I’m a rational guy, so I understand that fate is chance taken personally (thanks, Chip Denman!).

Last night’s show was:

a. one of our finest

and

2. one of the worst

First, some background…

Reasons for playing bass (another list!!):

• only four strings
• only use one or two of them if playing correctly
• no need bringing lots of stuff like guitar players, drummers or (deep breath) keyboard players.
• merely requires bass and an amp. (maybe a tuner if you want to look cool)
• get to say “Yeah, I’m in a band, baby.”
• can look cool if worn low enough
• not keyboards
• easily call mistake “solo”
• can be self deprecating
• makes post-modernism simple

Guitarists, drummers and (deep breath) keyboard players have all these little things they have to bring, set up, and worry about. Plus, guitarists can break strings. As a matter of fact, that’s all they do. They break strings constantly. It’s what guitar players do when a song is coming up they’re not familiar with. They break a string so they have to use another guitar or change a string before the song; then they can blame their inferior playing on the instrument or the string they just changed. “Man, the action on my back up guitar isn’t as good as my main axe… I need to take it to Matty… Damn…”

We bassists never break strings. Plus, we only have to change them when we get an extra 40 bucks which, because we play bass, is annually.

Coincidentally, I got some rockin pink strings earlier this year as a birthday gift. (no way would I buy them) I thought they’d go nicely with the fame and crowds of 50 or more purchasing 3 drinks a piece that came with playing On The Rox. Plus, it had been about six months since changing strings.

You can probably see where this is going, eh? (No, i’m not Corey Hardt from Canaduh.)

I broke a string last night during Jesse’s Girl. And not just any string. The big string at the top of my bass that I touch most. I just looked it up on the internet and it is the “E” string.

I do have an extra set of strings like I read about, but I took that out and put it on my desk at home when I put the packet of batteries in my little case where I have all my important stuff for gigs like batteries, picks, earplugs, condoms, syringes, tubing, smelling salts, spoons, candles, matches, taser, and such.

By the time I realized that I could tune the remaining three strings down to where I needed them to be, Feldstein was already in the process of saving the day by getting his mom to pick him up and take him home to get the bass someone sold him for drug money.

So we took a nearly half hour break. Fortunately, it was only two songs away from where we usually take our 15 minute heroin smoking break.

But…

During that time, I blew a fuse on my amp. A fuse I always look at when my wife is loading up my car and think “You know, I should really have a back up fuse in case that blows…” Yeah. So now, my bass amp wasn’t working. This was in addition to my wireless being done and having no batteries because I’d given the last one to, well, someone else.

Our awesome sound guy/parole officer, Corin “Corky” Nemesis, made magic happen and plugged me in to the main board the way he’d done with Feldstein when his amp died a while back.

Feldstein’s mom dropped him off with the bass (an excellent playing and sounding Fender, I might add) and we started up again.

We had great singers and a great crowd and they were contributing quite a bit to the Rehab Fund jar we have up in front of us. (We’re trying to save up enough to send one of us to rehab… he will remain nameless, except to say that his first name rhymes with “story”, last name rhymes with “shart” and the instrument he plays rhymes with “crumbs”).

Everything that could have gone wrong went wrong you say?

No!

Then the power began cutting out. We began blowing out the breakers at the Happy Ending (where we play every Wednesday night at 9pm. 7038 Sunset Blvd., just east of LaBerea.) and one could only hear the dulcet tones of Hardts drums, some nearly a cappella singing and Feldsteins guitar, which was apparently on the one breaker that we didn’t blow… go figure. But it was in the dark.

Nearly as dark as our future.

It was a perfect storm. I’M A SWORD BOAT CAPTAIN!^*

Regardless, the crowd (way more than 50 ordering more than an average of 3 each, easily) stuck by our sides and had a tremendous time. We were lucky to get great singers who chose great songs and everyone had fun.

People who come to Coreyoke are the finest people we’ve ever seen at our shows.

What?

Dream a little dream and, as always,

COREY ON!!!

^*It’s a fairly obtuse reference but not that difficult.