Of highs and lows

If ever I've hit a low as an amateur musician, this is it. Two vastly contrasting evenings. The christmas party was absolutely crazy! I've not had so much fun in such a long time. It was just pure entertainment, so much so that I felt like I had to be the dancing queen's king. Good food, great company, lots of booze, fun and games, a super DJ, all of which added up to be the best retro party I have been to. When the fun and games were over, most had left, the good food had been cleared, the super DJ decided to belt out some slow tunes to which the great company decided at 3 am that they should add their vocal talents in unison as there was still lots of booze left. By 4am the waiters had had enough, and had surrounded us, albeit subtlely (or not so subtlely, as we noticed), as if to say 'enough!'. We didn't sound all that bad though. When I got home at 4:30am, with 6 bottles of left over booze, I was indeed a happy man. Until I realised I have to be up by 7. At 7:30am the day from hell began, where the night from heaven had ended. By 9 am was at the studio, where the album is in it's last stage of production. By 11 am I was falling asleep, and my attention span was as short as Jehan Mubarak's longest innings. I was craving for some sleep. But it was not to be. I ran home at 2pm, ate, showered, ran out again carrying a 40kg amplifier, my guitar and a man bag of necessities for the gig. We had another drummer playing with us tonight as Jim is out of the country, so I had to run to his house and make sure he was tight with the songs. By 4pm that was all sorted. Got to Rockapoluza 2 as fast as we could. It seemed nice and chilled out. But my confidence was lagging. We hadn't practiced as a band in a while; the bassist hadn't even met drummer-for-the-night properly. To cut a long and horrible story short, when we came up to play we fucked up. It made us sound below amateurish and there's no one else to blame but ourselves. This was the perfect opportunity to dish out some of our music to an audience who had never heard us before. Our song selection was poor, our co-ordination was shit, and we went right after Powercut Circus, probably one of the top 3 alternative bands in town. We really missed Jim this eve. He definitely brings out the best in us, and is the key ingredient to how tight we are as a band. I had a bad day as a guitarist. I kept missing my notes, and my guitar tone was rubbish. Live and learn they say. One thing's for sure; the bitter lesson is that you should never take any gig too lightly. I swear to you now, I will never play another gig without adequate prep. There's too much embarrassment and humiliation involved in fucking up live.