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Tuesday, May 10, 2011

How to pull off a POP Shoppe gig

Let me tell you a story about a gig in Manila that I played solo and came very sooooo unprepared.  It was an Orange And Lemons tribute night for POP Shoppe, a regular monthly production organized by Lilystars Records at Route 196.

Well actually I went to Manila for several reasons.  First was to file some papers for a traffic violation I've committed many years back for driving in EDSA without a seatbelt on (yep I've been quietly driving without a license in Cebu mwahahaha).

The second stop was to watch supposed concert of The Killers.  Yes, that concert that got cancelled.  This was in January 2010.  And for the record, I'm still not happy about the ticket refund.

And since I'll be in Manila for several days, might as well get some fun.

Upon finalizing my flight schedule, I've decided to call my friends at Lilystars and asked if I could play in their gigs.  Tonet and Lui were very accommodating.  They booked me 3 or was it 4 gigs.  Hahaha... I didn't realize I had enough guts to present myself as a singer/performer to them.

And so, the concert got cancelled, fixed my MMDA mess, and ended up at Tonet's place cramming up for the night's gig.

I had to memorize the chords and the words to 'Hey Please'.  Tough.  Seriously.  It was a tough job for me.  I love lyrics and words but memorization is not much my thing.  I always almost flunk history classes back in school.

And so hours passed.  I had to keep myself away from distractions just to keep the words in.  Hours  passed again until gig time.  The crowd was warm and enticing.  The beer was cold.  So many people.  I was having fun.  And this is exactly what a gig should be - fun.

So I did.  I simply let the audience sing the lines.  And this is how I pulled off that one POP Shoppe gig.

I cheated pretty well, huh?

3 comments:

Xiomara Von Glindmeyer said...

I know too well your memorization skills. Ho, ho, ho...Lithium. But still, nice strategy Ian ;-)

Glamazoo said...

hahaha ;) of course xio of course

hapi said...

Hi Ian Zafra, Nice blog! How to add the Glitter Effect Mouse Pointer to your Blog

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