My first high school talent show is tomorrow

pklima · #1 02-28-2011, 01:41 AM

I'm 36 years old and playing in my first high school talent show tomorrow, but I guess this is what I get for being in bands with singers who are my age if you add both their ages together. It's just two songs, but it's already turning out to be more adventurous and complicated than a typical three-set gig with the same band.

Last Thursday the singers found out that the rules are different than they thought and they have to play different songs than they did during the audition. Each song has to be in a different foreign language, and while we've got a few songs in Spanish we could do, but the singers decided to do "Ederlezi" instead which is a Gypsy folk song with no one standard version and which we've never even attempted playing. But all right, we've got plenty of time. So I ask what version we're doing, transcribe it, send it out to everybody, and then yesterday at rehearsal find out they're not really doing that version, more like just the intro section repeated a few times with more rhythmic accompaniament. Would've been nice to know that in advance as it really is a lot simpler and doesn't have things repeating an odd number of times. Now, the other song we're doing is "Beautiful Liar", so of course we can't just play it like we have been playing it - the singers show up at rehearsal and annonce we're doing a medley of "Beautiful Liar" and "Umbrella" instead, and they tried to print it out but the printer needs ink so it's not really legible, and the chords they found via Google for the "Umbrella" part are wrong. That was easy to deal with, though.

Also, we're playing with a sub percussionist that I've never played with, and a sax player/singer who joined us yesterday - she wanted to audition for my other band which plays more jazz and older pop music, but hasn't had time to audition for that yet, so I called her up on Saturday and ask her if she wants to do this on Tuesday. And it's in the middle of the day so I have to take a day off from work.

Yeah, all this for just two songs. We'll see how this goes tomorrow, and I understand it's supposed to be videotaped so there should be evidence.

perogato02 · #2 02-28-2011, 01:47 AM

Hmmm, all I can say is: Good luck.

tony1982 · #3 02-28-2011, 01:57 AM

yea! good luck.. believe me, you will love it! I don't say something like:"don't be nervous" cause you will be nervous as hell anyway

but thats part of show!

otis_thick · #4 02-28-2011, 02:20 AM

You are PLAYING!!! You are supposed to have fun and enjoy it when you PLAY!!!

pklima · #5 02-28-2011, 02:32 AM

Heh, it is fun. It's just unnecessarily complicated fun in this case!

Downunderwonder · #6 02-28-2011, 09:05 AM

Keep your shirt on for this one.

pklima · #7 02-28-2011, 11:15 AM

Heh, OK, but my shirts are so hideously tasteless that might not be an improvement.

eSmith · #8 02-28-2011, 11:34 AM

I'm not against young female singers.... But your letting them direct the band? Why?

You are the adult, give them some direction to keep it simple and stop being teenage girls changing thier minds and songs every ten minutes.

-eSmith.

StuartV · #9 02-28-2011, 11:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pklima

I'm 36 years old and playing in my first high school talent show tomorrow

Good luck! Maybe if you play well enough, they'll finally let you graduate!

pklima · #10 02-28-2011, 01:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by eSmith

I'm not against young female singers.... But your letting them direct the band? Why?

In this particular case this is their school competition and I'm in no position to communicate with the teachers organizing it etc. We had to quickly come up with another song that's not in English or Polish (the only languages any of us speak well), that they both do a roughly equal amount of vocals on, and that will impress the jury - their choice resulted in a bit of a mess but we got it sorted out.

But they're adults at 18 and much more mature than my 22-year-old gf anyway... they can book bar gigs and make setlists on their own. We're not this disorganized normally.

Quote:

Originally Posted by StuartV

Good luck! Maybe if you play well enough, they'll finally let you graduate!

Heh. I keep telling people I never passed the high school exit exams we have here, which is entirely true as I graduated from high school in Texas.

Plays_For_Dog · #11 02-28-2011, 01:07 PM

Take a nastey fuzz pedal and stomp it one at random.

Ok, maybe not a good idea... Good luck!

pklima · #12 03-01-2011, 09:02 AM

Well, we got second place. I got a small English-Polish dictionary out of it, LOL. It was definitely a more fun way to spend the day than sitting at work. Also, one of the sound techs asked us if we want to play a gig at a bar in late March - perfect.

This was officially filmed by the school, so video is coming. And it is embarrassing - I wore a pink fuzzy bunny hat borrowed from one of the singers.

I<34080 · #13 03-01-2011, 10:57 AM

1) I believe high school talent shows should showcase high school talent ONLY.
2) If the school was anything like the school I used to go to, your band is going to get ridiculed for having a 36 year old in it, a 36 year old with a pink buny hat just makes it that more odd.

pklima · #14 03-01-2011, 11:53 AM

Eh, it's up to the school, and I guess they want to encourage their students to play music with people outside the school. Our singers are in a band with three guys over 30 and a sax player who's in college and have been in that band for over a year. If the school decided they don't want anyone from outside the school (or anyone above high school age) there, that would be OK with me tbh. But they let us play there, and I just find the whole thing slightly absurd.

pklima · #15 05-01-2011, 10:02 AM

Finally got the recordings from this! Took two months but here they are, pink fuzzy bunny hat, the guitarist's ears falling off, and all:

"Beautiful Liar/Umbrella" medley: YouTube - Koj
"Ederlezi" (the Gypsy folk song): YouTube - Koj

Yeah, so that's worth second place and Polish-English dictionaries for everyone!

Pollinator95 · #16 05-01-2011, 03:01 PM

Nice, I think your percussionist stuck his maracca up one of the singers´ a** at one point.

Also, I´m digging your Shakira cover. It sounds nice with the Polish accent, you could have played that.

oniman7 · #17 05-01-2011, 06:03 PM

Your singers could use some more stage presence. Otherwise, great show, and I loved your bass playing on Beautiful Liar.

pklima · #18 05-02-2011, 12:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pollinator95

Nice, I think your percussionist stuck his maracca up one of the singers´ a** at one point.

Also, I´m digging your Shakira cover. It sounds nice with the Polish accent, you could have played that.

Yeah, we could have, but for this we wanted to do songs where both the singers do an approximately equal amount of vocals. In the preliminary round we did something else in Spanish - Carlos Baute's "Colgando en tus manos", though (and also "No Thank You!" from K-On which in spite of the English title is mostly in Japanese).

The percussionist was a sub, but I wouldn't put it past him, haha. He's a very silly guy.

Quote:

Originally Posted by oniman7

Your singers could use some more stage presence. Otherwise, great show, and I loved your bass playing on Beautiful Liar.

Thanks, the singers have been gradually loosening up since our first gig last July when they didn't move an inch. At this rate they should have great stage presence by the time they're 50, haha.