GIG REPORT - Slightly Offensive (Chicago Blu)

This past Saturday night (11/20/10) my band SLIGHTLY OFFENSIVE played @ Chicago Blu (Frankfort IL).
So on Friday night I changed the strings on both of my guitars. My Charvel has a floating bridge and when I was tightening the saddle down on the G-string the saddle split. :shock: Damn, now its 9:30pm so I called Cory to tell him to bring his “Epi/Strat” guitar (Strat body w/a Epi neck) and I can use that. He did one better. He called Mike K who is known around the south side of Chicago as being the best guitar tech around (Players Guitars), & he said to bring the guitar to his gig that night @ Papa T's (Midlothian) and he'd work on it on Sat afternoon. So we went to Papa T's dropped off the guitar hung out for the 1st set and part of the 2nd set & the next afternoon I swung by Players Guitars and picked up my guitar. Worked beautifully!!! Mike is THE BEST TECH around!!! :D

Now Chicago Blu is has a small stage, & we barely fit on it and the singers Cory & Jennie were on the floor in front of us. Mike K from the band Slippery When Wet came out and played the 2nd & 3rd set with us. He had something going on before hand so I covered the first set alone. I really felt like I had to “work” during that first set, I don't know what it was but I felt like I was really struggling, hitting dead notes etc, but my wife & her group said we sounded good with just me playing on the first set so maybe it was just me. We play Johnny B Goode like Marty McFly did in Back to The Future and my friend John said he looked around and everyone was just watching my hands while I was 2-hand tapping which was cool. It's hard to tell how you're doing sometimes because the crowd is basically in the other area where the bar is and we are playing in the “restaurant” area. After our 2nd set we played our version of “Ice Ice Baby” and 2 people came up to us and said “that rap tune was AWESOME”!!! That was very cool!!! & just like clockwork, half way through the 2nd set the liquor kicked in and we had the girls dancing and singing along. :D

At the end of the night the manager told us to shut down promptly at 12:30am & we had a couple more songs to play but they wanted everyone out by 1am so Cory & Jennie said “one more” to us and we just ended it after that. A couple of guys came up and asked us to play just 1 more tune but we declined...really no sense in making the manager angry when you're trying to secure another gig there. We had a good crowd there (75) people but it was kind of hard to tell because they were all crammed over by the bar. Chicago Blu seemed happy with the turnout so we'll see if we can play there again in the next couple of months.

We have the next 2 weekends off to eat turkey and do some X-mas shopping and then we're back on the road. This time we're @ Charley Horse (Tinley Park, IL) SAT 12/11. This is Cory's B-Day Bash (turns 40) so it's all ages from 8pm-11pm then we kick the kiddies out and the “adult” party begins. Charley Horse is really a nice place to play so I'm really looking forward to this gig.

I have some pics up on my Facebook page (Tom McLaughlin) & on MySpace (Tommy Gunz) and I'm sure they will be up soon at slightlyoffensiveband.com.

Also check us out on Facebook & MySpace too!!!