Sweet jesus I'm tired. My head hurts a little and I feel a little dehydrated, possibly because we had a show last night and I got kinda tipsy! I got to bed at 3 and I got to work at 7(both am.) Livin' the dream!!! Plague went on first and I swear to god that bar must hate us. I mean we CLEAR that room! We hadn't jammed all together since last week at Airfest, so the accuracy was definitely not as tight as we can be. Everyone was in a really pissy mood from their work, we were running late, the chrondongdiddlyonic didn't arrive until it was almost time to leave my house, it was raining...just kind of stressful and it showed in our performance. On the upside, Aaron got a BBE Sonic Maximizer and holy monkey does it sound good. Anyway, I'm tearing down and dude walks up to me and says, "Hi, I'm Jon from Cobra//group, and we were wondering if you wanted to sit in with us." I think I looked behind me to see who he was talking to. (At this point I've only had one beer(sober is the new drunk) and I was coming down from the adrenaline so I wasn't real quick on the whole processing of information but eventually I understood that I should leave the kit set up and that I would be participating in a musical performance with some folks I'd never met(they were all extremely friendly and supportive.) While the violinists, trombone player, pedal steel player and Ken from the Tiki Lounge set up I took that opportunity to have myself a Blacktooth and a Newcastle. They kept saying things like "Don't worry, you'll be fine," (another Blacktooth for Mikey, please). Jon grabs me and we go over the rules of the performance, which I won't go into here, but there's a bunch of things to either remember or read off a sheet of paper. Not music, but like directions. Try to read english sentences off a paper whilst playing. I've done improv type stuff before, but it was always much more rigid in terms of time and feel. This was another sopapilla completely. I tried to texture as much as I could (no mallets, brushes, tamborine) and I did manage a couple of really cool grooves with the pedal steel(I think dude's name is Bud) and the violinist whose name begins with an "R." It was a whole lotta fun and I'd definitely do it again if the opportunity arose. Holiday Sail arrived, ahem...fashionably late(cheers Rob!) and proceeded to kick some ass. Catchy, catchy, catchy! If you haven't seen Holiday Sail yet, go see 'em, you'll like 'em. Minie has a beautiful voice and she and Rob nail the vocal harmonies. Gus is a good drummer too, and he plays what looks to me like an 18" kick. Good stuff happening last night. A special Plague thanks to Left Brain, who were about half our crowd (cheers gents!)

That was a sick Plague show! It was practically lesson in technical metal. We had a good time.

Seeing you play in Cobra//group was probably one of the most fun show's I've watched out here. Good job with the improv! You should do it again. I dig the concept.

All in all glad we made it out.

Mike is a talented percussionist and a nice guy. It took a lot of courage to get up and play a rather strange set with a group of people he'd never met or heard before. Thank you very much Mike.

The first 5 minutes of last night's set.

And those first 5 minutes were pretty scary! But it kicked ass once I got my courage up a bit. Just let me know Mr. Johnny Thunder. I dig the fuck out of it. Raven myspaced me earlier and I left all of my info on the reply.