JW - 8/4/2012

Everybody on board again.  Played through the fourth and first sets (most of 'em, anyway), plus the two Bryan Adams' songs, "The Boys are Back in Town", brought back ZZ Top's "Sharp Dressed Man", and tried Journey's "Lights" for the first time.  We're now officially on to return to the Horseshoe Pub 9/29.

We weren't as "on" as the last time, but we did get through a lot.  The harmonies on some established songs still need some work that we're not doing because the idea is that we'll do a vocally focused session later.  I'd rather address this as we get to those songs, with everything else, but that's not the consensus of the group.

"Boys" continues to improve, though it's not truly ready yet.  I'll be surprised if it's not ready for the next show, though.  I'm sure the Bryan Adams songs will be in.  "Lights" is simple enough.  We had to drop the key quite a bit, and need to work out the harmonies, but we made a decent start on it.

We're planning on adding Queen's "Fat Bottomed Girls", after we played around with it at practice.  Doesn't sound that difficult, apart from working on the harmonies.

We haven't been playing "I'm a Man" the last couple of practices, but I think it's because Dale wants to work more on the percussion parts.  Should be easy once he gets that down.

I've learned the bass parts for Bruce Springsteen's "Fire" (a song the band used to do) and Ozzy Osborne's "Crazy Train" on my own.  "Fire" was just for myself, and I'm not sure I should suggest bringing back a song so heavily associated with the band's original bassist, but I do like it.  "Crazy Train" is primarily because Keith was playing around with it at the previous practice, and I like it.  I'll also teach myself to sing lead on both of them, just for practice purposes.

Sounds as though we'll have plenty of new material for that next show.  Very happy about that!  I'd like to start working some of the other sidelined songs back into the mix, but I don't think Dale is comfortable enough yet that we have the core list down as well as we should.  There are several songs where I agree with him, though I'd focus more on some of the harmony issues if it were up to me.  We'll be okay with the harmonies; it's just more important to me than to most of the others.

We're almost certainly going to not have practice next week due to scheduling issues with multiple band members on vacation.  I'd like to sit it with the Splunge guys next weekend if that's the case, just for a bit of practice (especially singing lead) and to enjoy their company again.  They still haven't replaced me, and have made clear that I'm welcome to drop in, though they know there is no way I'm coming back permanently.