24-hour party people.

Friday evening my band, Dead Letters, was practicing at our drummer's house. We were trying to polish things up for our upcoming show at The Engine Room this Wednesday. After playing for about half an hour, someone knocked at the front door. Two girls then entered, introduced themselves as the new neighbors, and invited everyone present (members of the household and our band) to the party they were having on the following night (Saturday). After about a minute, they also invited our band to play. (As someone pointed out to me, this sounds like an intro to a pornographic movie. I can assure you that it was not.)

We looked at each other for a second, and then immediately agreed. House parties are downright rock and roll. They're different than club gigs because the admission (and usually the drinks) are free. We know a good opportunity when we hear it.

The rest of our practice was then devoted to learning a couple of covers. Right off the bat, we thought we could do "Buddy Holly" and "Hey Ya" pretty easily. So we prepared those, and later that night and the next day we entertained more ideas for cover songs. About three hours before we started playing at the party, we were hammering out more covers. We were like a machine. The songs we quickly learned and performed were as follows:

Buddy Holly (Weezer)
Undone (The Sweater Song) (Weezer)
I Wanna Be Sedated (The Ramones)
Louie Louie (The Kingsmen)
Whatever You Like (T.I.)
Paper Planes (M.I.A.)
Hey Ya (Outkast)
El Scorcho (Weezer)

We did El Scorcho at the party as an encore without having practiced it before. We mixed in most of our original songs, which, I think, were well received. Somebody even said they'd come to our next show. I think we got offered more party gigs already. I don't want to sound conceited, but even with our bass player missing that night, we sounded really good out on their concrete slab of a porch. Energy was high and the Natural Light keg beer flowed. I'd love to play one club gig and one house party per month. I think that's my goal. We gotta learn some more cover songs! Suggestions? I really loved playing "Hey Ya," because it was a song I can respect, but it was also a crowd pleaser.