Show Journal 2009-07-14
We’ve wound up playing unintentional house shows in the past and it’s usually bad news. In this case it worked well for us. Very well. I’d dare say it was the most fun I’ve had playing in Longview since our Halloween show of Rise Again fame. The story is a bit fuzzy, but about a week ago we discovered that Reid’s Pit Stop wasn’t ready for our show so we put the word out that we were looking for a venue. Our main motivation was getting long time friends The Secretions and their tour mates The Bugs a show since both were far from home wanting to avoid a night off. A few hours later our friend Joel (former guitar player for BXF and the owner of the second 800 Octane tattoo ever) offered to put us up in his garage/bar/party pad known simply as “Thunderdome”. Mission accomplished. The show got off to a late start but wound up being pretty fantastic. The Bugs sounded solid and won me over with a song called “e-mail from a she-male”. There weren’t a ton of people for their set, but by the time The Secretions started people really started to roll in. We’ve seen them play many, many times and I gotta say they rocked the hell out of the garage. The guitar players jumped on tables, couches, the bar, people and anything else available to walk on, stand on or jump from. I never thought I’d see someone dislodge a mirror ball from a ceiling with their head, but only a band like The Secretions could accomplish this task. Unfortunately the night took a brief turn for the worse. As we started to load in and tune up I heard the phrase we had been dreading, “dude, the cops are outside”. Right on queue two cops came in with flashlights looking for the owner of the house. Initially we were pretty bummed that we drove up there, setup and wouldn’t get to play. However, it had been a fun night and the other bands got to play for people, which really was our main goal. We loitered around for a bit and debated unloading and then Joel decided the plan would be to wait 20 minutes and then we’d bust through a 20 min set. His thinking was that the cops would leave, we’d play and by the time they returned we’d be done. Looking back the logic was a bit flawed, but it sounded like a good idea at the time so that’s what we did. We closed up the doors, packed people in and played a quick, fast, loud and sweaty set. The thing that made it really cool is that we knew pretty much everyone in there. Most of the people have been coming to see us for years, so it was definitely a different vibe that usual, more like a kick ass party than a show. I don’t know what it was like for the people watching but for me it was amazing. Looking out seeing familiar faces crammed in singing along is still sticking with me a day later. If you were there you most likely saw a version of ‘Day Of The Dead’ with Justin on bass and Dave sans instrument. My favorite moment however, was being egged ino a version of ‘Astro Zombies’ with Danny Secretion and pretty much the whole room singing. I can’t even express what a good time I had playing. There was one small spoiler to the evening though. Literally half way through unloading the cops returned. Joel wound up getting a $250 ticket which pretty much sucks. If you see him around buy him a drink and thank him for taking one for the team. Many thanks to The Bugs, The Secretions and all the familiar faces who stuck around late. Sorry again Joel, we owe you one. Perhaps even 250 of them.
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