One day before the SAMMIE Awards, Planet X performed at the American River College Theater in Citrus Heights, CA - with Nancy Briggs, Susan Rabin and ARC's on campus Pop band the Funky Monkeys. This gig had been arranged by our friend Eric Chun who teaches at ARC as well as works with ExtremeAudio.com - where we held our CD Release Party/Webcast last month.

Being a college production, this show was being arranged largely by students - not professionals, and as such, was frought with a few -- problems.

First of all, we were scheduled to be the last band, and usually the last group sets their gear up first and everyone else places their equipment in front of them. That wasn't the case here.

I had arrived at early at 3pm, and by that time the gear for the Funky Monkey's - which is a 15 peice band - including 5 vocalist and a horn section, was already in place and took up 2/3rds of the right side of the stage. The plan apparently was to squeeze us into remaining 1/3rd in the far left corner - of course the problem with that was that there would be no way to move out the Grand Piano currently sitting front and center onstage, because all of the gear would be in the way. We thought about putting our gear on a dolly so it could be rolled in and out, but none of dolly's we're big enough for our drum kit, so when the other guys arrived we setup behind Funky Monkey's at mid-stage, which left plenty of room. This position actually placed us behing the second curtain so that our gear wasn't even *visible* while the first groups played.

We actually got a real SOUND-CHECK! (I know... I know... I'm easily amused "little things"!)

We had to rearrange both mics and monitors from the setup that the "Monkey's" we're using - and then remember exactly where everything came from - but we actually had everything sounding pretty decent. In order to prevent the strong natural acoustics of the room - which was designed for unamplified performances from making our amplified sound too overpowering (as it was at our last Crossroads show) we turned our amps inward so that their we're directly facing the audience and used the main house P.A. to supply the sound the audience while we listened exclusively to our amps and vocal monitors (Y'know - the way sound is supposed to be run...) Except for some minor adjustments, we have everything sounding pretty good - and even recorded the soundcheck so that we could make corrections.

This particular performance was part of an entire concert series arranged by the School and attendence was a requirement for music majors. (There's nothing like a semi-captive audience.) In this case there were about 40-50 people in attendance- which certainly wasn't capacity, but then it was still a Tuesday night. Usually to receive credit the students are required to show their instructors their copy of the programs from the performance. Unfortunately, the student assigned to make the programs - didn't show up.

So, there were no programs.

That student was also supposed to handle tickets at the door - as a result Ron (our bassist - who is also an ARC student) wound up doing that along with our Roadie, Ed. Ron's wife and I even helped out.

Nancy Briggs was up first and she is an excellent Jazz vocalist/pianist. She performed with a stand-up bassist and with Eric chun on drums. Originally an L.A. native, Nancy has been living in Sacramento for several months now and is schedule to perform a showcase at Rejobi/ExtremeAudio in the coming weeks.

Second was Susan Rabin - a 30's styled jazz singer who also fronts her own group called "The Sinners". Susan has a lovely voice and also plays a mean Eukalele. :0 She performed several Jazz and showtune standards and was backed by Eric on Keyboards and Planet X's own Mitch Mitchell on drums. This show was the first time we'd had a chance to meet Susan. She works as an Entertainment Attorney in San Francisco - and through Eric I had setup an MP3.com page for her a few months back and her full band The Sinners.

The third group was an ARC band project, the Funky Monkey's which featured Eric on drums again, as well on Ron guest staring on guitar -- which ment that he couldn't work the door anymore - and therefore the show was FREE from that point on. The Monkey's bassist was a nice guy by the name of Randy - who'd had seen Planet X at one of our previous shows and was another person I'd met and talked to during the Amnesty International Rally a couple weeks back. The Monkey's performed a series of Pop Cover tunes, including "Pick up the Peices", Christina Aquilera's "What a girl Wants", "Thriller" (featuring a ripping guitar solo by Ron), and finished of their hour-plus long set with a version of Santana's "Smooth".

We we're supposed to go on at 9pm, but the show was running late by nearly an hour and a half before it was finally our turn. We worked quickly and with the help of the on hand stage crew and even Ahmad, the host (who also is a member of the Rap group Verbal Lock) - we had the stage cleared of all of the Monkey's mic and and music stands, keyboards, and drums in just a scant few minutes.

But it was already too late.

That strange Sacramentan phenomenon of not bothering to stay for the "Headlining" band reared it's ugly head. As we worked to prepare the stage I could see over half the audience filling out even before we could play our first note. We did what we could to make up for much of the time the previous groups had lost and get rolling quickly - in fact, we we're so fast we really didn't even bother to make sure all the mics were on and working. Plus the sound guy hadn't recorded where any of the settings we had made during our soundcheck were and put them back in place. He didn't really even try to mix on the fly - he just turned everything on and let it go, basically everything we'd done at Soundcheck was down the tubes. My vocal mic wasn't even on until halfway through the first verse of the first song.

Once we began playing, the monitors we're non-existant for me, so as I result I spent as much time as I could near the front of the stage listening to my vocals off of the house mix. Ironnically I'm pretty used to this by now, especially after playing shows without monitors at the Boardwalk.

It's sort of like playing by braille, you just "feel" your way through it.

In the plus column - I think we played a better show than we have in the last few weeks. We we're finally able to squeeze in a reheasal before this show and had modified the set to clean up most of the dead time between songs. We started off with "Pay Your Dues" and went immediatelly into both "Run" and "Hero-Inn" without missing a beat. Besides using Ron's yellow Ibanez - which stays in tune, Darryl is also using my Digitech RP-7 effects unit which has improved his tone immensly since he had to switch back from old Marshall Amp (The RP-7 also features a silent tuner!! YEah)

Although we we're loud compared to the jazz and pop bands that had preceeded us -- I don't think we were TOO LOUD the way we we're at the Crossroads, and we had about 20-25 people watch the entire show and cheer us on enthusiastically.

Honestly, I was pissed-off when I saw people leaving before we had the curtain open to reveal our gear -- I think even nearly all 15 members of the "Funky Monkey's" split too - (except for the percussionist who is also a concert promoter) - I mean - we'd all stayed to see them play and we actually didn't have to. But after we finished the first set of songs and I could hear the remaining people literally SCREAMING in approval, I felt much much better.

It's that, that makes putting up with all this freaking B.S. worth it in the long run. If we can reach people - even if only one at a time - and give them a reason to jump up and down and shout at the top the lungs in excitement (even if they don't do it outwardly - but feel it in their heart), then as a musician - we've done our job IMO.

I got so jazzed I did a cartwheel (well, technically a "round-off" - but only some other ex-gymnast would care about the difference) - and broke my watch band.

Ah, just another night at the "office"!!.

Anyway besides the watch band, the set went pretty smoothly with hardly a flub -- or glitch on our part, although there were a couple minor ones.

I didn't know it at the time, but even Susan Rabin - who had to go all the way back to the bay area that night stayed to watch us. She later told me via email, she had to stay -- "It was infectious".

Thanks, Susan.

This show was the first that one particular fan of mine from my open mic performances, Yasushi, had been able to see. He lives near me downtown and he'd come down to two of our previous downtown gigs, at the Press Club and at Cafe Paris and had arrived each time just after we finished playing. So he made a special trip all the way out to ARC to see us, and was sure to get their early. We we're all glad he made it this time, and congratulated him when he arrived. Way to go - SUSHI!!.

Oh, and this particular night was Ron's birthday, too.

Happy Birthday Ron.

Next up -- Behind the (UN)Scene and the UN)Heard: Explosing the Soft Pink (and Green) Underbelly of the SAMMIES!

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