What's Up Lounge
Mankato, Minn.
Set:
| Damn the Man | Poet (Who Didn't Know It) | M'Lady | Last Night | Good Vibes | Clone You | Casanova (jam) | Aphrodite | Found My Boogie | I'm a Bad MammaJamma (Who Works at Wendy's) | Golden Girls Theme [Andrew Gold] | Chosen Ones |
Tonight we returned to the What's Up in Mankato for reunion celebration of sorts. Apparently, a few years ago there was a bar in Mankato called the Albatross or the 'Tross. Tonight was a reunion of people that worked there and loved to hang out there. Leep 27 was a band that used to play there regularly back in the day, and though they haven't been doing much lately, they reunited for this occasion. Nick had been a part of that whole scene and we were invited to play on this bill. So there we went.
At first I (tony) felt kind of odd, myself. It seemed like a sort of "family" affair that I had not been a part of. But everyone made us feel welcome. We had a couple drinks with some folks before the show and visited a bit and it was all good. When we went up to play, however, it was discovered that the stage lights were out. We had thought they were just down pre-show, but they were actually out. The sound guy and another worker man began trying to solve the problem, but we said we were fine just playing the dark while they worked on it. We didn't though. We each took another round with the restroom and grabbed another beverage and by the time that happened, we were ready to roll.
The show started a bit low. Obviously, no one there knew us, so most folks were just visiting amongst themselves, which was obviously fine. But that didn't stop us from putting on a good show, even if there was absolutely no applause between songs. Because we're professionals, dang it!
We had the burden of announcing some sad news tonight. Comedienne and actress Bea Arthur passed away this morning. So in celebration of her life and commemoration of her passing, we played the Golden Girls theme tonight. Nick had never played it with us before, but he's a pro so he faked it for the sake of common good. It's a good thing we did play it, too, because aside from "Found My Boogie" and "Bad MammaJamma" this seemed to be the thing that grabbed everyone's attention and get them up to the stage.
It's too bad that once we had everyone's attention, we went and bungled up "Chosen Ones". And bungle it we did. We don't know if it was the tone on Anthony's guitar or the monitor balance or what, but when he starts the song with only his guitar, we could hear no definition in the sixteenth notes. It was just one big "bla" sound. So we didn't do to well starting it out. It was actually a disaster. I even considered just stopping and restarting, but then it somehow jumped back on track. Yikes.
At any rate, there probably weren't many new Junebug fans born tonight, but we had fun and kicked butt, regardless of any circumstances.
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