How to rock and fuck it up at the same time!

Success is measured by how often you fall flat on your face. Last week’s show was a testament to that as it seems that for everything that went well something else went horribly wrong.

The week didn’t start well. I have to admit I was a bit annoyed that the Houston Press gave the event no coverage – jeez, even the Houston Chronicle could muster a plug. Since the Press’ website is so terrible when it comes to navigation – I had sent an e-mail to John Lomax to forward to the appropriate party. I don’t know what happened but all I know is that frikkin’ Foreigner got a write up. Irked, I sent a big bitchy letter to Lomax demanding as penance he should at least come catch the first two bands. Now, Lomax knows that I really like him as a writer but I’m not above giving him shit at times but he’s a good guy about taking it on the chin. He wrote back apologizing for the mix-up and told me to whom I should send materials but said he had other plans for that evening. You know I have a lot of respect and admiration for Lomax but, goddamn, getting him to come to a rock show is like asking Scott Grimm to play a live show – it’s futility personified. Mercifully we got lots of love elsewhere: KTRU, KPFT’s Radioactive, HUH, and elsewhere.

So, Saturday morning, armed with a few CDs (Tara Jane O’Neil, Charalambides, Tom Carter, Nina Simone, Mission of Burma, and Captain Beefheart) I headed off towards Austin to get Lori Surfer who had agreed to do visuals for the show. The TJO, Charalambides, and Tom Carter were a perfect accompaniment to my meeting the day with groggy eyes as the concrete and pollution of Houston gave way to the more open countryside and eventually the glorious hill country of Texas. If you ignore the dumb-ass Republican politics of this state, it’s actually a very lovely state, which you often forget in an urban sprawl like Houston. But I wasn’t on a vacation, I was heading up to get Lori Surfer and, as promised, she was up at ready to go, armed, and ready for the Proletariat with only a small portion of her multimedia arsenal. So leaving Jeffery, her Iguana, with Animal Planet, we headed out. [The recurring joke was that we’d return Sunday morning, open the door, and duck as a flying bottle of booze would smash just above our heads. On the floor sprawled would be Jefferey sprawled on the floor with an empty bottle of whiskey shouting, “Look what you’ve done to me! You Bitch!”]

For fans of Lori, a drive with Lori Surfer is just what you’d expect – a lot of crazy ass stories while listening to all sorts of fun and obtuse electronic music resulting in a constant refrain of “Who is this?!” There was one track that sounded like Esquivel doing cartoon music played on toy electronics performed by happy if disturbed Germans on mushrooms. This was my soundtrack for the rest of the way – somehow this seemed more appropriate than what I had listened to on the way up.

Once we arrived in Houston it was right to setting up screens, stands, projectors, amps, and you name it. The rest of the band raced off at 7pm to catch Jim Otterson’s 40th birthday bash but I stayed behind to hammer-out shelves and other fun stuff. At 8:30 or so Lori declares, “We’re done! Food!” Dinner was a good idea but the thing I noticed as we left was that here it was nigh 9pm and the club was really empty. Here I was with a great lineup, weeks worth of shameless promotion, dragging Lori Surfer down from Austin, conning Kevin of Gay Marriage to drive down from Dallas, not to mention being $100 out of pocket by this point, and nobody is in the club. Great, I’ve totally wasted everyone’s time! Then, when we finish eating I get hassled by my debit card company because I’ve put so many transactions in one day that I have to prove who I am before I can pay the bill. I tell Lori to get back because we’re totally running late and proceed to go through a good 10 minutes worth of questions before I can finally pay and return to my presumed doom.

To my surprise, when I arrive at the Proletariat the place is packed and totally digging on The Dimes‘ set! People are smiling and many are mouthing “Wow” at Lori’s barrage of lights, films, and slides. Well shit! I guess we pulled it off after all. I figure I can relax a bit and slowly I begin helping Lori add more and more machines to the lightshow. Then, as the Dimes are ripping through an inspired set, the stage goes dark! Great, we’ve blown some circuit. As the Dimes (wisely) continue on in darkness Lori, Shawna, Jonathan, Clinton, Charlie, and myself frantically grab extra power strips and cables and race to find a new source of power. We run a long chord, disconnect the Galaga machine, and swipe its power…AAAAAAND…we blow another fuse! SHIT! OK split the cables! Run half the machines in one plug and the others in another! Disconnect the TVs and plug ‘em in those outlets! Here we go…AAAAND…Oh fuck! Did we blow another one? Nope, someone just tripped over the cable! Plug it back in! DUCT TAPE TO THE RESCUE! This probably went on for 5-10 minutes but felt like an eternity! Then, my trusty EIKI decides it doesn’t want to feed the films like it normally does! Great! Down one projector and the backup EIKI has a blown bulb! Ok well, now my workhorse Bell and Howell doesn’t like Lori’s splices! Ok down three projectors! I guess we will be working at 75% power. We’re like frikkin’ Scotty on Star Trek! But Lori thinks about it and says, “You know given the power issues, this may not be a bad thing. Losing those may prevent us from losing the last two available circuits.” She’s probably right.

The Dimes finished their set and I think they made some new fans. I especially heard people raving about Iram’s drumming and how he just beat the living shit out of his kit. They even played some new songs that were great! So far so good – Hectic but good and everyone seems to be having a great time.

Then Gay Marriage jumps on stage to set-up. They seem pretty good so I decide to take this time to go outside and restring my guitar. Unbeknownst to me, Kevin realizes that the amp he is borrowing has no distortion. Being outside, I totally miss the request for distortion until I return. Just as I’m about to run up to the stage and toss him my Superfuzz or Maxon D&S they rip into their first song. You know what? They frikkin ripped! Who would have thought you could play grindcore with just an overdriven Fender Twin? Just like the CD I reviewed here, the band just thrashed through songs so fast and hard that it was the musical equivalent of watching one of those early Mike Tyson fights. One! Two! You are down! It’s over! But unlike a Tyson fight you’d be up and ready for another round demanding to get the shit kicked out of you! It was a totally classy way to go out for these guys. It was easily the highlight of the evening and, fuck, it was only 10:30pm when it ended.

Now I know what you are asking, why did you book yourselves AFTER Gay Marriage? One word – curfew. You see a little known secret is Houston hates its youth. Here we believe that kids should to stay home and raid their parent’s prescription drugs. Many of you may know the Mexican story of La Llorona? Well here in Houston we have a similar story. Here, we tell our kids to honor the curfew or Officer G.M. Rodriguez will Taser your ass! But I digress the point is that this was the sweet spot that guaranteed the biggest audience for Gay Marriage since many kids would have to go home for curfew.

By the time we go on stage at around 11:15pm the place is (generously) half as full and by the time we end it’s down to a quarter. We played a solid set but clearly we have played way too many shows in 2006. Ironically, as we’ve improved as a live band we’ve seen fewer and fewer people at our shows. That may be a testament to our ubiquitous shows and/or our irrelevance. We’re clearly old farts in this scene. Most of my band mates don’t go out to shows and by extension the people who came out to see our shows 10 years ago are older and pretty much follow the same pattern. So our old friends don’t come out to our shows and we sure as hell don’t seem to make any new ones beyond musicians, radio hosts, or writers. So, despite being happy with the show and the reaction of those who stayed, we agreed to keep to the plan that we’d decided on before this show – 2007 would be a year to finish up our long delayed album. At this point we merely need some vocals and then it’s just mixing – hunker down and knock it out. Maybe you will see us in Austin but Houston is going to get a break from us for a while.

The audience dwindled significantly for PRKL8R, which was a shame as he played a good DJ set that I enjoyed, but I heard the same refrain of “I’m beat!” over and over again as people left. Maybe expecting people to stick around for 5 hours is a bit much. The drag is that while the bands all did well financially (yes, I made my $100 back), the bar did not. Hell, I was so hectic that even I didn’t do my Proletariat usual – two India Pales. That kind of sucks as the bartender is sitting there, you know, WORKING. So, now I know why bars are dodgy about all-ages shows- it’s just too early for the drinkers. That’s a shame but what can you do but bow to the economics of the situation. The trick is to think of how to move something like this out of a bar and into a place where beer sales don’t leave one party holding the bag. Despite this, I’m still glad we did the show and am thankful to everyone who helped from Rosa doing the photo shoots months ago to Shawna trying to find breakers in the dark that night. It was hard work that resulted in as much failure as success and that ain’t a bad place to be. You want to know how I can say that with confidence? I walked into the Proletariat at 9:30pm and saw people being genuinely happy. Merry Christmas.

PS. Apologies to the Comp List winners on KTRU. I called the station at 8Pm and I only got 3 names. When I arrived home I saw an e-mail giving me 7 more names. I’ve had this happen to me before where the station mucked up the communication with the promoters. So I offer my humble apologies.

Photos:
Black and white photos of The Dimes, Gay Marriage, and PRKL8R by Rosafoto.
Color photos of The Linus Pauling Quartet photos courtesy of Phil.
Lori “Surfer” Varga Photos uncredited from her myspace,