JW - 4/29/12

Turns out that Bill's vocal problems weren't entirely due to his performance last weekend; he had also picked up a nasty sinus infection.  He was still struggling with it for this practice, but not as badly as I'd expected.

We played through most of our third and fourth sets, which took longer than it should have.  Sounded good for the most part, but not as much of an upgrade over the second set as I thought it would be.  We're still making a lot of goofy little mistakes that we probably shouldn't be.  I think everybody is getting a little bored and getting sloppy because of it.  We tried to record the session for potential demo material, but the recording didn't take for technical reasons, even if the performances had been good.

Band leader Dale raised the possibility of our playing in a battle of the bands.  Most of us weren't thrilled with the idea for several reasons, in spite of the fact that first prize was fairly impressive as these things go.  The consenus was that it wasn't worth hanging around all day waiting to play a few songs.  However, in the absence of other work, there seemed to be some agreement on playing a couple of open mike nights to build support for when we actually get out, as well as getting some feedback on what we're already doing.

Played the Ashbory bass on a few more songs this time, including "Kryptonite" and "Tush".  There's a particular sound I'm getting on that bass that works well with some of the JW material.  That's three songs now, and I've been thinking I wanted to hit four before bothering to bring the "baby bass" when we play out.  I have one more in mind, but I think it'll be controversial with my bandmates.

I really think we need a goal in sight to pick up band morale and focus.  Open mike nights aren't usually my idea of fun, but playing a few of those might help.  I'd expected us to have something scheduled by now, even if we hadn't actually played anywhere yet.  We aren't going to able to practice for the next two weekends, which won't help, either, though we're going to sneak a Wednesday night in early next month.  I hope we can get this thing off the ground soon.