Recap of Last Night's Scary Robots Rehearsal

We had Scary Robots rehearsal at 8 and, overall, I was happy with how we sounded. It was a work session as we spent a lot of time working hard to nail the ending of "Saturday Night". The fact that we were now working on the ending of the song is kind of funny - we haven't actually made it through to the end of that song as many times as you'd think for it being on our list!

We also talked about playing our first gig in August and some logistics of that as well as confirming we are not going to rehearse this coming Friday (Joe is going to Chicago for his mother's 90th birthday party / Matthew has out of town guests). I think this actually will work out good for me. We still got our 'weekly quota' fulfilled because we rehearsed last night. There was a good conversation about a couple of other gigs - even though after checking the calendar when I got home, I can't commit to one of them - and the need for us to just go out and play in front of people. There was talk of playing in a backyard on a cement pad that is being poured for a basketball court.

Playing in front of people is increasingly shaping up to being a task that we need to complete. I think we are getting serious about finding the best way to complete it. We have been rehearsing fairly regularly for about a year. Matthew pointed out that we could do a hour now (I think he used the adjective "sloppy") and that with our regular rehearsals, by August, we would be even more polished. I am totally on-board with that.

Personally, I have some things I need to work on:

• Practicing. I played the Yamaha set for a solid 1/2 hour prior to leaving for rehearsal last night. I think the electronic set is really good for loosening up the muscles. I also took 600 mg of ibuprofen before I left because, after 30 straight minutes of playing, I could feel my shoulders tensing up. I need to get myself to the peak of my drumming potential. I need to be able to play the songs on our set list and, frankly, be able to play even more in case we have the time remaining in our time slot.

Right now, there are three songs on our list that I need to continue to internalize and the best way to do that is to spend time on the Yamaha set on a nightly basis. The fact remains that my time is not a metronome anymore. As the drummer, it's my duty and responsibility to nail the tempo and keep it consistent. That is an issue with these songs:

1. "Saturday Night"
• This song is fast and my endurance is challenged. I talk about this song being at the beginning of a set because it's a hard song for me to play. We haven't pounded through it enough times for me to settle on when I'm going to nail the snare on 2 and 4 and when I'm going to nail the snare on 1, 2 3, 4.  I simply need to spend more time with it
2. "American Girl" 
• While I can play it better than when we started to polish the tune, it's still very mechanical when I play. Without listening to the recording from last night, I think I was decent. It's not especially a 'fun' song for me to play. I can now play the drum beat and hit the open hi-hat on the 3 of the second bar in the 2 bar phrase. At the same time, if I am not concentrating 'really hard', I don't play it correctly. Though I am not in the same league as Metallica's Lars Ulrich, I remember reading an interview with Ulrich where he talked about playing their complicated parts when they would play songs from the "And Justice for All" release in concert. He described those songs with the complicated parts as not being as fun to play because he had to concentrate instead of relying on the 'feel' of the song. Looking back on this idea, it makes sense that their next release was the "Black" album, which were definitely more straight-forward songs than what they had done on the "Justice" release. This relates to me because I like playing "Break Up Song" and "What I Like About You" - two of the simpler songs on our list - more than "American Girl."
3. "Cheap Sunglasses" 
• continues to have me baffled. Back in 1999 / 2000, when I was in "Free Beer" with Steve on guitar  / vocals, Ralph on bass / vocals, and Jon on guitar / vocals, we would play this tune and it had a much different feel and groove. I know that Brian Guitar, Joe, and Matthew are different musicians - totally get it - but I just can't put my finger on what is so different between the way the song was played then and the way the song is played now. I am convinced I need to listen to our rehearsal recording from last night as well as going back to the recording of the Free Beer version and pick apart the differences.

Songs we did at rehearsal - though not in order:

1. Break Up Song
2. Saturday Night
3. For What It's Worth
4. Sunshine of Your Love
5. American Girl
6. Rocking in the Free World
7. Cheap Sunglasses
8. What I Like About You
9. Dead Flowers
10. Lonely Boy
11. Sweet Jane

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Songs we didn't do that are on our list:

12. Hey Joe
13. Big River
14. Stuck in the Middle
15. Key to the Highway
16. Foghat