Alkemy @ King's Inn 10_Oct_2025: Warm-Up in E, Going up the Country, Shake It скачать в хорошем качестве

Alkemy @ King's Inn 10_Oct_2025: Warm-Up in E, Going up the Country, Shake It

Ridi Pagliacco, vesti la giubba. This week I was introduced to a new aspect of this new profession: it doesn't matter how bad your week was, you still have to get onstage and play music to make the people dance. No one wants a sourpuss musician who doesn't want to be there. I got kicked square in the nuts by the stock market, I held SPY puts for a good six weeks waiting for the market to plunge down like it finally did on Friday ... after I had already given up and closed my position for a loss. I was f*cking furious, black-red with rage, questioning God like what do you want from me? Am I cursed to fail at everything and never have a home and always be poor? Didn't you say by the sweat of your brow shall you eat bread, and haven't I been sweating at this labor? Didn't I try to be a monk, and they wouldn't have me? Didn't I try to be a sternman on any lobster fishing boat in Maine? And none of these civilians should have homes in America until all of us Veterans do, God, none of them! At the bar, I encountered a woman who used to bartend at Zany's, the restaurant Alkemy played before King's Inn, before I joined the Band, back when I was just a fan. She's wearing black lipstick and she tells me, without preamble, "my son died." Then she tells me I'm a handsome man and boops me on the nose with the tip of her index finger, obviously grieving, and may God comfort her. I can't remember the last time a woman called me handsome, it felt good despite the somberness of the situation. Another woman who was there, a woman who bartends at King's Inn, she was in a terrible car accident and lost part of her leg. As in amputated, as in gone. I saw her briefly on her crutches but I didn't look down, didn't learn about it until this morning. It sure puts my suffering in perspective. It wasn't a catastrophic financial loss as it has been before. I've still got rent money and food money, I took precautionary measures to insulate myself against such a loss, I've got cash reserves. Government shutdown hasn't stopped the veteran benefits yet. Arguably, I'm in a better position than I've been in for years. I ate Cali-style eggs benedict this morning with avocado and bacon and tomato and a rich hollandaise sauce and left a 50% tip. What is my frustrating and humiliating loss in the stock market compared to the loss of a son, or a leg? Who's to say God won't someday take my leg or my son if I had one? Who knows what worse sufferings await me in this life? And yet there we all are, gathered at the bar, beset by all manner of trials and tribulations from all sides, doing our best to come together and have a good time in spite of it all. "We've all got our cross to bear," says Randy the Band Leader, and he's right, and he knows all about grief, and it's as if God spoke through him to me in that moment. Somehow God is with us, all of us at the bar, with us in all of our different trials. So we get onstage and go to work and play music for the people so they will dance and have a good time, because it is our job. At the pre-show Band Meeting, I told the Band: I don't want to be a "good enough" band, I've been in those. I want us to be an exceptional band, and that requires weekly practice with our full membership in attendance. Anyone can do rifle drill by himself, I tell them, but what blows audiences away is when an entire military precision drill team performs complex maneuvers in sync together with each other. That's what we have the potential to be, musically, and that's what I want us to be. What makes us great is not how we sound individually - what makes us great is how we play together as a unit, as a team, as a Band. I dare say there's not a band or musician on God's Earth who wouldn't improve further with weekly practice. We owe it to our employer. We owe it to our fans. Prayers up for Steve, who is also going through it. God save the Band.