Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Rum!

I hate how when I don't have a glass of wine before I perform I am a nervous mess. Last night I sang with my good friend Laura Waters and of course, in regular Jammin' Java fashion, I could not hear myself very well and so on top of that my mouth was dry and pasty and I just prayed I was hitting the notes. Frustrating. The more frustrating thing is that I was totally calm before I went on stage.

Laura and I did very well though, so that is good, eh? Maybe we are the next Indigo Girls.

It was actually quite hilarious. Laura and I were waiting our turn to go up to the stage and before we went on a crazy over weight guy with curly gray hair sort of gathered on top of his head like a mop crooned (quite out of breath-like) some really weird songs with a state of the art pink keyboard. Laura was really hopeful before he started playing, saying stuff like, "This is great, come on Rufus (whatever his name was), show us what you got." When she saw the keyboard she was laughing and light-hearted, ready to be entertained. I was greatly afraid, to be honest. I would say that when someone goes on stage (some random act) usually what happens is about 80% of the time or more they stink. And I mean STINK. Let me just tell you that when the guy started playing I got worried even more. The first song was just awful. And it kept going on forever. The guy could not sing really and he could barely breathe. The music was like Nine Inch Nails (don't ask me why I am familiar with them) on crackahol. It was insane. Sort of industrial breathless chaos. The place was almost packed. When his mad music started playing people started leaving in a crazy fashion. Laura and I looked at each other and could barely stand it. We needed to revolt but could not. I mean, the music was ridiculously loud already. We would look crazy to ask people to stay behind until we got up there---listening to this guy was torture, I tell you.

The next song was absolutely over the top horrible. All I remember is that the main words were "Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!" The place got down to about 25 people. You know, I blame this guy for part of my nervousness. It was such stress to see all of these people leave like this. My nerves were just blown---it was over. I had to just submit. I mean, it is great to go up after a terrible act and sort of smooth things over, but this guy had left a literal battlefield of dead men. Not even we could coax the freshly dead men from their graves. He literally slaughtered the whole drove of them.

We told the waiter that he was awful and he said, "Well, he is not so bad, I guess. See that camera over there? Someone is doing a documentary of him!" Great.

So basically after all that mess I did the usual Rachel thing and did not sleep until 2 ish this morning---even after taking a sleeping pill. That guy messed with me man.

We sang "Further and Further Away" (Laura lead, I bgv) by Cheryl Wheeler and "Possession" (I lead and Laura bgv) by Sarah McLachlan. I think we did really well. The host said "wow" after we were done, I heard, and Laura and I can be happy that perhaps we were good just because maybe we are---not because the bottle of rum guy was ahead of us.