Stranger things have happened

I'm sure everyone experiences a point in their lives when you sit up and go "whao!".

I had an experience like that last night. When I told my wife, she just shrugged it off like it happens to her every day. Anyway, I'll get to the story.

Yesterday was Friday, and when I looked at my calendar, I had a ton of stuff to do. But once the working day was over, all I had to do was pack the car with me musical instruments and head over to the studio for rehearsals and also auditions.

Since our singer is in Melbourne and we have had to fly him up for every gig, it has made performing for this project rather expensive. At the same time, our bouzouki player could not longer commit to the project and had to leave.

But the show must go on, and well... it kinda didn't for a few months. Five to be precise. When we got back together, we were all rusty. But that was over a month ago now, and we're back on form.

Being that we're back on top of it all, it was time to start looking for a local singer and maybe another bouzouki player. Bouzouki players all seem to have a similar trait, unorganised, non-committal. So we have put that idea to bed for now, and decided to see if we could find another musician to make up for it, with a different instrument.

No luck, however we did find a young kid who plays African Djembe. He's a whipper snapper. But he plays well. He doesn't get our jokes though. Either that or he doesn't find our immature sense of humour funny. After his first audition with us, he was thinking that perhaps this music was out of his league. So before he left, I told him about how when I first listened to the music, I thought "Oh shit, what have I got myself into?" I told him that my wife said "Well, you wanted a challenge, stop complaining now that one has come along. Get in there and take up the challenge." She was right. Hate that.

So far, the story is pretty ordinary. Nothing unusual there. Big deal.

Last night the kid returned. Glad to see he's going to give it a go.

There was one other thing about last night... a Sydney based singer. Val mentioned it was a female. No problem there. It might make us behave a bit more civilised. So, there we were last night, we got comfortable in our rehearsal room and started to just have a impromptu jam when this crazy girl with big hair bursts into the room announcing herself and asking where Val is.

I stopped her midway through her outburst. Pointing at her, saying "Get lost!!!! I know you!!!! What the hell are you going here?"

I had not seen this woman for about 4 to 5 years. I use to work with her when I was employed in IT. The craziness was overwhelming.

To top things off, I was checking out my Facebook account the other day and one of my friends on Facebook had her as a friend, and her face was on my page telling me she could be my friend. Funny part was, I clicked on the link and asked for her authorisation to be a friend.

Two days later, she's responded to a random advert we posted looking for a female singer and is standing right in front of me. I sense a big catch up happening soon.

We didn't get to hear too much of her last night, because she was still getting her head around the songs. But I have heard her perform before mainly as a singer/actor on stage in theatre productions. This is her main thing and responding to the advert we had online was something she decided to do purely for a change out of her normal cliché roles in theatre.

I was pleased to hear that because what we perform is different and challenging.

Last night turned out to be quite surreal. My bubble burst when I got home and my wife foiled my enthusiasm by saying "whoppedie doo" Not in those exact words, but to something of that extent.