Too many bands

Charging toward the end of the semester at top speed.... all 4 bands in top gear recently and all 4 of my classes too, so it's been nastily busy; the kind of schedule where you think: I can't keep this up one more day. This is going to KILL me. The kind of schedule where you get into a spitting fury if somebody DARES to ask why you haven't responded yet to an email they sent last week, and you have to bite your lip to keep from yelling: IF I HAD 2 MINUTES FREE I WOULD HAVE RESPONDED. BUT I DON'T EVER HAVE ANY SINGLE MINUTE FREE BECAUSE I WORK TILL 2AM 7 DAYS A WEEK, AND BY STANDING HERE TALKING TO YOU FOR 2 MINUTES ABOUT IT, THAT IT MEANS I'M GOING TO HAVE TO WORK TILL 2:02AM TONIGHT, AND, LET ME CHECK MY CALENDAR HERE FOR THE NEXT TIME I HAVE 2 MINUTES FREE, LOOK! IT'S NOT TILL DECEMBER 14TH! I'LL REPLY TO YOUR EMAIL THEN. OKAYYYYY?????

And you realize: This is an impossible way to life. I have to quit not just one but TWO of my bands.

So I had myself all geared up to quit two of the 4 groups, and I'd picked out the two. But then I went to 1 last rehearsal of each one and dammit... both were so, so, so, much fun.... and I didn't quit... and I've continued to work till 2am every single night.

So... Fantastic show week before last with 3 of the 4 bands (Lions for samba, Free Beat Nation or Bate Livre or whatever our name is now for maracatu, and Axe Dide pulling in some cool samba-reggae). The highlight of that show for me was definitely the killer maracatu set. Man, has that group come together. And I think this was the first maracatu set where I actually felt confident about all the musical transitions.

And the lowlight was me being completely befuddled when the Lions caixa section did a little caixa demo for the crowd. Blake gave me a perfectly logical instruction to play "the start of Gina", but, see, I always thought of it as, there's break 6 and then the repique solo and THEN Gina starts, but actually Break 6 IS Gina and so the start of Break 6 IS the start of Gina, and while I was standing there thinking about it in total confusion, luckily Blake and John just went ahead and played without me (otherwise I would have just stood there forever muttering "Start of Gina?"). Luckily Blake then further distracted the crowd from me by dramatically shattering a stick in mid-solo, which shot spinning through the air into the crowd - whee! so cool! And somehow he kept playing! Well, anyway, Blake and John played great and I felt like an idiot, which is about par for me on caixa. But I had a good time.

And I got to play almost the entire Lions set standing between 2 magnificent surdos (Rod & Kirin) and Blake on caixa, which was awfully good company. There's nothing like being right between two dead-on strong surdo players like that, and then of course Blake (killer caixa player) next to me, and John right in front - well, that was a fine, fine place to be standing.

Completely wiped out at the end. Realized I'd been playing 4 hours hard without a break.... 3 bands in a row. Completely wiped out. Took a couple hours to hang out with folks at a bar afterward. Then went back to work, at midnight.