Saturna

this weekend held more activity than is probably healthy for a person. friday night i drank too much espresso too late, and really cleaned the house. i am talking really scrubbed some stuff, not that you can tell so much now, but i wanted to start off clean.

saturday jah isaac and i met tony, melanie, logan, and vega at the CYFest so that the boys could play in the moonbounces. we got tickets and they took their shoes off, got in, and then promptly got right back out. it was a little too much for them. if it had just been the two of them in there, i think they would have had a blast, but there were tons of kids in there acting crazy. we let them play other games and they got some little prizes for those. it was well over for them by then, so i headed out to take jah isaac to my dad's.

immediately he was busy on the treehouse, slide, swing, sandbox, and seesaw in my dad's back yard. he barely stopped to say goodbye to me once i had unloaded what looked like enough stuff to last a month. dad seemed excited and i went on back to the festival.

it was enjoyable to be an adult amongst other adults for an afternoon. i bought some new nice pottery coffee cups, got a ten minute chair massage, and listened to lots of varied music. then i headed home, showered, got my records and headed to dish to eat before my set.

dish turned out to be a nightmare and havoc on me and probably the ears of those listening on my broadcast. i played for a while and then when i finally stepped off to get a glass of water from the bar, the record that was playing skipped all over the place, bad, repeated skips. i ran back over, put on another, and cursed myself for buying a used record that i had not triple checked for skips. then i went to cue up the next record, and the needle slid across the vinyl.

at this point i had to put on a cd, go down into the basement, move a bunch of amps and random stuff off of the old stored turntables, move them out, retrieve the needles, go back upstairs and try again. in the meantime, my dad had called and the little one was upset, saying "mama, nurse" over and over and over. so then commenced the many phone calls to jason and my mom and check back calls. i kept turning down the booth monitor so that i could hear the voices on the phone, and then hurrying back to mix. and nearly every time, i would forget to turn my monitor back up, so i was basically mixing in an echo chamber. so sorry if you happened to be listening and it hurt your ears.

all of this was not boding well for my second gig, after farina, except that i kept telling myself that if it had to happen, better earlier than later in front of hundreds of folks. david let me leave an hour early because it was dead, and i headed downtown. i had to carry all of my stuff, including computer and two bags of records, three blocks downtown, but i was not about to leave any of it in the car. it is not pretty downtown these days.

i walked in and the place was packed, packed! at that point i realized i was shaking like a leaf, from a combo of nerves and the four shots of espresso i drank at dish. my dad could not get jah isaac to bed so jason had to leave and go pick him up at 2am. it was bummer he had to leave but i did feel much relieved that he would be with his daddy and be able to calm down and go to sleep.

a lot of people were seemingly amazed that i was willing to go on after farina, and it didnt really hit me until i got there what a hotseat i was in. it truly took me an hour and 45 minutes to calm down, but i finally relaxed and got into it about fifteen minutes before i played. he had dropped down to acid jazz tempo near the end, but brought it back up to house around 124, so i was a little more confident that i could slide in there.

i would say a lot of what helped me were my many friends who were there, all of whom expressed supreme confidence in me. that really, really helped, and i feel as if i was bouyed up, and thank you all for that. i played my favorite new record first, by kenny dixon jr., and just did my own thing from there... it honestly is the best thing for any creative person to do. do what you are into, and people will get into it, and you will have fun. the dancefloor didnt immediately disappear, lots of people stayed to dance, and that made me very happy - i don't play for dancefloors much, and that was definitely the largest ones i have had in several years.

so, it was a good day, it was even good to have reason to be nervous, work through it, and have a good time. i want to do that some more, it is so much fun to me, looking out and seeing people getting down with smiles on their faces.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 18th, 2005 at 9:34 pm and is filed under Journal, Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.