!  Many bands play that song, but to hear that bluesy wail from a harmonica on the solo a la the great biker-rocker/original-Doobie-Bro visionary Tom Johnston actually makes your hairs stand up!  He later told me a secret for learning how to play blues harp: you have to learn how to play one note, and then play another single note.  Makes sense to me, but people who first blow into a harmonica undoubtedly play several notes at once, a la Bob Dylan.  It's not as easy as you think it would be.  Chris has worked at his singing and breathing to improve his stamina.  I don't have the drive to do all of that, but I sure would like to work on it.

My phone had locked up seconds before we started the first set.  I had to remove the case for the first time since buying it and take out the battery to restart it.  In doing so, I clumsily dropped it!  Well, that did get the battery to come out.  Luckily, it landed (on the concrete) face up and unscathed.  The pics I took in the beginning were without a flash.  I like the one of Mark a lot, and made a decent crop of Brian "all smiles".  Later, I turned the flash on, but it sure does make for conspicuous shooting.  This was a fun gig with good family folk near my neighborhood.  I don't get to play events like this often enough.  Kudos to Walt for rallying us together and working around our schedules.

Tambourines and Elephants: SWJ Perform at The Venue in Asheville

Too many hours in a van.  That's how it feels now that weekends are the true precious entities they once resembled since I began my job 3 weeks ago.  This was an easy job.  No dances to perform.  In fact, we couldn't figure out who the groom was!  We were upstairs, so the load-in and out was a drag since there was no elevator.  It got the blood flowing, that's for sure.  Great balcony area with comfy furniture that made you want to sit a spell and take in the crisp fall air.  I bet there have been some wild parties here.  It was nice to not be rushed on the setup.  Played my 6 and 8 (the NS/Stick), and the results were decent.  Did some nice groovy slapping on the NS, adjusting my heavy-handed thumb-n-pluck attacks to a more precise and ergonomic accurate slap-fest to suit the tighter string spacing.  The NS has a beautiful tone that I'm always surprised to hear.  It has a distinctly crisp bottom end with crystalline highs.  Walt has got me thinking about that top end and the crucial midrange.  Need to make sure the notes are articulate, with a clear fundamental and not so much "horn" treble.

Mark gave a great performance, constructing these 4 segment passages that built up progressively to utter pyrotechnic shenanigans.  He has more technique running through his limbs than most drummers I know.  Scary stuff that keeps me on edge a bit.  His running commentary in the van had us periodically in tears.  His tirade on CCR's Looking Out My Back Door was the work of a clever mind at work.  Brian has the essence of buttery velvet tone.  I never hear him trying to tweak it either.  It's always solid from the moment he plugs in.  We were loud for sound check.  Brought it down a notch, but once we started playing with the folks dancing upfront, all was well.  This band has a lot of promise for the future.

Had a lot of time to kill before the downbeat.  Strolled around the downtown area of Asheville, namely Broadway and Patton Avenue, where the Asheville Music Hall is located.  We ended up there later on after the gig to check out Walt's old Dead cover band from Athens, Cosmic Charlie.  He got to sit in with them for an encore of Shakedown Street.  I took a million pics and enjoyed a Guinness.  They were fun, doing it right with 2 drummers and lots of improv going on.  Couldn't hear Walt well enough, but I know he had fun reliving some glory days.  Anyways, it was a stellar first day of Fall and a great city to take in while we waited for our time to arrive.  The party was so sparsely attended - why did they even have a band?  They were nice enough, but really, get some more friends out on your special day!

Cosmic Charlie at Asheville Music Hall - the encore set with Walt sitting in on Shakedown Street.

Platinum at St. Regis for the Atlanta Opera Benefit: Third Time's a Charm

How oddly coincidental to have three jobs in the same venue with the same band.  As big as this city is and as many places we have played, the odds have to be quite small.  Yet here we were once again, smack dab in the middle of Buckhead at the St. Regis Hotel in the same ballroom.  It looked great with red draping flanking the rear of the raised stage.  The crowd was certainly well-to-do, as there was a silent auction as well as a full-on rabble-rousing auction geared to raise money for an opera company in dire need of funding. The arts in Atlanta is undergoing some tough times, with the ASO going through some potential downsizing.  Hoping this was a lucrative venture for this crew.

We had it fairly easy, although that meant a long wait until we could finally get up and play our blend of Motown, dance, and oldies.  Dianna Crawford, on loan from Platinum Soul, came to the rescue to complete the front line.  It felt like a show from 3 years ago, as the set list included many tunes we hadn't played in a while.  I was proud of this night in that I believe it was the very first show I've done with them that I didn't refer to a single music chart the entire night.  Yay!  No music stand!  I had rehearsed Last Dance and my break in The Love You Save, so I was ready for everything.  I could have played the entire night on the P-bass.  I ended up playing much of the second set on the NS Stick, which certainly had a beautiful tone.  I haven't practiced any tapping lately, other than the Rihanna medly on the Stick.  Funky technique indeed.  I had revelation with my octave effect and Forget You sounded rather good with it.  We ended up closing the night with Virginia's choices of Don't Stop Believin' and Just Dance.  Good old-fashioned fun!  BTW, I will go on record as saying that I was looking forward to getting through the aforementioned Last Dance without a chart - I'm certain that I was the only one who was slightly bummed we weren't going to do it after all...

Kevin took this during our soundcheck.  Great to have Dianna back with us,
although she doesn't appear to be too enthused at this moment.  I look like I
do in many of my "action shots"!

Had an opening act; a woman sang an excerpt from a famous opera that I certainly cannot recall.  Not exactly my area of expertise or passion.  Still, she was very animated and passionate.  Every eye was on her, and she was quite attractive.  A great job for a relatively critical crowd.  For our part, we gave our usual show.  It went over better than I would have expected.  Some ladies got up on stage and gave an impressive impromptu dance performance.  Almost stole the show!  Another scene stealer was Di laying down on the stage to sing the opening of Proud Mary - we've missed that aspect of her irreverential humor.

Glen is always getting caught falling asleep.
This time was extra funny because he was joking about  sleeping by his "fake snoring",
and then he crashed out anyways.

Gus can't believe his eyes.

Looking more and more like my dad every day.