a very special gig
funny, music, Washington June 23rd, 2009Friday afternoon, I drove up to Seattle (actually, it was Renton, which is the suburb most famous for being the resting place of Jimi Hendrix) to play a gig with my friend BT.  It was at a venue I was not familiar with, so when I drove into the parking lot, I was surprised to find that it was a small ‘British-style’ pub that was located next to the Department of Licensing in a strip mall. Veeeery rock and roll.
I left my bass in the car and walked inside to check the place out and say hi to BT. He was there, naturally, getting the PA system all set up. The drummer was also there, and it was my first time meeting him, since he was a fill-in guy that night as well. In fact, it was BT’s first time playing a gig with him, which can be very telling about someone’s personality.
Usually during set-up, especially between new people, there’s a lot of conversation and chit-chat about all kinds of things, but this time there was a noticeable lack of conversation, with BT over on one side of the stage, turned away and working on something, and Drummer sort of sitting behind his kit, adjusting his cymbals and whatnot. It was weird. I broke the ice by asking the drummer about his drum kit, which was a beautiful, custom-made kit that was much too large for such a small place. He had about a million different cymbals, too, which were sprawled out everywhere and left precious little room for BT and me.  I moved my monitor and microphone as far forward as I could, in order that I wouldn’t have two cymbals a foot from my head.
Finally it was time to start, and it turned out that the drummer didn’t have a good ‘feel’ at all. I’m a competent enough bass player and musician that I can lock in with anybody, and I could not lock in with this guy. His timing wasn’t solid, and he put in lots of unnecessary flourishes throughout every song. Yeesh.
When we took a break, Drummer went to talk with a couple of his friends, and BT and I went outside to enjoy the cool breeze. He told me that the first thing out of Drummer’s mouth when he arrived was, “You set everything up wrong. It needs to be further over.” He told me that he’d talked with Drummer about how much gear to bring, and Drummer assured him that he’d keep it small. Drummer also brought this weird headphone mixer and effect thingy and tried to plug it in, and got angry with BT for not knowing how to use it. This all went down right before I showed up, which explains the air of tension onstage.
Rule One of being a for-hire musician; never bite the hand that feeds you. You don’t walk in and insult the person who hired you, and you certainly don’t want to be snippy with them if they don’t know how to use your personal equipment. If you do decide to do those things, however, you’d better be a good enough player that your musicianship alone will hopefully redeem your behavior, because if you’re not, you won’t be called again, and worse yet, you will earn yourself a bad reputation around town.
Drummers are particularly prone to this sort of bravado. This guy also grew up in Los Angeles, and he had what I like to call the L.A. Self-Promotion Syndrome. Everyone I’ve ever met from L.A. has a particular way of talking about him- or herself. They always seem to be trying to put themselves ahead of others, or to drop a name in just the right way; you get the idea. It’s very peculiar and specific. So you can imagine what a bravado-prone drummer, who’s also from L.A., is like.  Ugh.
We slogged through about four hours’ worth of songs, and I think three songs sounded good in that whole span of time. We just had to laugh, but after a while, BT’s laugh reminded me of a sheet pulled over broken glass (a very memorable image from a very un-memorable Ayn Rand book). There were three or four times we actually had to stop a song because it sounded so bad. We got through the night, though, and at two-thirty in the morning, we finally got everything packed up and out of there. Drummer gave me his business card and went on his way. BT actually had a gig scheduled with him for the next day. I don’t envy BT. I crashed in his extra bedroom, in my sleeping bag on the floor, for about four hours, and then woke up at nine to meet my brother and his family for breakfast. That’s a story for the next entry.
The thing that made this particular gig bearable, though, was a guy in the audience. He requested songs like “Cocaine” and walked in front of the stage drunkenly appreciating us when we played his requests. Then he started requesting songs by Sublime, which none of us knew. “I’m from Long Beach,” he said, about fourteen times. “I usually listen to gangsta rap, but after I saw Sublime, it made me realize that you guys [meaning musicians in general] can really play.”
“Well thanks, man,” BT said diplomatically. “We’d sure play some Sublime if we knew any. I’ll try and learn some for you by next time.”
“I’m from Long Beach,” the guy repeated, with significance.
“That’s cool,” Drummer said. “I’m from L.A. too.”
“Yeah, man, so you know. Sublime, man. That’s where they’re from too. You guys sure you don’t know any Sublime?”
This conversation happened three different times. And for the record, why is someone who ‘normally listens to gangsta rap’ hanging out in an English-style bar, anyway? Hilarious.
I’m really glad none of our friends were there to see that show. The bar owner guy said, “Hey, guys, sorry there aren’t more people here for you. Usually Friday nights are pretty crazy around here.  I don’t know what’s going on.”
“That’s okay,” I said, laughing and casting a glance over toward BT. “Tonight that’s probably a good thing, at least as far as we’re concerned.”
Every once in a while you have gigs that just don’t work out. It’s totally normal. I look back on that show as being fun, though, if only for reasons other than it was supposed to have. It certainly wasn’t stressful or anything. We just laughed our way through train wreck after train wreck, which has its own special form of appeal.
June 23rd, 2009 at 2:57 pm
too bad Ira Glass wasn’t there to document it for his “Fiascos II” episode of TAL. :)