Mickey's 1/22/09 w/ Underculture

I'm not sure why, but it has been a busy winter for my band. Basically, I started trying to book shows last spring...and wasn't very successful. Then everything came in at once. So we basically have had a show every two weeks...from Dec 12th to Feb 14th. My usual goal is one show per month...so this is more than expected or hoped for. The only down side has been that it has meant that we haven't had time to learn many new songs. We'll start on new tunes this week (the Feb 14th show is not much of a concern). Usually so many shows in such a short time means poor attendance too...but our fans (read friends) have been solid in turning out.

The show stretch started Deb 12th at Mickey's with what was possibly my worst performance on drums in public ever. That show basically led me into a month of solid depression (mostly due to work concerns or lack thereof in the dead of government winter). It was just horrible. Of course I'm the only person who really noticed how bad that night was. I didn't drop beats of anything...so everyone else was happy. In particular, the bass drum was a mess that night...and my fills.

Since then I've been trying to dissect what happened and how to fix it...and generally I've been trying not to pysch myself out (which is easy to do).

Last Friday we played the 4th of the 5 show series...back at Mickey's again. It was a nice checking in point. The show went really well. Underculture provided the PA and they mic'ed the bass drum...which made me nervous...but turned out fine. It's actually a good practice to mic the bass drum. I played really well.

I used my own throne, snare, snare stand, and cymbals and shared the rest of the kit. I had 1.5 pints of Futhermore Proper before playing and finished off the other half of the pint and a whole pint of water during the show. It was about 35 degrees outside...I wore jeans, Keens, and a short sleeve t-shirt and sweated my ass off during the show. I had a 4 hour nap 5pm to 9pm. Left house at 9:30pm and we took stage about 10:45pm. I stayed through bar time and got to bed about 3:30am. We brought down $40 for SSW ($10 a person). Not sure if that was bar or tips or both. We played dress rehearsal the night before the show. I was pretty active the week of the show (went to gym twice and played basketball), but tried not to do alot of walking in snow. Stayed up until about 11pm the night before the show and probably had more beer that night than prudent, but was still able to sleep. The nap on Friday helped.

Setlist: I didn't think I would, but I liked this set list. It built and ebbed and flowed well for my playing. Playing the last two one after the other was a pretty big workout...had to reserve energy during FU&W for SD.
1. EVERYBODY'S HAPPY NOWADAYS
2. DON'T GIVE ME NO LIP CHILD
3. TEENAGE KICKS
4. BOSCOBEL BREAKOUT
5. YOU STUPID FUCKING LIBERALS
6. STARMAN
7. FABLE
8. HELICOPTER
9. DANCE (4X) TO THE RADIO
10. MANIAC
11. WE ARE THE ONE
12. POLITICAL SONG FOR MICHAEL JACKSON TO SING
13. THIS SIDE OF PARADISE
14. THE WAY I LOVE YOU
15. WARSAW
16. FUCKED UP AND WASTED
17. SUSPECT DEVICE