I know a lot of guys who do this daily, Tony. One, in particular, Jerry Burns, performed five days a week, every week, since he was 18 years old, played piano and arranger keyboard for some of the greats, and never, to my knowledge, had a single sheet with him on the job, and did not use a laptop or notebook PC - the songs and chords, some very complex arrangements, were all in his head. Same goes for Helmut Licht, whom I posted a short video of his big band here. I rarely saw UD look at his laptop during the hours I saw him perform, and when I saw Don Mason perform, he rarely looked at his as well. With some entertainers, especially those that are constantly on stage and performing on almost a daily basis, the need to glance at the chords is often secondary - and the same goes with the lyrics. There are some songs that I performed so often that it would be difficult to forget the words, but then, there are times, when you fire up the keyboard, play the intro, and forget the first line of a song you have performed thousands of times - and at that point, that damned netbook PC sure comes in handy. I know it has covered my ass on several occasions, and the audiences were none the wiser.

Tony, my disagreement is that UD, DNJ, DonM and many, many others do NOT need the charts and often the lyrics in front of them in order to perform for hours on end. Joe Ayala was another great example of this. You saw Joe at my home perform many, many songs, he never looked at anything - it all spontaneously came out of his head and he never missed a beat, chord or word the entire day - and that was after a lotta Kickapoo Joy Juice!

Sure miss Joe. He was a dear friend.

Gary