The Penultimate Playtime of GET THERE!

Wow, we feel like a band. It's actually amazing how quickly things come together. I still hate the fucking Journey song, but man do we have that crap together. We sound in sync with each other and we are looking at one another for cues and actually listening which took us much longer when we were trying to do Message of Love. The band is actually functioning as a whole and that is really exciting me, especially because we worked on a song that I can actually stand. We started learning Baba O'Reilly by The Who (whom I actually really like and kind of grew up with because of my uncles) which from the start sounded much better than we would have been just weeks before. There is a definite jump in the skill level from all of us. I'm associating the notes better, Bobby is actually sometimes tuning down and letting others take the lead when he has no idea what he is doing. Alex is really jumping on the drum beats and getting into it. I can stand there and watch his face light up when we speed up. Ellen is more confidant. The first few times when she was playing Sax no one could hear her, admittedly we have turned our volume down but man is that girl wailing the notes out now. Doug seems to be getting better at improvising. It's been a lot of work learning for him to play guitar, I remember last year him performing at out lunch break, he was meek-ish and playing his notes by the book but now he is so confident and when he takes his solos there is real feeling in them. I personally like his solos the best. They sound much more smooth and effortless that they just work. I think this workshop although awkward at first has really become a growing experience for all of us, not just as musicians but as people learning to interact with one another. When someone is too loud and we tell them, they turn down without argument, sometimes there is even a "Thanks I didn't realize" or "Oh wow, that worked now I can hear better. None of us sit anymore, well, besides Katz but I don't see how you could wail on the bass drum and high hat without sitting. We look at each other, move around so that we can hear each other, this is really turning out to be something successful. I can't believe how I used to hate this and it ending on a note where I kind of wish I would be going back down to the community center on Tuesday to see Freddie walk in as we are setting up out instruments to dive into another one of his lessons.

Well, one more day, here we go. GET THERE!