The Bis Key Chronicles

  I met a very interesting fellow last night at a party (thanks Neil and happy 30th). Let’s call him Joel. Joel wanted to major in music performance. Like me he played the saxophone. But in his freshman year a professor indicated that for Joel, and many others, it would be very hard to eek out a living doing what they loved.

The professor asked leading questions like, "Do you like nice things." Well most of us do. So Joel changed his major to business and ended up working in the retail instrument business for a company he’d worked with since he was 17 years old.

Well one day while working as a salesman, he sold a piano to a seemingly nice couple with two kids. This couple had been in the store three times and had even brought their two kids in to try a beautiful, new grand piano. They finally put the piano on their credit card and showed proper ID. The credit card cleared.

They indicated they were moving into a new house and they wanted the piano in there before their furniture came. It sounded legit. When Joel and the crew showed up to set up the piano, the couple was there with the two kids running around. There was a U-haul in the drive way, but it was closed so that the crew couldn’t see inside of it. The couple walked Joel through the upscale house and showed him around the place.

So Joel and crew set up the piano in the living room and the couple played it a bit. They weren’t very good players and said they were musicians long ago who hadn’t played much as of late. Sometime later the store got a credit card rejection because the credit card used to buy that piano was fraudulent. This couple had stolen a grand piano. Apparently getting a stolen number and creating a new card is not that difficult. As far as Joel knows, the couple was never apprehended for that theft.

Joel said he was really struck hard by this loss. It took it quite personally as any of would. He has been in the business for a while now and it has happened twice to him. Apparently it is a rather too common occurrence in the industry. I wonder if that is why it took over two weeks for Suzy and me to get our grand piano delivered?

This review was so well done, I had to share it with my friends who are considering starting up a band. And you thought it would be soooo easy.  ;o)

I saw your blog entry on the xBands.  I’m not so sure I was as keen on the vocalist.  Considering that with maybe 5 exceptions, every song was a female vocal arrangement, by the time I was done listening to the first set, I was kinda tired of her.  I think she was very good, but not so good as to captivate me for an hour.  Their guitar player did a few vocal numbers.  He was not very strong vocally, or more precisely I could not tell. Either their sound guy kept him a little under volume to hide the fact that we was not so strong, or he was falling asleep at the controls.

Overall though these bands had some nice things going.  They were quite tight, playing together stylistically.  Any quibbles I would have on individual playing would be a bit petty as they are much better than us at this time.  I don’t think though that they out of our league for where we can get too.

I remember thinking man, they’re playing 2 one-hour sets.  That’s a lot–then I realized that most of the music were vocal arrangements.  Challenging musically to get right, but not nearly as taxing on the chops.

As my wife and I left she did point out that they were in a completely different league from where we (the Dissonance) were at Christmas.   So we do have some work to do.  I’d like to make sure that when we take the covers off we’re really ready.

We also both agreed that after an hour, we thought it was missing something.  To me the bands looked bored.   Their stage presences weren’t bad.  The horns dance about a little and had some light horn gimmicks integrated, but it seems to lack a lot of spark.   I’m at a loss to define what was missing.

I would draw the following conclusions:

1) The wireless mics seemed to work very nice. They would be expensive and we’d need a sound guy/gal, but I think it is worth considering.

2) I initially liked the stand fronts the horns in most of the bands used, but I wonder if it didn’t block too much of the stage. You could not see the drummer. I wonder if part of the lack of spark was that the horns were almost hidden. When we went to see a Dixie festival last year, there was one band that regardless of their musical prowess (which was good), bored me to tears. They had three things in common with the xBands. Matching cheesy shorts, very little communication with the audience and band fronts. I am coming to the conclusion that band fronts might work well for a dance band, but not a show band.

3) I think if we do dance gigs, something we should be prepared to do, a better mix of vocal and instrumental might give the horns a better chance to shine.

4) I think if we show up at Third Place Books or Crossroads Bellevue, we’d best be prepared to play two hours of mostly dance music depending on the crowd. We need a much thicker book then you’re anticipating, eventually at least.

5) Never ever, under any circumstance, close a set with C-Jam blues. Seriously boring. Sucked the life right off the stage.

Just a quick note today before we run to the Second Story Rep‘s presentation of "Laughter on the 23 Floor". This has been a whirlwind weekend with so many fun things to do and Suzy had to work both Friday and Saturday nights.

Friday night we got to see Rainy City Riff Raff, a three horn combo which was pretty good and their vocalist was stellar. Gary and Christine joined us but we had to leave early because of Suzy’s work schedule.

We did get to see the 85th Street Big Band (who still do not have a Web site) at Crossroads Bellevue but the crowd was so big (for big band saturday) that we left after a security guard told us we had to find a seat or leave. There were no seats to be had.  :o(

So visit my wife’s blog and read about clarinets, kitties, and more. Live Spaces is easy to use and you can see in my fav blogs box that my Mom, wife, daughter, and grandson are all using it as their blog engine of choice.