Top o' the afternoon to ya, just in time for St. Patrick's Day. A fortuitous occurrence above the western skies (relative to my apartment) of Syracuse in the direction of Tipperary Hill (where, for those interested in local trivia, the traffic light has the green on top thanks to the indefatigable efforts of Irish youths in the 1920's) brings to mind three questions about the most recent (and my first sub'ing) Grove Havener (who's name, for those interested in local trivia, is taken from an Earth Science teacher at Jamesville-DeWitt) gig at Coleman's Irish Pub on 6 March 2009:
(1) Will it go 'round in circles?
(2) Will it fly high like a bird up in the sky?
(3) Did we play that Billy Preston cover?
Answers: (1) people were trashed enough by the end of the night that it likely appeared that way, (2) I'd say we hit 60% pure rock-dom, and (3) regrettably, no.
Click on the image for a larger view (pretty cool).
Thanks to my trusty Olympus LS-10, the entire gig did get captured for posterity, with a few pick hits worked up in Garageband (for those interested in the clean-up procedure, slight added Compression and default Speech Enhancer, no bass enhancement, 320 kb MP3) and provided below. In the interest of explaining the balance on the recording, the LS-10 was sitting 3 feet from my hi-hats (and splashes, they do come out strong) on top of the back of a wall of seats. The fact that (1) you hear the rest of the band at all and (2) you hear them quite well despite the amps pointing away from the drums means that I clearly did not play hard enough. I include a drummer-level visual (with Mark's cheat-sheets, through which several people thumbed in the interest of making requests) from behind an overworked and unprepared set of Pearl Masters Studio BSX's.
Mark refused to order me a Shirley Temple, "Johnny High Five" didn't go anywhere, and I did terrible things to a pair of Vater Super Jazz.
Featuring the artistic stylings (the most polite way to describe it after "almost two" rehearsals) of Mark Bell (vocals), Mike Grossman (guitar), Matt Bell (guitar), Andrew Willis (bass), and yours truly (drums and cowbell)…
1. Set 1 – Weezer – Say It Ain't So (4:10, 9.5 MB)
2. Set 1 – The Black Crowes – Hard To Handle (3:30, 8 MB)
3. Set 2 – The Rolling Stones – Sympathy For The Devil (6:14, 14.3 MB)
4. Set 2 – Pearl Jam – Animal (2:53, 6.6 MB)
5. Set 2 – Young MC – Bust A Move (5:39, 12.9 MB)
6. Set 3 – Duran Duran – Hungry Like The Wolf (4:33, 10.4 MB)
7. Set 3 – Red Hot Chili Peppers – Suck My Kiss (3:53, 8.9 MB)
8. Set 3 – The Killers – All These Things That I've Done (4:54, 11.2 MB)
9. Recorded Quote Of The Night (0:04, 220 KB)
And, because they don't set up kits like that anymore…
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Patrick%27s_Day
www.syracuse.ny.us
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipperary_Hill
www.myspace.com/grovehavener
www.jamesvilledewitt.org
www.colemansirishpub.com
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Preston
www.billypreston.net
www.olympusamerica.com
www.olympusamerica.com/cpg_section/product.asp?product=1350
www.apple.com/ilife/garageband
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3
www.pearldrum.com/default.asp
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley_Temple_cocktail
www.vater.com
www.vater.com/newproducts/product.cfm?M=300
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