Egg Bagels

"The only good thing about the weekend, baby, is that Monday's just two days away. C'mon boy!"

Name that lyric. So after secretly deciding that blogging on the weekend would be kinda the lame way to go, I just quietly counted the seconds until I could type some more words into my little space here.

This weekend, we finally got the big Egg Babies/Eric and Bovie artshow off of the ground. For once, Eric and Bovie are their actual names. I didn't really see a point in giving them pseudonyms. But now that I've brought it up, let's call them Arty and Painty. This was Arty's first show ever or at least since he was required to include things at school-sponsored things at MICA. Well, it shouldn't have taken him this long. The other friends and I have always encouraged him to do more with his talents. So after years of pulling his hair to work up some album covers and show flyers...Painty was finally the one that convinced him to do a joint show. And it worked like gangbusters. They shared materials, so that from a distance, you couldn't necessarily tell that they were two different artists. Of course, as you approached, you could see the obvious Paintyisms versus the obvious Artyisms. My one complaint is that Arty had promised me a life-size painting of a man on stilts rescuing a cat from a tree. Didn't happen.

As for the Egg Babies, we lucked ourselves into another insanely well attended show thanks to the draw of the art, the Good Guise and J-Roddy Walston & The Business. And, also, as luck would have it, the crowd was quite attentive and gave us all sorts of cheers at all of the appropriate times. To complete the trilogy of luck, a kind soul had recorded the set, so I just got through listening to it.

Now, after the last show, we received a copy of the set and it was quite a humbling listen. Not that we were terrible...just that there's a certain amount of Eggdrenaline (sorry) that runs through us on stage and we think we're infallible. So, after that one, I had expected the worst, but low and behold, we actually played pretty well. Of course, I've pinpointed a problem area in each song, but overall, it was a real party set. Our new female singer was really freaking great and she added a nice counterpoint to that typical Chris Sound that everyone's come to expect. And after the way "Holiday Road" was sounding at practice all week, its a real wonder that we somehow convinced 200 people to sing along to the chorus with us.

So, its nice to have that eggshausting (sorry again) week of practicing over again. I have a throat issue that I'm hoping to resolve before the band takes a lucky contest winner out on a romantic date next week.

Okay, that's all I've got.

Egg Babies Practice Review 12/3

Hey everyone,

Last night was the second of six Egg Babies practices scheduled for this week. Just the same as Sunday, the six dudes showed up, while the four ladies readied their makeup and outfits for their appearances later in the week...

Imagine that last bit as being a lot more jokey than it may initially read.

For once, the five of us whom don't live at the Record Label building all arrived nearly simultaneously. Honcho Folds was busy with some sort of meeting when we arrived, so the five of us made the ill-advised decision to start the practice with a 45 minute snack break.

Now, don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with snacks. In fact, they're the single reason most of us manage to trudge through the 4 practices. Personally, when I'm singing Tiny Dancer, there are visions of raspberry cookies floating around in my brain. So, what happened last night is this...we ate snacks first and then had nothing to look forward to, so practice suffered because of it. The snacks always seem like a reward, albeit not free, from Honcho, as an acknowledgment that we've done a good job.

Couple this misstep with the fact that Honcho didn't take his pants off at practice, as he did Sunday, and it was one brutally long practice for the Egg Babies.

Now, I can't go into specifics about songs, because the set is always top secret...but let me say this, its possible that we've made a horrendous mistake when we picked out these songs. There's something missing. Maybe its missing Jeff Conlin. Maybe its the lack of a bonafide No. 1 single. Maybe its because I have to do more high singing then I typically have to. Now now, I'm just being pessimistic. We're going to do okay.

Jazzconference Guy and I have an ongoing inside joke going between us. We typically use a hush voice of speaking whenever we reference it, so Orangey can't hear it. He's certain that its about him. Now, couple this with his disappointing second place finish in the Baltimore Sun Dog Photo Contest...triple it with the Coke Zero in the vending machine being sold out...quadruple it with the dance that we've forced him to do during MAJDBTS...and I think we're due to see a major meltdown later this week.