When will you come home?
Wow, we had a great turnout for our gig last night! Only problem
is, we had already finished playing. With an almost cosmic comic
timing, a large group of people descended on Sin-e from all
directions the moment we stepped outside the club after removing
our gear from the stage. We dissuaded everybody from trying
to enter the premises since, frankly, we didn't know anything
about the other bands, and a show is pretty much over when Motico
has left the building. So we all went down to Sin-e's liquor
bar on the corner and boozed the night away.
Here's the problem: on Sin-e's calendar we had been listed
to go on second, officially at 9pm. At some point in the past
couple of days, they changed the band order, putting us on
first at 8pm. Despite the implied demerit, we assumed, like
every club on the planet, that our 8pm slot was flexible.
As we've experienced in the past countless times, the official
time designation is almost never correct. Posted performance
times work on "anti-bartime," instead of pushing
the clock forward, performance times create artificial demand
by trying to make people think the show is going on earlier
than it really is. In short, since they know people will bide
their time and not come out until the last possible minute,
clubs routinely lie about what time the bands take the stage.
Take for instance our last show, Death Disco at the Delancey
bar. We were told we'd go on at 9:30 only to find out the
club had no intention of us going on before 11pm. I think
we actually started well after 11, almost 2 hours later than
we had been told, and 2 hours later than we had told our friends
who had to wait around that whole time. The bar loves this,
since these people were buying beer when they otherwise would
have been long gone had the show gone on as planned.
Which brings me back to last night. The soundguy at first
said we had to start playing at 8:40. Where he got this figure
is anybody's guess. I personally thought we'd end up going
on at 9, but 20 minutes would be no big deal. Then the guy
suddenly insisted we go on immediately (it was about 8:15).
We were threatened with the whole "you're eating into
your own set time by not starting now," so we played
our set to the few people lucky enough to have been there.
Or maybe it was us who was lucky that they were there. So
despite the confusion concerning moving our band to first
on the list, we went on way earlier than anybody had a right
to expect. We got the shaft!
Anyway, at least everybody who tried to make the show got
copies of our new record. We have put an insane amount of
work into this project over the past couple of weeks, so it
was nice to see it in people's hands (although it did make
for some heart-wrenching moments when people who didn't have
turntables just wanted the CD that we inserted, hoping to
discard entirely the record and jacket over which we had slaved
for days). Now we have to talk to the booking person for Sin-e,
as they have a policy of not inviting back bands that don't
get a good turnout. The bartender seemed to think it would
help our position to complain about the time shift and how
early we went on when so many potentially-paying customers
did actually show up.
In other news, why not go out for sushi
made out of paper! Then see Stupid's
last show for a while tonight at the Luna
Lounge, in its last month of existence. There'll be latkes
for all!
Posted By Jimmy Legs
| Non-PermaLink
|
Oh
boy, I've got a fun week of printing and drug testing ahead
of me! Oh did I tell you guys that my job says I have to prove
to them I can successfully pee in a cup? Considering that drug
testing is really only good for 
I
wish I could think of some service with which I could convince
Corporate America to pay me tons of cash to ne real benefit.
Perhaps I could spread a rumor about facial-borne lice infesting
the air vents in every skyscraper in the 
industrialized
world, necessitating the services of me and my crack team
of mustaches combers. But of course, the mustachioed office
folk will have to go out of their way, to one of my special
Invasive Mustache Clinics to be tested and treated. After
being declared free of 'stachelice, the individual must wear
a "No more lice in my mustache!" sticker on their
upper lips for at least a week. I think I could really make
this work; in my pitch I'll just remind them how this is still
less humiliating that urinalysis. 
