Five Person Splunge - Now With Alcohol

Mouseketeer roll call: Jason, Nick, Steph, Jared, and yours truly. Everybody present went out to see other bands in various combinations this weekend, some combinations more alcohol-soaked than others, with some unfortunate impact on the Sunday session. I wasn't personally among the heavier drinkers (one cup of beer from a pitcher on Friday night), but had problems of my own due to serious allergy issues this past week seriously messing with my voice. So, on the downside, we weren't at our best sounding on the whole. On the plus side, the excursions seemed to bring some combinations of people closer together personally, which should be a Good Thing in the long haul.

We got through almost the entire song list, even with slowing down to work out details on most of the songs. The songs we didn't get to were, once again, songs that one guitar player or another hadn't yet worked out well enough to function, and I even played guitar again on a couple to enable us to play them so Jason or Steph could work on one part or another. I've got to take some of the blame for our difficulty in getting songs down as a group, because I learn fairly quickly, but the others don't have my experience, and I suspect that at least part of the problem is that I've thrown too much at them too fast. We've cut back on adding new songs, only adding "My Boyfriend's Back" for this session. Virtually every song is steadily getting better, yet virtually every song retains a few rough edges, which I'm finding frustrating.

One thing that I know slowed us down is that the other two guitar players had been relying on Sal for lead guitar parts and some guitar cues, and since he hasn't been able to make the last couple of sessions, other members have had to pick up lead guitar parts or new cues for transitions, causing us to step back on things we'd previously had down. There's really no reason for me to be impatient, as nobody is chomping at the bit to get in front of an audience. I'm getting a little bored of going over the same songs repeatedly and still not getting them quite right, though.