Summing up November and two gig announcements!

Hey everyone,

Got some more updates on what's been going on with World Racketeering Squad.  I've been filling out my pedal set lately to give me a lot more control on our songs.  Got a CryBaby, a Maxon OD808, Big Muff Pi, and an Ibanez CS-9 stereo chorus.  I've started running the stereo outputs to my Vox AD30VT and my little Kustom amp, just for fun.

After complaints from my neighbor, we've started renting rehearsal space and practing there on Saturdays.  It's great to get to focus in an environment where we won't be distracted, and where we can turn up loud.  Although my ears are still ringing from when we played a bit of "Hey Hey, My My".  I really turned it up too loud in that case, I've gotta be careful.  Need to get some earplugs for sure.

We spent November playing 3 open mics a week, focusing on the same set list to hone the songs and get them tight.  As a result, we got a studio recording of one song, we got our first bar gig, and built up our mailing list and made some great friends!

This month we're doing it a little different.  We're taking the first week of December off for the most part--my left hand's been getting sore and I want to get it rested up.  We're going to find some new open mics we haven't played at before, just to branch out a bit.  We're also playing a LOT of new songs!  We've been building up a stock of songs we haven't played yet, and we're dying for folks to hear them!  We've got some dark and intense grungy stuff, a bluesy soul number ("Hoarse angel"), a super-funky tune ("Screwed you"), and several parts of a rock opera about a quantum band who only exists when enough people are watching them.

We're also working on covers, which is new for us: "I Feel Fine" by The Beatles, "99 Luftballons" by Nena, "Elephant Stone" and "Waterfall" by The Stone Roses, and some others.   I'd love to do "Johnny B Goode", but we haven't worked on that one as much!  We're going to add some more Beatles as well, because they're such a huge influence on us.

And the biggest news is that we've got some better opportunities to play those songs!  We opened for bluesqueezebox in November and they asked us to play with them again on December 18, which is great.  Even greater is that we've got a headlining gig at the same club on December 27!  And I just got a text message from my bandmate saying that our friend we tapped to headline for us has confirmed that she's in!

So now we've got our longest set yet, from 10pm to midnight.  It's going to take basically ALL the songs we know well enough to play to fill out that slot, and it's gonna be awesome.   We've got a number of songs on the keyboard as well, so we can mix up the night and give the keyboard songs a chance to shine too.

This is super-exciting!  We've been extremely focused and as a result, a lot of great stuff is happening in a shorter time than we thought possible.  Now our next big result is to audition and find a drummer and a bass player--there are two more squad members of the World Racketeering Squad out there who just don't know it yet!

Isaac