the Hancock UCC U2charist - televised!

As y'all know, on Tuesday evening I played lead guitar and did the vocals alongside drummer Elisa Lucozzi and bassist Roseanne Hebert at Hancock UCC in Lexington for a U2charist with entirely live music.

I didn't know until shortly before the start of the prelude, though, that the service was to be televised (on local cable) and recorded to DVD. *Gulp!* And on my first public outing as a lead guitarist too -- which I was trying to do while also doing lead vocals!

There were some additional challenges as well. Various technical issues meant that I didn't have a vocal monitor as such; we were using our monitors as a P.A. system to project the vocals and drums into the congregation. Even my guitar amps were angled primarily for the congregation to hear; the direct sound out from the amp hit me at about knee level. Guitar cut out during "Sunday Bloody Sunday." My microphone cut out during "Walk On." I missed a chord or two, I'm pretty sure.

In other words, it was rock and roll! I reminded the perfectionist part of me that U2 themselves often have things go awry, and sometimes (e.g., Bono's unplanned and very lengthy plunge into the audience during "Bad" at the original Live Aid concert at Wembley) the Spirit's worked powerfully through it.

I'm still not entirely sure I'm going to watch the DVD. I'd rather judge the evening by what I saw of the congregation's experience of it than by a recording. And by what I saw in the congregation, it was a very, very good night. A packed house pledged their voices to the ONE campaign and gave generously to Oxfam for relief of extreme poverty, and by the end of the evening, I don't think there was a single person in the congregation who wasn't on their feet and singing their heart out.

I'll be posting more about the experience and what I learned from it (yes, I've been doing U2charists for almost five years now, and I'm still learning!) at the U2charist resources page.