Been a bit since I've updated this. Seems as good a time as any. Last night we played One Eyed Jack's Roadhouse in Lynwood. It was to benefit a family who had lost their home and belongings to a fire. We figured a good cause, why not. We all got to the venue at staggered times. No big deal their either. We were slated to go on last so there wasn't a big rush. Plus there wasn't enough room for all the bands to be loaded in at the sametime. We all got there in time to see TuT play. They played a great set. We were all suprised how good the sound was listening from the crowd. The PA had a lot of juice behind it and Chris' vocals were cutting through really well.
After TuT, it was time for the first Wreckless Freeks set. Now if you are unfamiliar with the Wreckless Freeks, they are a freak show/circus sideshow act. Comprised of three people The Mighty Lurch, J.K. FourtySeven and Dee Bauchery. I wasn't entirely sure what to expect. They started in with Lurch taking a mouse trap to the tongue, then Dee shoving a buck fifty worth of quarters up her nose (One of which getting stuck and needed to be extracted with pliers). They went on to bust cinder blocks over J.K.'s junk and so on. Bringing on the close to their set in which they had people come up with donations to the benefit and staple gun it to their body. Different parts of the body for different denominations. All very disturbing and very fun to watch.
Sausage Slapper came up next with a lead singer dawning a cape with the Sausage Slapper logo. They were what could be best described as parody death metal. They describe themselves on their web site as "A Mack truck smashing a V.W. bus into a meteorite of Krypton." It was definitely it's own thing. Once again I had never seen anything quite like it. They played a good set, but all the while some guy in the audience was wandering around with his junk hanging out of his pants as folks took turns to try and kick it. Very weird.
Anyway, as Sausage Slapper wound down their set Wreckless Freeks set up for their second set. Lurch assured me in between sets that the second set was far more over the top than the first. He wasn't kidding. Varying stunts of laying their face in glass and having a girl from the audience stand on their head. Beds of nails were incorporated. Imagine this odd sandwich, Lurch on the bottom, chest down in glass. A bed of nails with the nails going into his back, Dee laying on the flat side of the bed with a cinder block on her stomach as J.K. smashes the cinder block with a sledge hammer. You know that kind of thing.
They finished up their second set as they finished the first with the staple gun. We were finally up. We should have seen the signs early on. Wes didn't have his bag with him that contain all his cables, amp power cord and tuner. I loaned him my tuner before hand so he could tune up. He hand it back to me and for some unknown reason it crapped out along with my Wah Wah pedal. So I had to quickly tune by ear. We fired off into the intro and suddenly that great sound you hear from the crowd is not at all apparent on stage. The way the stage was set up was a little odd. It was too small to have us all on it. So our amps and Doug were all on stage the other three of us on the floor. A position that perfectly lines your ears up with 2 guitar amps. Hearing anything beyond the guitar from that vantage was impossible. I knew from that first note that things were a little off. But we persevered. Getting through 2 and half songs at which point I broke 2 strings, my low E and A strings, which for us (and most hard rock bands) are pretty critical. I threw my guitar down in frustration and pulled out my back up. I remembered then that I had no tuner to work with. So I finished out the next verse sans guitar and quickly tried to tune it up during the next instrumental break. The next few songs were a bit of a blur and went off without too much of a hitch, minus Lee's bass that was cutting out from time to time. We were finally down to our last 2 songs. Actually we had a few more in the arsenal, but we just wanted to stop the bleeding. I opted to play Read Em and Weep, which may have been a bad choice. My hands cramped a little and for some reason the act of playing a simple E to G shuffle was absolutely impossible. I managed to get my head out of my ass long enough to get through the first verse, at which point I broke 2 more strings and quickly lodge my head right back where it was, up my ass. I completely missed my queue for the second verse and geeked myself out enough to screw up the first portion of the chorus too. It's one of those moments that you just want to stop, apologize and walk off stage. It's embarrassing. It's actually hard to cope with. We made it through Read Em and Weep without further issue fortunately. We decided to play Taking My Anger Back and get the hell off the stage. Anger went well. We were at least finishing on a high note. But as we ended the crowd screamed for one more. We should have said no. We opted to finish up with our cover of Shake Your Blood. It went ok until we got to the bass solo and for some reason I lost the ability to count to 4 and decide to start the final verse on like 3 and a half. This little stunt threw Doug and Lee off as well and they did their best to cover my gaffe. Usually when something like that happens we cover pretty well, because let's be honest, shit happens just about every show. Most times however it's just one of us that's having an off night and the other three can cover. This time we were not firing on all pistons and covering was impossible. It was a rough night. There were several people afterwards who said they enjoyed it. So maybe I'm being overly critical of myself and it wasn't as bad as I thought. But from my perspective it was my personal worst performance. I try and console myself by saying that we've played about 40 shows this year and it was bound to happen. But the fact of the matter is that my work schedule has screwed us over the past few months and we haven't been able to get the practice in. Fortunately that will change soon.
I made the analogy to my wife last night, she used to play soccer, that you don't just show up for the games. You have to practice in between them so you can plan and cope with the unexpected. Otherwise you end up just being a poor player. That's what we've been doing really for the past month and a half. Our show schedule has been booked solid so no real time to practice or write. But like I said that will soon be rectified.
Anyway, back to the story. I was, needless to say, grumpy on the car ride home. We got about half way home when I realized that I had not closed out my bar tab. So to add insult to injury, I had to call the bar to see if they were still there so I could swing by and pick up my card. We turned around and headed back to Lynwood. This really did not improve my mood much. I woke up this morning kind of feeling ashamed. So I figured I would share with everyone, since that was the point of this blog, sharing everything that happens with in the world of playing in an indie band. For better or for worse. It doesn't always go well. Sometimes shit happens. We just got to do better next time at dealing with it. I just have to learn to make light of it. There's nothing I can change about last night. I played bad. I apologize to the folks who came out to see us. I want to put on a good performance. I will do my best to make that happen from here on out, no matter what. I also apologize to my band mates for not being able to right the ship once we started listing. In the end, nothing ever really goes perfectly. I just have to regulate the amount of time I spend with my head hibernating up my own butt.
And now it's over... We shall never speak of it again.
That is all...
adam
WCG
