Re: ----- I suck, I tell you, I suck. ------

[Steve Price <sprice@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 27 Feb 1995 BEERE_MARK@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:
[...]
> I walk up, grab the
> SM-58, cup it to a Golden Melody and begin to draw.  And what do you think
> emerges but a not-so-golden melody at all.  Like high-pitched feedback.  And
> because I didn't have a monitor going through the PA I could only use the
> audience's reaction as a monitor.  And let me tell you it ain't no fun 
> to be on
> stage and see half the audience trying to get ear wax outta both ears.
> Really took the wind out of my sails, not to mention my lungs.  > 

Really, this is why I don't use Golden Melodies anymore.  Damn harp feeds 
back.  =8^)

I don't have one like this right off the top of my head, but I'll 
tell y'all 'bout the time I played in a real professional setting with a 
guy I'd been jamming with.  He was a guitar teacher and local musician 
and he also worked for my father.  I was about 14 and had wicked hot 
chops, and knew about laying back and not stomping all over everyone 
elses work.  But I'd never really played on a stage before.  This guy's 
group was acompanying a bunch of people playing that night by 
invitation.  They were a Country Western group, and that night they had 
arranged to have a long line-up including me, but I only had about four 
numbers with them.  

Well, the girl before me was only about four feet tall.  She had a big 
Everley Brothers guitar, but she could fit in a shoebox.  Well, I come up 
and the band starts and I start playing and I'm bending over, 
way over, and I reach to pull the mic out of its stand, but no go.  It's 
stuck.  So we finish that song and I'm struggling to pull the thing off 
the stand or to pull the stand up higher.  No go.  

But my efforts haven't been lost on the audience because as I'm 
struggling the P.A. is broadcasting "bangity, pop, thud THUD, pop, bang" 
and my buddy makes a joke, and audience laughs, and I freeze, and leave 
the thing alone.  They strike up the next song and I'm bent over like 
I'm tying my shoe to blow harp.  

Now, when we rehearsed the thing, he'd give me one and he'd take 
one, so after each of my solos I'd back down.  That means I try for the 
full effect on one chorus.  But he's saying "take another one, Steve" and 
I'm bent over, and now I have to whip up another, and I finish and back 
down, and he yells "Take another one, Steve" and I'm getting red faced, 
but I do it, and now I'm sure I'm done with my solo for this song and I 
stand up, and he yells, "Take another one, Steve," and I look at him like 
what the hell planet did you come from, and now I hear the laughter 
again, so I'm down blowing midget harp again.  Well, the audience was 
very nice, and my buddy was very nice, and all.  

After the show someone says, why didn't you loosen the mic stand and pull 
it up like [the person that followed me] did.  I'm going "Idiot, idiot, 
idiot" all the way home.  

	Steve