Back in business

And here I thought my band was dead. =)

As I have mentioned many times in the past, my band Still Oz hasn’t really gotten to play a lot in the last year because our guitarist Bunky was on night shift, and for his first six months at work, his weekend was Wednesday and Thursday. With our drummer Cholo working in Sta. Rosa, having gigs on weekdays didn’t seem feasible.

So a few months ago, Bunky’s weekend got moved to the ‘normal’ weekend of Saturday and Sunday. So now we could officially work on getting gigs again as long as they were scheduled on Saturday.

After a few months of virtually no movement (we did have that one gig in Bulacan a couple of months ago), we all of a sudden have a jam-packed schedule for the next 2 months! In fact, our first of 8-or-9 gigs in a row was last Saturday, where we played 2 extended sets in Bistro 110. Oz was out of town that weekend and the news of that gig came in short notice, so we didn’t have a violin in our first gig. We also didn’t get any practice. And despite having technical difficulties with the sound system for the entire 1st set, I actually thought we pulled off a pretty decent job.

What I was really pleased about as well was the fact that we got to play two new covers for the first time. We played the Goo Goo Dolls’ ‘Black Balloon’ which we loved playing and which the crowd sang along to. Then we always played the Smashing Pumpkins’ version of Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Landslide’ which is truly a beautiful song so I was so glad we played it.

We clearly need some more practice to get to the level we were before, but the important thing is that we are playing again and that the audience continues to respond to our song selection and the way that we play.

Anyway, here's one of our performances from last year that we caught on video and which John V. felt like putting up online.



This isn't the best performance of #41 that we've done and I don't really like my stage presence and performance here, but all in all it's pretty decent.