A while ago, some people I had played carols at a Christmas dinner for homeless people asked me if I'm free on Saturday April 11 because they have a thing in this restored Renaissance villa, playing old Polish hits. I'm like, fine, I have time. Playing some old Polish hits for senior citizens to sing along to. Well, that's not great as I was in Texas for 17 years and don't know those songs from having heard them when they were current, but doable if we have charts and can rehearse a few times. They wanted a bass, I can do that. I ask how many rehearsals we're doing and they say it's not that serious. Well, we did manage to rehearse on Friday without everybody there and with the chords for only about 1/3 the 60-odd songs charted out, but nobody knew how many songs we'd need because we might just play for a half hour or maybe two hours. So we show up Saturday around 3 PM to set up and start at 4 PM. First it turns out it's not the Renaissance villa, it's the smaller building next to it. I had thought about taking pictures in front of the villa, but also turns out it's currently covered in scaffolding. Then it turns out we were expected to start at 3 PM. Then it turns out there's no violinist who was supposedly going to be there, but one of the guitarists brought a cajon he was planning to play sometimes. It turned out that the cajon mostly got played by another guitarist's son who looked to be around 9 years old. But they set up the laptop with the lyrics on a big TV and we start around 3:45.
So it was fun, nobody minded that we didn't really know the songs really or that I played some old rock hits with a generic Afro-Cuban groove because I vaguely remembered the vocal from having heard it as a kid but had zero memory of what the bassline sounded like. We got mulled wine and got fed during the break - as it turned out, the seniors could have gotten a room in the main villa, no problem at all, but the smaller building has an available kitchen and some of them made sandwiches and stuff. And my parents even managed to wander in during the break. Then after around 2 hours from when we started, we kinda ran out of songs, people started leaving, and things just kinda ended.
And they want us to do this again May 2. Might be better prepared, but tbh I think I'll be too busy late April/early May... but it was fun and sometimes it's nice to do something nice for maybe around 20 people.
So it was fun, nobody minded that we didn't really know the songs really or that I played some old rock hits with a generic Afro-Cuban groove because I vaguely remembered the vocal from having heard it as a kid but had zero memory of what the bassline sounded like. We got mulled wine and got fed during the break - as it turned out, the seniors could have gotten a room in the main villa, no problem at all, but the smaller building has an available kitchen and some of them made sandwiches and stuff. And my parents even managed to wander in during the break. Then after around 2 hours from when we started, we kinda ran out of songs, people started leaving, and things just kinda ended.
And they want us to do this again May 2. Might be better prepared, but tbh I think I'll be too busy late April/early May... but it was fun and sometimes it's nice to do something nice for maybe around 20 people.
