There's always a first time for everything

Okay, that's arguable. But in this particular case, my band Still Oz played in an event in Cats at the New World Hotel last Thursday and this was the first time that we played a gig without Bunky, our guitarist.

It was actually very stressful. Initially, our call time was at 6pm, but because Oz had to work til 6pm and JohnQ was not free til 530pm that day, Dex talked to the organizers and set our call time to 6pm (program starts at 630). That would've given everyone enough time to get there before we had to play. Unfortunately, some of the activities in that event ended early, so we had to bump up our call time last minute to 530pm, and we would start at 6pm sharp.

The problem there though was that Bunky had finals that day and got stuck in terrible traffic. At 545 we find out he is still in Taft Avenue, so we had no choice but to start without him. To make matters worse, Sep's bass was in Bunky's car, so he couldn't play with us either. To say that the stress level right before we play was high is an understatement. I was freaking out (as I am wont to do in such situations) while we were checking which songs we could actually do without a guitar. No more Dave Matthews Band and U2 songs? Horrible!!!

So we start out with a very laid back Counting Blue Cars, followed by The Scientist and hmm well I can't recall anymore. By then I think we had settled down a bit, and Oz walks over to JohnQ and says, let's play #41. Of course we initially took it out of the makeshift playlist because it is key to have a guitar for that song, but we are #41 addicts and the idea of trying to pull #41 off without a guitar was both intriguing and challenging. And heck, most people don't know that song so if we don't play it as well as we normally do, no one but us would notice. =)

#41 ended up being immensely cool! And it allowed us to play a bit more freely afterwards. We even had enough courage to play All I want is you, Where the streets have no name, and With or without you one after the other. Haha, of course we played those songs poorly, but it was a lot of fun (and the crowd had thinned appreciably by that time as the program was over) so it felt more like a jam than a performance.

Right now, I am looking forward to June 24, our next booked gig (I say booked because we might snag another gig or two before then) which will be in Racks in El Pueblo. The other bands performing there in June are Session Road, Indio I and Mojofly. Wow, I can't believe we are now in the same league as those bands! Hehehe I wish! We need to write our own songs first. =)