A Night at The Biltmore: Part I

Nice to have one during the week again.  It had been a while for one of these.  We were treated well; even Lee J came out to pay a visit.  He does a great job and I only wish he could use us more.  I'm certain he feels the same towards us.  During the week, a Platinum gig is most likely going to be a corporate event.  Those are typically easier in that there are no special songs to learn - usually.  Sometimes they want one that is a theme for the compnay (ie Let's Get It Started or Simply The Best).  No problem.  In this case, the problem could have been the venue.  The Biltmore has it's share of acoustical nightmare stories assoicated with it.  This evening was compounded with the issue that we were playing dinner jazz that wasn't really meant to be heard.  

I have to go on record here as saying that I'm a big fan of jazz.  I wasn't always, but I get it.  I love all things jazz at this point.  Here is my issue; it's not a rant, I promise.  Live jazz for a corporate event or even a wedding needs to be dumbed down as much as possible.  :Let's face it, we're not playing for the X or Y generation.  We're not playing for people who disagree on whether Miles' Second Great Quintet was more groundbreaking than his first.  These people don't know who Elvin Jones was, or that Keith Jarrett scats when he solos.  They want to hear something nice and innocuous.  Wallpapaer music.  What bands should play are standards, and the standards should actually become more contempoary as the years go by.  And, yes I began a sentence with and to make a big point, they shouldn't be 12 minute outside excursions with solos from everybody on the bandstand.  The tunes should each be perhaps 5 minutes max.  One soloist per tune, 2 maybe.  Really.  People don't really want to hear the solos.  They want the melodies, the heads.  Get in and get out.  They want songs, not All Blues.  By the way, that is a great tune that eveybody knows how to play.  Too bad it's just a vehicle for soloing.  Ballads are the name of the game in this scenerio.

We did a decent job with keeping the volume down, although Anton was called out early on for being a bit too out front in the mix.  We played On Green Dolphin Street, which is a very nice standard.  I think we also did All The Things You Are, which went over well.  i would like to see us make them shorter and play more tunes, which is hard to do.  It's hard to edit ones self and it's really hard to all collectively be able to play a lot of standards.  I thinking of As Time Goes By, perhaps a Beatles tune like Eleanor Rigby that has been played by multiple jazz musicians in the past, maybe a Norah Jones tune, maybe something like a Jason Mraz tune, maybe a Disney theme tune like Beyond The Sea. you get the picture.  A lot of short tunes, so that eventually everybody will have recognized something if they're listening.  That's my view on dinner jazz. 

  We played well but had to be so quiet.  I mean really really quiet.  Silly quiet.  We did some vocal tunes as well: Virigina's Make You Feel My Love and Dianna's The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face went over very well.  Johnny Collins, a recent contact who has begun stepping in for the departing Kevin, excelled on his version of My Funny Valentine.  We had soundchecked Love's Divine and Johnny killed it, but it wasn't played during the proceedings.  We also had Bogey (yes, from the great Bogey and The Viceroy) on hand to lead us along and provide a strong frontline.  He delivered the goods on a fly Fly Me To The Moon.  Great to work with you again, Bogey!  Sweetness trimphed over the decible-sensitive gathering.

As you can tell form the crowd shots above, they loosened up considerably after our break.  It became an all out dance fest, culminating in the show stopper Don't Stop Believin'.  Not much to report, although my cabling and poedalboard were beginning to really bug me.  I was fed up with not having my Rack Rider in my system.  Funny how a seemingly inconsequential unit like a glorified power strip makes a difference.  I guess that's the way I'm wired!  My cables and such were in a disarray, prompting me to always bring an excess of wires just to cover my needs.  I want to make the setup and strike a lot easier.  My pedalboard was getting out of hand as well.  I was looking to simplify it all in the near future.