Hey, we've now got two gigs under our belts. Thursday night we played at a downtown pub and it actually kind of went well.

To start though, things were a little hairy; marv borrowed a mic but didn't have a cable, so we made a beeline for the music store before it closed at 9pm. We left marv & cf's place at 8:52, caught all the green lights and pulled within a block of the store at 8:58, only to get stuck behind a garbage truck. Marv and cf hopped outta the car and ran over to pick up the cable just under the wire. It was just like a scene in Mission Impossible... well, except there were no cool sound effects, hot chicks, explosions or dastardly villains (unless you count the manager of the music store :-).

Once at the pub, we got set up and were set to start exactly on time, much to my surprise. Our mix of Celtic and newly-acquired pop tunes seemed to work out well. The most well-liked stuff of the night turned out to be "Hey Ya" (go figure), "Sweet Caroline," "Rocky Road to Dublin" (who'd a thunk!), and of course the fiddle tunes. We got paid, the manager said it sounded good, and we got a lot of compliments from friends -- above and beyond the usual obligatory "yeah yeah, you guys were great, see ya!" -- so it sounds like we did alright.

Oh, and half the operatic society was there, so I'm sure that boosted the place's take for the night, which will hopefully get us a return gig. It would be nice to get more experience, and some cash as well... Several of our friends and marv's colleagues from work were there, and Poli too, so I think the support really helped.

Other weird highlights:
* Two girls kept requesting "Ramble On" by Led Zeppelin, so we played it -- not that we knew it or anything. While I could not for the life me remember the words, we sorta managed to figure out the chords and play the music to it while mumbling. :-)
* A friend of marv's got onstage with us at the end of the night and we did "Ice Ice Baby." I'm not kidding.
* A couple of girls in front of the stage talked openly about karaoke upstairs, to our chagrin, but then stated that "no no, we love you guys;" later, they started to walk out of the place, at which point cf blurted out "have fun at karaoke." Hey, they came back though...

Anyway, all in all I think it turned out well. Can't wait for the next one.

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