With Scott on his summer sojourn, we had the unusual drumming duo of Lee and Drew making up our rhythm section for this and next week. Additionally, with no Rennie this week, it left Andy and I to alternate between Jerry and Bob songs with Brotpen throwing in a Pig tune and/or GarBand tune here and there. Andy left the second set leaving me for all the guitar with with Rich and I splitting vocsls.

This week's setup should have been super easy as all the equipments was exactly as we left it last week, including wiring. That was a blessing. This meant I only had minor adjustments to make on camera angels from last week. The difference was that Scott wasn't there and I didn't have his drum mics or camera to use. I had good enough drum mics to substitute with, but Brotpens, zoom camera, the 4 in the group ended up having a pretty useless picture. It had by far the best audio of any of the camera microphones. My long optical HDMI cable got bent and while we bent it back into place, it never worked reliably again. The video worked though with 3 cameras and produced another week of good video coverage of the jam.

I had to pull in a last minute amp substitute with the Fender Twin with the etched line in it. The provided Deluxe just had issues, the Twin worked throughout the night. Kevin also discovered his giant bass head was causing "attack" issues and for the first time in years used a different amp for the lower speaker, a G&K.

I thought the Shakedown felt a bit too loud and over-powering, but we settled into a better volume and energy level and made some good music. I think our Lazy Lightning was one of our better versions of that song. Music Never Stopped was also very good. I think we had no major issues with the other songs of the first set, but they didn't feel too magical either. For instance Easy Wind and Like a Road had trouble elevating off the surface. Lazy River Road and Don't Let Go on the other hand were pretty good. Funny thing about the Song selection were the back-to-back no page-turners with the It's All Over Now into the It's All Over Now Baby Blue and then the Lazy Lightning into a Lazy River Road. That's some pretty Lazy song selecting.

The second set started with another Weather Report test run and it keeps getting better trying to peak-out for the July 27 gig. Harder the come was solid as it usually is as well was the Brothers and Sisters. I had a horrific time with the Till the Morning Comes but made up for it by jamming out the ending. We hardly ever do Take Me to The River as I am barely familiar with it, but we attempted it and had a blast. Drew commented afterwards that he felt we left our ordinary Deadstein skin during that song and found our own uniqueness, something along those lines. Finally to close, the Ripple was also pretty weak but the Brokedown that segued out of it felt like an adequate way to close the night. The Rat is no longer in the drain ditch as he is gone, I guess he got the Mazarati lease he was hoping for and skipped town realizing Flat Rat is too good for New York City in 2021. Deadstein has made such a proclamation and still maintains New York City as its home.

Freak Out!