Jameson

It was about 3 months ago when good buddy Edesel made his annual announcement of gathering the gang for his August birthday party/jamming. To be honest, I am always stressed by this as it requires us to study a number of songs to play in time for August.

Now this should be easy to do ---if I had the time. It was difficult to juggle this between family, work, and run/bike training so I had to fit it during the only free time I had left: lunch breaks and late nights.

I prepared for the inevitable list of Beatles/Metallica/Megadeth songs (Paul McCartney was a bad ass in his bass playing, mind you) but I was surprised/glad that Edesel toned it down this year with Eraserheads, Nirvana, and a TheCure song ("Just Like Heaven") which eased me up a bit (a couple of Beatles songs were still in the mix so that's still a challenge).

I concentrated on the EHeads and Nirvana songs during my free time with the hope that the Beatles songs won't be played (it would depend on John, another member of the band who loves Beatles songs, if he will be able to come. The Beatles set list will be scrapped if he didn't).

I relied heavily on ultimate-guitar.com (good thing we have this these days vs tablature printouts of old), and a mini-amp I bought from Lazada.com to spice up the practicing.

By the time we jammed a week before the party, I was ready ---except for the Beatles songs which I HAVEN'T started any of it yet. 😆

We played well at the studio in BF, thanks to a bottle of Jameson which Marlon, one of our drummers, brought in much to the (drunken) delight of Pedro, our other drummer. Hahaha...


D- DAY

To cap it all off, last night was a success for everyone. I only felt a tinge of nervousness as it was only a small crowd (roughly 30-40) attending the party but they applauded our music playing nonetheless.

Adding to the confidence was that John (unfortunate for him but fortunate for me) was MIA, which meant no Beatles songs for that night. Whew!

I enjoyed playing live tbh and I hope to do it again ---but not anytime soon as I would like to have my free time back. 😆


HANDOVER

As a post note to this, Lucas my eldest, now 12, decided with his friends who attended the party to play Mundo by IV of Spades then and there. He got my bass guitar and was able to play the 2-chord song (he said it was only 2 chords so it was supposed to be a synch until the latter part when he discovered there were more chords there hahaha) along with his friends ---not perfectly but with confidence of a real band. Hehehe...

I guess this would be a good time to teach him to play the bass, as this'll be a good time to pass him the torch for future parties and jammings to come.