Our final performance in China. Unfortunately, marked my some technical problems. As we hit the introduction of our opening number, "Fly Me to the Moon," they turned off the lights... and our amplifiers. Paul came in with chords and bassline on piano while I put down my guitar and ran off into the audience in search of the sound guys. We were back by the end of the song, but the power strip was generally unstable throughout the show, and often I (or Colin, who helped me out) would have to go back and wiggle the cord a bit before the amp would come on again. Fortunately, I didn't lose power during either of my solos.

At least I got a decent guitar amplifier. When we first arrived to set up before dinner, there was no guitar amp, so we set things up so that guitar and bass were sharing an amp and I was using my effects processor not only for distortion but to allow myself different tone settings from the bass. But when we returned from dinner, there was a guitar amp with distortion, so I was able to put aside the previous confusion and panic.

My soloing was absolutely terrible this time around, but I didn't really care. It was the last performance in China, probably my last performance with the Cal Poly Jazz Band, and possibly my last performance ever with a big band. And there were no sound recordings being made, but there were a few photographers. So I decided to continue the progression I had been making of focusing less on playing and more on acting. There were probably quite a few pictures taken that would embarrass me. I just hope people didn't take my behavior too seriously...