GIG REPORT.

It went amazingly well. Last night I printed out this thread and read it a couple of times. Lots of extremely good advice (including a couple of laughs c/o Anon. who had me going from being a commie to a fascist in two posts!)...all of it useful in different ways....and thanks for the PMs as well.

I'll set it up a bit for you. There were about 110 kids and fortunately they'd put up a couple of mikes and an adequate sound system. Just to make me do a bit MORE thinking (a dangerous process!) the teacher reminded me that the only performer to hold the kids' interest in the past was a very tough lady who calls herself "Bomba", who grew up on the city streets of Chile, and does a kind of 'South American Rap" thing.

I brought (along with the guitar) a dobro and banjo, and decided to try to get them to relate to MY experience rather than the other way around (as several Mudcat friends suggested). I thought it might be useful to let them know that my schooling was probably as frustrating to me as theirs currently is to them. Truth of the matter is, had there BEEN alternative schools for kids who couldn't hack it in the mainstream...I WOULD have been sent to one.

The one thing really different I did was think of how "QUICK CUTS" are now used in TV advertising and films...and that is what kids are used to....guess it's an 'attention span' kind of thing. So...I used snippets (a verse and chorus) from a couple of dozen songs (including several mentioned earlier here.

For example: I sang ONE verse of "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll", and then told them about how powerful the song was to so many people....AND....how, even though she died, Hattie's name has gone around the world....as has that of the man who killed her. We talked about how exposing that crime to the world (through music) was a much more powerful sentence than the one the man actually received.

Did the same thing with my songs, and let them know that in that group of a hundred kids, there had to be at least a dozen who can 'put a rhyme together', and it's up to them to use such a god-given talent to make others feel that someone is speaking for them.

Told 'em how much I loved the Blues, and that sometimes 'borrowing from another culture' is the only way to get your own into a creative frame of mind. Played them a couple of verses of Broonzy's "Black White and Brown Blues", and Leadbelly's "Bourgeois Blues", on the slide guitar....complete with a couple of hot solos (ha ha!)

Picked up the banjo and just as I was starting into Uncle Dave Macon's song about striking Miners (Buddy Won't you Roll Down The Line) a girl shouted out: My Dad could play "Foggy Mountain Breakdown"! Bet you can't! She said her father lived in Sudbury Ontario and had a little country band.....so I got a chance to tell about spending so many years touring Northern Ontario...and who knows may even have jammed with her dad. Picked the Foggy Mountain BD, and had a lot of fun with it.

After I finished, a kid got up and said 'Hey do you do any songs about LEGALIZING GRASS'?!! Thanks to Country Joe and the Fish, I actually remembered something up that alley!

Anyway, t'went very well, got asked back, and spent close to an hour showing the kids the dobro and banjo, which was fun. So once again MUDCAT comes through. Everyone who tried to be helpful gets my deepest thanks.

Cheers

Rick