In which I go on stage and utterly fuck up....

Ok, so, now that sobriety has hit, I'll give you a more in depth view of the happenings of last night.

First, I'll say that it wasn't really that bad. It could have been a lot worse. In fact, I've seen a lot worse.

Fucking up on stage is all in the recovery part of it. If you can manage to keep playing something, keep playing anything, you'll be fine.

First things first though. I had to tell the sound guy that I don't actually know how to use any of the knobby things on my guitar.

So I went up to him before I got called up and explained my predicament. I said "This is kind of embarassing, but I don't know how to work any of the knobs on my guitar. It's brand new and I've never had an electric before".

Sound Guy: Well, bring it out, we'll see what we can do

Me: *Hands over guitar*

Sound Guy: Uhmm....

Me: *Blinks*

Sound Guy: Uh... well, now. Do you ... uh...

Me: *Prays he doesn't ask me any technical questions*

Sound Guy: You do know that this is a pretty sweet guitar? Uhm, like, it's a Gibson?

Me: Yeah. I just got it for a present. Pretty neat, huh?

Sound guy: *into the mic* Hey, Other Sound Guy! Get up here and check this out!

Me: *Blinks*

Sound Guys: Whoa. *Look at me.* *Look at guitar*

Me: *Blinks*

In a matter of minutes I had a crowd there admiring Gibby. I felt like snatching her back into my arms and saying "Hey now! Paws off!" But I couldn't very well do that. A couple of the other players came around and looked from the front of the stage.

Then the Sound guy fiddled with my knobs (I only let the cutest sound guys fiddle with my knobs, don't worry) and introduced me.

Then he spent about five minutes introducing my guitar.

The guitar got more attention on stage than I did.

But, as Bylak pointed out to me, getting applause over the guitar is better than not getting any applause at all.

So I started out by playing Scarborough Fair. A beautiful song. If only I had remembered how the last verse went, I would have done fine.

Alas, the lyrics left my head. I stood on stage blankly staring and strumming for a minute, then went back to the first verse over again. Then I gave up when I forgot that verse and stopped playing all together.

Me: Man! I hate forgetting the lyrics in front of a whole crowd of people!

Crowd of people: Polite chuckles.

Next, I did one of my own. I screwed up the lyrics to it as well, but the beauty of screwing up your own lyrics is that no one knows it but you. It's like walking around with no undies on. No one knows it but you.

Then I did Ring of Fire. And when I did that, the Other Sound Guy came up to do something with the sound (Because, you know, that's his job) and I managed to flub mid-line. Seriously. The words just stopped coming out of my mouth. I managed to recover though.

At this point I was feeling pretty flustered. I was also kinda wishing I had taken that shot of Jack my co-worker had offered me. Apparently sobriety doesn't help my playing any.

I finished the song and was thinking fast of what the hell to play next when another co worker hollered out: Hey! Play a song about your brother! (There are many pluses to playing in front of a largely intoxicated crowd. One is that the requests make less and less sense as the night goes on. Another is that they start to forget what a complete and utter mess you're making of yourself. )

So, I played my original called Big Brother. It was well received. Then I played another original and left the stage.

Or, I tried to. The sound guy came up and said to give me some more lovin', which I thought was fine since I like some lovin' as much as the next chick.

Then he held up my guitar, again, and said "And one more round for Amanda's awesome Gibsons semi-hollow body....." And proceeded to spout out more information about my guitar than I'm aware exists.

Who is this guy and why does he know what kind of wood my guitar is made out of?

And the sad thing?

The rounds of applause for the Gibson were louder than the rounds of applause for me!

At any rate, as usual, I had a grand time playing and I still love being on stage. Hey, I'm the youngest in the family: I live to be the centre of attention.

And if my guitar gets to be the centre of attention before me, well, Hell, at least it's something of mine that made it to the centre of attention.

Toonses