I really have to hurry up and get current on my gig blog posts. The longer it takes for me to blog about any one gig, the more chances there is for me to forget what actually happened during that gig. This post is about what essentially was my last experience with the Jack Daniels' JD Set Philippines tour for the year. This one was set in November 11, 2011 (yes, 11-11-11) in Casa Nami.
(All pictures in this post belong to Jack Daniel's Philippines.)
I dragged my good friend Joseph along with me to this gig. He's gotten to be a really good friend this past year. And I can safely say he's my only friend that I look to hang with on any given weekend. We got there relatively early than the rest of my band. My favorite band out of the JD Set 7 bands, Paramita was playing when we arrived. The Jack Daniel's organizers greeted me as I stepped in Casa Nami, and offered to bring in the band's complimentary bottle. I politely refused and said I'd rather wait for the rest of the band to arrive before hitting that bottle. Otherwise, it might very well be half empty by the time my bandmates got there.
So I headed over to the bar and kept ordering Jack Cokes for myself and Joseph. Since we weren't allowed to vote for ourselves for the entire span of the JD Set competitions, I just poured my votes into Paramita instead. That band with its rather large following ironically doesn't do well in terms of event votes. That's probably because the demographic of their fan base really can't afford to spend a lot of money on expensive Jack Daniel's drinks. Knowing this, I wanted to support my friends (since I know these guys from my other band SunDownMuse playing Blaster production events).
My bandmates arrived about an hour or so later. I found out from Waxie that a good number of our horn players couldn't make it to the gig. So we essentially only had 1 trumpet player and 1 sax player. The two horn players just had to adjust.
I do remember seeing a group of guys that were from my batch back in college. They used to be basketball heads and looked down on me for being such a geek. It's just funny because now they're just in Casa Nami to get drunk and I'm actually playing at this event. What sweet revenge without even doing anything. LOL!
Whatever else happened from when I got to Casa Nami and when it was our turn to play was largely a blur. I know I just kept hanging out at the smoking area and kept drinking with Joseph. We were waiting for Fritz, our drummer, to come in from his gig with Snafu at a different venue. And while I was sharing with Waxie in our frustration that Fritz was taking so long to get to Casa Nami, at a certain point I just shrugged it off and just enjoyed drinking.
Fritz finally arrived on a full sprint from downstairs. Below are some videos that Joseph took of our set that night.
"I'm In Love Again"
"The Song I Never Finished"
I was particularly proud of my solo during our last song of the set. I still get uber nervous when it's my turn to solo given the cumulative skill of the band. But I think I did pretty well that night. /gives himself a pat of the back
I also like our guitarist's, JR's, solo. He picked up his wine glass of Jack Daniel's and used it as a slide while playing his guitar. The horn players, particularly Enzo stepped it up a notch that night. It was the first time I saw Enzo really pull out how good he really was. Our drummer Fritz and our sax player Fred were awesome as usual. Derek, our bassist, was a barrel of laughs during his solo because he was amusingly copying JR's George Benson-esque/stecato solo-ing. That was hilarious and the crowd loved it too.
Park that gig in the history books of what's been a rollercoaster ride of music for me so far.
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