They don't make gigs like this everyday (part II)

You can read about the first set of this incredible gig in my previous post. As for the rest of the story that night, read on… After our first set, we took a break and the band Bridge played one set. We had known that there would be two bands that night, and before we played, Bunky shared some concerns about the fact that Bridge covered similar songs to us, mainly those of Dave Matthews Band (DMB) and Sting.

So we were jolted when we heard Bridge play Sting’s “It’s probably me” then Bob Dylan’s “All along the watchtower” (although we do DMB’s version of this song) both of which were part of our 2nd set playlist. We were supposed to play 11 songs in the 2nd set, and since we didn’t want to play the same songs that Bridge played, we were now down to 9 songs. We were rushing to figure out what other 2 songs to put in when Oz told us that management said we had time for only 8 songs in the second set. We looked at our playlist and we decided to take out Poison’s “Every Rose has its thorn” since it was the slowest song we had that set.

I quickly show Oz the final playlist of the set, and he gives me a look like he’s not satisfied with it. We were about to go on, so I just told him let’s just play each song as well as we can. I myself was worried that we wouldn’t be able to live up to our last 3 songs of the 1st set, but those worries were soon put to rest the moment we started. Here’s a run-down of what we performed

“Lightning crashes” by Live. This is one of my favorite songs and one of the first ones we learned, so sing this is almost second nature to me. Since Oz didn’t seem confident in our set-list, I felt that I needed to sing this song well enough that it sets the tone for the rest of the evening. Sep had insisted that I stand up, partly to give us more space on stage and partly so that we would have more passion while performing. I’m glad that Sep insisted on this as it freed me up a bit more and allowed me to be more intense and use my vocals and my range a bit more. By the time I hit my first high note, there was an unmistakable vibe from the audience. And when song built up and became more powerful, we knew that we had picked up from where we left off.

“Bright lights” by Matchbox 20. We’ve gotten great response from our audiences with this song in the past, and tonight was no exception. The cool thing was, when we were learning Beatles songs for Ray’s wedding way back in January, Bunky realized that the instrumental part at the end of Bright Lights had the same chords as “Hey Jude”. Since then, we had been playing the “Na na na na na na na… Hey Jude” part of that song during the instrumental of “Bright Lights” and each time, the audience would start singing with us as they also did that night.

“Grey Street” by Dave Matthews Band. This was the only song that we played in the second set that was never released into the mainstream. But the song has such a great riff and tempo to it that it didn’t matter that almost no one in the audience knew the song. They still gave us a massive ovation once we were done. It was at this point that I realized that everyone in the bar was actually watching us. It wasn’t like we were background music anymore. At that point, the whole gig had the feel of a concert where everyone came there to watch us perform.

“Better man” by Pearl Jam. By the time we played this song, I knew that we had the set in the bag. This song was something that we generally did okay with, but we were already zoned by the time we played it that all of a sudden it felt like it one of the best songs we play. In fact, I saw Dex signal to me to try and ease up a bit as he was worried that I might be straining my voice too much. But my voice felt so strong that night that I knew it would hold up the rest of the set.

“One” by U2. 90proof crowd is an 80’s crowd, and as such a lot of people there are fans of U2. This is one of the most passionate songs that we do, and the atmosphere was electric while we were performing. I could hear the audience sing “Love is a temple, love’s a higher law…” along with me and when we were done, the audience had given us wild applause for the 8th song in a row that night.

“Knockin’ on heaven’s door” by Guns n Roses. We’ve never played this song and not have the audience sing along with us during the chorus. I recall looking at the audience right before we got to the chorus and I could see so many of them gearing up to sing “hey, hey, hey yeah yeah.” The instrumental bit though was absolute magic. Oz opened up the instrumental with his solo and Mano then followed suit on percussions, both of wowing the crowd. The cool thing during this solo was that Bunky started playing percussive guitar along with Mano thus enriching the sound quality. The audience was going crazy the entire song! It was uncanny.

“With or without you” by U2. We had put this song in to replace “Where the streets have no name” after we moved it to the 1st set. And it was the right decision to add "With or without you" to the playlist. The response we got from the crowd on this song was immense! It felt like everyone there sang along with us from the very first note. That has never happened to us in any gig, so it felt like we had broken new ground while performing this song.

“Ants marching” by Dave Matthews Band. Anyone who’s seen us perform before would know that we almost always cap off our night with this song. That night, we were all playing out of our wits, and yet we all remained in very good control (does that make sense?). Oz got the crowd going when he played his solo while standing atop a bar stool. We got raucous applause during most of the song. While playing "Ants Marching", we knew that we had just played the best set, and best gig, we've ever played, and we were simply putting icing on the cake. And what perfect icing it was too.

Cheers from the crowd for us to play more, even an encore of #41, filled 90proof but we had to stop as we were told by management that we had played our last song that night. We humbly apologized to the crowd that we couldn’t play anymore. But I guess it didn’t matter that much. Everyone in the band was on a natural high! We excitedly recounted how the set went with each other and with our friends. Noel confirmed with us that we had just passed our audition, and both Treena and Jaygat agreed that it was the best gig we had ever performed.

My hope now is for us to be able to duplicate this feat when more of our family and friends are in the crowd. Maybe even have John V and John Q playing with us when we nail another gig like this. In the meantime, I will continue to relish how well we performed that night. After all, they don’t make gigs like this everyday.