Practice Weekend, day two.
It's 9:30am on Sunday morning and I have no idea when the phone is going to ring announcing the arrival of my bandmates. It could be any minute, it could be several hours. That's the way it goes in rock'n'roll. I suppose I should have tried to form some sort of vague plan, but I was in no shape at the end of the day for that. Sigh.
So yesterday morning I got up and worked myself into some excitement. Rebby and I cleaned the house a little bit and then I set to work on pizzas. I'm working my way through all the pizza dough recipes I have in all the cookbooks on all my shelves. The first one I did was from The Greens Cookbook and while it was OK, it wasn't exactly what I was looking for. This batch I used Sheila Lukins recipe from The New Basics Cookbook, except I added some sugar and more salt. It seemed REALLY soft when I was working with it, but after adding a little more flour in the shaping stage, it turned out great! I made one with tomato, basil, and mozz and one with caramelized red onions, fennel, apple and goat cheese. Since rebby gave up beer for lent, we were rockin bloody marys. We were all set.
The boys arrived at about 12:30, so close to on schedule I was amazed! Steve couldn't make it for day one because of his class and radio show, so it was just Ernie, Alan and me. We had pizza and made drinks and they got their gear set up in the basement. After about an hour we all headed down and got down to business. I was so apprehensive, but once we got started it became absolute second nature. Just about every song came flooding back effortlessly. A few of them we had some trouble with....a couple cases where we couldn't remember all the words, or one of us just couldn't quite put our finger on what we used to play. For the most part, though, the body memory took over and it just flowed. The old familiar tuning problems reemerged, and I really remembered why I used to smoke so many cigarettes. There was just nothing else to do behind the drum kit while they tuned between every song. But I managed to hang out and keep myself amused with a constant infusion of bloody marys. Courtesy of our roadie/sound tech rebby. She was running wires and recording and taking pictures and filling drinks all day. Bless her.
We practied solid for three hours, and then we took a break. Only to discover than we had consumed all the vodka in the house. Which meant we had to take a field trip to the vodka store, of course. By this point I felt a lot like I was tripping, and the world outside of the basement felt very surreal. We made it through, though...got a new giant bottle of rain vodka and headed back for more bloody marys.
Round two in the basement was just as good as round one...we hit our stride and even though I am often loathe to "jam" in practice, it really felt right. I have always been more able to just close my eyes and go with it in Dead at 24 than any other band I've been in. I just really groove on the guitar sounds, I guess.
Anyhow, we did another solid two hours and then we had pretty much gone through all the songs. We emerged again at about 6 and had more drinks and then sat around talking for a while. During this sitting around talking period, I started to realize just how strung out I was. I was really, really, really tired, and really, really, really wired, and even though I had switched to water I felt a little like I was swimming in some sticky goo. The conversation had turned to drugs and as it's not a subject I like talking about, I was pretty much sitting in the corner zoning out.
For some reason we decided to go back to the basement, and I realize now that was the big mistake. I should have insisted on a nap.
This third go round was just too much, and it really didn't go well at all. We couldn't really get our groove back, and after a few songs we gave up.
I had been looking forward to a night at Gooskis for a couple of weeks...the new metal band featuring my friends Ben, Matt and Eric were having their premier show. I wasn't so jazzed on the other band, but I was really looking forward to a night out. When we got out of the basement the third time, rebby said that leah had requested we all stop over there before the show, so I got changed and ready. It was 8 o'clock.
I really, really should have relaxed a little bit. We could have stayed here for another hour and things might have been very different. But I ushered us all out, and by the time we got to Leah's I was starving. She was hungry too, so we ordered pizza. More pizza! Woo. As the minutes ticked by I became more and more and more squirrelly...I was starting to understand exactly how a baby feels when it wants nothing more than to go to sleep except that there are so many things happening around it that it's impossible. I couldn't really focus on anything, so I just let the conversations swirl around me. I really belonged in bed, but I was still holding out the hope that I'd make it to the show. Once the other folks showed up at the house and the general volume got louder, I realized that was probably not going to happen. By the time 10pm rolled around I was a basket case, and when Rebby asked if i was ready to go to the show I couldn't really answer her. I just had to get. out. of. there. We walked onto the porch and I told her I didn't really think I could be around any more humans that night. So we came home and went to bed.
I'm really sorry that I missed the show, but I'm not sorry that I chose to take care of myself instead of putting myself in an uncomfortable position for rock n roll.
That's what being a grown up means to me.
Today I feel really great and I am definitely going to lay off the booze. I've got an arsenal of soda water in the frige. It's coffee and water all day for me today, boy.
It's 9:30am on Sunday morning and I have no idea when the phone is going to ring announcing the arrival of my bandmates. It could be any minute, it could be several hours. That's the way it goes in rock'n'roll. I suppose I should have tried to form some sort of vague plan, but I was in no shape at the end of the day for that. Sigh.
So yesterday morning I got up and worked myself into some excitement. Rebby and I cleaned the house a little bit and then I set to work on pizzas. I'm working my way through all the pizza dough recipes I have in all the cookbooks on all my shelves. The first one I did was from The Greens Cookbook and while it was OK, it wasn't exactly what I was looking for. This batch I used Sheila Lukins recipe from The New Basics Cookbook, except I added some sugar and more salt. It seemed REALLY soft when I was working with it, but after adding a little more flour in the shaping stage, it turned out great! I made one with tomato, basil, and mozz and one with caramelized red onions, fennel, apple and goat cheese. Since rebby gave up beer for lent, we were rockin bloody marys. We were all set.
The boys arrived at about 12:30, so close to on schedule I was amazed! Steve couldn't make it for day one because of his class and radio show, so it was just Ernie, Alan and me. We had pizza and made drinks and they got their gear set up in the basement. After about an hour we all headed down and got down to business. I was so apprehensive, but once we got started it became absolute second nature. Just about every song came flooding back effortlessly. A few of them we had some trouble with....a couple cases where we couldn't remember all the words, or one of us just couldn't quite put our finger on what we used to play. For the most part, though, the body memory took over and it just flowed. The old familiar tuning problems reemerged, and I really remembered why I used to smoke so many cigarettes. There was just nothing else to do behind the drum kit while they tuned between every song. But I managed to hang out and keep myself amused with a constant infusion of bloody marys. Courtesy of our roadie/sound tech rebby. She was running wires and recording and taking pictures and filling drinks all day. Bless her.
We practied solid for three hours, and then we took a break. Only to discover than we had consumed all the vodka in the house. Which meant we had to take a field trip to the vodka store, of course. By this point I felt a lot like I was tripping, and the world outside of the basement felt very surreal. We made it through, though...got a new giant bottle of rain vodka and headed back for more bloody marys.
Round two in the basement was just as good as round one...we hit our stride and even though I am often loathe to "jam" in practice, it really felt right. I have always been more able to just close my eyes and go with it in Dead at 24 than any other band I've been in. I just really groove on the guitar sounds, I guess.
Anyhow, we did another solid two hours and then we had pretty much gone through all the songs. We emerged again at about 6 and had more drinks and then sat around talking for a while. During this sitting around talking period, I started to realize just how strung out I was. I was really, really, really tired, and really, really, really wired, and even though I had switched to water I felt a little like I was swimming in some sticky goo. The conversation had turned to drugs and as it's not a subject I like talking about, I was pretty much sitting in the corner zoning out.
For some reason we decided to go back to the basement, and I realize now that was the big mistake. I should have insisted on a nap.
This third go round was just too much, and it really didn't go well at all. We couldn't really get our groove back, and after a few songs we gave up.
I had been looking forward to a night at Gooskis for a couple of weeks...the new metal band featuring my friends Ben, Matt and Eric were having their premier show. I wasn't so jazzed on the other band, but I was really looking forward to a night out. When we got out of the basement the third time, rebby said that leah had requested we all stop over there before the show, so I got changed and ready. It was 8 o'clock.
I really, really should have relaxed a little bit. We could have stayed here for another hour and things might have been very different. But I ushered us all out, and by the time we got to Leah's I was starving. She was hungry too, so we ordered pizza. More pizza! Woo. As the minutes ticked by I became more and more and more squirrelly...I was starting to understand exactly how a baby feels when it wants nothing more than to go to sleep except that there are so many things happening around it that it's impossible. I couldn't really focus on anything, so I just let the conversations swirl around me. I really belonged in bed, but I was still holding out the hope that I'd make it to the show. Once the other folks showed up at the house and the general volume got louder, I realized that was probably not going to happen. By the time 10pm rolled around I was a basket case, and when Rebby asked if i was ready to go to the show I couldn't really answer her. I just had to get. out. of. there. We walked onto the porch and I told her I didn't really think I could be around any more humans that night. So we came home and went to bed.
I'm really sorry that I missed the show, but I'm not sorry that I chose to take care of myself instead of putting myself in an uncomfortable position for rock n roll.
That's what being a grown up means to me.
Today I feel really great and I am definitely going to lay off the booze. I've got an arsenal of soda water in the frige. It's coffee and water all day for me today, boy.
posted by sheryl at 9:27 AM
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