Hungover w/o Drinking a Drop (Alternate Title: Your Shoes and Socks Don't Match)

My band and I finished up '07 with a New Year's gig in Newport. Both the drummer and I were sick as dogs - he had some kind of stomach bug, while I got clobbered with an upper respiratory infection that clogged my sinuses, throat, lungs and windpipe with gunk (GREAT news for a singer). Still, going into the gig I was pretty excited about the venue and performing on New Year's Eve. It's always a good gig.

'07? Hm. Not so much.

I'll start off by saying the venue itself, the owner and the support staff were top notch. Every person working there was very cool. And, although load in was kind of tough (upstairs with no elevator), the band pulled together and we got the gear in and out in a reasonable manner (again considering no elevator). The band members and the music were both in good spirits.

The kinda sorta issue was the crowd. I have to say, in all my years of performing, I had no answer for the crowd. The average age was early 50s through crypt-keeper, and though we threw every swing and older-ish song at them we knew, I still got criticized for "not playing enough cha-chas!"

Verbatim, by the way.

Now, I have absolutely nothing against cha chas, classic west coast swing, the Charleston or boogie woogie. In fact, we have a few of those in our musical bag of tricks. However, the set list I put together encompassed swing, faux jazz and then soul, R&B and pop from the 60s through the 90s. I mean, we were to open with "Slide" and crank out "Rock and Roll All Night" at midnight for God's sake! So, there I was, tearing through an old "complete" and "updated" song list (which wasn't either), trying to figure out what could work with this crowd.

Ultimately, we resigned ourselves to slow-burn music and accepted the multiple crickets that greeted us at the end of many songs with a sense of humor born from playing countless gigs like this through the years. Uncomfortable? Yes. Unexpected? Definitely. Unparalleled? No way. Unprofessional? Never - we pulled together and pulled it off like a solid cover band does.

Now, a few of the tables there were definitely very nice, friendly and high energy, and that allowed us to bust out some old-school disco and other kind of non-threatening dance music. Still, the room and the night didn't move the way I wanted it to, and that was a bit frustrating and, ultimately, had me shaking my head and thinking of mismatched socks.

Which means? Well, next time I prepare two completely different set lists and the band creates an even BIGGER bag of up tempo dinner music. This type of thing is a challenge, and - once the headache passed - I made up my mind to nail the next "huh? That's the crowd?" gig to the wall.