So last week the new G-Force made it’s debut at Dudley’s Friday Night, followed the next night by a show at Victors. Both gigs went well, with the second being tighter than the first, and with a bigger crowd too. There was a really entertaining drunk chick who stole Gina’s tambourine and ran around the bar shaking out the beat. Later sang a song with the band. I thought she was a friend of Gina’s but none of us knew her. She was a friend of the drummer’s sister or something. During the intermission she was hitting on me until I went over to the bar to get a drink and introduced her to Jeannie, who was sitting right there. Then she took off. Funny how that always seems to happen.
I must say Vinny is not only a really good guitar player, but he’s a great asset when it comes to loading and unloading, and setting up and tearing down the PA. He must have experience lifting heavy things, cuz he knows what he’s doing. Very efficient, always there at the right time with another pair of hands.
Monday night was maybe the first rehearsal ever where we didn’t learn any new tunes. Instead it was all tempos, endings and transitions. I’d say now most of the songs ought to be pretty damn tight. We have two more shows the next two weeks, and then we’ll learn a bunch of new songs when we come back in January.
We’ve also been having a series of really good jazz rehearsals. Unfortunately our guitarist Gary has been out sick, but we’ve been exploring cool new grooves and sounds as a quartet. Jay got genuine gut strings on his bass, which changes the tone considerably, making it much warmer and richer. Last Sunday we practiced at the drummer’s house. He lives right on the river near Croton-on-Hudson, straight across from where we went hiking last month. The next gig with the jazz group is in early January. Should be lots of fun.
Meanwhile on the home and auto front, it seems everything breaking down at at once and takes forever to get fixed. Nothing catastrophic but a series of minor inconveniences that by now are adding up.
First I’ve been meaning to get my car into the shop for an oil change and a new set of tires. The tires are not super urgent, but I’d rather get it done now than wait until springtime. I took it to the shop one day last week, but they only had 2 tires in stock. The said they’d order two more but now I have to take it back. And my car is full of amplifiers these days so I’d rather wait until after this run of gigs.
Next we have a fluorescent light fixture in our kitchen and ballast blew out on that. So that was an unexpected repair project. This is the second light fixture I’ve replaced this fall.
Then our furnace shut off one day and wouldn’t restart. We had go out to the garage and flip the breaker to get it to come back on. And just as it’s getting below freezing at night. After this happened two days in a row we called in a repairman. He fixed it temporarily, and now we’re waiting on a part.
It turns out the cause of this was that water got into our chimney pipe and dripped down into the furnace. The day it happened was windy and rainy and stormy. So now we need to get someone to go up on the roof and check out the situation, whether thing on top the chimney that’s supposed to keep the water out is intact.
And then to top it off, yesterday my car key broke in half. The metal key part separated from the plastic part that holds the electronics. What’s next?