Wedding Cringe

A few days ago we had a wedding in a nearby city called Suzhou. It’s about half an hour by fast train, but probably more like 2 hours door to door.

This was one gig I wasn’t really looking forward to. Reason being was that there were a few song requests... of the worst possible kind.

It is true that is what you get paid for. It’s a wedding, so it needs to be all about ‘love songs’

Yes....

But some songs are just TOO over the top cheesy. I haven’t figured out how to handle it yet.

These were the requested songs:

Can You Feel the Love Tonight - Elton John
Right Here Waiting - Richard Marx
Moon River - Henry Mancini

Ok, Moon River is fine... I could never say anything about Henry Mancini... he wrote the elephant dance, pink panther theme? Common!

Lion King song.... ok, it’s catchy. But that’s not always a good thing. It sells records, but it turns people nuts if they can’t get it out of their head. The catchiest songs seem to grow old very fast.

As for Right Here Waiting... I cannot think of anything cheesier... nothing!

Moon river I kinda know, but the other 2 I purposely didn’t listen to until the morning of the wedding. I wanted to learn them, and forget them the next day.

I’m pretty sure it does damage to ones creativity. So I don’t feel bad about having negative reactions to this kinda stuff.

The wedding went smoothly enough. We were fed well, they didn’t stress too much about the schedule or the songs.

Sometimes they’ll ask you to arrive like 5 hours before or ask for matching shirts and suits. Not this one.

The groom gave the most basic speech I’ve ever heard. Translated, it was like: “welcome, we decided to have a simple wedding, enjoy yourself, let’s begin”.

Funny enough, when we finished playing our set he said literally “the wedding is over” haha.

I’m sure it sounds more articulate in Chinese, but it translated like that in my head.

I tried also to put my phone (to read charts) resting on the edge of the bass neck, leaning up against the body. It didn’t fall but it was a bit sketchy because it could fall at any time, and also the bottom part of the chart is usually out of view. Might not do it again….

We got back to Shanghai around 10pm, the metro at Hongqiao was packed... as it always is. Living in these big cities in China, you need to get used to being herded around or packed up like sardines.

End of the night, I went to Chair Club for a bit. There was some hip hop, and some jamming. This is Gil’s newish project.