New Year's Eve - Third Year In a Row Celebrating In Johns Creek with Platinum

To be more clear, it's our third year in a row playing in the same corner of the bar at this well-to-do country club of the South.  Not in the Country Club of the South, mind you.  That's another place.  And also, just so you people from far away are wondering, Johns Creek does not have an apostrophe in it.  For that matter, I don't really know where the creek is...

We rehearsed Landslide, as that was on the list and Dianna doesn't usually sing it.  I had my acoustic and it was good to go over the song with her.  However, we didn't even play it in the show.  I'm a fool to try to Travis pick that song on a 12-string, but that guitar sounds so much better than the black Fender with the passive pickup system.  My problem with the song is that I need to simply relax and be the Travis picking machine that Lindsey Buckingham is, easier said than done.  Also, I'm playing with Derek so we need to hear each other and stay together.  I don't want to be the weak link, so I'll keep working at it.

We most likely played a very similar set or two last year.  I mean, we've learned a few choice ones, but this was the Platinum Five and we are the same five.  This time out we did a few new ones.  One that comes to mind that we should almost always do is that Hall & Oates classic Sara Smile.  Great blue-eyed soul and with a vocal performance like that, Daryl Hall could certainly rest on his laurels.  Glen copped it rather well, in addition to playing the keys and knowing the form perfectly.  I had a fine little chart, cobbled together from a reliable source, namely local saxophone legend Eric Fontaine (he's the real deal, folks).  Nothing I found had it complete (nothing against Eric's outstanding efforts, but as the bass player I need it idiot-proof).  Modifying Eric's chart, I was able to insert the intro chords and the proper bridge chords to make it just right.  I utilized photo repair/clone from ACDSee (similar to Photoshop Elements I suppose) to copy & paste existing chord symbols, mainly in the Intro and Interlude sections - it came out really well, I think.  Check it out:

Transcription of Sara Smile by Eric Fontaine (with as few slight mods)

What else did we do?  Something we haven't played since last New Year's Eve!  James Brown's Sex Machine!  I called it (in my head) but I still wasn't completely ready.  Guess what?  I have a chart for that too.  Have you ever listened to the bass in it?  A young Bootsy Collins letting his fingers do the talkin'.  It's not a clear mix with the bass kind of in the back, most likely an amp signal miked up.  Tough to discern the notes really well, so there's a lot of speculation about what he played.  There is a JB bass book but I haven't seen it.  I found this online one fine day and turned these 2 excerpts into my chart for the tune.  I leaves out the intro, the bridge, and the ending, but these syncopated motifs are the crux of the biscuit:

Bass transcription of Get Up (I Feel Like Being A) Sex Machine

The folks wanted us to rock out from the get go.  I think we have a tendency to want to keep it down.  With this gig, we also can easily shift back into the mellow stuff towards the end of the night if older folks are hanging with us after midnight.  It stayed uptempo just about the whole show.  We ended with a climactic Purple Rain, and then it was time to face the new year.