Good Party, Except....

Last night was the annual club X-mas party. It's a chance to dress up, dance if you wish, share lots of food, chat with old friends and meet new ones. The food was great, the company interesting and friendly, a live band played.

So what was the problem? A live band played.

OK, that sounds like a plus, right? The standard seems to be an assumption that live is better than a DJ. I suppose they're right. At least when the live band is good, that is. Last night's band was excruciating to listen to, and the volume was turned up so loud they were unavoidable. Even shouting at the person sitting next to you didn't quite make conversation possible. Perhaps the band members a: were already deaf, b: thought we were deaf, or c: thought volume would hide the flaws in presentation rather than accentuate them.

The musical selections were decent. Starting off, there were several really old-time goodies, the kind of music most of us geezers still recognize, and Steve absolutely loves. Luckily for him, his back was hurting so much he sent me on without him. The selections morphed into X-mas classics, mostly secular with only one or two outright religious songs.

The members of the band were fairly personable. We didn't chat with them but they smiled frequently. One of the band members was also a club member, which aided in their choice for our  party, since it was easy to tend to other details of the party without expending a lot of energy and time locating a suitable band.

The band also dressed well, in black with occasional trim in holiday reds and greens, or a fuzzy antler headpiece. The one exception needn't have been one, except for an unfortunate oversight. The woman in the front row who had a string of jingle bells wrapped around one foot so that shaking it also left her hands free to play something else simultaneously made two mistakes. Her skirt was a little short, not covering her knees even though she sat in the front row. By itself, not a problem. However, her enthusiasm for shaking the bells led to her legs spreading apart enough so that ... well, let's just say certain things can never be unseen.

My main complaint is the band's musicality. Or lack thereof. They needed a vocalist. Several members sang solo, but none really qualified. The lead singer had a range of about one octave, all very low. Where songs we all know rose in pitch, her voice went down. I'm not one who can really tell perfect pitch from relative pitch, but I recognize when someone has even more problems in that area than I do. One of the men had the second verse of a song for his showpiece. Unfortunately it took the rest of the band about two meters to figure out he was using a different tempo than they had been and adjust to match him. The harmonica soloist was never a member of a marching band. The rhythm was already unsteady, but accentuated by how she ended her musical phrases. Where the final note was to be held for 4 beats, she started the next phrase about the middle of the third beat.

Ouch. No really, ouch.

What was really interesting is how many compliments on the band's performance were offered in the club this morning while I was there.

I decided to keep my mouth shut.