Another notable difference for our band of musical marriage was the audience, 99% of whom were German. Although, the genre of choice for most German citizens is recycled American music, so the language barrier ceased to exist during sets.
Loads of campers traveled hundreds of miles to camp and dance to the sounds of six bands. We were originally slated as band number five (and felt pretty secure that everyone would be at least six beers in at this point which makes the buddymollys sounds “polished.”)
But, living the life of a rock, er, folk star means being flexible (or is it trashing hotel rooms and evading taxes?) Anyway, our acoustic act was moved to the starting position to make it easier on the sound guys. The sounds guys, however, did not make it easy on us.
I don't feel we can we can complain about sound. Up until that point, our stellar sound systems usually consisted of one microphone to which Jeremy and I sat really really close to catch both of our ukuleles and vocals.
The stage manager threw us on stage after the main act’s sound check and said no sound check was needed for our duo. Come to find out, majority of our set was just that.
During the first three of our six-song set, numerous stagehands walked around, adjusting our mic's and turning various speakers on and off.
Jeremy and I wondered during this time if we were actually playing. No one could hear us, or hear us well. We held conversations behind the microphone and no one blinked an eye.
We then looked out to the audience to see our friend Jeff holding Sky dog just in time to watch her attempt to take the leg off of a drummer in one of the later bands. At that moment it sort of felt like we were in fact the audience members with front row seats to the action. Said drummer was quite displeased by Sky’s attempted assault and let Jeff and the rest of those in attendance know it.
The fourth song of our set seemingly worked out the sound and we did our best to rock. At this time the audience had caught on that we were actually playing and threw in a few hearty applause numbers.
It was over as soon as we felt we had our mojo working and we slinked off stage to collect our free bier. (Payment of the night.)
The rest of the night was divided between playing soccer with the kids, Frisbee, grilling and other “campy” activities.
The music played in the background and ranged from Blues to Jazz to a Ragtime band with pretty impressive harmony.
When songs like “Proud Mary” and “Country Roads” blared threw the speakers, we almost forget we were in Germany.
But listening to “Johnny Be Good” sang with a German accent brought us back to reality.
It also made us giggle …
Was it longer than that drum solo we were held captive to in Prague? The neverending-rest-of-the-band-is-bored-people-are-leaving-but-i-don't-care drum solo? Beacuse if it was, you would deserve a medal for living through two drummers gone wild disasters.
ReplyDeleteI picture you two in a swank hotel room and Jerome gets all p.o.'d about the set you just played, and, whilst mumbling all kinds of things under his breath, "balogne, crud, dagnabit!" runs to the bathroom, and in a fit of interal non-rage annoyance, drops his uke into the half-full bathtub's tepid water and looks up to the ceiling and shouts, "UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUKE!" . . .
ReplyDeletethen he realizes that the uke is floating.
Wish I could have seen the show.