Winter Patriot Community Blog

There's a lot of good stuff there, Plunger. And it's nice to see something from you again too.

Thanks for your kind words, Bob. Unfortunately my project -- a benefit concert -- was plagued by technical and non-technical difficulties, many of which we did not manage to overcome, and I have nothing to link to. From some other angles it went well. We managed to help some people who badly needed help, on a very local level, and it was "fitting and proper" that we did so, as Abe Lincoln would have said.

But it was also entirely "fitting and proper" that the recording equipment broke down during the show, because everything else broke down along the way, including some of the people. For starters, our keyboard wizard, who would have been easily our strongest player and probably our strongest singer, got a sudden and serious illness which nobody has been able to diagnose, and she isn't recovering yet.

She's the only one we're still worried about, but she's not the only one who was sick that night. The sax player was having trouble breathing. One of the other guys was having gastro trouble and hadn't been able to keep any food down for more than a week. And I had done too much rehearsal and too little pampering and two of my fingertips were split open and bled all the way through the set. Not helpful, especially for classical guitar. I was only good for rock and roll, and even then not much good, to tell you the truth. I didn't play well, nor could I have. And equipment trouble kept popping up all over the place, and I couldn't have been less surprised when the guy doing the video said he hadn't actually got anything recorded. It was that kind of a show.

Actually I'm glad I don't have to listen to it again. I'm also glad we didn't do it in a recording studio, because it would have been a big waste of money. Fortunately it wasn't about who played well; it was about doing it at all; it was about getting people together who needed to be together, and some other things too. Fortunately as well, it a VSOP deal; one-time-only, there-and-gone. It was great that we did it, but it's great to be back.