Over 50 ?

You are probably wondering if we made our goal of playing over 50 tunes in one night. Well as you know since half the band is now "over 50" our plan was to play over 50 classic rock tunes. We had our plan etched out in stone. 4 sets of 13 songs each set for a total of 52 !!!! We knew it was going to be a very cold weekend and since we have played the Shortstop many times we knew that the "load in" sometimes could be challenging. Normally we show up at 6:30 right during the dinner hour, prop the door open, haul our gear, (usually pissing off the dinner crowd if it is cold out) set everything up, do a quick sound check and before you know it off we go. We usually start on time but there is no room for error which makes some of us cranky. (well the bass player for sure) This gig we showed up at 3:00 hoping not to impact as many diners. Of course when we got there there were 3 tables of customers, of course sitting right where we were to load in playing the video game by the door. Thankfully they were VERY nice and took a 15 minute break from the game to allow us to trudge in with the gear. They were nice enough to even hold the door open for us ! There was some good natured ribbing of course like "shut the f%&$ ing door !! ) Once we got all our stuff loaded in, it was time to deal with the 15 or so extra bar stools stashed in the area we are to set up. There really was no place for them anywhere so they kind of got "integrated" in with the rest of the tables and chairs. At least one waitress later was heard to say" where did all these stupid chairs come from". Hey at least they were out of our way ! We had one last trip back to Kingers to get our guitars and our Lava Lords banner and got some more heat (good natured ribbing) from Kingers son Blake who was having some buddies over to do what teenagers do.... that is online gaming. They had three TV's and cables everywhere hooked to the Internet and of course we were "old goats stomping on there stuff".... I guess that's all part of the "rock star mode" taking abuse from everyone everywhere you go....So back to the bar, had our stuff set up, plenty of time to eat a burger, fine tune our gear, tune up, review lyrics, review set list, schmooze with bar patrons, Mill About Smartly, and mentally prepare for the evening. We started exactly at 8:00....Our first two sets went off without a hitch. First set EXACTLY 1 hour 2 minutes, 2o minute break, 2nd set EXACTLY 1 hour, took another 20 minute break. The first two sets ROCKED ! Every song started / ended exactly the way we wanted them to. We were on fire. We were MOLTEN LAVA !! WE ROCKED ! We did however have Mr Drunk Heckler Guy in our face before we were even halfway throught the first song. "When are you going to play something good"? "Do you remember me, I'm (insert dickheads name here)" "Hey did you hear Rod Stewart died today"? "Play something good" while extending his paw to get a handshake. Sheesh - Hey Dumb$hit can't you see we JUST STARTED...Can't you see I am trying to play a F$@#^ing instrument here and it's pretty hard to shake your paw !!! This went on almost the whole night. The only time he wasn't heckling us was when he was heckling the women in the crowd....that's another entire story there folks.....Grrrrrr.....God bless him anyway, he's prolly a nice guy when he ain't Mr Drunk Heckler Guy. Overall the night was FANTASTIC. There is NO DANCE floor at the 'Stop but WE HAD DANCERS !! and POLE DANCERS !! Ray the owner of the bar jumped onstage to help us sing some Alice Cooper and later when we did Allright Now by Free...Normally we frown on "stage crashers" but hey he is the one writing the check and of course the crowd loved it. The place was packed as usual. By the end of the night we were pretty gassed and it ended up 1:00 AM as we finished our 50th SONG. We could have done the last two on the set list but decided that 50 after all is a good number and we cashed in our chips. So the reality of it was we did not play OVER 50 songs !!! At the end of the night when we packing up our stuff we had Mr Very Drunk Very Large Guy stumble onstage, knocking over every thing in site including Lava Lamps, mic stands and such but fortunately nothing got broke this time and he did not get hurt. (two gigs ago we lost a Lava Lamp that was sent crashing to the floor...bet that was fun to clean up) Thanks to ALL of our friends, neighbors and co workers who came out to support us. YOU ROCK!!