1999

Baycon

Where: Doubletree Inn, San Jose, CA
When: May 30. 1999
Duration: 1 hour
Set List:
Sir Brian
Born Out of Time
Persian Rose
Caledonia
Merlin
Jean's Odyssey
Nuts
Fly Freedom
The Dark Man
Scarborough Fair
The Teela Tango
Ramblin' Time
Persian Rug
The Merry Minuet

This set list may look very similar to the previous one, but that's only because it is. We were asked to do the Gamecon concert at the last minute (after we already had our Baycon set list), and we figured that there would be very little overlap in the two audiences, which was true.

Paul was sweating a bit while setting up our equipment on-stage, since Taunya and Alisa weren't back from the hotel coffee shop yet. Fortunately, Alisa had asked filk-head Seanan McGuire to send a gopher to fetch them, and they arrived just before he finished setting up. This concert was quite a departure from the previous evening. We had an expertly-run PA system (thanks, Jeff!), and this crowd was there to hear us play, and they let us know it. :) They were great!

Our performance was a sortuva mixed bag. Musically, we were fairly on, our blend was good, and the engineering was marvelous (ah, sweet monitor speakers!). But what might be most remembered by those present was our becoming the poster children for Frank Hayes Disease. :) At odd times, too. We frequently lose one chorus or another of "Nuts", but that one went fine. Instead Paul blanked on the words in the first verse and then the first chorus of "The Teela Tango". But we laughed at it and the audience laughed at it and we started over and it went fine on the second try. Then, during "Ramblin' Time", Alisa completely missed her entrance, which set Taunya into a fit of giggles. After a minute, though, we pulled it back together again, and got through the song. Later reference was made to "Puzzlebox Disease". Sure hope that doesn't stick...

We also brought percussionist extraordinaire Dierdre McCarthy (of the groups Avalon Rising and The Veil, who also had concerts that evening) and guitar wizard Scott Snyder up on stage to help us with “Jean’s Odyssey”. Both of them did a wonderful job, even without any rehearsal (in Dierdre’s case, without ever having heard the song before!). Also especially fun was our premiere of Bob Kanefsky's "Persian Rug". It's his parody of "Persian Rose", written at Consonance in March, and this was our opportunity to spring it on Jeff Bonhoff, who was handling sound engineering for us. It went over very well with the audience, and we made Bob stand up to take a bow afterwards (mainly so as to properly fix blame). We got to play it for Maya later, at the open filk.

Overall, people had a good time. The audience was very gratifyingly responsive, and we got several more people signed up on our list for notification when our CD comes out. (Anybody who wants to be added to the list may send e-mail to puzzlebox@puzzlebox.net with your e-mail address or real world address, and we'll send you a note when it's out to let you know how to order it.)

Thanks here to Jeff (with help from Kristoph Klover) for audio engineering and to Seanan for offering us the concert.

Special Memories:

• "Along comes a gal with a funny-lookin' face, says: ..........{noteworthy pause}............."
• The "Oh goody..." look on Jeff's face when we started "Persian Rug".
• Dierdre's bohdran rolling in on "Jean's Odyssey", followed by Scott's kickass lead guitar.
• It's all Seanan's fault!!!!! Just stay in the back, Seanan. {kiss}
• The Loooooong Wait at the coffee shop for just about anything, including a glass of water!
• Watching the bunch of kids at the front who were sitting on the floor. When one of the adults (not mentioning any names, AMANDA SNYDER!) yelled playfully, "Play something you know!" after our goof-up on The Teela Tang, a young one up front felt compelled to make sure we heard her and so said it very loudly a couple of times as well. {guffaw}
• Kayla's princess dress, complete with stuffed pink dragon.
• Alisa and Luis both scoring t-shirts for answering questions right at the Hollywood Trailers session earlier that afternoon. Alisa got "Wild Wild West" and Luis got "Matrix". Woohoo!!