so the florence in niles was our destination last weekend.  hope everyone had a good time hanging out.  saturday night was packed and lots of people were in costume.  a gal w/a wifebeater on w/plastic huge nipples w/nipplerings sticking out was the winner....go fish.  the place was so packed we couldn't get back up to the stage after we took a break.  sunday was a little bit of a slimmer crowd, everyone was probably hung over or watching the raiders game trying to get a bit of the hair of the dog that bit them to get them going again.  we still had a nice sized crowd.  it's great to see everyone down there as we play there on a regular basis and don't get to see everyone until we play and then all are in their perspective spots in the bar where we see them sit everytime we play.  this was also the last weekend of the barbeque on sundays and we can't wait to see the que master greg next april.  that man cooks some mean grub.  a friend of ours, tony, got up to play some tunes w/us on drums and that was very cool as he has seen us for many years and finally got up there and jammed w/us.  we and the crowd totally dug it as he is a great guy and damn good drummer to boot.  dottie the bar queen is gearing up to do her collections for bikes for underpriviledged kids again this year.  last year she got 101 bikes and is hoping to beat that this year.  if you buy a skull cap for 15 bones the proceeds go to that fund so go purchase one and get a cool cap and the money goes to a more than worthy cause.

So band stuff.  there's alot of things that patrons at bars don't see as far as behind the scenes stuff of a band jamming.  bands don't let fans in on what's right or wrong on stage so i'll give you a little insight as to issues that pop up that affects no one but us primadonna band guys.  playing music is unfortunately a little more than plugging in your amp and cranking it up and blasting it out.  there's P.A.  issues, monitor issues, sound out front issues.  some of the issues you guys might all hear and we don't because our monitors sound different than the mains out front and we can't hear those at all.  case in point.  we have 2 wedge monitors in front of us and this last weekend we included one for our drummer Rich.  this had never been done before and the chords we had were not the correct ones or had gotten messed up and we fixed them but not to thepoint of working correctly.  so here we are playing and rich is the only one who can hear anything and we are in front of him not being able to hear each other as it's so loud.  for a singer it's like trying to sing w/an ipod on 10.  you wind up shouting out of key.  so we got that fixed around the 3rd set on sat night.  as well we were losing power, that's why no wireless mic.  just started unplugging everything that was not necessary so we wouldn't fade in and out.  it's hard to keep your composure when you know something is fucked up but you can't figure it out and you've got people to entertain.  we pulled it off though and i should say with some grace.  when all was said and done we learned some new technical things and will definitely apply them to future gigs.  we always strive not to be just musically good but technically as well because there are alot of good bands w/just bad sound.  people say they sound like shit but really it's their gear and they actually kick ass.  we don't want to be one of those bands so we are always trying to push the fold w/sound and mix.  well there's your behind the scenes of a band blog.  just trying to keep it interesting.  let me know if you have any questions and i'll answer them right here on the blog for all to see.  by the way rich has been w/us 3 years.  sorry rich, time flies.  well all, jason and i are off to see motley crue and aerosmith in vegas this weekend so need to go pack and make sure my camoflage undies are pressed.  keep on rockin, blog more next week.