Year: 2005

What’s Hot? Pt. I

 

As Paul might say, “fool, I’ll tell you what’s hot.”

The French Horns live

Last night was our first show with violinist Jesse Long and I proclaim it to be one of our best. He played on five or six songs and added those melodies we missed so much as a trio. Besides that, I think what really made a difference were the couple of practices the days right before the show, the good vocal monitor setup, and a decent pedal setup that gives me a little more control over my guitar sound. The only trouble I had on stage was that, in “Amy L”, my guitar was turned up too high and I was getting tons of guitar feedback to the point of distracting me into forgetting the whole second verse (I was frantically trying to figure out which note was feeding back and how to play the chord in a different shape to leave that note out). Well, to me it was ultra-loud, but apparently the audience didn’t notice much (which is why I think it was coming from the vocal monitor, but whatever.) Anyway, we were pretty well received from the few people there (unexpectedly we were asked to play first so several people who came to see us (from as far as Orlando) missed the set, but it’s not a big deal. The point of the show was kinda to build up our confidence for the Athens popfest show on the 12th. We won’t have Jesse there (which really sucks because he’s apparently “the cute one”) but we’ll get by I guess.

New home

 

Kathleen lives here now and things couldn’t be better. All the great stuff she brought fits wonderfully…including eveydog! though she still sometimes gives me this “ok, this is fun, but when are we going home?” look, or the “I like you, but when does she get home?”. Maybe it’s just me; I haven’t had a pet since I was in the single digits, so it’s kind of a new experience but she’s been great.

Anyway, our new “shacking up” todo list keeps growing and the house keeps looking better.

Last night and thoughts lately

 

Last night was, at least instrumentally, one of our best..I think. As for vocals, I must apologize to the five people who bothered to stay in the room because the Soft Targets, who played before us, packed up their vocal monitor after they played. They let Josh borrow a drum throne so they had to stick around, but they couldn’t leave the monitor so we could have decent vocals? For those who don’t have to sing 3 feet in front of a loud guitar amp and drums, the vocal monitor is essential. As Nathan Arizona might say, “speakers and monitors you got a PA set, no monitors you got dick.” It was at least nice that all the music of the night was pretty good, Soft Targets included, and the Shamrock was comfortable (no smoking inside).

I think I’ve come to the conclusion that I shouldn’t be “lead singing” (or generally the center of attention) in a live band setting. I’m not enthusiastic, an extrovert, an amazingly good singer or guitarist (esp. doing both at the same time), and I’m not physically attractive enough to make that stuff matter less. All I can do live is play a song semi-competently and I can live with that, but why make an audience watch someone be awkward and uncomfortable on stage while a band tries to do with three members what really needs five or six? Even if the recordings do the music justice, the current French Horns live show isn’t going to send people to them, nor is it going to encourage any like-minded musicians to join us, which is what we need more than anything. Unless we can be sure we’ll be in front of people who really appreciate the songs enough to hear them through our badness, playing more shows in Gainesville is a waste of time.

There are a few things we could do to help. We have zero aesthetic appeal so anything would help, projectors, props, anything! It might also just come to us playing to a tape. Since it’ll be nearly impossible for us to sync a recording up to us live (and really hard to play along to for a drummer) we’re just gonna have to have recorded drums and have Josh play something else. At least for some songs this could really be nice, and for others, it would mean we could actually even play them…