Sunday
Check out this timelapse on Flickr: Sailing on the Nile.
This morning I walked to Caffe Italia for my morning coffee. Nice!
The first show at Anthology in San Diego yesterday was great. We had a lot of fun and everyone played well. I really enjoyed playing my solos. (((I wrote soli, but spellchecker didn’t like it… cactus-cacti and solo-soli, isn’t it?)))
By the way, I did like the food at Anthology, especially a plate of rectangular columns of yellow and red water melon next to an arugula salad. Wonderful combination. The gnocchi were excellent as well.
I still don’t know what happened during the second show. About a third into our set the stage became a heat inferno. Either the air conditioning broke down, and I did hear that the whole club became quite hot, or the lighting director went home and left the lights up at 100%, or they compromised the live performance to record some video for the club. (((or maybe it was a Genie?!))) Option 1 – that’s life, things break down. Option 2 – the LD should get fired. Option 3 – it is unacceptable to compromise a performance because your cameras need more light – unless you tell the audience (((and the band))) that they are part of a video-shoot. The stage looks horrible with that much light and the heat makes the musicians extremely uncomfortable. We played well, considering the circumstance, but it was rough…
Speaking of rough, I went to the merch-stand after the concert in Newport Beach to sign CDs or tickets, but instead almost everyone wanted a photo with me. Mostly cellphone photos!! And several inebriated folks were holding cellphones upside down or were looking at the lens instead of the screen!! I was being pulled this way and that way, and I mean pulled by the arm or even by my shirt. People were quite aggressive about it. NTS (((note to self))): no more signing in Newport Beach! Enough is enough. The price of admission entitles a person to a seat from which to experience the concert, not to pushing me around.
PS: It’s Sunday night. I signed after the concert and people were very nice. Not a single request for a photograph, by the way. Go figure. There has to be an interesting social study in this… I think there are two separate issues. There is location-specific behavior: people in one place are mellower than in the next place. And also, any group takes on a specific group-character. A few aggressive people can turn a gaggle into a pack. Anyway, it was a nice experience for me, tonight. Oh, and tonight the stage was a nice temperature again – like the first show last night. Good playing, smiles all around. No, we didn’t figure out what happened during the second show yesterday.
