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WEDNESDAY
August 12, 1998
It All Began With... The kids and I had a nice breakfast of cereal, milk and scrambled eggs. My eldest son made the eggs, which turned out to be pretty good for a 9 year old chef. I spent some time with my kids this morning, riding our bikes in and around the neighborhood. When it started to get too hot we all went inside to escape the heat. I worked on updating my websites for a little bit. I called my wife at her work and we chatted for a bit. And let her know that I had to gig at 2pm for this TV shoot. On To The Television Shoot Dropped the kids off at their aunt's. Made the commute to the television studio. Loaded in at an industrial / business district in the Sorrento Valley area. I was surprised to find a television studio in this area, but then again, from my recent experience in the TV business, and especially in California, I guess you can find television studios just about any old place. Loaded into a convenient side door on the first floor of this large green, all glass building, which looked new and had waterfalls out in the front area. I guess the thing about these TV shoots is that there's a lot of time where everyone's waiting around, hanging out and eating food / snacks provided by management. I set up my drums in the main studio area, which was just this stage area painted all blue with a blue background and a blue floorl--- basically blue all over. I noticed on the monitor that the stage area was digitally overlayed with a nice shot of some stage, which I later found out was shot in one of the tall buildings in downtown San Diego. So the band was going to be digitally placed into this scanned stage area. I thought this was a nice digital effect! The stage in the monitor was very similar to, say, Jay Leno's or Letterman's stage setup. It was incredible how it really looked like we were at this place when we weren't. Once we got dressed into our zoot suits, we started filming all the takes the band was going to be in. It was basically all us, and they were going to shoot as much as possible and keep us there, until they had enough footage in which they were satisfied they had taken enough. What got me was the fact that time flew! I mean, after take after take after take, we all started to get hungry and tired. Being in a studio for hours is kind of rough, with all the hot lights and all. After a while, our director ordered us some pizzas and salads. He was very concerned about our being able to get to the next gig, and that was very considerate on his part. But I know, had we not had that gig, we probably would have kept shooting into the wee hours of the morning. This guy was pretty driven! After the shoot, we quickly packed our stuff and made the commute south to Pacific Beach to play at Schooner's. On To Tonight's Show! Schooner's was packed tonight, and it was extremely hot inside. I heard the echo of the swing dance instructor as he was talking through the mike as I was parking my minivan. I was extremely pissed off. It had been a long grueling day at the TV studio. Don't ever let anybody tell you that the TV business is all fun and games. It's hard, hard work and we were all exhausted afterwards. Looking back, there were several scenes that we're shot and we had to do all these over, several times. Even if the director said it was a great take, we went and did it again! Over and over again. Not just because we had to get it right, but because we simply had to have several takes as a general rule of thumb, I guess so the editors have a lot to play with. To Recap The Day's Events... The Schooner's gig went better than I had expected. I expected all of us to be damned tired towards the end, and my suspicions proved to be correct. Some of us WERE getting tired with the exception of ME! I couldn't believe I had the energy I did. I guess I was able to muster up more adrenaline for this show, but afterwards, after the show was finally over. I still wasn't tired! As a matter of fact, I loaded the minivan very quickly and went home to get on the Internet to surf and update my websites for at least a couple more hours before finally crashing. Wow! CDs Played Today:
Frank Sinatra - September Of My Years Keith Jarrett - The Trio - Live In Norway Keith Jarrett - Lausanne-Bremen The Greatest Jazz You've Ever Heard!
There's Something About Mary
Web Pages That Suck! The Internet
Schooner's - 9:30PM to 12:00 Midnight |
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