Well, I'll post some more once I figure out what's wrong with my CD burner and can get some tunes on Myspace. For some reason neither my CD player or burner in my Dell will work right. The top drawer (player) isn't even reading that I have a CD/DVD in there and the second drawer (burner) will recognize a disc but when I burn its missing data and when I play a CD/DVD, it skips and pops.
Onto the good stuff: Melvin is an unbelievebably nice, kind, gentle man. He got to the venue (Three20 South) about 5 minutes before we went on, got mobbed by the crowd, made his way to the stage, made a few adjustments to the Hammond and said, Alrighty, let's go! We broke out with Don't Let Go. He immediately got this big smile on his face and kept looking up at Jeff (lead) as if he were looking at Jerry. Jeff was really on this night and took long intricate jams that sounded like stories to me.
We didn't make a set list and just went off the mood the whole night, so I'll put together the setlist later, but some tunes we played were Mission in The Rain, Stop That Train, Get out of my life, Run for the Roses, Sisters & Brothers, How Sweet It Is, Gomorrah, Deal, Sugaree, Midnight Moonlight, Masterpiece and even threw in some Dead crowd-pleasers like Sugar Mag and Shakedown. I'm sure there were more.
You know, I've never played with such a celeb before so I'll admit I was a little numb during the show. Kind of star struck. But I tried to take every thing in. I kept looking around at the band members and could see they were on cloud 9 the whole night. Melvin would really ramp up that Leslie speaker to the point where i could feel it in my feet! Of course, he was perfect tyhe whole night. Monette, who sings the Donna parts, belted out those beautiful backups with Tim (bass) and me(rythym). Melvin went up to her at set break and gushed about her. I know she liked that. Rich (drummer) was on as well. All in all, it was a good night. I think we'll get to do this again! Also, the Three20 talked to us about just having The Pranksters do a monthly show up there which we would LOVE to do!! We had about 150 people there and ususally when we play, we get a few people who will stop by the stage afterwards, but this night, we had gobs of people giving good words, so I think it was a success and really helped the band!
More to come!
Peace,
Gil
