Dec 17th gig at The Palms

Got to The Lounge at about 8 p.m. Place was a mess. Boxes lying all around, junk on the floor, no chairs set up. We had to set up the tables and chairs, and we didn't get stage lighting till about 9:50. Thought we might end up in the dark again.

Whatever. Turned out to be a great musical evening.

I was really a bit surprised -- pleasantly so -- at the size of the crowd tonight. We were SRO, packed in shoulder-to shoulder in the back. Wildly enthusiastic crowd, too.

Fat City Horns II continue to coalesce. Most of the charts went down just fine, no trauma tonight.

Dave's new "What'cha Gonna Do With That Greazy Thing?" was at once particularly tight and swampy. "Brother to Brother" was off the hook, as was "Ain't That Peculiar."

Incremental blogging ensuing now. First, I video'd "Si Te Vas" (it is so fine) and it's gonna take 20 minutes just to dump it outa the camera into an AVI file, which I then gotta upload to YouTube if it came out OK. Patience.

While I'm waiting, Jasmine says 'buy the Christmas CD.' It really is awesome. Only ten bucks, plus S/H (cocktail server not included).

Jamie was off tonight, so our Bad Boy bro' Abe LaMarca again stepped up to fill in, coming in from Cleveland to do the gig.

OK, 3:51 a.m., and that "Si Te Vas" movie clip is still uploading to YouTube (after which it has to convert from AVI to their compressed format before it becomes viewable). Gonna post some more stills while I continue wait.

Dave Stambaugh is one serious alto player, man!

Below, my shot of the night, Rochon, with Pepe in the background.

Above, Rudy Regalado sittin' in. Very cool.

It's 4:10 a.m., and that YouTube upload is still in progress. May have to post it tomorrow. I gotta catch some Zzzz's. My sister Carole and all of her kids (including the beloved Zen niece April) are comin' tomorrow. We're all still kinda reeling from what happened back in October. Gonna be a healing visit. Bringing both of my parents from the nursing homes to the house Thursday. That will be very interesting.

4:26, YouTube upload still goin'. Gotta crash.

BTW- we still have no word from The Palms about a 2008 schedule. Remember, no gigs the next two Monday nights. After that, TBA. Stay in touch here and on the band's website for update notices.

TUESDAY UPDATE, 10:51 a.m.

OK, here's Jerry singing "Si Te Vas" as copped in my Fuji still camera. Sorry for the Nausea Cam in places. Trying to do one continuous eight minute shot and not screw it up. I need to go to Auto Zone and Home Depot, buy a couple of shock absorbers and some nuts and bolts and shit, and build some home-brew Rube Goldberg cheapo SteadyCam, LOL!

The audio is cheesy too, sorry, itty-bitty built-in condensor auto-volume mic was probably havin' an embolism.



This is a brilliant song. They're really still learning it. Tentative in a couple of spots. The interlude horn ensemble section has zero room for error, it's so deliberately-on-the-edge-of-dissonant. Hope you dig this clip. Dave Stambaugh on alto, man, wow!

BTW, last week I posted the "Si Te Vas" Spanish lyrics. Wanna do something funny? Google one of those Spanish-to-English online translators, screen-scrape the lyrics off the earlier post (click-drag, Ctrl-C, or Command-C on a Mac), and paste 'em into the translator (Ctrl-V or Command-V). Watch what comes out. LOL!