[Brian Krashpad]

So Sunday night was the first time my main band, Crash Pad, got together in like a year. I put the band "on hiatus" when it got to be more work than fun, for a couple different reasons. First, our drummer. He didn't have a car, so I had to go fetch him and his kit from across town, bring him over to the practice, and then take him home back across town after practice. To make matter worse, he lived in the opposite direction as my house from the practice site.

If he'd been a great drummer with great gear, I might've continued that, but he was so-so in both departments.

So I robbed my side-band drummer and convinced him, at a minimum, to drum for an upcoming CD-release gig that will happen whenever the homeless charity CD, that he and I recorded a song for in November, comes out.

Both the two high school kids I had on rhythm guitar and bass agreed to do that too. They are both kids, but good enough on their respective instruments for the material. The guitarist had announced last year that we should scrap all our material and write all new songs, which was when I pulled the plug. He didn't have any similar comments last night, so maybe he has revised his thinking in that respect.

I had a setlist ready of 7 songs, which may be all we need since the CD-release will probably have way too many bands to begin with. I cut out anything that had been on the last Crash Pad CD of a few years ago.

Anyhow, it went pretty darn good. I was in fairly good voice, especially for not havng sung lead in a year or so, with the exception of one song I let the other guitarist sing, where I sing backing. On that one I was trying to sing in too high a register, and it took me awhile to figure out what I was doing was not going to work, and drop down.

Also, that song reminded me of how I need to lean on the other guitarist to sing out. When we first ran the song, he was singing through his mic, which I had mixed for backing, and I couldn't hear him. So I figured switching mics would fix the problem, since we had been really good about setting a reasonable playing volume, and I had been able to hear my vocals clear as a bell all night.

Still couldn't hear him.

Guess I'll hafta clue the sound person when we play out that s/he'll really need to boost him for that song.

We played for a couple hours, at a very mellow pace. I think we got through a few passes at all but one of the 7 songs. Aside from the obvious learning curve issues (the drummer had only played the one song before, so he was making up his arrangements, and learning where stops and such were), we sounded waaaaaay better than I expected we would. I thought I would screw the chord progressions up a lot more, but only had a couple minor gaffes, and the same was true of the two kids. The bassist in particular sounded downright great, and the drummer made a point to tell him so (as did I).

I played this all practice:



My rig was this head:



Into one of these cabs (angle-front):



Dang that guitar and rig sounded good. The Sovtek through a halfstack is really the perfect combination for Crash Pad, and the P-90's in the Epi sounded boss. I'd meant to switch guitars and also try out this'un in a band sitch:



But I was having so much fun with the Alley Kat I forgot to.



I know some of you were wondering about the Dano, I apologize for forgetting to switch guitars.

As usual, you comments are welcome and encouraged. I also apologize for the lack of band drama, but am hoping the illustrations help in some small part to make up for that.