Ah, "Shout."  I forget; have I ever mentioned "Shout"?  It gets weirder every time we play this thing, and we had a couple of particularly good ones lately.

• Outdoor gig, on the water:  yes
• Two dinner stations:  yes
• Station 1: Pad Thai - Station 2: Mashed Potatoes:  As God as my witness, yes

Background:  the script for this song is always the same, and as I've written before C has an uncanny ability to take a song that is meant to be improvised and create a manuscript for it.  When it breaks down in the middle he always sings, "Now wait a minute!  I think [insert groom's name] is feelin' alright!  Now that he's got his woman!"  and points to the bride.  On this particular evening, when we arrived at "Now, waaiiiit a minute!  I think Nelson's feelin' allllllllllriiiiiight!" the groom came running over, yelling "I need a mic!  I need a mic!"  C was momentarily stunned at being forced off-script, but recovered when it occurred to him that the groom might want to do a duet.  Irregular, sure; and it WOULD take the focus off of C; however, it would look great in the candid shots that N takes all night.  (Quick aside:  our soundman spends much of the night taking pictures of the crowd, which we then send to potential clients to show them how much fun people have at our gigs.  It's fairly effective, and would even be a good idea if we didn't actually need a soundman to begin with.)  So I handed my mic to the groom while the band was hanging on the IV⁷ chord (the subdominant chord is very unresolved, you music geeks) and C beamed in anticipation of what was about to be a magical Kodak moment.  He set it up again with, "I said, I said, I think he's feeling alllllriiiiight!" as we crescendoed once more.  The groom then began:

    "Yeah, so I thought this would be a good time to thank everybody for coming tonight.
    "Can everybody hear me?
    "How about now?
    "OK, great.
    "Where's Winnie?  She should be up here too."

    C's face began to fall off of his head as Nelson continued, "We'd especially like to thank those of you that traveled great distances to be here tonight..."  This went on for ten minutes, at the end of which our bewildered leader actually said:

    "OK.  Well.  As I was saying...", and then proceeded to finish the song.  The man is a bull.

• Boston wedding, complete with Terrorizing Wedding Coordinator Crazy-Person^TM:  Yes
• Young couple, very worried that we play as many contemporary songs as possible:  Yes
• Song list that consisted of the exact same-old crap as every other wedding:  Yes

It was another one of those clipboard affairs, complete with a Function Diva who came at us thirty seconds before the end of "Brown-Eyed Girl" and started screaming, "THE SALADS ARE READY!  STOP!  RIGHT NOW!" as if we'd just launched into "Free Bird."  We only took one break because they were so tense about the minute-to-minute scheduling, so by the time we got to "Shout" things were a little edgy.  Once again, the breakdown:

    "Now wait a minute!  I think Pierre is feelin' alright!  Now that he's got his woman!
    "Now that he's got his woman!
    "Now that he's... wait a minute.  Where's Margaret?"

It has frequently been a source of amusement that we dive right into formalities without checking to see if the required parties are actually there.  It's nothing for us to announce the bride's dance with her father and then be stuck waiting for her to get back from the bar and him from the john.  Anyway, it was at this point that C realized that the groom was dancing with a beautiful young girl in a red dress.

    "Wait, a minute Pierre!  You just got married today!  You can't go around dancing with just anybody, hahahaha!  We need your lovely wife!"
    To which Pierre replied, "but she's right here!"
    C answered, "Where?  I don't see her.  We can't finish this song until [sings] heeeee's got his woman!"
    Most of the crowd was laughing pretty hard at this point as Pierre, now completely confused, asked, "Dude, what are you talking about?" just as the girl in the red dress said "I GOT CHANGED."

Silence.
Oh.
Sh!t.

There is absolutely no truth to the rumor that the Function Diva mistakenly left a large ice bucket with several bottles of white wine in the band's dining area, or that such a thing would have played a part in the above incident.