All in all, 2008 has been kind to Wish Inflicted, with another year full of good music, several new tunes, added instrumentation, a 2nd printing of our demo CD.  Plus we even garnered a bit of national publicity in Guitar Player magazine.  It's been a long year, but another quick one (I mean, we still didn't find those gobs of time to finish our full length CD!)...   Of course, we still managed to fit in a lot.  But when we loaded in on Saturday 12/20 at El Rio to play our last show of the year, it didn't feel like terribly long since the FIRST show in '08.

El Rio is a truly unique San Francisco venue, near the place where Mission St. finally slams into Valencia. It was a cool and cloudy winter night, but we had a good crowd on hand anxious to warm up with some live music.  The venue brought several great bands together, including Cannons & Clouds, plus our friends Atomic Lucy.  Both are very solid acts with a strong sense of musicianship and some wonderful sounds; we were happy to share the stage with them.

When I arrived at the venue I was informed by my illustrious bandmates that in fact we would debut our new song, called "Your Imaginary Friend," a tune I had just penned in November.  Though we had thrown the idea of playing around with it at the show, I came in without knowledge of any solid plans to actually do so.  Mind you, this was not something we worked on extensively -- Emir, Branden and I had jammed on it a little bit at the rehearsal space, but Jochen had never even played it with us!  But it's a fun song with a straight ahead hook, and hey, we're up for some experimenting, so we broke it out / aired it out / tested it out.  Whatever you may want to call it, our audience were our guinea pigs.

We played it as the last song, with several disclaimers up front.  I only messed up the words a little bit here and there, and the band performed admirably.  It was fun to end the tired old year of 2008 with something completely NEW -- a fresh and exhilarating piece of potential, some hope to carry us into the New Year.  The tune was well received, and several people came up to us to say how much they enjoyed it, afterwards.

Regardless, thanks to all the fans who made it out in the midst of the holiday craziness to come see us and make this a successful show, to our friends Dave and Danielle who helped us book this appearance for us, as well as to Frank on the sound board.

We look forward to more fun, excitement, and adventure in 2009.  Hope it's a good year all around.  WISH-ing everyone the greatest of peace, love, and good-will, as you celebrate the holidays of 2008.  Thanks; we'll see you next year.

Cheers,
Brian
Wish Inflicted

p.s. to hear a rough demo version of "Your Imaginary Friend" see the secret music player --> here <--