Although I had a good time getting them that way. We went to the tenth anniversary and new-office-warming of some friends, and because they’re old folkies, as are most of their friends (and in a number of cases the friends are current or former working musicians), the music started when the party did and only wound down around sunset, after everyone had played their hands halfway off. The food was good, and there was too much of it (as there should be at any good potluck party), and there was plenty of beer and non-alky drinks as well. (I had no faith in the drink supply, and brought my bottle of Irish whisky with me.)
The bit that was most gratifying to me was that I was able to play bass during the jam session, although I haven’t even picked up an electric in twenty years or an upright in ten. All that performing rust showed in the lots of fluffs I made, but in all I was pleasantly surprised at how much I was still able to do, and it was very nice to get to play again in a jam, after all this time. It was also fun to get to play with musicians who are technically way out beyond me—the host is the only man I know who can play lead autoharp, and there were serious guitarists and fiddlers and all kinda people in the group, and I enjoyed finding out whether I could still fake through songs I’d never heard before (I did fairly well, as it turned out). The only drawback was that, since I haven’t used my hands that way in years, my fingers are all puffy (getting my rings off was tricky) and I expect they’ll be so fat in the morning that I can’t even put a ring on.
